how embedded they are in their local context. To be sure,
there are several great traditions, not just one. But this multi-
plicity can be interpreted in a number of ways, including
some that cohere with the universalism of the traditions
themselves.
The postmodernist assertion that modernity is over can
also be questioned. The claim seems to ignore the large body
of evidence summed up in the term globalization. Globaliza-
tion, as Peter Berger has observed, is “a continuation, albeit
in an intensified and accelerated form, of the perduring chal-
lenge of modernization” (Berger and Huntington, 2002,
p. 16). The forces of globalization—science, market capital-
ism, individualism—are expanding, not contracting in the
world, and religious traditions everywhere are struggling to
come to terms with them. The religious fundamentalisms
that are often cited as evidence of the collapse of modernity
are in fact just one of a number of responses to modernity,
their stridency and extremism marking them as untraditional
phenomena. While globalization occurs in diverse forms,
there are enough similarities among its forms to suggest that
it is indeed a global process. In short, whereas postmodernist
critics have significantly refined the discussion of modernity
by discrediting simplistic theories, the case is by no means
closed.
For the time being the best approach is probably to rec-
ognize that the problem of tradition and modernity is part
of the religious situation of contemporary civilization and
not likely to be resolved, or even greatly altered, in the near
future. The naive progressivism of the early theorists of mod-
ernization has been abandoned by most scholars, but the
general problem stands. Given globalizing trends, the contin-
uators of tradition may be expected to go on experiencing
threats to their identities, including some that arise from
within their own traditions as modernizing tendencies insin-
uate themselves even there. Yet the work of the globalizers
is also full of tensions, and these are likely to intensify as ide-
alistic enthusiasm for modern visions gives way to the diffi-
culty of putting these visions into practice. Globalizers risk
losing the way to the future for lack of a connection with the
past. A steady orientation in any field of endeavor seems to
require traditions: traditions inherited from premodern
times, new traditions of modernity’s own making, or new
cultural syntheses combining elements of both.
SEE ALSO Canon; Folk Religion; H:ad ̄ıth; Memorization;
Oral Tradition; Popular Religion; Reform; Revival and Re-
newal; Scripture; Sunnah.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Edward Shils’s Tradition (Chicago, 1981) is an excellent introduc-
tion to the concept of tradition, although the book does not
contain a specialized discussion of tradition in religion. Josef
Pieper’s Überlieferung: Begriff und Anspruch (Munich, 1970)
is a good introduction to religious and theological dimen-
sions of the concept. The lectures by Jaroslav Pelikan, The
Vindication of Tradition (New Haven, Conn., 1984), offer
a lively if brief defense of the centrality of tradition in reli-
gion and culture. The broad influence of Robert Redfield’s
concept of tradition makes his Peasant Society and Culture:
An Anthropological Approach to Civilization (Chicago, 1956)
required reading, especially chap. 3, “The Social Organiza-
tion of Tradition.” The most influential sociological discus-
sion of tradition is Max Weber’s in Economy and Society: An
Outline of Interpretive Sociology, 2 vols., edited by Guenther
Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, Calif., and London,
1978). The seminal essay by T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the
Individual Talent,” in The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and
Criticism (London, 1920), pp. 47–59, reprinted in Selected
Essays, 3d ed. (New York, 1950), pp. 13–22, is also essential
reading.
For the contribution of philosophical hermeneutics to the discus-
sion of tradition, one should consult the two masters of the
discipline, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans-
lated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, 2d rev.
ed. (New York, 1989); and Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and
the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and Interpre-
tation, edited and translated by John B. Thompson (Cam-
bridge, U.K., and New York, 1981). For an overview see
Jean Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics,
translated by Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven, Conn., and
London, 1994).
On oral tradition one may begin with Jan Vansina’s Oral Tradi-
tion: A Study in Historical Methodology (Chicago, 1965), a
rigorous discussion of the value of oral tradition as a histori-
cal source; and Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The
Technologizing of the Word (London and New York, 2002).
The fundamental work on oral poetic tradition is Albert
Bates Lord’s The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass., 1960).
For a more recent treatment see Ruth Finnegan, Oral Poetry:
Its Nature, Significance, and Social Context (Bloomington,
Ind., 1992). On oral tradition in the Hebrew Bible see Ed-
uard Nielsen’s Oral Tradition: A Modern Problem in Old Tes-
tament Introduction, with a foreword by Harold H. Rowley
(Chicago, 1954); and Susan Niditch, Oral World and Writ-
ten Word: Ancient Israelite Literature (Louisville, Ky., 1996).
A large literature exists on the concept and practice of tradition
in particular religions. The best of these works shed light not
only on the traditions under investigation but on tradition-
ality in general. On goddesses in prehistoric Europe see
Marija Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess, edited by
Joan Marler (San Francisco, 1991). Douglas A. Knight, ed.,
Tradition and Theology in the Old Testament (Philadelphia,
1977), is a good collection of essays on tradition in the He-
brew Bible. James A. Sanders’s Torah and Canon (Philadel-
phia, 1972) is a suggestive discussion of tradition and canon-
icity. See also John Van Seters, “The Pentateuch,” in The
Hebrew Bible Today: An Introduction to Critical Issues, edited
by Steven L. McKenzie and M. Patrick Graham (Louisville,
Ky., 1998), pp. 3–49. For contrasting approaches to tradi-
tion in rabbinic Judaism see Jacob Weingreen, From Bible to
Mishna: The Continuity of Tradition (New York, 1976); and
Jacob Neusner, Early Rabbinic Judaism: Historical Studies in
Religion, Literature, and Art (Leiden, Netherlands, 1975), es-
pecially chap. 1, “The Meaning of Oral Torah, with Special
Reference to Kelim and Ohalot.” On tradition in mystical
Judaism see Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York, 1974).9280 TRADITION