BIBLIOGRAPHY
Modern study of the topic was inaugurated by Richard Reitzen-
stein and H. H. Schaeder in their classic Studien zum antiken
Synkretismus aus Iran und Griechenland (Leipzig, 1926). The
investigation begun there has been continued in a series of
symposia: Syncretism: Based on Papers Read at the Symposium
on Cultural Contact, Meeting on Religious Syncretism Held at
Abo on the 8th–10th of September 1966, edited by Sven S.
Hartman (Stockholm, 1969); Les syncrétismes dans les religions
grecque et romaine: Colloque de Strasbourg, 9–11 juin 1971
(Paris, 1973); Synkretismus im syrisch-persischen Kulturgebiet:
Bericht über ein Symposion in Reinhausen bei Göttingen in der
Zeit vom 4. bis 8. Oktober 1971, edited by Albrecht Dietrich
(Göttingen, 1975); Les syncrétismes dans les religions de
l’antiquité: Colloque de Besançon, 22–23 octobre 1973, edited
by Françoise Dunand and Pierre L. Lévêque (Leiden, 1975);
and Religious Syncretism in Antiquity: Essays in Conversation
with Geo Widengren, edited by Birger A. Pearson (Missoula,
Mont., 1975). A recent approach to the topic can be found
in Ulrich Berner’s Untersuchungen zur Verwendung des Syn-
kretismus-Begriffes (Wiesbaden, 1982). The historical situa-
tions in which syncretisms can arise are best described in
Mircea Eliade’s monumental A History of Religious Ideas
(Chicago, 1978–1986).
Many volumes are devoted to the critical appraisal of syncretist
materials in the series “Études préliminaires aux religions ori-
entales dans l’Empire romain,” edited by Maarten J. Ver-
maseren (Leiden, 1967–1981). The theme was also the sub-
ject of a special research area undertaken from 1968 to 1981,
the results of which were published in the series “Göttinger
Orientforschungen”; see especially Joachim Spiegel’s Die
Götter von Abydos: Studien zum ägyptischen Synkretismus
(Wiesbaden, 1971); Wolfgang Schenkel’s Kultmythos und
Märtyrerlegende: Zur Kontinuität des ägyptischen Denkens
(Wiesbaden, 1977); Brigitte Altenmüller’s Synkretismus in
den Sargtexten (Wiesbaden, 1975); and Maria Theresia Der-
chain-Urtel’s Synkretismus in ägyptischer Ikonographie: Die
Göttin Tjenenet (Wiesbaden, 1979). In addition to the works
on Egypt, the series offers a general study: Synkretismusfor-
schung: Theorie und Praxis, edited by Gernot Wiessner
(Wiesbaden, 1978). The principle of syncretism is also dis-
cussed in Richard Merz’s Die numinose Mischgestalt (Berlin,
1978).
Hypotheses regarding an ancient syncretism in Greece and Iran
are defended by Otto Kern in Die Religion der Griechen, vol.
1, Von den Anfängen bis Hesiod (Berlin, 1926), and vol. 2,
Die Hochblüte bis zum Ausgang des fünften Jahrhunderts (Ber-
lin, 1935), and by Sven S. Hartman in Gayomart: Étude sur
le syncrétisme dans l’ancien Iran (Uppsala, 1953). Descrip-
tions of syncretism in India can be found in almost every
study on the religions of India. On late antiquity, see, in ad-
dition to the symposia mentioned above, Christoph Elsas’s
Neuplatonische und gnostische Weltablehnung in der Schule
Plotins (Berlin, 1973). On South America, see Lindolfo
Weingärtner’s Umbanda: Synkretistische Kulte in Brasilien,
eine Herausforderung für die christliche Kirche (Erlangen,
1969); Ulrich Fischer’s Zur Liturgie des Umbandakultes (Lei-
den, 1970); and Horst H. Figge’s Geisterkult: Besessenheit und
Magie in der Umbanda-Religion Brasiliens (Freiburg, 1973).
For a discussion on syncretism in Africa, see Raymond Rozier’s
Le Burundi: Pays de la vache et du tambour (Paris, 1973). On
Japan, see Joseph M. Kitagawa’s Religion in Japanese History
(New York, 1966) and J. H. Kamstra’s Encounter or Syncre-
tism: The Initial Growth of Japanese Buddhism (Leiden,
1967). On syncretism within a variety of Buddhist cultures,
see Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution, by
Emanuel Sarkisyanz (The Hague, 1965), and Buddhism in
Ceylon and Studies in Religious Syncretism in Buddhist Coun-
tries, edited by Heinz Bechert (Göttingen, 1978).
On the Christian position regarding the problem, consult Willem
Adolph Visser’t Hooft’s No Other Name: The Choice between
Syncretism and Christian Universalism (London, 1963). On
the dispute concerning syncretism within the Protestant
church, see Otto Ritschl’s Die reformierte Theologie des 16.
und 17. Jahrhunderts in ihrer Entstehung und Entwicklung
(Göttingen, 1926).CARSTEN COLPE (1987)
Translated from German by Matthew J. O’ConnellSYNCRETISM [FURTHER CONSIDERA-
TIONS]. Syncretism belongs with several other terms in
the study of religions, such as myth, magic, or religion, that
derive from Greek or Latin words but have a complex seman-
tic history in which the meaning of the ancient Greek or
Latin word is relatively unimportant when compared to the
adoption and resemantization of the term in modern scholar-
ly discourse. In the case of syncretism, Erasmus’s adaptation
and Latinization of Greek synkr ̄etismós (Plutarch, the Suda
lexicon) into syncretismus paved the way for later usages.
Erasmus adopted the term in its ancient meaning of “band-
ing together of Cretans” as a proverbial term to designate an
alliance of unlike partners based on usefulness, not on mutu-
al attraction, and he applied it to the changing coalitions in
the religious fights of his own time (Adagia 1.1.11) or to the
necessity of humanist scholars to close ranks against their
ideological enemies (Letter 947 to Melanchthon, from
1519). After Erasmus the term radically changed its mean-
ing. When reused in Protestant sources in its French and En-
glish adaptations, it referred to the closing of ranks among
different groups of reformed Christians, especially Lutherans
and Calvinists, despite their considerable doctrinal differ-
ences and under the pressure of their common enemy, the
papacy, and it was used to censure this closing of the ranks
as bizarre and unacceptable. Although in these texts the in-
tended meaning was “a behavior like that of Erasmus’s belea-
guered Cretans,” it was quickly understood as “unprincipled
blending of theological and liturgical truth (ours) and false-
hood (theirs) under outside pressure.” This negative use and
meaning resurfaced in the nineteenth-century missionary po-
lemics against native influences on Christianity, and it sur-
vives in contemporary Catholic discourse about ecumenism
and any other “relativisms” (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger). In
a more descriptive sense, but still with negative connotations,
the term became prominent in the scholarly language of his-
torians of religion, philosophers, and linguists in the latter
half of the nineteenth century. In the study of religions, it8934 SYNCRETISM [FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS]