Introduction

What were ‘saviour’ gods? What did it mean to invoke a god under the title Soter? This chapter discusses the cult epithets, perceived power, and divine nature of gods and goddesses called ‘saviours’ in the Greek world. It explores the possible reasons why soteria and ‘saviour’ gods have been understudied by ancient historians, the significance and centrality of the concept in antiquity, and the existing state of scholarship on this subject in Classical and Biblical Studies. Drawing on recent paradigms in the study of Greek religion in the last half century, not least the ‘structuralist’ approach advanced by Vernant and Detienne and the post-structural analyses of Parker, Versnel, and Pirenne-Delforge, this chapter situates the phenomenon of ‘saviour’ gods in existing approaches to the study of Greek polytheism. It gives a semantic analysis of the Greek words sozein, soteria, and Soter/Soteira, and an overview of the different kinds of source materials, ranging from epigraphic to literary and archaeological, to be encountered in the rest of this study.