That Big Idea

Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept
by Brent Nongbri
Yale University Press, 2015
(275 pages, $25.00, paperback)

reviewed by Graeme Hunter

It may surprise readers of Touchstone to learn that Jesus had no religion. Neither the practices of the Jews, which it was his custom to observe, nor the Way, by which he perfected those practices, was religious. In fact, there was no religion anywhere to be found prior to the Renaissance. Medieval Christians before and after the Great Schism were without religion, as were indeed all peoples of all continents of the globe. This, at least, is the exciting way of putting the thesis of Brent Nongbri's interesting book. The details are a little less exciting, but still very interesting.

Nongbri provides an accessible account of a difficulty that has long been familiar to historians wishing to explain the patterns of reverence, worship, and pious behavior that they encounter in ancient writings, art, and artifacts. It seems natural, perhaps inevitable, to use the word "religion" to signify such matters and tie them together. The difficulty is that the ancient peoples we study seem to have no word like it—none, that is, with the meaning we attach to our word, "religion." Not even—especially not!—the Latin religio, from which our word comes. What Latin writers meant by the term only partly overlaps with what we mean by "religion."

So what does Nongbri think "we" mean by "religion"? To synthesize his half-dozen different characterizations of it, "we" think of religion as involving voluntary associations (usually called churches or denominations) of like-minded individuals together pursuing ideas and conduct that these individuals have separately and privately concluded lead to salvation. "We" also recognize the existence of other voluntary organizations much like our own. To the extent that we are liberal, we grant that these other organizations may also be on the path to salvation. Otherwise, we think them heretical or heathen.

Nongbri is aware that there is something very Protestant about this conception of religion, but that is consistent with his view that the modern concept arose at the time of, and in part because of, the Reformation. Prior to the sixteenth century, the Latin religio might mean wisdom, or doing one's duty toward one's neighbour, or practicing certain approved forms of worship or ethnic customs. Though Latin handed down the form of our word, its meaning was not included in the bequest.

Language Problem

Many of the languages that interest contemporary religious scholars not only lack cognates of "religion" but also lack any words closely connected in meaning. Alas, this does not prevent translators from sweeping the difficulty under the carpet and picking a term to translate as "religion" anyway. It is the frequency of this practice, says Nongbri, that plants in all of us the conviction that religion is a universal and immemorial feature of human existence.

Nongbri's second chapter, called "Lost in Translation," gives some striking examples: Threskeia, usually said to be the Greek word for religion, more properly means rituals, or their proper performance, or an object of worship, or the virtue of loyalty or obedience to God. The Encyclopedia of the Qur'an is quoted to establish that "prior to the twentieth century, the English word 'religion' had no direct equivalent in Arabic, nor had the Arabic 'din' in English. They became partially synonymous only in the course of the twentieth century as a result of increased English-Arabic encounters and the need for consistency in translation." Other ancient terms historians try to reconcile with our modern notion of religion prove equally uncooperative.

Not even the English "religion" has always meant religion. Nongbri quotes a verse from an English translation, attributed to Chaucer, of the French poem Roman de la Rose:

Sometime I am religious,
Now like an Anker in an hous.
Sometime am I Prioresse,
And now a Nonne, and now Abbesse,
And go through all regiouns,
Seeking all religiouns.

True, the word "religioun," like its modern cognate "religion," is referring here to a genus of which there are different species. The shock lies in what the species are. "The entities classified as religions are . . . different types of Christians under vows—the anchorite, the nun, the prioress, the abbess."

A Sharpening Tool

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