ANTH 280LIntro to African Religion

Catalog

E. A. Wallis Budge defined African religion as "the worship of the souls of the dead, commonly called Ancestor Worship." Also, Diodorus, a Greek historian of the 1st Century BCE, stated that blacks or Ethiopians, "were the first of all men, and the proofs of this statement, they say, are manifest. For that they did not come into their land as immigrants from abroad but were natives of it, and so justly bear the name of 'autochthones' is, they maintain, conceded by practically all men. And they [i.e., the Greek historians relied on by Diodorus] say that they [i.e., the black peoples] were the first to be taught to honor the gods and to hold sacrifices and processions and festivals and other rites by which men honor the deity; and that in consequence their piety has been published abroad among all men, and it is generally held that the sacrifices practiced among the Ethiopians [i.e., the black peoples] are those which are the most pleasing to heaven." Thus, students are introduced to the nature and phenomenon of African religion, conceptions of God and gods and goddesses, ancestors and ancestor worship, elders, sacrifices and symbols, and rituals that offer meaning to the lives of Africans.