World Religions

The term primal religion, as Nielsen, et al. explain (21), is at once quite common to the discourse of prehistoric and preliterate societies and misleading in the fact that it is by and large a Western designation for non-Western (especially non-Christian) modes of worship that were encountered by missionaries and explorers from the 16th century onward and that were taken to be undeveloped versions of the idea of the sacred that evolved into the religions typical of the structured and literate culture of Europe. It is arguable that modern monotheistic religiou

eful look at the map reveals that Greece was geographically positioned between cultures that were highly diverse--African, Mesopotamian, Egyptian--which makes it reasonable to assume that Greek religion of the classical period took personality and attributes (for example, polytheism) from a variety of cultures. By the time of the classical period, however, when Greek civilization and literacy were well established, the origins of many customarily observed religious ideas and customs had become relatively obscure (Nielsen, et al. 69). Institutional religion was linked to state-sponsored festivals such as the Olympic Games or the Festival of Dionysus, which involved contested presentation of plays (Nielsen, et al. 69). However, beside such mainstream traditions were folk religions and mystery cults, with the former involving minor deities that can be compared to African models and the latter involving esoteric social demographics and initiation rituals. The worship of Dionysus Zagreus, which involved chopping up and distributing pieces of the god, can be compared to both the Egyptian myth of Osiris, which preceded it, and the Christian practice of the Eucharist, which followed it (Nielsen, et al. 70). In many ways Roman religious t