Source: “Border lines : The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity” By Daniel Boyarin, University of Pennsylvania Press. 2004
7. Kingdom Turned to Minut.mp4
7. The Invention of Religion Identity Kinship and Belief.pdf
The Christian Empire and the Rabbinic Refusal of Religion.wav
This topic argues that in the late Roman Empire, particularly during the 4th and 5th centuries, Christianity actively invented the concept of "religion" as a distinct category separate from ethnicity or nationality. Through texts like heresiologies and legal codes, Christians defined themselves and others, portraying groups like Hellenists and Jews as separate "religions," even labeling Jewish-Christian groups as hybrid "heresies" or "nothing." Paradoxically, this Christian effort to define and legitimize itself as a distinct religion led to the unintended consequence of also legitimizing Judaism as a separate, though "wrong," religion within the empire, fostering a new form of inter-group understanding. Ultimately, while Christianity embraced this new "religious" identity, rabbinic Judaism, especially in the Babylonian Talmud, refused this Christian definition of religion, instead re-ethnicizing difference and continuing to see themselves as distinct from all Gentiles, including Christians.
What if the idea of "religion"—as a separate part of your identity, distinct from your culture, family, or nationality—wasn't timeless? What if it was invented?
In the ancient world, this separation would have seemed profoundly strange. For a Roman, the practices we might call "religious" were completely interwoven with politics, family life, and social duties. The Latin term religio referred not to a distinct system of belief one belonged to, but to an appropriate single act of worship. It was not a conceptual system separate from culture and politics, but part of the very fabric of society itself.
This explainer reveals the fascinating history of how this changed. The concept of "religion" as a distinct category of identity, based on personal belief, was a revolutionary idea invented by early Christians in the late Roman Empire. This was no simple evolution of thought, but a high-stakes intellectual and political battle—a war over definitions—that fundamentally reshaped how people understood themselves and their place in the world.
Before this shift, identity in the ancient world was primarily based on two pillars: kinship and land. You were defined by your family, your people, and the place you came from.