generation, especially Gadamer and Ricoeur, have played a
particularly prominent role in recasting the discussion of
tradition.
IDEALIZATION AND CANONIZATION. All religious traditions
construct pictures of their own formative periods. The pic-
tures are built up over time by the retrospective projection
of religious ideals onto the history of the tradition. Such pic-
tures must not be accepted as literal descriptions of the for-
mation of a tradition. Their function is to stress the unity
and continuity of tradition, whereas the critical history of
any tradition in the formative period never fails to reveal
breaks, conflicts, and a diversity of views and practices.
An example of an idealized picture of the formative peri-
od of a tradition is the picture of the early Christian church
in the Acts of the Apostles, a New Testament work composed
in the last third of the first century. The picture of the church
in Acts was shaped in part by the proto-Catholic ideal of a
single apostolic church, and it contributed to the spread of
this ideal in the following decades. Acts depicts a worldwide
church directed from Jerusalem by twelve apostles governing
alongside elders who are not identified as apostles, such as
Jesus’ brother James. Much attention is devoted to the mis-
sionary work of Paul, who is not identified as an apostle ex-
cept in Acts 14. Stress is placed on Paul’s cooperation with
the Jerusalem church and on the harmony of his views with
those of Peter, the only apostle to receive a substantial
amount of attention in Acts. Matters that would tend to qual-
ify the general impression of a unified church leadership,
such as the nature of the relationship between the twelve
apostles, Paul, and James, are not clarified. The picture in
Acts is at variance with the evidence preserved in Paul’s let-
ters. Paul does not hesitate to call himself an apostle, does
not deal with a group of twelve apostles in Jerusalem, records
a sharp conflict with Peter (Gal. 2:11–14), and in general
gives the impression of a more independent relationship to
the Jerusalem Church than the one ascribed to him by Acts.
The idealization of tradition by later canonizers stands
in tension not only with protean historical experience but
with living traditions originating prior to the canonization
of the tradition. No religious tradition springs onto the scene
already possessing the canonical structures that will hold it
together in the long run. Nevertheless, nascent tradition
must be defined and held together in some way in the circles
where it is received. In these circles the legacy of charismatic
leaders who can claim a direct link to the originating source
of sacred tradition plays an important role, as do beliefs and
practices validated by custom and oral tradition. Local cen-
ters of living tradition developing independently and with-
out much central coordination are the original hearths of tra-
dition. Examples are the regional schools of law in early
Islam (e.g., Medinese, Iraqi, Syrian), the metropolitan
churches in early Christianity (e.g., Antioch, Alexandria,
Rome), and the various monastic disciplines elaborated by
the Buddha’s successors around a common core but admit-
ting significant differences of practice and eventually belief.
The fixing of canons in a tradition necessarily breeds conflict
with the original local centers of living tradition. Conflict
would be inevitable even if the work of later canonizers were
free of ideological or regional bias, which is rarely the case.
The function of canonization is to generalize and standard-
ize, that of living tradition to affirm and develop inherited
beliefs and practices.
Yet it must not be thought that canonization represents
nothing but the regimentation of tradition by a central au-
thority. Canonization is a process that presupposes a signifi-
cant measure of consensus among the centers of living tradi-
tion to begin with. Without it the canonization of a tradition
could not be successful but would result in division. An ex-
ample of division is the split in the order of monks at the
second Buddhist council, said to have been held at Vaisali
about a century after the Buddha’s death. Catholic Chris-
tianity and Sunn ̄ı Islam, on the other hand, are examples of
extremely successful efforts of broad-based canonization, ac-
complished in each case during the first three to four centu-
ries of the religion’s existence. The consolidation of broad
segments of Judaism in late antiquity on the basis of the Tal-
mud is another example of canonization carried out in a reli-
gious environment that modern scholarship has shown to be
far more diverse than formerly supposed.
If canons are by definition clear, communicable, and
relatively easy to identify once the process of canonization
has been completed, the consensus presupposed by canoniza-
tion is more difficult to locate and define. The concept of
consensus is further complicated by the fact that some reli-
gious traditions possess their own particular concepts of con-
sensus, such as the concept of the consensus (ijma ̄E) of the
law schools in early Islam. While concepts of consensus in
religious systems function primarily as ideals, the ideals usu-
ally preserve evidence of the fact that the formation of the
tradition was not the work of a single religious center dictat-
ing canons to the periphery but resulted from the simulta-
neous emergence of distinct living traditions whose informal
agreement on fundamentals was the sine qua non of the for-
mal consolidation of tradition at a later time.A good example of these dynamics is seen in the evolu-
tion of the sunnah, or tradition, in early Islam. In the third
and fourth centuries AH (ninth and tenth centuries CE) the
sunnah of the Prophet received its classic form in the six ca-
nonical books of h:ad ̄ıths, or stories of the Prophet, eventually
accepted by Sunn ̄ı Muslims. How these books were pro-
duced is not a mystery. They were the leading works to
emerge from decades of travel, research, and discussion by
learned seekers of h:ad ̄ıths who undertook to discriminate be-
tween sound and spurious reports and whose methodolo-
gy—the testing of the chain of transmission (isna ̄d) of each
report—was rigorous, even though modern critical historians
would question some of the criteria applied. However, to
suppose that one has explained the formation of the sunnah
upon rendering an account of the work of the seekers of
h:ad ̄ıths is to fail to address more basic and difficult questions:9274 TRADITION