REL 276(S) Greek Religion: Between the Cunning of Reason and the Uncanniness of Common Human Acts (Same as Classics 276)

Where should one begin thinking of Greek religion? A Greek would say, `begin with the gods', but what if we begin with the Greeks? With what Greeks, male and female, did every day, or every month, or every year-for seventy years (if the gods or fate so ordained)? With what a lifetime of doings did? And with what Greeks thought of the doings of their doings? This beginning places us theoretically where the Greeks found themselves practically, between the cunning of reason and the uncanniness of common human acts. We start with Greeks about their business of leading a human life. They told stories, imitated wolves or bears, sloughed off pollution, swore oaths, sang hymns, incubated dreams, consulted oracles, ran races, washed statues, wore masks, burnt cakes or fat and bones for daimons in heaven or under earth-and every month f#ted gods, ancestors, city life and after death. After death, if one had initiated friends, one might find a solid gold leaf of instructions on where to go and what to say and what not to do in the underworld. We will survey grand themes in examining ordinary 'beliefs and practices,' taking both as skills the Greeks cultivated to relate themselves to themselves in maintaining right relations to the gods, to the world's dynamic economies and to the set span of life. This will be a lecture course using resources in English. Texts: Hesiod Works and Days, Robert Garland, The Greek Way of Life: From Conception to Old Age, and Walter Burkert, Greek Religion. Students will master an essential Greek religious vocabulary, learn to avoid crypto-Christian categories in studying archaic religious traditions, acquire a basic familiarity with the sources and problems of Greek religion, and earn a grade based on one mid-term exam and a 15- to 20-page paper. This course is open to all classes without prerequisites.

Hour:  BOZEMAN