AP/RLST 1710 6.00

Roots of Western Culture

This course investigates the two major branches of Western thought: the Greco-Roman and the Judeo-Christian.  The course begins by critically thinking about how history is “made,”  reworked and transmitted, about oral culture, and how cultural identities emerge (ex. the Hebrews). Most of the course will be engaged with the ancient Greeks from the Archaic period to the Classical and Hellenistic, and the Romans from the Republic to the early Empire.  The course will end with a consideration of the emergence of proto-orthodox Christianity within the surprising mix of philosophical and religious ideas in the Roman world. Our aim will be to examine texts both critically and in context. For example we will study the documentary hypothesis which suggests that the Hebrew Bible is a composite work from several sources, and we will consider how our knowledge of “the Greeks” is often based on scant physical remains, fragmentary literary sources which are themselves dependent on second and third hand authors.

Students will be introduced to many kinds of works that emerged in the ancient period:  epic poetry, lyric poetry, fables, parables, dramatic works, philosophical and medical treatises and historical prose. We will want to engage in close readings of primary texts with a view to understanding key themes and ideas, historical, political, and social contexts, and religious beliefs and practices. We will consider influences from even more ancient civilizations; highlight certain Greek gods and goddesses and their festivals; consider the social status of women and slaves and differences between ethnic groups such as the Spartans and Athenians. We will engage with the texts interpretively which will involve examining various perspectives, examining the use of art and literature for ideological ends, as well as examining our own embedded assumptions about the past. Our primary texts will include most of the following and many more:  excerpts from the Hebrew Bible,  Homer, Hesiod,  Sappho, Aesop, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Thucydides, Hippocrates,  Livy, Virgil, Lucretius, Epicurus, Epictetus, Apuleius, Marcus Aurelius, Ovid, and excerpts from the New Testament.

RELIGIOUS TRADITION(S) COVERED: Multiple

Course Category: Self, Society and Other