The History of Hell: Eschatology in Ancient Mediterranean Cultures

4 credits · Undergraduate

In this course we will examine the history of ideas about the soul’s postmortem fate in the ancient Mediterranean world. We will focus on epic poets and philosophers from ancient Greece and Rome, but also read comparative material from the ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and medieval Christendom. Our goal will be to study the common threads that connect depictions of hell / the underworld in their respective cultural contexts. No knowledge of Greek or Latin required.