BEFORE RELIGION This page intentionally left blank BRENT NONGBRI Before Religion A History of a Modern Concept NEW HAVEN AND LONDON Copyright © 2013 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. offi ce) or [email protected] (U.K. offi ce). Set in Janson Oldstyle and Futura Bold types by Westchester Book Group. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nongbri, Brent, 1977– Before religion : a history of a modern concept / Brent Nongbri. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-300-15416-0 (alk. paper) 1. Religion— History. I. Title. BL430.N57 2012 200.9—dc23 2012020811 A cata logue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48– 1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Janet and Govanon Nongbri This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Ac know ledgm ents ix Introduction 1 one What Do We Mean by “Religion”? 15 two Lost in Translation: Inserting “Religion” into Ancient Texts 25 three Some (Premature) Births of Religion in Antiquity 46 four Christians and “Others” in the Premodern Era 65 fi ve Re nais sance, Reformation, and Religion in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 85 six New Worlds, New Religions, World Religions 106 seven The Modern Origins of Ancient Religions 132 Conclusion: After Religion? 154 Notes 161 Bibliography 231 Index 263 This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION My father grew up in the Khasi Hills of northeastern India. The Khasi language is today spoken by roughly one million people, mostly in the state of Meghalaya. When I was in college and just becoming aware of the complexity of studying religion, it occurred to me one day that I had no idea what the Khasi word for “religion” was. I owned a small Khasi-E nglish dictionary, but it did not provide English-t o- Khasi defi nitions. Faced with the usual number of dead- lines for various projects, I didn’t immediately try to track down an answer to the question and soon forgot about it. But a few years later, the topic came up in a conversation with my father, and I asked him about the Khasi term for “religion.” He replied that it was ka niam. By this time I was a graduate student in religious studies, and I was curious to learn more about this word. I dug out my little dic- tionary and looked it up. I found it could also simply mean “cus- toms,” that is to say, not necessarily anything particularly or espe- cially religious. More intriguing, though, was the asterisk beside the word that directed me to a short note at the bottom of the page. It turned out that niam was in fact not an indigenous Khasi term at all but a loan-w ord from the Bengali niy˙ama, meaning “rules” or “du- ties.” My father’s language, it seems, had no native word for “reli- gion.”1 For much of the past two centuries, both pop u lar and academic thought has assumed that religion is a universal human phenomenon, a part of the “natural” human experience that is essentially the same across cultures and throughout history. Individual religions may vary through time and geog raphi cally, so the story goes, but there is an element that we call religion to be found in all cultures in all time periods. Introductory textbooks supply us with competing defi nitions 1