Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide.

• Author: Flannery, Frances
• Position: Book review

Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide. Edited by SARAH ILES JOHNSTON. Cambridge, Mass.: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2004. Pp. xix + 697, illus. $49.95.

Every once in a long while, a reference work comes along that is certain from the outset to become a well-used standard. Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide is such a work, which is unsurprising given that approximately one hundred forty top scholars contributed to the articles inside. Not quite an encyclopedia, not quite a collection of essays, this unique volume is the first comprehensive and comparative reference guide to a wide array of topics in ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern religions.

The overall premise of the Guide is that, despite the well-touted and justified dangers of studying a religion ethically through the lens of another, each ancient religion should be approached as a permeable entity in conversation with the others in the volume. The general editor, Sarah Iles Johnston, notes in her preface that "No ancient culture was left untouched by its neighbors" (p. x), and the format of the work attempts to promote awareness of cultural and religious hybridity as well as of the uniqueness of particular religions.

The bulk of the work, part III, "Key Topics" (pp. 243-656), consists of over four hundred pages in ten-point font treating twenty separate themes by means of side-by-side discussions on religions from ten areas or cultures: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria-Canaan, Israel, Anatolia, Iran, Greece, Etruria, Rome, and Christianity. The twenty themes are fascinating and sweeping, covering issues of cosmology ("Sacred Times and Spaces"), cult and ritual ("Religious Personnel," "Religious Organizations and Bodies," "Sacrifice, Offerings, and Votives," "Sin, Pollution, and Purity," "Illnesses and Other Crises," "Prayers, Hymns, Incantations, and Curses," "Rites of Passage"), ethics ("Ethics and Law Codes"), politics ("Religion and Politics," "Controlling Religion"), myth ("Myth and Sacred Narratives"), material culture ("Visual Representations"), theological beliefs ("Divination and Prophecy," "Deities and Demons," "Death, the Afterlife, and Other Last Things," "Theology, Theodicy, Philosophy"), and writing ("Sacred Texts and Canonicity"). The essays are cogent and thorough but not exhaustive, given their necessary brevity. Each reader will have her favorites. Most contain general introductions and a few conclude with short dictionary-type listings that make the essays even...