RELIGION AND CULTURE

Themes

• religion and worldviews
• culture and language
• examples from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, India, China, Americas

Religion, Culture and Language

• Religion =
  • a system of __________, __________ and __________
  • relative to __________,
  • which shapes an __________ manifested in the __________ of its adherents.
  • or: "the systems of belief, which, through symbols and actions, mobilize the feelings and wills of human beings." (Ninian Smart)
  • "relates a view of the ultimate nature of reality to a set of ideas of how man is..to live." (Clifford Geertz)
• culture and language
  • Can you understand another culture without learning the language?
  • universal translator versus "incommensurability"
  • What can religious stories tell us about cultures and worldviews?

Religion and the Environment

• creation stories
  • Greek Gaia, Uranos, Chronos
  • Chinese Pangu*
  • Mesopotamian Enuma Elish
  • Egyptian Amon *; Atum-Re
  • India's Purusha
  • Mayan Popol Vuh
• gods and nature
  • animism
  • ancestors, aumakua
  • chthonic deities
  • animal-human combos
  • Arinna, Tesup, Dingri-Lama*
• anthropomorphic deities and polytheism
  • India: Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva*
  • Mesopotamia: Anu, Marduk, Enlil
  • Egypt: twins; Osiris and Isis*
  • Greek and Roman pantheon: Olympus; Zeus*
• fertility stories and heroes
  • Greek Persephone
  • Egyptian Osiris
  • Hercules and Gilgamesh

Religion, Society and Politics: ____________ religion

• ziggurats, Hammurabi; Nippur
• pharoah, Ma`at
• Mandate of Heaven
• Temple of Athena
• Purusha and varna

Relating to the divine: __________ religion

• propitiation
  • salt
  • ancestors
  • blood
• prediction
  • geomancy, I Ching
  • aurispices
• the future
  • burial: mummy*
  • judgment
  • transcendence and yoga *
  • quests

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