“When religious traditions travel, they tend to adapt to their new surroundings”

When religious traditions travel, they tend to adapt to their new surroundings. Like new products seeking to penetrate a foreign market, they often undergo a process of modification and re-packaging that makes them comprehensible and inviting to their potential clientele. This can often be a subconscious process whereby the elements in the imported tradition that evoke more familiar local practices rise to prominence and develop further, whereas others sink into the background.

Geoffrey Herman, “Religious Transformation Between East and West: Hanukkah in the Babylonian Talmud and Zoroastrianism”, in Religions and Trade: Religious Formation, Transformation and Cross-Cultural Exchange between East and West, ed. Peter Wick and Volker Rabens (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2014), 261.