Religion scholars often separate religions into oral traditions, or local or indigenous religions passed down across generations through storytelling, and written traditions, or world religions that are primarily associated with sacred, written texts. While each may use components of the other tradition—oral storytelling is still occasionally used in a religion that is primarily a written tradition, for example—the emphasis on either oral or written worship affects the nature of the religious system in various ways.
Religions that remain primarily oral, such as most tribal and non-state religions, rely on religious performance as a way of bringing history to life instead of storing this cultural knowledge in written form. Most oral traditions have a cyclical connection to time, interpreting the past as repeating in cycles over and over, and see themselves and their ancestors as connected by enduring relationships over time. One of the clearest contemporary examples of this is a concept in the belief systems of various Indigenous Australian peoples commonly known as Dreamtime. In her study of women’s rituals and song lines among the Warlpiri people, Diane Bell (1993) became very interested in the yawulyu tradition, the women’s Dreamtime rituals. Through rituals of song, dance, and ceremony, Warlpiri women bring their ancestors to life. In one specific ritual, they walk paths near their communities where various historic and mythic events are believed to have occurred. These ritualized walks are called storylines because the women believe they are actually reliving the events that occurred in those locations and bringing their ancestors to life by remembering what happened in these meaningful and sacred places. Men have their own storylines and Dreamtime. Among indigenous Australian peoples, as among many small-scale societies, religion is not separate from everyday life. Instead, it infuses what they do and how they think about themselves. Theirs are oral and performative traditions in which they walk alongside their ancestors as they walk the same trails that their ancestors walked and remember them by remembering their stories. In this way, they turn myth into ritual itself, one intermingling with the other. Myths, for the Warlpiri, are alive and relived when they are performed. Dreamtime connects the Warlpiri people to their ancestors and their history and strengthens their cultural identity.
Even in religious faiths that rely primarily on doctrine, storytelling remains critical. The phrase “people of the book,” an Islamic reference to the Abrahamic religions—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism—is used to describe religious traditions that primarily, although not exclusively, rely on text and textual study. Each of these traditions has a primary sacred book used as the foundation of the religion—the Bible in Christianity, the Qur’an in Islam, and the Torah in Judaism. Yet while these traditions are based on scripture (writings), there are also significant oral components in the practice of these faiths. Many of the writings are based on earlier oral traditions and retain characteristics of oral performance, such as repetition for emphasis and to encourage remembering and story units that are self-contained and can be moved around. And each tradition utilizes oral performance in worship, reading aloud from their sacred texts during religious services.
Profiles in Anthropology
Manuel Zapata Olivella 1920–2004
Personal History: Zapata Olivella was born in Lorica, Colombia, in 1920 and studied medicine in the capital at the Universidad de Bogotá, eventually working as a physician and psychiatrist. He traveled throughout Latin America, Europe, and the United States, lecturing in the United States at Howard University and the University of Kansas. When introducing himself at the Library of Congress, he stated, “Soy Manuel Zapata Olivella, colombiano, novelista, médico, y antropólogo” (I am Manuel Zapata Olivella, Colombian, novelist, medical doctor, and anthropologist). His work— academic, literary, and medical—extends across all areas of what it means to be human.
Area of Anthropology: Born into a family of mixed ethnic and racial heritage—his father was of European and African ancestry, and his mother was of Indigenous and Spanish descent—Zapata Olivella was interested in identity and cultural diversity in Colombia. While traveling in the United States in the 1940s, he witnessed segregation and racial discrimination against Black Americans; he returned to Colombia and dedicated himself to studying the culture of afrocolombianos (Colombians of African descent), even as he continued his medical practice.
Accomplishments in the Field: For his ethnographic-literary works, Zapata Olivella received many awards throughout the Americas and Europe. Afro-Hispanic and Americanist scholars today value Zapata Olivella’s work for its cultural detail and focus on an understudied and too often overlooked population.
Importance of His Work: His ethnographic work provided the material for him to write a series of historical novels, the best known of which is Changó, el gran putas (Changó, the badass, 1983), an epic novel tracing the African diaspora from its origins in the slave trade across generations. His work incorporated many of the syncretic religious and mythic elements of contemporary afrocolombianos. Speaking at a national literary event on the importance of studying Afro-Colombian identity and culture today, he said, “For young countries such as ours, to assert our traditions, our evolutionary reality, our creative force is to take possession of ourselves, to come of age” (Zapata Olivella 2010, 185). On the afrocolombiano experience in the Americas, Zapata Olivella published more than a dozen novels and numerous short stories and essays (Selected Correspondence).
The content of this course has been taken from the free Anthropology textbook by Openstax