Syncretism and the Localization of New Religious Authorities: Rabbinization and Christianization

Developing religious institutions are ultimately products of local environments despite their every effort to appear trans-regional and eternal. As I showed in Christianizing Egypt (2017), the production of Christian religion on the ground always involved a negotiation between local traditions, habitus and immediate landscapes (on the one hand), and new idioms of authority and charisma, including textuality (on the other hand) - a negotiation played out across multiple social sites that I have called syncretism. This paper investigates ways rabbinization might also be said to have involved syncretism, here in the context of scribal authority (as expressed in Babylonian incantation bowls) and in the context of iconic or magical writing (as expressed in late antique Palestinian synagogue floors).