All religions, which are commonly known as world religions, have their origin in the vast territories between the Mediterranean and the Pacific. Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam originated in Asia. The same holds true for the Hindu religions, Confucianism, and rather less known traditions such as Jainism, Sikhism or Zoroastrianism. Besides these religions the Eurasian history of religions was also determinated by religions, which are today either mariginal or even extinct such as the religious system of the Roman Empire, the Babylonian religion or Manichaeanism.
Given this situation, CERES has dedicated an entire focus area to the history of religions in Eurasia. This area includes the European as well as Western, South, Central and East Asian history of religions in past and present times.
One of the central assumption of this focus area is that initially regional religious fields emerged and developed further to bigger entities due to processes within the history of religions. Today, there is a tendency towards a worldwide religious field with global networks between different religions.
Zusammen mit Fachkolleg/innen in Museen und Universitäten untersuchen Wissenschaftler/innen des CERES und KHK die materielle Dimension des Kultur- und Religionskontakts …
With the purpose of providing philologically well-grounded research concerning tradition building processes among the Tibetan Buddhist Kagyüpa traditions in the …
The teaching-learning-project "Ancient Religion(s) in Contact" (ARELINCO) enables students from the fields of religious studies, history, archaeology, philology, and related …