265 DOI: 10.4324/9781003096016‑15 15 OUR TERMS AND THEIRS Some reflections on recent approaches to Greek religion Kenneth W. Yu Introduction The intersection of the field of ancient Greek religion with the manifold concerns of postcolonialism may not be readily apparent. On closer inspection, however, Greek religion may in fact constitute one of the most productive standpoints from which to explore the past, present, and future relation‑ ships between Classics and the nexus of ideas normally associated with postcolonial thought. For one thing, the domain of ancient religion presents classicists with a particularly rich set of data and a range of debates about essential social facts and cultural processes central to postcolonialism, such as agency, consciousness and personhood, as well as the relationship of the self to society and to the divine. 1 It has long been observed, moreover, that the paradigms and theoretical frame‑ works that modern scholars customarily marshal to interpret Greek religious thought and practice are often inflected with extra-academic, if not thoroughly ideological, investments that scholars of postcolonial thought have probed with especial precision. If there is merit to such claims, then a close examination of ancient Greek religion, both as a body of empirical data and as a historiog‑ raphy, may offer some of the most revealing and fruitful materials for considering the relationship between Classics and postcolonialism. Thus, the dearth of explicit discussion of Greek religion’s multiform engagements with postco‑ lonial thought occasions some surprise. 2 Although historians of the Greek diaspora in Magna Grae‑ cia, Ptolemaic Egypt, Roman Greece, and Hellenistic Judaism, for example, have long employed postcolonial concepts for the study of Greek religion—e.g., hybridity, syncretism, charter myths, mediation, and networks—my intention is not to address specific empirical arguments in the field of Greek religion (e.g., Counts 2009; Thomas 2010). My present objective is twofold: first, I identify, without pretending to be exhaustive in coverage, certain salient points of contact between Greek religion scholarship and postcolonial studies by tracing the political and ethical dimensions of three broad developments in the field of Greek religion, especially regarding the question of cat‑ egories in historical explanation and critique: (1) the anthropological approach to Greek religion; (2) the application of the “lived religion” model to ancient religions; and (3) the ontological turn in Classics. All three approaches, I argue, have been fundamentally concerned with discerning the appropriate categories and units of analysis for the study of Greek religion. Second, I canvass, in the conclusion, some theoretical opportunities and challenges that postcolonial thought may afford