Religions of the World Online Spring 2016 Exam One—Ancient Religions

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Religions of the World Online Spring 2016

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Exam One—Ancient Religions

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This Roman senator and philosopher is credited with creating, for the first time, a vocabulary of religion with an explicit intellectual content, where previously, the entire foundation of religion was based solely on ritual. This was the first rational work of theology. This man's name was:

As Semitic peoples settled in Babylonia, they came to dominate the region from around 2300 B.C. As they developed their culture, they began to tell the Sumerian myths in their own language. Eventually, this language became the dominant language of the region. Their language was know as:

Living a good life was thought to be a way of ensuring a safe passage to the afterworld. Those who failed to do this were destroyed forever; however, this could be avoided by reciting a specific incantation. Incantations that would assure a successful journey to the afterworld were collected in a series of parchments collectively referred to as:

By the 6th Century B.C., the idea of Greek city-state itself became the most important aspect of Greek religion. The fortified citadel gave way to this open-air plaza, which was the central marketplace of the city:

The priests of the ancient Celts were believed to be scholars, lawgivers and arbitrators; they are known as:

Match the Egyptian god or goddess to the correct description.

This Babylonian sky god was given credit for creating humankind. He is considered the mythological forerunner of the Greek god Zeus; this god's name is:

Coinciding with the establishment in Egypt of a single central government, writing began around 3100 B.C. through a pictorial writing system known as:

The earliest written texts of ancient Greek civilization were an archaic form of the Greek language called by this name—these tablets consisted of inventory lists of people, occupations, livestock, produce and the gods.

Which of the following religious practices was NOT characteristic of ancient religious worship and ritual?

This was the name for the land of Israel from around 1800 to 1200 B.C. According to the Old Testament, the people of Israel were warned by God to avoid all contact with this native religion and to "utterly destroy" all traces of these people once they entered this land:

This man was the most famous king of the Babylonian empire. He is credited with the successful conquering and destruction of Jerusalem, which led to the exile of the Hebrews into captivity in Babylon. This king was named:

The southern part of Mesopotamia depended upon artificial irrigation for agriculture, a practice that started around 5000 B.C. After this, a steady development of settlements grew into great cities and eventually empires that would encompass the entire known world. The great city at the center of this ancient empire was called:

The ancient Egyptians thought that the human spirit needed the body as a kind of base for its journey; as a result, they created this elaborate system of physical preservation of the corpse that is commonly referred to as:

The Norse god of thunder was the slayer of giants and inspired the most widespread of devotion from the common people, who looked to him as their protector; this god was named:

One of the most famous stories from ancient Sumeria was of this great hero, who sets out to find the secret of immortality. He encounters a man who, like the biblical Noah, escaped a great global flood by building an ark. This hero's name was:

The Sumerians, the first great civilization of Babylonia, created this type of writing, which was a symbolic alphabet carved into clay tablets.

This is the Greek name for the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the modern-day nation of Iraq. Human settlements first began there around 10,000 B.C., which contributes to its label as "the cradle of civilization."

The religious character of the Roman empire—and the entire Western world—changed in 313 A.D. with the Edict of Milan, issued by this Roman emperor, who declared that Christian worship was allowed to take place freely, and that the Christian church was to be singled out for "compensation from our benevolence."