ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the region of the Eastern Mediterranean as a whole: geography, geology, climate, weather, and history. It gives an impression of the region sans modern political borders and discrete historical periodization. Part Two of this chapter provides summaries of political, religious, and linguistic history in the region, beginning in the Bronze Age. Part Three of this chapter, ‘Agrarian Religion’, contrasts the vicissitudes of changing political history with long-lived elements of agrarian religious culture, imparting an impression of the Levantine agrarian religious experience as a whole, and over time.
