Wretchard reports that Islam (according to some scholars says Wikipedia) is a syncretal mish-mash of Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. But the same Wikipedia article on Syncretism, and another article on Christianity and Paganism, suggests that Christianity itself developed in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, leading an underground existence as an illicit mystery religion until it underwent a syncretism with the Roman Imperial cult and Hellenistic philosophy in the 4th century. If one is able to rise above the conceit that one’s own beliefs are the very same doctrine handed straight from Jesus to the Apostles pure and undiluted, such as we find in the assertions of every denomination from Roman Catholicism to Five Corners Good Book Baptist, then syncretism is revealed to be a good thing. It was the mechanism by which the principles of Judaism were incorporated into a proselytizing force that evangelized the Western World, much to the good.