RELI 220 - Text and Traditions

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Study of selected oral and written texts and their place in various religious traditions.

May be taken more than once for credit when content changes.

Topic for 2014/15b: Heretics, Deviants, and Others in Early Christianity. Jesus’s earliest followers quickly developed radically different ideas about his nature, about their own role in history and the goal (if any) of their participation, about how much they should be participating in the life of society, and about how their groups should be organized and supported. Their disputes over these subjects were fierce, with each side convinced that the other was standing in the way of God’s plan for the world. What were these early varieties of Christianity, and what ideas are expressed in the unique literature of these movements? Why were some ideas eventually considered ‘orthodox’, while others were dismissed as deviant or wrong, in some cases leading to Christian persecution of other Christians? What is the legacy of such disputes in contemporary society? Ms. LiDonnici.

Topic for 2014/15b: Religion and Culture of Ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptian religion is an organic growth out of the life of the people along the Nile, impossible to discuss in isolation from it. This course is an integrated survey of daily and religious life in ancient Egypt in from Pharaonic times through Late Antiquity, focusing equally on royal and on individual forms of religious expression. We will make extensive use of preserved Egyptian texts, an enormous body of literature that expresses a unique outlook upon the world, on human life, on the nature of divinities, and on the meaning of death. Ms. LiDonnici.

Prerequisite: one course in Religion or permission of the instructor.

Open to all students.

Two 75-minute periods.