ORIGINS AND SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS AND LEGAL TRADITIONS

Abstract

The article analyzes the origins of religious and legal traditions, which is due to the relevance of research in the direction of a broader understanding of the genesis of legal systems and the patterns of their historical development. Religious and legal ideas were one of the primary regulators of social relations, forming normative models of behavior long before the institutionalization of state power and positive law. The author emphasizes that it was within the framework of religious doctrines that the basic categories of justice, duty, responsibility and sanctions were consolidated, which were later transformed into secular legal norms. Also, the researcher identifies the religious idea as the initial, pre-institutional origin of the religious and legal tradition, which ensures its semantic integrity, value orientation and ability to normative design. The analysis of religious ideas as origins updates the understanding of the mechanism of formation of religious and legal systems and the specificity of sacralized normative thinking. At the same time, the author notes that the religious idea is the source of the religious and legal tradition, while the religious dogma and religious norm, religious practice act as forms of its normative objectification. The methodology for studying the origins of religious and legal traditions is based on a combination of general scientific, special legal and interdisciplinary methods of cognition, which is due to the complex, syncretic nature of religious and legal phenomena. The purpose of the article is to study the origins of religious and legal traditions in view of their theoretical significance for legal science, practical value for improving legal regulation and methodological role in the development of interdisciplinary legal research. According to the results of the study, the author notes that the identification of origins with sources is methodologically incorrect, since it leads to a confusion of the levels of analysis of the genesis and normative structure of religious and legal traditions. Their distinction allows us to more accurately investigate the process of formation of religious and legal systems and identify the mechanisms of transformation of sacred ideas into normative and legal prescriptions. Religious and legal traditions arise as a historically primary form of normative regulation, combining worldview, value and regulatory functions and preceding the formation of secular positive law. The key difference between origins and sources lies in their functional purpose: origins form the ideological and axiological basis of the religious and legal tradition, while sources provide its normative concretization and practical implementation