Talking about ancient religious cultures. What is religion? -- Early prehistoric religion. Prehistoric religion : the Neolithic Era -- Egypt, a unique religious culture. Egyptian creation stories and their meaning -- The Egyptian pantheon. Egyptian myths of kingship -- Egyptian myths of the underworld. Egypt, the power of goddesses -- Egypt, religion in everyday life. Egypt, the beginning of wisdom.
Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers. Mesopotamia, stories of creation -- Mesopotamia, Inanna the Goddess. Mesopotamia, Gilgamesh the King -- Mesopotamia, the search for eternal life. Mesopotamia, the great flood -- Ancient concepts of the divine. The gods of Syria-Palestine -- Israel's ancient history. Israel's national history -- Prophecy in the ancient near east. Early prophecy in Israel.
Classical Israelite prophecy. Israel's great crisis -- Syria-Palestine, the problem of evil. Early Aegean civilizations -- Religious culture in the Iliad and Odyssey. Religious culture in archaic Greece -- Greece, how things came to be. Greece, the goddess -- The classical era in Greece. Greece, philosophy as religion -- Religious culture in the Hellenistic world. Mystery religions in the Hellenistic world.
Mystery religions from the East. Roman religious culture before the empire -- Rome, saviors and divine men. lecture 40. Rome, divination, astrology, and magic -- Rome, critics and charlatans. Jesus of Nazareth as a figure in history -- Creating Jesus communities. Living and dying for the God(s) -- Women's religious roles in the early empire. The Jesus movement in the Greco-Roman world -- The death and rebirth of the old gods. Conclusion : persisting ideas and yearnings.
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