- Guidelines for Teachers -

Curricular Level

Upper-secondary school.

Guidelines for Teachers

This module gives an introduction to some of the important concepts and classifications  developed and used as tools for systematically and comparatively studies of religions in the study of religion. The module focus on myths, sacrifice and the ritual process and presents examples on analysis of these features from different religions. The first page gives a general introduction to comparative religion and some of the important classifications and concepts developed and used in this approach to religion. The second page introduces the concept of myth and different classifications of myths and suggest different tasks where the students can analyze and compare different myths from different religious traditions. The third page is about sacrifice as a religious ritual and gives examples on how, for example the Christian Eucharist ritual can be seen as sacrifice. The last page of the module introduces the theory on the ritual process developed by the French ethnographer, Arnold van Gennep (1873-1957) and the students shall try to use this theory in analyses of different rituals presented in videos.

Conceptual (knowledge) Objectives

C.O.1: Introduce the systematically and comparative approaches in the study of religions.
C.O.2: Introduce some of the important concepts and classifications developed and/or used in comparative religion or history of religion, inter alia myth and different types of myths, ritual and sacrifice.

Skill objectives

S.1: Develop analytical-critical skills in order to analyze and compare religious phenomenon based on classifications, concepts and theories developed and used in the scientifically study of religion or comparative religion.
S.2: Use the different categories of myths cosmogonic, theogonic, anthropogenic and eschatological myths in analysis of different myths.