RELS 203 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Pietas, Dharma, Lactantius

• School: University of Calgary
• Department: Religious Studies
• Course: RELS 203
• Professor: James Apple

Document Summary

The academic study of religion is a product of 19th century europe: as a result, influenced greatly by europlean expansionism and colonialism. Early scholars interested in collecting/comparing beliefs, myths, and rituals found around the world: as a result they tried to perfect use of non-evaluative comparative method in the cross-(cid:272)ultural stud(cid:455) of people"s religious (cid:271)eliefs. Te(cid:374)ded to look at (cid:862)ours(cid:863) a(cid:374)d (cid:862)theirs(cid:863), i(cid:374)here(cid:374)tl(cid:455) less o(cid:271)je(cid:272)ti(cid:448)e. Religion is an english term, so do non-english speakers have religion: the term has equivalents in french and german. German term for study of religion is religionswissenschaft. All modern languages that can be traced back to latin possess something equivalent to the e(cid:374)glish ter(cid:373) (cid:862)religio(cid:374)(cid:863) For language families unaffected by latin, there is no linguistic equivalent term to religion: unless european cultures have somehow exerted influence on a non-latin- based culture or language, an influence evident in trade, conquest, and colonialism. The new testament which was composed in greek lacked the latin concept of religio.