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Undergraduate Courses

840:314 ORIGINS OF WESTERN MORALITY (3)

The ways that early Christian groups used Jewish and Greek moral traditions and reshaped them according to their developing interests. These interests came to shape the moral language, laws, politics, and social codes of Christian Europe and America. The course will pay particular attention to the roles of Hellenistic philosophy, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the letters of Paul, the teaching attributed to Jesus in writings from the end of the first century C.E., and the development of ascetic practices and ideology. Issues of importance to the course include the variety of ancient options available for thinking about ethical psychology, the concept of porneia (harlotry) and the attack on traditional Mediterranean religion, the family/household and opposition to it, wealth/poverty, slavery, sexual ethics and gender norms. (Pre or co-requisite: 01:840:212, "Religions of the Western World.")