AAMC Test 3 Item 88 (Stoics)

[tungstenchef]

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This one is driving me nuts. It's asking how the author's claims about the Stoics would be affected if it was discovered that the traditional portrayal of the Olympian god Zeus as the source of thunder originated from a Stoic philosopher. The correct answer is that "It would support the claim that the Stoics reinterpreted individual deities as explanations of natural phenomena."

My problem with this answer is that it completely misstates the author's claim about the Stoics, which was that "most people had come to regard [the gods] as merely symbolic, and even the Stoics, for all their belief in divine Providence, reinterpreted and accommodated many individual deities as merely allegorical explanations of natural phenomena.

So if a Stoic says that Zeus is the literal source of thunder, doesn't that undermine the claim that Zeus is the merely allegorical source of thunder instead of support it?

I went with choice D, "It would weaken the claim that the Stoics produced numerous slighting references to the Olympian gods. The explanation says that the "numerous slighting references" were attributed to the period of time, not to the Stoics. My thinking was that the key words were "merely allegorical". To me, interpreting Zeus as the merely allegorical source of thunder is a slighting reference compared to interpreting him as the literal source of thunder.

 

[LeonVCU]

Now, once you interpret the passage wrong, it can be hard to see what the author really meant. Try to clear your mind and read this again: "most people had come to regard [the gods] as merely symbolic, and even the Stoics, for all their belief in divine Providence, reinterpreted and accommodated many individual deities as merely allegorical explanations of natural phenomena" Try to take out some words and you get "Stoics, for all their belief in divine Providence." Now, you see that Stoics actually believed in supernatural forces and were not simply making "slighting references."

"the traditional portrayal of the Olympian god Zeus as the source of thunder originated from a Stoic philosopher". This is because "reinterpreted and accommodated many individual deities".

Granted, this is not the best possible answer. But it is the best of the answer choices.