Midterm

Question 1

Siduri

Answer 1

Tradition: Mesopotamian (The Epic of Gilgamesh)
Significance: Siduri appears in “The Epic of Gilgamesh” and is the tavern keeper that awaits Gilgamesh as he exits the dark tunnel and entrees the garden. She is the long-lasting embodiment of immortality, living on through this boundary between the wilderness and civilization.
Date: 1800 BCE

Question 2

Utnapishtim

Answer 2

Tradition: Mesopotamian (The Epic of Gilgamesh)
Significance: Utnapishtim appears in “The Epic of Gilgamesh” when Gilgamesh makes it to the land of the dead. While he is immortal, he convinces Gilgamesh to live his life and not strive for immortality, and helps him come to terms with life and death.
Date: 1800 BCE

Question 3

Aeneas

Answer 3

Tradition: Roman
Significance: Aeneas is the main character of the “Aeneid”, a Roman novel that depicted a map of the underworld. This was new and revolutionary because it was the first time certain landmarks, spaces, and structures were identified in the space thought of as the “underworld”
Date: 30 BCE (Aeneid)

Question 4

Cave Allegory

Answer 4

Tradition: Greek
Significance: The cave allegory describes people chained in a cave, forced to stare at only shadows on the wall, which they believed were real life. This idea was introduced by Greek Philosopher Plato, who compared those in the cave to ordinary people, and claimed that the world they observed was fake, while philosophers were free from chains and could see the real world, the world of forms because of their higher level thinking and questioning.
Date: ~400 BCE (Plato)

Question 5

World of Forms

Answer 5

Tradition: Greek
Significance: What Greek philosopher Plato claimed to be the true, intelligible world that stood above the visible world and shaped it/gave it being. This true world was only visible to people who engaged in higher philosophical thinking.
Date: ~400 BCE (Plato)

Question 6

Psyche/Soma

Answer 6

Tradition: Greek
Significance: The psyche was described as the soul or mental existence of people, and persisted after death, separating from the soma, or physical body. Greek philosophers wanted to be free of their bodies because they believed that their bodies imprisoned their minds and prevented them from seeing the full truth. In death, they finally become free when their souls leave their bodies.
Date: ~400 BCE

Question 7

Phaedo

Answer 7

Tradition: Greek
Significance: A text about Socrates’ death, written by Plato. In his moments before death, Socrates’ allegedly speaks about psyche and soma and how the separation of body and mind is something to look forward to. Philosophers like Socrates and Plato believed that in death, when psyche and soma are separated, the world of forms can be achieved, which is what philosophers spend their lives striving for.
Date: 4th century BCE/300 BCE

Question 8

Curse Tablets

Answer 8

Tradition: Roman Empire
Significance: Curse tablets were tablets written by Roman people to ask spirits to do certain things to others, often for their wrongdoings. Their discovery implied that Roman people believed death could cross over into the world of the living and affect people. It showed how permeable the boundary between life and death was to them.
Date: 2nd century BCE

Question 9

“Death of Socrates”

Answer 9

Tradition: Greek
Significance: A painting about the Death of Greek philosopher Socrates. It depicted visual cues on how Plato/Socrates percieved the afterlife, such as Socrates’ hand ready to grab the Hemlock to put him to death, revealing his willingness to die for his beliefs and achieve what he believed was the true world, the world of forms. The artist of this painting used Socrates’ belief in dying for a cause to stir conversation and thinking during the French Revolution.
Date: 1787

Question 10

Hades

Answer 10

Tradition: Greek
Significance: The Greek word for underworld, and also the name of the God of death. When the underworld appeared in the Aeneid, the segmented, geographic nature mirrored real life for the first time. This specific vision of the underworld with people divided by morals influenced later texts about the afterlife.
Date: 30 BCE (Aeneid)

Question 11

River Styx

Answer 11

Tradition: Greek
Significance: The river that dived the living world from the dead world. Shows that there is a geographic marker clearly representing the boundary between the two worlds. Once must cross over in a ferry to get to the underworld. First appeared in the Greek text the Aeneid.
Date: ~30 BCE (Aeneid)

Question 12

Shades

Answer 12

Tradition: Roman
Significance: A term that translates to ghosts who still have recognizable, human-like bodies. They are mentioned in the House of Dust in Gilgamesh and appear in the underworld in the Aeneid. They are a specific representation of dead people that still stay people-like after death.
Date:

Question 13

2 Maccabees

Answer 13

Tradition: Judaism
Significance: A text describing the Maccabean revolt where Greeks imposed their rule on Jews. A mother of 7 sons convinces them to stick to and die for their beliefs, because those who do will get their bodies back from God after death. This text introduced the Jewish idea of bodily resurrection, and the importance to the Jews of getting their own physical body back in the afterlife.
Date: Second Temple Period (124 BCE)

Question 14

Mother and Seven Sons

Answer 14

Tradition: Judaism
Significance: A story in the 2 Maccabees where a mother’s seven sons are being ritualistically tortured and killed, but are encouraged by her to maintain their customs and die for their beliefs. It emphasized Jewish bodily resurrection, and how they believed and found importance getting their own body back after death.
Date: Second Temple Period

Question 15

Second Temple Period

Answer 15

Tradition: Judaism
Significance: Began with the construction of the second temple, and ended with the destruction of the second temple. A moment when there was Greek and Persian influence in Judaism, leading to transformative changes in ideas of life and death. The afterlife was being re-understood based on different perspectives.
Date: 597BCE-70CE

