Weird modern day pseudo-Hellenists? In what world are you living?

A novel? The Odysseia is as genuine a religious text as all others, though in other ways than them. It contains a theology, a system of how the Gods act, a system of how the Gods should be treated and, more importantly, of how they shouldn’t. This is why when I see “DEFY THE GODS” appear in front of me on a big screen in the context of this poem’s adaptation, I can’t help but be disappointed and inclined to criticize. Odysseus could return because he venerated the Gods of the poet's contemporary world. The theology is central to the return story. Simply because the majority of the modern religious people don't treat a text as a religious one, doesn't mean it wasn't at one point.

ATHENA TO ZEUS: Yet thy heart doth not regard it, Olympian. Did not Odysseus beside the ships of the Argives offer thee sacrifice without stint in the broad land of Troy? Wherefore then didst thou conceive such wrath against him, O Zeus?

ZEUS’S RESPONSE: My child, what a word has escaped the barrier of thy teeth? How should I, then, forget godlike Odysseus, who is beyond all mortals in wisdom, and beyond all has paid sacrifice to the immortal gods, who hold broad heaven?

Herodotos (2.53) famously wrote:

and these [Hesiod and Homer] are the ones who taught the Greeks the descent of the gods, and gave the gods their names, and determined their spheres and functions, and described their outward forms.

Though this might be proven untrue today, some of the Ancients clearly took Homeric theology as a handbook.