Classroom Connection: Early Belief Systems with NYU's Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures

1. Why does early religion look so similar all over the world?

2. What was it about early societies that made these religious forms especially attractive or believable?

Perhaps there is something in our DNA? Somrthing that was passed doen from our earliest humans.

I think religions are similar because we are closely related we truly are.

I love reflecting on Emile Durkheim's foundational studies. With young students, we discuss the role that religion filled in systematically structuring a primitive society.

I love reflecting on Emile Durkheim's foundational studies. With young students, we discuss the role that religion filled in systematically structuring a primitive society.

3. What would surprise ancient people most if they visited a mosque, synagogue, or a church in New York City?

4. What would feel most familiar to you, if you could travel back in time and take part in an ancient ceremony?

I think like anything, people would lead with curiosity first. Trying to figure out connections to their own lives.

5. How do we avoid seeing Roman religion through the eyes of the powerful, like Cicero?

6. What alternative rituals and beliefs might the Roman elite have been trying to counter in their textual and monumental production?

I think through acrhaeology. What objects were left behind by the general populations related to religion? Or perhaps other civlizations wrote about Roman religion through the eyes of the general population.

7. What ways could we find to explore the lived experience of other early religious traditions, like those of the Egyptians, the Aztecs, the peoples of ancient Africa and India?

8. What new histories of religion in the long term could we write if we did not consider religious traditions to be structured like Christianity (evolving to a system), but instead viewed with the lived religion approach?