Imagine No Religion: How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities

“Shed[s] new light on the fascinating transformations of these words [religio, threskeia] in the shadow of Roman imperial power.” —Brent Nongbri, award-winning author of God’s Library

What do we fail to see when we force other, earlier cultures into the Procrustean bed of concepts that organize our contemporary world? In Imagine No Religion, Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin map the myriad meanings of the Latin and Greek words religio and threskeia, frequently and reductively mistranslated as “religion,” in order to explore the manifold nuances of their uses within ancient Roman and Greek societies. In doing so, they reveal how we can conceptualize anew and speak of these cultures without invoking the anachronistic concept of religion. From Plautus to Tertullian, Herodotus to Josephus, Imagine No Religion illuminates cultural complexities otherwise obscured by our modern-day categories.

“An excellent attempt to approach translational issues with fresh eyes . . . this book presents a fresh methodological challenge to students of the ancient world and especially to scholars interested in the ‘religion’ of the ancient Mediterranean.” —Reading Religion

“A timely contribution to a growing and important conversation about the inadequacy of our common category ‘religion’ for the understanding of many practices, attitudes, emotions, and beliefs?especially of peoples in other times and contexts.” —Wayne A. Meeks, author of In Search of the Early Christians

© 2016 Fordham University Press (Ebook): 9780823271214

Release date

Ebook: October 3, 2016