Religious Syncretism IS Natural

Syncresis is the blending together of traditions. We have religious thinkers today who argue that syncretic practices are foolish reconceptions inimical to true faith and sign of weak adherence to established dogma. In short, these critics decry any form of religious syncretism as indicative of "erroneous" practice, or as a contamination of "pure" tradition. However, we must face the essential fact that Christianity has been a syncretic faith at least since it was made the official religion of the Roman State under Constantine, who ordained that it be combined with the then very popular (and pagan) cult of the sun god (Sol Invictus -- "the Unconquerable Sun"). With this inter-cultic syncretism by imperial edict the simpler form of Christianity that had been practiced when it was still a minority (and only recently legalized) religion ceased to be. Thus the Christian sabbath was moved from Saturday to Sol's holy day (Sunday), and the commemoration of Christ's birthday was shifted from the beginning of Autumn to the beginning of Winter (which was when Sol's birthday was celebrated). Also, the commemoration of the Last Supper was likened to the pagan cults of divine cannibalism of sacrificial gods that were reborn, like Mithras and Attis, through the neologistic concept of transubstantiation. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was now likened to pagan Parthenogenic Mother Goddesses like Isis, even though the actual Mary had several children by her husband Joseph, who had been a mensch and married her when she had been an unmarried pregnant girl (either by miraculous conception, or, as Jewish tradition has anciently held, by a Roman soldier named Pantherus). Of course before that, another form of syncretism has already begun in terms of the development of Christianity. The Church Fathers (and the Apostle Paul before them) had been busily incorporating various ideas from Greek philosophy with Christianity to give it "intellectual rigor" in the face of scholarly pagan critics, and one Church Father, Tertullian, even introduced the Indo-European pagan concept of triadic deity in the theology of the Trinity.

Yet syncretism goes even farther back in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The early faith of the Hebrew Patriarch and their household followers shows a strong connection to Sumerian, Akkadian, Canaanite mythic traditions and worldviews in the Book of Genesis (Bereshith). The laws and purification practices of the Pentateuch (Torah) resemble Babylonian law codes and ritual purity standards of Egyptian priesthood. The Psalms (Tehillim) resemble many hymns from Egypt and Mesopotamia in phraseology, motifs and themes. Conversely, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Testament (Tanakh), known as the Septuagint may have influenced the popular philosophical movement of the Kunikoi in Greece, who lived and taught lives of moral virtue over worldly materialism, just as had been preached and exemplified in the Books of the Prophets (Nevi'im). In its turn, the later rabbinic tradition of Judaism studied Greek moral philosophy (sometimes in Arabic translation) and integrated its principles in their development of Judaic moral principles.

Getting back to Christianity at an earlier stage, Jesus' re-prioritization of one's individual spiritual perspective and his moral upending of the whole social order resemble the principles of Buddhism, and there was a Buddhist immigrant community in the Galilean trade city of Tzippori (i.e., Sepphoris), not far from his native Nazareth, not to mention the Buddhist-influenced Hellenistic philosophical movement of the Eastern Mediterranean, known as the Therapeutae. The Apostle Paul's theology developed in his Epistles resembles the dualistic philosophy of Neoplatonism and the moral hardihood and spiritual universalism of Stoicism. The Book of Revelations has strong thematic and symbolic antecedents in the prophecies found in the Book of Daniel and the apocalyptic scrolls of the Qumram Separatist Jewish community on the predicted cosmic war between the "Lords of Light" and the "Lords of Darkness", not to mention the polarized theology of Manichaean Christianity and its predecessor, Zoroastrianism.

Today the critics are venting at syncretic practices within the Judeo-Christian family, seeing these spiritual experiments as anything from "pretentious" to an outright "betrayal" of orthodoxy. However, the tendency of the two traditions (Judaism and Christianity) to find more in common with each other (rather than to have a sense of mutual alienation) has happened recurrently through time, and has been recorded wherever and whenever puritanical religious and secular authorities were present to interfere and keep the two sister faiths "properly separate". One comes across the anxiety over syncretism repeatedly mentioned by ironfisted religious officials who perceived what they considered "the Judaizing of Christianity", which occurred often in places where Christians and Jews shared economic, social, and political aims and values, and as an outgrowth of these factors began attending each others religious services and even intermarrying with each other (the "proof is in the pudding": Jews of European heritage look more like Christians of European heritage than they do Jews whose ancestors lived in Arabic countries).

So syncretism is natural, and has been a part of the Judeo-Christian tradition from beginning to end. It is also a necessary factor in the positive growth of any faith tradition in communication with the broader world and possessing a moral sense of common cause with the whole of humankind. In a certain sense, Jesus was effectively a "Jewish Prophet unto the Gentiles", bringing the emotional heart of Judaism to a pagan world that had thus far mainly developed only an intellectual form of morality. Moral teaching could now generate a popular appeal in the Gentile world because it was religiously grounded. Thus efforts today by Christians to embrace the Jewish roots of their faith in a variety of ways is not a "betrayal" of their Christian faith, but actually a form of syncretism. Such synncretic instincts could reestablish that "purity" of the Early Church that the Protestants and the Counter-Reformation both failed ultimately achieve, because neither of the two major divisions of Christianity could shed the authoritarianism they mutually inherited from the Imperial Church of Constantine. To put the Jewish soul back into Christianity will restore its egalitarian spirit of halcyon days.