Ancient Origins of Religious Conflict in the Middle East
Classics 224/ Religious Studies 224/ Religion 3225: January, 2004
Required books:
1. The Oxford Study Bible (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992) = OSB
2. N. J. Dawood, translator, The Koran (London: Penguin, 1999 [revised reprinting of fifth edition of the 1956 original])
3. Hershel Shanks, editor, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism: A Parallel History of their Origins and Early Development (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1992) = CRJ
4. F. E. Peters, Muhammad and the Origins of Islam (Albany: State Univ .of New York, 1994)
Short quizzes (a third of the semester grade) on all assigned readings. Graduate students will write a research paper, due April 21. Midterm exams on Feb. 9 and March 19. If you miss the exam you can take a makeup but you will be docked two thirds of a quality point.
Part I: Greeks and Barbarians
Jan. 14: Introduction
Jan. 16: The time of the gods, and the Achsenzeit
Jan. 19: The Hellenistic kingdoms, from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra
Jan. 21: Hellenistic society: language, education, culture, “ethnicity,” and communities
Jan. 2 Jan. 23: Philosophy and the philosophers’ concept of Divinity (Read the on-line summary of Cicero’s De Natura Deorum at http://www.uah.edu/student_life/organizations/SAL/claslattexts/cicero/denatdeorum.html
Part II: Jews and Gentiles
Jan. 26: The Jerusalem temple and the ideology of a Holy People (OSB 194-201: Deuteronomy 12-18, and pp. 901-912: Ezekiel 40-48)
Jan. 28: The Septuagint, synagogues, and the dramatic growth of an ecumenical community (OSB pp. 1058-1070: Tobit)
Jan. 30: Judaea and the Seleukids: the outbreak of the Maccabean revolt (OSB pp. 1233-57: Second Maccabees)
Feb 2: The Seleukid collapse, Judaean apocalyptic, and visions of an eternal empire for the Holy People (OSB pp. 913-30 = Daniel)
Feb. 4: Hasmonean Judaea, the religious divisions, and the arrival of the Roman legions
(OSB pp. 1071-1986: Judith; Josephus Jewish War 2. 120-161 on the Essenes, Pharisees and Sadducees: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi‑bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0148&layout=&loc=2.120
Suggested reading: (L. Feldman, “Palestinian and Diaspora Judaism in the First Century,” = CRJ pp. 1-39)
Feb. 6: Judaea under Herodes the Great and Caesar Augustus; the Judaeans of Alexandria and Philo’s allegorizing of the Septuagint (Philo, Allegorical Interpretation II, http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/book3.html
Feb. 9: EXAMINATION
Part III: Christians, Jews and Heathen
Feb. 11: Judaea under Tiberius: John the Baptizer and Jesus Nazarenos (OSB pp. 1304-26: Gospel of Mark)
Feb. 13: The Judaean Christiani; Messianic fervor, the Son of Man, burning of Rome, and the outbreak of the Judaean-Roman war (OSB pp. 1327-32: Gospel of Luke, Chapters 1-3, with special attn to the poetry, the so-called Lukan Canticles)
Feb. 16: End of the Judaean-Roman war in 70; Judaean religion in the aftermath of the destruction of the temple (OSB pp. 1556-1575: The Revelation of John)
Feb. 18: New Covenant Christians (to end of first century): making God more accessible for “the gentiles” (OSB pp. 1475-1480: Letter of Paul to the Galatians. Suggested reading: Howard Kees, “After the Crucifixion: Christianity through Paul,” = pp. 85-124 in CRJ)
Feb. 20: The Judaeans of Mesopotamia, and the Diaspora rising of 115-117; the Ben Kosiba (Bar Kochba) revolt of 131-135 (Lee Levine, “Judaism from the Destruction of Jerusalem to the End of the Second Jewish Revolt: 70-135 C.E.,” pp. 125-149 in CRJ)
Feb. 23: The Christian ekklesia, Montanism, the N.T. canon, and the imperatives of orthodoxy
Feb. 25: Civic cults, mystery cults and the “spiritual awakening” of the ancient world; reason and revelation in the Age of Anxiety
Feb. 27: The early Christian apologists: the arguments for God and against the gods (Tatian, To the Greeks, on-line at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/tatian‑address.html
Mar. 1: The third-century crisis of the Roman Empire
Mar. 3: The persecutions of the Christians: what were the causes, and the results? (Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, online at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/perpetua.html
Martyrdom of Polycarp, online at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/martyrdompolycarp‑lake.html)
(Suggested reading: H. Attridge, “Christianity from the Destruction of Jerusalem to Constantine’s Adoption of the New Religion: 70-312 C.E.,” = pp. 151-194 in CRJ)
Mar. 5: The academies of the Jewish tannaim; divergence of Diaspora and Palestinian Judaeans in the third century (Shaye Cohen, “Judaism to the Mishnah: 135-220 C.E.,” = pp. 195-223 in CRJ)
(Spring break, March 6 through 14)
March 15: Sassanid Iran, Zoroastrianism, and the Manichees
March 17: Constantine; the end of the persecutions, and the beginning of monasticism
March 19: EXAMINATION
March 22: Trinitarianism as Christian orthodoxy; the terrors of Hell in Late Antiquity
March 24: One Way or many, the last philosophers, and the end of public paganism (Dennis Groh, “The Religion of the Empire: Christianity from Constantine to the Arab Conquest,” = pp. 267-303 in CRJ)
March 26: Judaeans in the Christian empire: the attraction to Christianity; the Talmuds (Isaiah Gafni, “The World of the Talmud: From the Mishnah to the Arab Conquest,” = pp. 225-265 in CRJ; also, sample any three chapters from Book I (“Sabbath”) of the Babylonian Talmud: http://www.sacred‑texts.com/jud/t01/index.htm )
March 29: From Adrianople to the dismemberment of the Roman Empire in the west (James Charlesworth, “Christians and Jews in the First Six Centuries,” = pp. 305-325 in CRJ)
Part IV: Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Infidels
March 31: Arabia and Arabians, through the third century
April 2: Arabic society and religion before Muhammad: the limits of Judaism and Christianity
(Peters, pp. 1-75)
April 5: Muhammad: monotheism and revelation (Ibn Ishaq on the infancy and nursing of Muhammad, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/muhammadi‑sira.html
Also, read Peters, pp. 77-166)
April 7: The Quran. Read sura 3 (“The ‘Imrans”), sura 4 (“Women”), sura 8 (“The Spoils”), and sura 9 (“Repentance”); also Peters, pp. 167-210
April 9: The Quran. Read sura 2 (“The Cow”), sura 5 (The Table”), sura 22 (“Pilgrimage”) and sura 23 (“The Believers”); also Peters, pp. 211-268
April 12: Heraclius and Khusro II as “holy warriors”; Umar and the spectacular creation of an Arabian empire
April 14: The last of the Rightly Guided Kaliphs, the Umayyads, and the Sunni-Shiite division
April 16: The umma: Muslim community, conduct, custom and law (Sample any six of the 93 books of hadith collected and published by Sahih Bukhari:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/
April 19: The expansion of Islam under the Abbasids; Jewish and Christian subjects in the d r-al-isl m (The “Pact of Umar”: http://faculty.juniata.edu/tuten/islamic/pactofumar.html )
Part V: Epilogue
April 21: The religious policies of the Ottoman Turkish empire; 19th-century nationalism and colonialism; the end of Ottoman rule in the Middle East and the establishment of the Hashemite and Saudi kingdoms
April 23: Zionism and the creation of Israel as a nation-state; the wars between Israel and the adjacent Muslim states
April 26: Discussion
