Sociological Approach To Religion Essay

Theoretical approaches in general help us understand the concepts of religion that both our society has created and societies before ours. Two theoretical approaches to “religion” that would help understand ancient cultures would be Archaeology and History. Archaeologist would look closely at artifacts and past civilizations to understand the way they practice or believed in religion. Where as Historians would examine the language that was spoke, which would then correlate to the stories being told and the texts that came from a specific culture, traditions and decrees. Many may say that the archaeological approach to understanding religion has more evidence since the way these individuals look at religion have tangible objects opposed to the
They may also read, The Epic of Gilgamesh, to understand the beliefs of people in ancient Mesopotamia, and later being able to being able to reference it to other religious text, such as the Christian bible books of Genesis, and the Egyptian, Memphite Theology. The text in some cases may not have been read by all of it’s people but there is evidence according to Steadman, that the text was read at festivals or some type of ceremonies. We understand the the lives of the Sumerian people, the gods they believed in and how these stories, and myths evolved into the stories we hear today. In this particular culture, through text we understand that they believed everything happened by gods, including “good fortune and disasters.” Which we call, binaries, just the good versus evil binary, and in turn through the myths we understand the reasons why they believed the gods controlled everything. Along with the documents of the historical information, there was the Sumerian King List, which was noted that it was copied multiple times; therefore having several versions and it has information that doesn’t necessarily transfer “accurately” from the original text. In relationship the bible is the same way, as discussed in class. The creation story on