ABSTRACT
The valley floor is the site of make shifting, of the quotidian tactics of those without a mountain to stand on. It is where the negotiation of everyday life and identity take place, where embodied and practiced religion happens, and where the bricolage footpaths are laid down. Scholarly descriptions of "religions" are maps, not territory, and the maps are not always faithful guides. Creeds and doctrines are attempts to shape the landscapes of experience, not reflections of them, and materialism has the power to show us that a Christian using a menorah or a Jew using a codex can do so without any apparent dissonance. Judaism and Christianity did end up as separate entities, separate polarities or mountain peaks on the landscape, thanks to the efforts of those who described them into being. The mapping of Pseudo-Cyprian and others succeeded in raising up two mountains.
