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Imagine No Religion: How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities
Carlin A. Barton
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Description for Imagine No Religion: How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities
Paperback. A study of ancient Latin and Greek words frequently translated religion with a view to showing how such mistranslation seriously obscures our understanding of those cultures including their Jewish and Christian versions. Num Pages: 328 pages. BIC Classification: HRAB; HRAX; HRLB. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 181 x 254 x 29. Weight in Grams: 612.
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.
Product Details
Publisher
Fordham University Press
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2016
Condition
New
Number of Pages
328
Place of Publication
New York, United States
ISBN
9780823271207
SKU
V9780823271207
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1
About Carlin A. Barton
Carlin A. Barton is Professor Emerita in the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster and Roman Honor: The Fire in the Bones. Daniel Boyarin is the Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include Imagine No Religion (2016), A Traveling Homeland (2015), and The Jewish Gospels (2013).
Reviews for Imagine No Religion: How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities
Imagine No Religion is 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
From Plautus to Tertullian, Herodotus to Josephus, Imagine No Religion illuminates cultural complexities otherwise obscured by our modern-day categories...Imagine No Religion is unreservedly recommended for community, seminary, college, and university library Religion/Spirituality collections.
-Julie Summers
Midwest Book Review
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
Yale University
If, as recent scholarship suggests, ancient Romans did not have an idea of a distinctly religious sphere of life, what are we to do with those words in our sources that are generally translated as religion, namely the Latin religio and the Greek threskeia? Adequately answering this question demands a back-to-basics lexical approach that carefully re-examines usages of these words in their ancient contexts. The rich fruits of such labor are on full display in Barton and Boyarin's Imagine No Religion, which pushes well beyond the simple observation that Romans had no religion. Through in-depth studies of religio, threskeia, and related concepts, Barton and Boyarin shed new light on the fascinating transformations of these words in the shadow of Roman imperial power. One need not agree with all of its provocative conclusions in order to recognize that Imagine No Religion is now the definitive starting point for the reevaluation of these crucial terms.
-Brent Nongbri
Macquarie University
Reading Religion
From Plautus to Tertullian, Herodotus to Josephus, Imagine No Religion illuminates cultural complexities otherwise obscured by our modern-day categories...Imagine No Religion is unreservedly recommended for community, seminary, college, and university library Religion/Spirituality collections.
-Julie Summers
Midwest Book Review
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
Yale University
If, as recent scholarship suggests, ancient Romans did not have an idea of a distinctly religious sphere of life, what are we to do with those words in our sources that are generally translated as religion, namely the Latin religio and the Greek threskeia? Adequately answering this question demands a back-to-basics lexical approach that carefully re-examines usages of these words in their ancient contexts. The rich fruits of such labor are on full display in Barton and Boyarin's Imagine No Religion, which pushes well beyond the simple observation that Romans had no religion. Through in-depth studies of religio, threskeia, and related concepts, Barton and Boyarin shed new light on the fascinating transformations of these words in the shadow of Roman imperial power. One need not agree with all of its provocative conclusions in order to recognize that Imagine No Religion is now the definitive starting point for the reevaluation of these crucial terms.
-Brent Nongbri
Macquarie University