Ancient Western Religions

1. It arose and flourished in ancient Iran, known today as Persia during the Persian empire of the 5th and 6th centuries.
2. Zoroastrianism spread beyond its origin after Persia conquered by the Greek and Alexander the Great in 328 BC which caused it to spread far
3. Zarathustra had the religious experience at age 30 of that an angle called good Thought appeared and brought him before Ahura Mazda who Zarathustra recognized as the one true god which drove him to spread the idea of monotheism.
4. The Sacred Text of Zoroastrianism is the Avesta and the oldest part is the Gathas, which are Zarathustra’s seventeen hymns
5. Ahura Mazda is eternal and universal goodness and controls the cosmos and the destiny of human beings
6. Ethical dualism is the belief in universal forces of good and evil
7. The Lie is the evil spirit. The Lie was chosen by the hostile spirit who was one of the Ahura Mazda’s twin children
8. Humans must choose between truth and the Lie, the beneficent spirit or the Hostile spirit
9. Zarathustra’s understanding of human destiny is that after death individuals undergo judgment. The good go to paradise and the bad to a dark abyss. Stress individual responsibility of a person in their passing of judgment.
10. The general ethical demands of the traditional Zoroastrian life and caring for livestock and fields lead by example, tell the truth, and avoid evil people.
11. The Parsis are today’s Zoroastrians that mostly live in India.
12. “The Bible” of the ancient Greeks was Homer’s The Illiad and the Odyssey.
13. “The gods of the Olympian pantheon are anthropomorphic” means that they have human attributes and none of them are all knowing but rather each has their own talents.
14. Aeschylus main contribution to the understanding of the gods was to focus on divine justice and have an emphasis on the characteristic strengths each god had rather than the humanistic ones. For example, he focused on Zeus’ power and strength.
15. An oracle is a sanctuary favored by a particular god who communicated to morals who were at the site. The most famous oracle was at Delphi where they sought the wisdom of Apollo.
16. The three basic aspects of the mystery religion are that individuals had to choose to become initiates and they went through some sort of initiation ritual, initiates experienced a personal encounter with deity, and initiates gained spiritual renewal through participation in the religion and hope for better afterlife.
17. The mystery religion that honored Demete, and Pesphore was that celebrated at Eleusis near Athens.
18. The god Dionysus is associated with fertility, vegetation and wine. He is often depicted in Greek art with vines and grapes.
19. The goal of the ascetic practices of the Orphics is to release the soul from the body and fully realize its divine nature.
20. Plato’s theory of knowledge is that we know things in life partially because we experienced them in a previous lifetime. This is known as recollection
21. Platonic dualism is how truth exists outside of any physical thing and is in ideas therefore perfect and eternal.
22. Jesus seemed to have much in common with Asclepius because they were both god and mortal at the same time, had the power to heal, and both encouraged a closer relationship between the worshipper and the worshipped.
23. Numina were supernatural powers that were in charge of specific functions. They were thought to inhabit homes, towns, fields, the countryside, streams, doorways, altars, shrines, and many other things.
24. The most powerful Roman deity was Jupiter
25. The six planets named after Roman deities are Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Neptune, Mercury, and Saturn.
26. Official worship practices were essential because it was believed such worshipping ensured the welfare of the Roman state
27. The mystery religions that were the major threats to Christianity were those from Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Palestine, and the Greeks.
28. The Egyptian myth of Isis and Oriris is that Orisis was killed and hacked into pieces by his brother. Isis, his wife, searched all over until finally finding Oriris’s body parts. She mummified him and he came back to life and was a god of the underworld.
29. The sort of emperor worship that was encouraged by Augustus was that he be worshipped as a god by the people he conquered.
30. Christians and Roman rulers clashed over emperor worship because Christians only believed in their one god and therefore refused to worship the emperor.