| description: |
The research project deals with the developments and dynamics of the Near Eastern religious history in the first millennium BC, using the religious literature and documents of the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, Persian and Hellenistic periods. The research project investigates the possible influences of Mesopotamian religious and mythical thinking in the Hebrew Bible, and especially in the Jewish apocalyptic literature; also the Mesopotamian influences in Classical Greek culture, especially in the hellenistic Mystery Religions. The project will not deal with the whole religious history of that region in the first millennium BC, but concentrates on certain themes within this broad framework. Amar Annus will study in his reasearch some aspects of the complex relationships between the Near Eastern religion, the Hebrew Bible and the Mystery Religions. Liina Ootsing is preparing her doctoral dissertation on the battle of Order and Chaos in Jewish apocalyptic texts and in the Mesopotamian mythology. Vladimir Sazonov will work on his doctoral dissertation on the relationship of the royal ideologies in Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Syria and Classical Greece. |