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Syncretism, historicism, and cognition: A response to Michael Pye1 LUTHER H. MARTIN "Syncretism" is a central category for the modern study of religion, the sense of which remains, nevertheless, anchored in the historical orientation of its nineteenth-century definition. The overriding historiographical goal during this century was an understanding of human history "wie es eigentlich gewe- sen", to cite Leopold von Ranke's historistic dictum (1824: Vorrede). This positivistic assumption concerning the accessibility and nature of the past informed a view of religions as more or less coherent systems of belief in which a primordial or original "hierophany" became progressively diluted or contaminated through historical transmission. In the succinct formulation of loan Couliano, this view can be summarized as the search for "origins and transgressions" (1990: 57). The cardinal historical process whereby the integrity of a particular religious system might be violated was termed "syn- cretism". 1. Some early uses of "syncretism" The notion of "syncretism" was first given academic currency by von Ranke's s younger contemporary, the German historian, J. G. Droysen, who described, in his Geschichte des Hellenismus (1980; originally published in 1836), the "east-west mixture of people" that occurred in the aftermath of Alexander's far-flung conquests in
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 1996
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