Death, the Soul the Afterlife

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course will ask the following simple questions with their not-so-simple answers: What is the larger context into which the ideas of “death” and “the soul” fit? What did the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, among the myriad pagan, polytheistic traditions of antiquity, believe about death, the soul, and an afterlife? How did those beliefs change and not change with the advent of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? How are the beliefs on this subject the same for these three “Abrahamic” traditions and how do they differ from each other? How has such thinking changed and how has it not, in arriving into the “modern“ era?