Before Religion. A History of a Modern Concept Taking apart this assumption, Brent Nongbri shows that the idea of religion as a sphere of life distinct from Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept: Amazon.co.uk Brent Nongbri talks to Jack Tsonis about his recent book, Before Religion: a History of a Modern Concept. Nongbri provides an overview of the history of Before Religion:

Scholars of ancient cultures are increasingly speaking of the "embeddedness" of ancient religion -arguing that the practices modern investigators group under the heading of "religion" did not compose a well-defined category in antiquity; instead, they claim that "religion was embedded" in other aspects of ancient culture. Th ese writers use this notion of "embeddedness" to help us see that categories post-Enlightenment thinkers often regard as distinct (such as politics, economics, and religion) largely overlapped in antiquity. Th e trope of "embedded religion" can, however, also produce the false impression that religion is a descriptive concept rather than a redescriptive concept for ancient cultures (i.e., that there really is something "out there" in antiquity called "Roman religion" or "Mesopotamian religion," which scholars are simply describing rather than creating). By allowing this slippage between descriptive and redescriptive uses of "religion," the rhetoric of "embedded religion" exacerbates the very problem it is meant to solve.

We propose that the author of Hebrews employs threats of eternal condemnation using words and imagery familiar from apocalyptic literature, particularly 4 Ezra, to evoke a speci c kind of fear in his audience. The audience members should, rather than fearing the reproach of society, have angst for falling away from the community, which in our author's eyes, is an oVense for which no repentance is available. To eVectively bring about such fear, these threats, contrary to the assertions of many recent commentators,

Published accounts of the University of Michigan's acquisitions of items from the papyrus find known as the 'Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri' are sketchy. This article describes the results of research at the University of Michigan and the Chester Beatty Library, which has provided details about the chronology of the purchases and the dealers involved, as well as a new suggestion regarding the provenance of the find.

It is often said that palaeographic analysis of Greek literary manuscripts from the Roman era has progressed from an aesthetic judgment to more of a science, thanks largely to increased data (in the form of newly discovered papyri and parchments from Egypt) and to more sophisticated ways of describing similarity and difference in handwriting. This progress is frequently taken to mean that we may now use the analysis of handwriting to assign dates to undated manuscripts with much greater precision and accuracy than was possible a century ago. This article questions this conclusion by focusing on neglected methodological points that specifically relate to the problem of palaeographic dating of codices, namely the size and character of the corpus of securely datable samples to which the handwriting of undated codices is compared. This problem is especially relevant for early Christian books, the surviving examples of which tend to be copied in the codex format.