REL 295 - Special Topics in Religion

FDR: HU
Credits: 3 credits in fall or winter, 4 in spring

Winter 2020, REL 295A-01: Rise of Religion and Fall of Rome (3). Over the first six centuries CE, a disparate assortment of texts from the eastern Mediterranean - eventually known as the New Testament - were written, composed, collected, and became authoritative for communicating a religious identity: Christian. Simultaneously, Jewish communities from Spain to Central Asia went on living their lives, with the communities of Palestine and Babylonia ultimately producing a regulatory literature - the Talmud - that would revolutionize Jewish religion. Neither existed in a vacuum. This is an exploration of some of our earliest and richest opportunities for understanding how Christianity and Judaism became global phenomena. We focus on vibrant local and trans-local narratives: martyrs, magic, the Holy Land, halakha, magicians, and heretics. We travel not only the traditional hunting grounds of this period (Italy, Gaul, and what became northern Europe) but also late Roman Syria, Egypt, Palestine, and Ethiopia. How were the important events in the period relived and rewritten by those who followed, including Iraqi clerics and the first women playwright of the Middle Ages? And what can we learn by rethinking the big questions we ask of this period - of decline, fall, rise, conquest, and religious competition? (HU) Chalmers.