U-IRLSO-AB - Interdepartmental: Ancient Religion and Society

This interdepartmental major (IDM) between Religious Studies and Classical Studies is for anyone interested in the many ways that religion shaped history, society, and thought in the ancient Mediterranean, particularly within the Greek and Roman traditions. In this cultural context, a rich variety of Greco-Roman religious cults and ritual practices intersected with Judaism, Christianity, and (eventually) Islam, as well as with myth, magic, and other expressions of humanity’s relationship to notions of the divine. Just as students in Religious Studies often look to Classical Studies for social and cultural background, so too Classicists attend to the fundamental role played by religion in their understanding of the Greco-Roman world.

In this IDM, both disciplines work together to provide essential content, context, methodologies, and skills, and to yield the kind of insight into religious experiences and traditions that is beyond the reach of either discipline alone. The IDM differs significantly from a Religious Studies major in its emphasis on the socio-cultural and political and intellectual histories of Greece and Rome, the optional focus on an ancient language as a fundamental for the major, and the focus on Greek and Roman literature and material culture. The IDM differs significantly from a Classical Studies major in its emphasis on religious traditions and the themes and methodologies that characterize the contemporary study of religion.

Core parts of the research and coursework in a Religious Studies Department involve texts, buildings, and artifacts, particularly those in the Jewish and Christian traditions, that reside in an ancient historical, social, intellectual, and literary culture that is usually considered the focus of a Classical Studies Department. Likewise, the classical era (especially the Hellenistic and Imperial periods) contains hugely important texts and archeological remains, again mostly but not exclusively Jewish and Christian, that are downplayed or even ignored in preference to literary or non-religious narratives. In the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, for example, Classicists look to the likes of Tacitus, Pliny, Martial, Plutarch, Lucian, Galen, Dio, Aristides, Fronto, and the Greek novels, while scholars of religion focus on writings such as the Pauline letters, the gospels, Justin Martyr, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Clement, Philo, the novelistic Joseph and Aseneth and Acts, Apocalypses and other early Christian Apocrypha. Yet these all existed in the same time, and many in the same place! Recent developments in ancient Mediterranean studies are increasingly focusing on this problem, or rather opportunity, and this major is then a way for a student to travel down a leading-edge path through this interdisciplinary study of the ancient world.

Website: religiousstudies.duke.edu/undergraduate/interdepartmental-major