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Mar 29, 2024
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HIST 110WW PO - Holy War in Early Christianity and Islam From its very inception, Christianity was a religion steeped in blood. The original members of this sect found themselves subject to suspicion and intermittent prosecution by the Roman authorities. In the process, some learned to welcome execution as a way of achieving a particularly intense form of identification with their crucified leader. The moment the empire embraced Christianity in the fourth century, bishops, emperors, and even monks began to inflict “divinely sanctioned” violence on groups they perceived as threats to the Christian “chosen people”: pagans, Jews, and heretics. By the time Muhammad entered the picture, a whole range of Christian notions of holy violence had become commonplace. The unparalleled success of Arab expansion in the seventh century has drawn much attention to the Islamic idea of jihad. In this seminar, we will use primary and secondary texts to help us contextualize this concept by considering it alongside early Christian attitudes toward and experiments with religious violence.
Instructor: K. Wolf Course Credit: 1.0
Please refer to the course schedule on the Scripps Portal for current course offerings and details.
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