Talking about ancient religious cultures -- What is 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 ancestral 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 the 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 -- 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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