tion) that can in turn be an antecedent for subsequent factual
situations. The concept also contributes to a sociopsy-
chological clarification of a readiness for the balancing, sub-
ordination, superordination, and unification of truth.
As a description of phenomena. In the use of the con-
cept of syncretism there is no adaequatio intellectus et rei
(“correspondence of mind and object”). The concept is in
principle a tool for interpretation and as such is in principle
independent of the term inherited from antiquity. Agree-
ment must be reached on what the term is to mean here and
now. The parties to the agreement must see to it that the
constituents of the concept are close enough to one another,
despite the diversity in the phenomena, that a unity of type
is preserved. An individual connection is not to be described
as syncretist when taken in isolation but only when it is seen
as an element in a complex unity.
TYPOLOGY OF PHENOMENA. Since it is not possible to apply
the concept of syncretism in a universal, univocal way, a ty-
pology is needed. For present purposes we may propose two
main headings, as follows.
Relations between complex wholes. A complex unity
or whole can be any coherence of mental elements and of ac-
tions, representations, or objects related to these elements,
which has the function of giving human beings an irreduc-
ible explanation of their world, as well as norms that are like-
wise not further reducible. The coherence can take sociologi-
cal form in an organization or institution, though it need
not; in its intellectual expression it can be presented as a sys-
tem but may also take some other doctrinal form.
Relations between particular components. Particular
components of a religion (e.g., its gods) can also be linked
to one another in various ways. They can be identified; new
relations can be established between them; various shifts may
occur within a pantheon due to encounters with another
pantheon. Such particular relations, which are established
quasi-organically (at least at the popular level) and anony-
mously, presuppose relations between complex units or
wholes. But a particular component can also be the creation
of a literary author. Here the establishment of particular rela-
tions can be undertaken by individuals and without any con-
nection in principle with more comprehensive encounters
between cultures and religions, even where the latter have oc-
curred. Many an author has established his own syncretism
(e.g., in the Hellenistic age of late antiquity certain Pythago-
reans, astrologers, Orphics, Physikoi, the various compilers
of the Hermetic corpus and the sibylline and Chaldean ora-
cles, the Tübingen theosophists, alchemists, Lukianos of Sa-
mosata, Aelius Aristides, Numenius of Apamea, Porphyry,
Iamblichus, and Sallust).
THE LATE-TWENTIETH-CENTURY STATE OF SCHOLARSHIP.
When the concept of syncretism is used in describing phe-
nomena, the application of the term is still not the result of
an analysis; rather, it serves as a disparaging judgment on cer-
tain manifestations, a judgment assumed to be obvious. The
adjective syncretic, used in this way, occurs in countless trea-
tises on religions, where it designates both simple and com-
plex phenomena; its definition is taken for granted and vari-
ous inferences are drawn from it. Only in the 1970s were
initial efforts undertaken to distinguish between the concept
and the array of phenomena.
Subsequent stages in scholarship are represented by the
conferences on the problem that were held in Äbo (1966),
Göttingen (Reinhausen) and Strasbourg (both in 1971),
Santa Barbara (1972), and Besançon (1973). These have led
to various consensuses. The present article attempts simply
to advance the consensus, but it cannot promise any certain
results.
System and history. The concept of syncretism can be
used to describe either a state or a process. It is used in the
first way if, for example, an entire religion—or its particular
components or traits—are described as a syncretism or as
syncretic. In this case the concept is applied statically to de-
scribe a state or condition in which the characteristics of the
object are systematically correlated among themselves.
The concept is used processually when we speak of a
syncretic tendency or development, or of a development that
will end in syncretism. Syncretism is here understood as a
process which extends through time and in which gradations
or stages of development are to be distinguished. This may
be called a dynamic concept of syncretism. An attempt has
been made to capture this dimension of syncretism in neolo-
gisms like syncretization.
SYNCRETISM IN HISTORY. It follows from the above that a
project for a “history of syncretism” would be inappropriate.
All that can be done is to point out constellations in the gen-
eral history of religions that have made possible what histori-
ans may, under certain conditions, call “syncretism.” The
syncretic results of these constellations as such are not initial-
ly cohesive in respect to content, although such cohesiveness
may of course occur. The location of such results under the
concept of syncretism depends on a genetic and typological
analysis. At the present time such an analysis can only take
the form of a classification. The present article is therefore
organized along classificatory lines, but within the classes
suggested the examples offered will be in chronological
order.
Presuppositions. Religious entities that were originally
separate can come together in such a way that a syncretism
results. The first possible result is that what is superimposed
predominates, while what is older survives. This happened,
for example, in the Nabatean and Palmyrene religions of the
Hellenistic period, and in the associations that arose as a re-
sult of Christian missionization in Africa. A second possibili-
ty is that the substratum continues to exercise dominance;
for example, the Sumerian substratum in relation to the Ak-
kadian superimposition, the Celtic substratum in relation to
the Roman superimposition, and perhaps the Germanic es-
chatology in relation to a superimposed Oriental one. A third
possibility is that a balance may be established between theSYNCRETISM [FIRST EDITION] 8927