Oriental Beliefs - MOOC

Info

"Oriental Beliefs, between reason and traditions" is an online course offered by Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium).

Geschiedenis

Beliefs have existed in every human society, from time immemorial, and they strongly contribute to the way people identify themselves with respect to ‘the others’. This course invites you to a fascinating journey into the world of beliefs and mental representations as they developed in a great variety of cultures, ranging from the Classical world and the Ancient Near East to the Christian, Jewish and Islamic worlds in the Oriental Middle Ages and up to the present time. We will be dealing with afterlife and the netherworld, with angels, miracles, the transmutation of elements, solar eclipses and the cycles of the universe, among many other issues. We shall ask ourselves where these beliefs and theories originate from, what function they perform in a given culture or confessional system, and by which means they were transmitted over the ages. This course is offered by a large team of colleagues attached to the department of classical and oriental studies at the University of Louvain (UCL).