type often make a conscious effort to deny the novelty of
their message. Confucius is a good example. A powerful orig-
inator who reoriented Chinese tradition, Confucius achieved
a remarkable humanization of the substance of Chinese reli-
gion in his doctrine of “humanity” (jen). Yet he vigorously
denied that there was anything new in his work. “I transmit
but do not innovate; I am truthful in what I say and devoted
to antiquity” (Analects 7.1, Lau translation). Confucius’s
words and deeds were designed to authenticate this claim.
He was scrupulous in his observance of the established rites,
devoted himself to traditional poetry and music, took the
worthies of antiquity as his models, and showed reverence
for the spirit world and for heaven.
The approach of Socrates to tradition, at least in Plato’s
quasi-canonical version, runs parallel to that of Confucius in
an important way, though with an equally important differ-
ence. The difference lies in the method—dialectic—which
allows for the critical interrogation of received tradition in
a spirit quite foreign to Confucius’s approach. The parallel
lies in Socrates’ insistence that he had neither new truths to
teach people nor access to a special or secret source of truth,
but simply wanted to clarify the traditional values—justice,
goodness, piety—that most people accept on faith but can-
not define or defend when challenged to do so. Thus
throughout Plato’s portrait of Socrates there is a tension be-
tween the critique and the affirmation of Greek tradition.
Socrates is depicted as a man who respects and participates
in the common forms of tradition even as he demolishes the
arguments of pretentious and incompetent apologists, such
as Euthyphro, Ion, and Agathon. The Republic, for example,
although it contains the sharpest attack on Greek tradition
in Plato’s dialogues, namely the critique of Homer and Hesi-
od for “badly portraying the nature of gods and heroes” (Re-
public 377e), opens with Socrates telling how he went down
to Piraeus to pray to a goddess during a religious festival and
ends with him recounting a myth of gods and heroes (the
myth of Er).
THE FORMATION OF TRADITIONS. A general theory of the
formation of religious traditions has eluded scholars of reli-
gion despite the large body of specialized scholarship on the
formative periods of many world religions. The difficulty is
related to the conflict between the modern critical view of
tradition as a historical product and the religious concept of
tradition as a body of inviolate sacred canons transcending
time and change. The application of historical and philologi-
cal analysis to sacred traditions never fails to demonstrate
their dependence on historical determinants. Yet the critical
analysis of sacred traditions, if carried to the point of radical
relativism, fails to account for the most distinctive fact of all:
the continuity of certain sacred traditions with the capacity,
however limited, to preserve themselves in a world of time
and change.
The dynamics of traditionalism and relativism are fur-
ther complicated by the instability of critical-historical theo-
ry itself. The annals of the modern study of religion abound
with examples of theories that at one time commanded a
substantial scholarly consensus but subsequently collapsed,
not because they were opposed by religious traditionalists but
because they were rejected by a new generation of critical
scholars. For several decades of the twentieth century, for ex-
ample, students in the reputable Protestant theological
schools of Europe and North America were taught to view
the Pentateuch through the lens of the “tradition history”
school of Albrecht Alt, Gerhard von Rad, and Martin Noth.
These scholars regarded the Pentateuch as the product of the
expansion of smaller yet well-defined units of traditional ma-
terial dating in some cases from as far back as the Middle
Bronze Age (2100–1600 BCE). Toward the end of the twenti-
eth century this theory gave way to a view of the Pentateuch
as a much later body of material reflecting the party struggles
of the waning years of the Israelite monarchy (seventh–sixth
centuries BCE) and owing relatively little to canonical forms
handed down from earlier periods. The revisionist view itself
is susceptible to revision, of course, not least because it tends
to evade rather than settle the issue of tradition. While em-
phasizing the decisive role of political and religious elites in
the fashioning of the Pentateuch, the revisionists concede
that the elites did not create their material from nothing but
worked with an antecedent “body of lore (myths, legends,
laws, etc.),” “a basic core of stories, traditions, and so on,”
or a “body of diverse traditional material” (Van Seters, 1998,
pp. 8–9, 14). If so, then an account of the history of these
traditions is demanded. The category of tradition, marginal-
ized by criticism of “tradition history,” enters the picture
again.Political determinism, namely the view that traditions
are formed by elites as a means of legitimating power and
privilege, has been a powerful factor in modern theoretical
reflection on the formation of religious traditions. Attention
focused originally on clerical elites who, as Enlightenment
rationalists supposed, invented the apparatus of religious tra-
dition to exploit the ignorant masses. Beginning with the
French Revolution the role of secular political elites also
came under scrutiny, as critics of “ideology” exposed the cozy
relations between church, throne, and aristocracy. As monar-
chical and aristocratic power declined in the nineteenth cen-
tury, ideological criticism was directed against the new power
elite, namely the middle class. The feminist criticism of tradi-
tion took shape in the same historical context. A related form
of political determinism reverses the terms, suggesting that
certain traditions were formed by oppressed groups as a way
of contesting established power structures, whether through
a revolutionary assault or through some sort of exodus from
them. Such a view has been particularly influential in the in-
terpretation of the Hebrew Bible, in presentations of the eth-
ics and “politics” of Jesus in the New Testament, and in lib-
eration theology.Delineating the connections between traditions and
power elites has proved complicated enough to prevent the
emergence of a generally accepted analysis. That power elites9272 TRADITION