academics and paganism

I find modern academics are increasingly doing a better job of looking at ancient religions as they were rather than trying to fit them into a christian framework.

There are plenty of "unlikey" theories that provide useful understandings. Depends if we are using the academics view of "unlikely" or actually unlikely. Academics tend to class things as unlikely if they can't be proven or there isn't a mass of material supporting them -and- they personally don't want to support it, either due to their own prejudices or to safeguard their academic standing

I view the existence of the gods as central, and where academic sources help us understand how the gods were apprehended and interacted with (at whatever point in history) then they are useful
by ' looking at ancient religions as they were rather than trying to fit them into a christian framework'

I mean understanding that there was never an inflexible orthodoxy that the dream/goal of the scholar is to uncover... the final perfect pagan "bible"

at least in regard to what can broadly be classed as 'western' pre-christian religions