Gods in the Classroom: Religion and Education in First Millennium BCE Babylonia

Argues that religious education in first-millennium BCE Babylonia was not a separate informal practice but a defined component of formal scribal schooling, identifiable in the cuneiform pedagogical corpus. Establishes criteria for recognizing religious instruction in Mesopotamian records by linking classroom genres, curricular structures and explicit learning objectives to ritual and theological content. Shows that a careful reading of school tablets, lexical lists and exercise texts reveals intentional transmission of religious knowledge rather than incidental religious vocabulary, and situates this instruction within known institutional settings such as temple schools and scribal households.

Details the substance and function of that instruction: curricula combined memorization of liturgical and god lists, training in ritual procedures and divinatory formulae, philological mastery of sacred terminology, and moral or devotional exemplars aimed at shaping competent ritual practitioners. Documents classroom techniques (repetition, copying, graded exercises) and traces clear applications in temple administration, ritual performance and divinatory practice, arguing that schooling sustained elite religious competence and reproduced theological authority across generations. Concludes that religious education was instrumental to social and institutional continuity in Babylonia, linking pedagogical form to practical religious roles.