The appearance of God or Gods before individuals is usually a decisive literary move that signifies the apogee of human suffering. Although in everyday life, people always solve problems through their efforts, the inability to help themselves, systematic anguish, and suffering in literature, especially religious literature, often result in the character facing God. These episodes are always decisive for the protagonist’s other life journey, often radically changing their lives.
In the semester reading, several works at once involved the appearance of God before the characters. One of the most obvious examples is Genesis 32:24-32, in which Jacob meets God in the person of an angel while he is asleep. This episode was the culmination of life’s problems and sins of a man who was prone to sin and to living outside of God’s laws. However, the appearance and subsequent confrontation with the Angel was the apotheosis of a life strategy to fight God, as a result of which the man was not only forgiven but also given new energy for life.
The appearance of the Gods, however, may not necessarily be literal but may instead be expressed metaphorically. For example, in Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex, the Gods as such did not meet the characters, but the way they accomplished the fate of the protagonist’s family through foretelling seems ironic and evil at the same time. Meanwhile, both Genesis and Oedipus Rex simultaneously show the gods as cruel: the struggle of the Angel with the ordinary person and the cruel fate of Oedipus reveal parallels. This creates a constructively new view of deities — they do not necessarily have to be kind and merciful, but they can also be cruel.
The appearance of the deity is not always related to biblical stories since many of the current course readings were books that were written millennia before the Bible. Among such is the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient Sumerian cuneiform text that treats the gods as selfish and evil beings. The cruelty of the gods is a frequent theme in mythological literature, and, as has been shown earlier, it can also be seen in biblical works. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, however, the God Enki is merciful when he appears before Utnapishtim. In this story, God warned Utnapishtim of the impending threat of a flood, leaving him as the only survivor afterward. This literary example of deity mercy shows that the mythological vision of the gods was complex and was not always associated with cruelty.
The appearance of the gods is particularly notable in the epic Aeneid, authored by Virgil. Although the story describes the famous plot of the legendary Trojan hero Aeneas, the intervention of the gods in the lives of all the characters cannot be overlooked. This includes the appearance of Venus, who secures her son’s fate in Carthage, and the intervention of Juno, who sets Rome’s fleet on fire. The God Jupiter is metaphorically shown to Aeneas when he saves the burning ships with rain. The use of the example of Aeneas is not coincidental after analyzing the rest of the work. It is this epic that simultaneously shows both the positive and negative effects of the appearance and subsequent intervention of the gods in the lives of literary characters.
In conclusion, it is worth saying that literary works perfectly demonstrate the rhetoric of the gods through scenarios that cannot be found in real life. In contrast to everyday practice, in texts, the appearance of the Gods can be portrayed through the use of metaphors. It has been shown that the Gods, however, were not always strictly positive characters in epic and nonepic literature. They caused harm to man and, at the same time, warned him of severe disasters in order to save him. In addition, some Gods could have a positive effect on the individual, contributing to his development, while others, on the contrary, pursued self-serving goals. In all of this, the difference in communication between the individual and God is traceable. It may be communication, struggle, or prayer, but in either case, it is always vertical communication in which God or deities are above the individual.