Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept

In his first book, Nongbri, a postdoctoral researcher who earned his Ph.D. at Yale, provides a succinct history of the development of the concept of religion. Through detailed analyses of ancient texts and ancient strategies for conceptualizing group differences, he contests the prevalent assumption that there is such a thing as “ancient religion.” Instead, he traces the invention of religion to the 16th and 17th centuries, when the fragmentation of Christian Europe and colonization of the “new world” led to the construction of religion as a privately held belief system distinct from the secular, political sphere. He argues that the tendency to think of religion as natural and universal is perpetuated by scholars who, while recognizing that the concept is anachronistic, continue to use the term and discuss “ancient religions.” And while Nongbri ultimately concedes that “religion can be used as a redescriptive concept for studying the ancient world,” he urges scholars to be more critical about the terminology they use. Although this book is both broad in scope and concise, forcing Nongbri to only briefly survey each historical episode, its cogent thesis and historical interpretation are compelling. It is a thought-provoking addition to scholarship on religion, history, and culture. (Jan.)