Question 16

Seoul/She’ol

Answer 16

Tradition: Judaism
Significance: Like the house of dust in Gilgamesh, it was the understanding of an underworld. During this time, people acknowledged that there was a place people went to after death, but they didn’t think much more about it; it was not very defined. To them, it didn’t matter what happened to dead people, just that they went somewhere else.
Date: 1st Temple Judaism

Question 17

Tanakh (TaNaKH)

Answer 17

Tradition: Jewish
Significance: An acronym for the Old Testament in the Hebrew Bible; a big collection of literature showing Jewish thought and their beliefs on life and death. Genesis, which is included in the Tanakh, tells the story of Abraham and the attempted sacrifice of his son Isaac, which displays important ideas in Jewish belief and death.
Date:

Question 18

Empty Tomb

Answer 18

Tradition: Christian
Significance: Women encounter an empty tomb when going to find Jesus’ body, which serves as evidence of his resurrection. The empty tomb has become a symbol of bodily resurrection embodied by Jesus.
Date: 1st century CE

Question 19

Corinthians

Answer 19

Tradition: Christian
Significance: Two letters written by Paul and sent to the Greek city of Corinth. They described Paul’s idea of resurrection which blended many ideas together. Similar to Two Maccabbees, people got bodies back, but instead of being their own, they were a mix of true body and spiritual elements, or God’s idea of the best version of your bodily form.
Date: sometime around 50 CE

Question 20

Messiah

Answer 20

Tradition: Christian
Significance: Translates to Christ. Jesus was chosen as the Messiah or “anointed one”, and the Jews followed him as they saw him as a prophet. The Messiah was said to come and lead Jewish people through the End when the good will be rewarded and the wicked will face God’s judgement.
Date: (Jesus) 1 century CE)

Question 21

Paul

Answer 21

Tradition: Christian
Significance: He spread Jesus’ story and message to the wider Mediterranean, and introduced Christianity as its own bounded idea. He created a new belief separate from Judaism that still involved Jesus and his ideas including death and resurrection which involved the End Times and resurrection of God’s best version of your body.
Date: ~50 CE

Question 22

Day of Judgement

Answer 22

Tradition: Islamic
Significance: A day following the resurrection of God, where the good and bad deeds of each individual are weighted. This day comes to humanity suddenly, and is a complete secret so that people are motivated to behave properly all them time and not just when the day of Judgement approaches. The day of Judgement shows what people of Islamic religion believed occurred in the “afterlife”, and how justice was served after death.
Date:

Question 23

Muhammad

Answer 23

Tradition: Islamic
Significance: An Islamic prophet who received the Quran from angel Gabriel. He is a descendent of Abraham via his son Ishmael, which distinguishes him from Abraham’s descendents via his son Isaac. While he was teh chosen recipient and messenger of the word of God, he was still a mortal human being, emphasizing the idea that “every soul will taste death”.
Date: Born 570 CE

Question 24

Qu’ran

Answer 24

Tradition: Islamic
Significance: Oral scripture sent to the Prophet Muhammad by God via the angel Gabriel. It contained a message to humanity, emphasizing the importance in doing good and avoiding bad so that you are rewarded and not punished on the Day of Judgement when God returns and all “die” or make their way to the afterlife in heaven or hell.
Date: 7th century CE

Question 25

Abrahamic Traditions

Answer 25

Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, Islam
Significance: The three main Abrahamic traditions share similar views on death and mortality, including ideas of resurrection, sharing important texts, and linking themselves to the figure of Abraham who tried to sacrifice his sons Isaac and Ishmael—important figures in these traditions.
Date:

Question 26

Apocalyptic

Answer 26

Tradition: Especially Judaism and Christianity
Significance: A genre of literature describing the end times, when a Messiah will come and destruction will occur. Those who had done wrong would be punished and face the judgement of God, while those who had done good would go to some form of heaven. This genre showed how people viewed the afterlife and how their actions and choices would affect them in death.
Date:

Question 27

Ernest Becker

Answer 27

Tradition:
Significance: The author of denial of death, who wrote on the importance of repression—the tendency for humans to distract from worrying thoughts of death and be motivated to accomplish things to avoid thinking about our mortality. He also wrote about how death motivated people to contribute to society and work on immortality projects that would keep their spirit and memory alive long past their physical death.
Date: 1973 (Book)

Question 28

Resurrection

Answer 28

Tradition: Central to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Significance: The idea that once you die, your body will come back in some form. Each religion has a different view of resurrection, including being given back your own body, only having your soul, or being given God’s best version of your body.
Date:

Question 29

Liminal

Answer 29

Tradition:
Significance: Being in a state of inbetweenness, neither this nor that. There are many examples throughout religious and historical texts where people are in a metaphorically liminal state between life and death. For example, Gilgamesh when he has not buried Enkidu or returned as king of Uruk and is in an unknown gray area.
Date:

Question 30

Rite of Passage

Answer 30

Tradition:
Significance: A phrase that describes the way people change statuses in the world. It refers to the process where they exit a liminal phase and get reincorporated as a new individual. An example involving death could be a funeral, where dead people move from the world of the living, and become part of the world of the ancestors.
Date:

Question 31

Repression

Answer 31

Tradition: Ernest Becker’s “The Denial of Death”
Significance: The idea that in order to avoid thinking about death, humans distract themselves with tasks, goals, and superficial things. The thought of dying motivates people to do greater things, and involve themselves in immortality projects to keep their memories alive. Death is always in the back of our minds fueling what we do each day.
Date: 1973