From where do religions come? From other religions. A “new” religion is a permutation—not infrequently in the form of a reversal, total or partial, of a previously existing religion. Where Brahmanic Hinduism posited the transmigration of the atman, Buddhism posited the doctrine of anatman. Where Judaism posited Torah or Law, Paulinian Christianity posited grace. Where New England Puritans saw themselves as the children of Abraham, the Israelites, England as “Egypt,” and America as Canaan, African-American slaves saw Anglo-Protestants as “Pharaoh,” America as Egypt, i.e., “the house of bondage,” themselves as the Israelites, and freedom from slavery (in whatever form), as Canaan. Permutation, reinterpretation, recontextualization, re-emplotment, reversal: the “history of religion” is the history of the deployment of such tropes.

By way of analogy, the science of religion must carefully consider the explanation of this species of activity offered by Tzevtan Todorov, who describes how these kinds of processes work in literature and in language: