gration of cultures into a higher unity are better represented
by the term synthesis, which in turn is to be understood as
a complex of synthetic phenomena. This can correctly be
taken to mean that there were as many kinds of Hellenism
as there were cultures that established links of one or other
kind with Greek culture. Egyptian, Babylonian, and Iranian
Hellenism were the principal types, and most of the cults
within each of the three were synthetic in character after the
manner of Hellenistic Judaism or many of the city-state cults
in the empires of the Seleucids and Antigonids. Syncretist
formations in religion were special cases in these various Hel-
lenisms.
Evolution. This term designates a process, internal to a
system, that produces new elements and that is irreversible.
The new elements can then become the center of a new unity
and thus of a new system. The result of the process is a new
religion, but this new religion is not syncretic. It was in this
way that Buddhism arose out of the previous religious sys-
tems in India and not by way of a clash between Brahmanism
and alien systems. The Baha ̄D ̄ı religion and even its precursor,
Babism, arose because their founders took over, from the
Twelvers, the institution of the imam, or mediator of revela-
tion; non-Islamic elements played no part in this process.
Harmonization. Theosophists in particular incline to
the conviction that all religions are true and lead to union
with God. Thus Ramakrishna (1834–1886) said that he had
tried all religions (i.e., Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity)
and had found that all were moving toward the same God
in different ways. The founders and adherents of other neo-
Hindu reform movements hold similar views. Comparable
tenets are also found frequently in the broad stream of tradi-
tion flowing from ancient Gnosticism via the Neoplatonism
of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Neoplatonism was con-
cerned to harmonize philosophy and religion rather than var-
ious religions) to modern anthroposophy. The claim is usual-
ly not made that all religions teach the same thing, nor are
the lines of demarcation between them removed. But a har-
mony is establihed among them by the claim that they are
all seeking the same goal. This assertion includes an emphasis
on the unity of the goal (e.g., God), which is comparable to
presuppositions of unity that can in other circumstances lead
to a syncretism. In the cases mentioned here, however, no
syncretism has resulted.
Consequences. When a religio-historical development
has in fact reached a syncretistic stage, its syncretistic charac-
ter is usually not communicated to the subsequent stages. To
this extent it is correct to say that syncretism is always a tran-
sitional phase. Here again various kinds are to be distin-
guished.
Transformation. An example that was significant on the
scene of world history because it accompanied the expansion
of Islam was the dehellenization of the Orient. This process
occurred not only in religion but also in the area of material
culture, with which archaeology and aesthetics deal; in the
institutions of government; and even in ideas. Once the lan-
guages spoken in Asia Minor and the Semitic, Iranian, and
Egyptian languages spoken in various regions began to assert
themselves again, after the spread of Greek culture in the cit-
ies of the East in approximately the second century CE, their
revival did not bring a return to prehellenistic conditions but
rather a transformation, or metamorphosis, of the synthetic
and at times syncretistic character of Hellenism into a new
unity. This unity operated in the direction of homogeneity,
although analytically viewed it was itself not homogeneous
and it did not, on that account, become uniform.
Earlier, a complex process of transformation had like-
wise given rise to the Christianity of the apostolic and
postapostolic ages. Despite the multiform derivation of
many of its basic concepts and views, this Christianity was
not a syncretist religion (with, for example, rabbinic and
Hellenistic Judaism as two of its chief components). The
same must be said of Catholicism, which came into being
after a further transformation, namely, a now non-Judaic
Hellenization of Christianity. In a similar manner, various
forms of Eastern Christianity developed that can no longer
be described as Hellenistic and certainly not as syncretic; this
development took place not only in the Nestorian and Mo-
nophysite churches, but in smaller churches as well.
Manichaeism and orthodox Zoroastrianism, among
other religions, emerged in a region in which Baptist, Syrian
Christian, and Zurvanite elements were in close but unde-
fined proximity. Manichaeism was, in addition, syncretic,
but the syncretism was held in check by systematization. Zo-
roastrianism was not syncretic. Even elements that from an
analytical standpoint were not Iranian appeared in it as Irani-
cized, although there was no question of “absorption.”
Disintegration. If the component parts that produced
a syncretic formation had been independent for a sufficiently
long time or if they continued to have an independent exis-
tence alongside the syncretism, they also tended to reassert
themselves in a perceptible way within it. To the extent that
this happened, the syncretist structure fell apart. Thus not
only did the various Eastern Hellenistic societies undergo de-
hellenization, but there were also Greek reactions against
them. From the eighth century onward in Japan there were
syncretist unions of Shinto ̄ and Maha ̄ya ̄na Buddhism, but
people visited temples of each separate religion as well as
temples shared by both; the result was a continuing aware-
ness of the difference between the two. With the exception
of Ryo ̄bu Shinto ̄, which did not break up until the four-
teenth century and then did so for political reasons, these
syncretisms did not last long, although the symbiosis of
Shinto ̄ devotees and Buddhists continued.
Absorption. When a superimposed level does not ulti-
mately lose out to the subordinate level—as frequently hap-
pens—but remains dominant, absorption occurs. Thus, for
example, it is very likely that the sky god of the invading
Greeks became heir to the many mountain gods of the pre-
Greek period. In a way, faith in Yahveh, who rules from
Sinai, absorbed the faith of nomads from the tribes of Abra-SYNCRETISM [FIRST EDITION] 8929