Greek Religion and Education: Key Concepts and Aims

This contribution explains the aims, methodologies, and content of the edited volume. It argues that religious education can be defined as the processes, contexts, and places from where one could learn about religious knowledge, mythological stories, and ritual acts. There is no fixed definition of its forms. It could take the form of formal training or informal intergenerational exchanges between older teachers and children as well as of a lifelong process of acquisition of religious knowledge. Alongside a more individual dimension from the perspective of a learned single person, the collective dimension of religious education plays a significant role in the ancient Greek world. Shared knowledge and identities were conveyed through socialization, i.e. the experiential knowledge in the religious sphere acquired by growing into social practices, by watching and imitating. The contributions in this volume demonstrates how the concept can be used in the study of ancient Mediterranean religions.