The above course carries Arts and Humanities distribution & Culture
Studies A distribution credit for the College of Arts and Sciences.

Who or what is the divine?  How should human beings relate to it?
This course explores the variety of ways that people answered these
questions in the ancient "pagan" experience of the Mediterranean
world, focusing on the religions of the Roman Empire including
ancient Judaism and early Christianity.  To that end, we will read a
first-hand, pagan account of a spiritual journey to find salvation,
The Golden Ass, by the ancient author Apuleius, although the
seriousness of the tale is a question to consider.  Other primary
texts include handbooks, magical papyri, and curse tablets used to
make binding spells for all occasions, from athletic contests and
legal disputes to business dealings and finding true love (or at
least a date).  Of particular interest will be accounts of
supernatural phenomena involving witches, ghosts, demons, vampires,
and resuscitated corpses.  What connects all the various readings is
our overarching project to define "religion" in the ancient
Mediterranean context, to see whether the commonplace distinction
of "religion" vs. "magic" furthers or hinders academic inquiry into
the ancient texts, and to challenge the unexamined presupposition
that religion is simply "faith."

Course goals:
(1) to acquire general information literacy about the cultural
foundations of Western civilization;

(2) to learn critical interpretation of primary texts that express a
lost religious tradition of the past;

(3) to overcome the difficulty that monotheists have in
comprehending polytheistic religion, particularly a kind that
operates by ritual and not by belief;

(4) to understand how ancient Judaism and early Christianity
participated in this ancient Mediterranean religious context.

Textbooks:
Robin Winks and Susan Mattern-Parks, The Ancient Mediterranean World
(Oxford University Press, 2004).
Apuleius, The Golden Ass, translated by E. J. Kenney (Penguin, 1998).
John G. Gager.  Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient
World (Oxford University Press, 1992).
Georg Luck,  Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and
Roman Worlds, rev. ed. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).
Marvin Meyer, ed., The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook  (1987;
reprint, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).

Requirements: two essays: one a short interpretative assignment, the
other an in-depth analysis of a particular religious text or
ritual.  Mid-term and Final Exams.