various components, as, for example, in Manichaeism or in
some pseudo-Islamic sects (such as Ahl i Haqq, the Druze,
the Yesids). In addition to a syncretism of what was originally
separate, there is a syncretism of elements from related
sources. Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Marxist eschatolo-
gies, for example, are all related, yet each of them developed
into something so independent of the others that the few at-
tempts, mostly of a literary kind, which have been made to
fuse them or reduce them to a common denominator can,
with reservations, be called syncretist.
Syncretism in religion need not be accompanied by syn-
cretism in other areas. In principle, the coincidence and non-
coincidence of diverse syncretisms occur with equal frequen-
cy. Though it seems odd to speak of a “mixed” language or
of a “mixed” culture, since any culture in principle always
has heterogeneous precursors, there are nonetheless examples
of such that will clarify what is meant. The mixed Jewish-
German culture of the Middle Ages also used a mixed lan-
guage, Yiddish. But a cultural syncretism need not be accom-
panied by a linguistic syncretism; for example, on the islands
of Japan, continental Asian and oceanic insular cultures have
mingled, but the Japanese language has remained homoge-
neous. Conversely, a linguistic syncretism need not be
matched by a cultural one; thus a certain form of Persian-
Turkish literary language is in the service solely of Islamic
culture.
Analogous relations exist between cultural and religious
syncretisms. An example of the coincidence of a syncretic
culture with a syncretic religion can be seen in hellenized
Egypt, especially in the cult of Serapis and possibly also in
modern nativist movements in some regions that were colo-
nized by Western societies. A cultural syncretism is to be
found, to a certain measure, for some time after the migra-
tion of the Israelites into Canaan; yet there was no corre-
sponding religious syncretism, and where such threatened to
occur, the prophets resisted it.
A linguistic syncretism matched by a religious syncre-
tism often occurs when a language is pidginized or creolized
in a group in which tribal religion has to some extent been
amalgamated with Christianity. On the other hand, a lin-
guistic syncretism was not accompanied by a religious syn-
cretism when a Hebrew-Aramaic language was used for dis-
cussion in Rabbinic Judaism; nor was a religious syncretism
accompanied by a linguistic syncretism in the mystery reli-
gions of late antiquity with their hieros logos only in Greek.
Symbiosis. A social presupposition for the rise of a syn-
cretism can be the coexistence of various groups. It may be
hypothesized that there were coexistences like this even in
prehistoric times, insofar as inferences regarding that period
can be made from the nonliterate cultures of modern times.
The matrilinear traits observable, until their recent disap-
pearance, in many food-growing cultures were ascribed to
groups possessing a developing economy in the Neolithic pe-
riod; scholars even went so far as to regard the transition to
production through food cultivation as a cultural fact attrib-
utable to women.
Closer observation showed, however, that food-
collecting and grain-harvesting peoples and early food culti-
vators exhibited a characteristic that was typical of hunters—
namely, the relating of a group of people to a particular ani-
mal. There is thus the possibility that from the outset food
was collected or was grown and harvested not only for
human consumption but for animal consumption as well.
The conclusion would be not that the relations of human
groups to certain animals and their relations to certain plants
were antecedently connected but rather that the two types
of cultures and their modes of religious expression were
fused.
The situation is clearer in cases where there is written
evidence. In Asia Minor and Media in the first century CE
worshippers of the Iranian goddess Ana ̄hita ̄ lived together
with worshipers of the Greek goddess Artemis, and this sym-
biosis led to a limited syncretism. Other symbioses in the
same part of the world did not, however, lead to any syncre-
tism. Symbioses are to be presupposed prior to many other
and varied linkings of divinities throughout the Hellenistic
world. The doctrines espoused by modern messianic move-
ments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have demonstrably
been shaped by the contacts of ethnic groups with represen-
tatives of Western civilization; the preaching of missionaries
has played an important but by no means isolated role here.
Acculturation. If we locate the fact of symbiosis in the
larger context of the systems in which those living together
are socialized and to which a great many subsystems also be-
long, we may speak of acculturation. Once movements of
conquest became imperial in scope (e.g., the Achaemenid
dynasty and the empires of Alexander the Great, the Ro-
mans, the Spaniards, and the English), they brought diverse
cultures into contact; the conflation of tradition that resulted
for one of the two sides could repeatedly lead to syncretisms.
Superposition. The most extensive example of this was
probably the migration of the Aryans into the Asiatic sub-
continent, which was already inhabited by non-Indo-
European peoples. Depending on local circumstances, we
may speak of a sanskritization of the Dravidian part of India,
of a hierarchization of castes, and so on. In any case, Hindu-
ism—the Hinduism of the epic and Puranic period and
thereafter—became a religion very different from that of the
Vedas. The comprehensiveness of which its representatives
boast is one aspect of its syncretist character.
Parallel phenomena. Not every symbiosis, accultura-
tion, or superposition, however, has led to a syncretism.
Other formations may have resulted, the names of which are
often, and misleadingly, used as synonyms for syncretism.
Synthesis. Although J. D. Droysen and others have
called Hellenism a mixed culture, it was not syncretic
throughout. The ideas of Droysen and later scholars who
speak of Hellenism as a reconciliation of cultures or an inte-8928 SYNCRETISM [FIRST EDITION]