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Cyrus the Great is known to historians as the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, and he is an intriguing figure for historians and scholars of religion. The Achaemenid Empire was formed through the consolidation of Persian tribes and the conquest of the Median, Lydian, and Babylonian kingdoms (Hourly History, 2021, p. 3). The historian Herodotus…
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The Syrian Bride is a fascinating movie that was made in 2004 and was directed by Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis. This film is an emotional exploration of borders and the complications that can come with these border crossings. Mona, a young Druze woman in Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, is arranged to marry…
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Do video games need to be challenging or difficult to be enjoyable? The first time I played Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, its combat system and time limit made the game extremely challenging for me. However, I was able to finish it, and I understand how the game can be enjoyable despite some challenges. Some…
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Throughout human history, people have had the desire to alter their states of consciousness. The motivations for such an alteration can be spiritual, religious, or even secular. As an anthropologist examining religion, the key factor in examining altered states of consciousness through ethnographic fieldwork or other historical and modern examples is to suspend personal judgment.…
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The anthropology of religion has interested me since I was introduced to the subject at San Jose State University in 2011. I have put together a free recommended reading list featuring some of my favorite books on religion, ritual, myth, symbolism, and culture. I hope it provides a useful starting point for anyone interested in…
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Jeremy Holtom has written a fascinating essay in The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible relating to Mohandas K. Gandhi’s view of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Holtom begins his article by quoting Martin Luther King Jr. and his reverence for Gandhi. King states, “Just with a little love and understanding and…
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Christianity and Jainism Two religious traditions that are rarely compared are Christianity and Jainism. In this post, I will not speculate or argue that one tradition directly influenced the other. While there is no clear historical evidence that Jesus was directly influenced by Jain teachings, and Mahavira lived centuries before the emergence of Christianity, I…
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In a previous post, I examined learning and symbols in video games and gaming communities. This can be a fascinating aspect of culture to examine, and I would like to explore a few different angles of this topic in this post. The anthropologist Helen Thornham, in her book Ethnographies of the Videogame, argued that, “Games…
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For this post I would like to examine the concept of phenomenology as it relates to video games. Phenomenology is defined as “the study of ‘phenomena’: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience” (Smith, n.d.). One way…
