DISKUS Vol1 No.1 (1993) p.1

THE FORMATION RATHER THAN THE ORIGIN OF A TRADITION

Ninian Smart

University of California at Santa Barbara, 
CA 93106, USA

I argued recently in my 'The World's Religions' that the formation of a tradition is more important than its supposed origins. I set this forth in this super-brief article: but why not brevity occasionally?

One of the main fallacies in the history of religions and more widely in religious studies consists in identifying the essence of a religious tradition with its origins. It is I suppose a kind of Protestant thought, even if Calvin's Geneva bore almost no resemblance to life in Corinth; and no doubt Jesus would have been surprised by Orthodox faith in Kiev or Episcopalianism in Scotland. Naturally, traditions have to adapt, and it could be argued that certain values were reaffirmed in Calvin's time or in St. Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow in modern times. More important than supposed origins were formative periods when traditions took influential shape.

In my view the periods of formation have been very different from those of starting or 'origin'. Unfortunately scriptures can give a different impression. They typically were adopted some time after they were composed. I would think of Christianity as being formed in the 4th Century C.E. and a bit after. It came to be a merger between a Jewish offshoot and Neoplatonism. Judaism, as a religion of synagogues, rabbis and Talmuds came into being at much the same time (and was very different from the religion of Moses or of the ancient Israelites). Christianity of course had a second formation in the 16th Century (the Reformation). Buddhism had its roots at the time of the Buddha, but was formed several centuries later with the completion of the Pali canon. Hinduism could be seen to be much more recent, though with various ancient roots: in a sense it was formed in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. Again, Taoism as a religion had its roots at the time of Confucius, but its formation was in the 2nd Century C.E.

And so on. It is worth getting away from the idea that religions started at a certain time: their roots differ from their shaped form. We love being retrospective. We think of English history as starting in 1066, as if the people of then were much like the people of today.

<END>   NINIAN SMART: THE FORMATION RATHER THAN 
                      THE ORIGIN OF A TRADITION    <END>