Imperial Religious Politics in the Ancient Near East
From The Observatory
What kind of socio-political and economic changes had to occur to uproot millennia-old structures of control of religious practice by political centers and local priestly elites? What does the loss of indigenous rulership in the wake of Persian and Hellenistic-Roman conquests mean for the social and religious life of the individual in ancient Mesopotamia? What was the “social and religious capital” of early Christianity, for instance, that even family structures could break apart due to the individual’s choice to follow the claim for exclusive devotion and adherence to one God only?
Agenda
In my talk I am going to argue that the rise of so-called monotheistic religions begins nearly five hundred years before the Common Era and that individual identity and self-definition in relation to the social community – human and divine – was primarily a process of experience and lived practice in particular social political, economic, and religious settings. It is the collapse of these settings that paved the way for the emergence of new forms of religiosity.
Key Speaker: Beate Pongratz-Leisten
Participants
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Host, Organizer | Homepage
ISAW is a center for advanced scholarly research and graduate education, which aims to encourage particularly the study of the economic, religious, political and cultural connections between ancient civilizations. It offers both doctoral and postdoctoral programs, with the aim of training a new generation of scholars who will enter the global academic community and become intellectual leaders.
