GakuseiDon

(bad joke that sounded funny while in head but less so when read aloud removed)

DCHindley

Don't forget the footnote:

"Don't rely on anything written before 1950 or so unless you can confirm what it says from primary evidence or more recent scholarship." [William V. Harris, PBUH]

The gist of this paraphrase is that you should not automatically accept historical conclusions presented in a monograph written before ca. 1950, but rather review the sources and its context yourself, and can agree with the conclusion in light of more modern scholarship.

Gawd, I'd hope anyone does that with any source, regardless of age. It could be written yesterday by the most respected scholar, and I would still look at these things.

While I respect those who are reluctant to force themselves to constantly "reinvent the wheel," I would humbly respond that solid disc cart wheels are not the same as spoked wagon wheels, which are not the same as iron/steel auto wheels of the early 20th century, which are a far cry from modern pneumatic tired wheels, and truck wheels are much different than passenger car wheels, and their components undergo constant change such as radial-ply tires replacing bias-ply tires. All these changes were due to context: sizes, weights and types of loads, the conditions under which the wheel must operate (packed flat soil, grass plains, mountain passes, gravel roads, cobblestone or brick paved streets, asphalt or concrete paved roads, banked oval racetracks, dry, wet, snow/ice covered, commerce, trucking, pleasure driving, combat, etc).

If we read a source that references "wheels," we look at the source for the original word, pull out our lexicons and grammars, see what context the word was used ("wheels within wheels" of Ezekiel or wheels of a chariot/cart running over poor Judas Iscariot in the alley, etc), and then attempt a historical explanation.

As far as old critical sources go, IMHO some of the best examples of historical critical work were done in the late 19th century. Their conclusions no longer carry any weight but the process they underwent to reach them changed everything, destroying entrenched acceptance of long cherished assumptions and conclusions. They managed to make note of an extensively list of things that previous critics had not examined closely, finding inconsistencies and anomalies and faulty logic along the way.

Not only did this help sift the data from the noise in the historical evidence itself, but helps us in the process of re-evaluating the relationships between the various pieces of evidence. The analysis that did not work in 1903 with the evidence that existed then, especially when the evidence itself seemed ambiguous (e.g., nobody really knew what to make of Pistis Sophia, etc, so they guessed), may make much more sense now with a greater range of evidence to draw from, evidence that has been given more extensive forensic analysis than what was available in the 19th century, all of which allows relationships to come into view that would not have "entered the hearts of men" in an earlier day.

Amen

DCH

Petergdi

I think you have missed it. The real biggie is that you cannot assume that academic historians writing prior to 1950 did the basic fact checking that we now take for granted as essential to writing a serious history paper or monograph. It used to be acceptable to use a secondary source where using a primary source is now required.


Chasing down references is often serious leg-work. You have to do it before submitting work for publication or to read at a conference, but you can't possibly do it with every thing you provisionally accept as true in your own reading.

Peter.

mountainman

p.354. The Ancient Historians - Michael Grant

robto

This warning seems to apply especially strongly to the study of the relationship between Christianity and the Mystery Religions. Around the turn of the century there was a spate of "parallelomania", with scholars finding parallels between all sorts of widespread religious phenomena. It's been a while since I read Angus, but I think he falls into this category. There's a good discussion of the general problem (without mentioning Angus particlularly) by Metzger here (which I found linked from the Carrier page on Kersey Graves.)

Metzger quotes Schweitzer:
which goes to show that the Freke/Gandy approach has been around since at least 1911.

Although I basically agree with Metzger's point in the article, he sometimes seems to make the very methodological mistakes he complains about! For instance, he argues that the Mysteries likely borrowed the idea of eternal salvation from the Christians (p. 11), but the inscriptional evidence he cites is (p.7 fn. 2):

- "eternal" efficacy around 376 AD,
- 20 year efficacy from around 376 AD and around 390 AD.

While this is certainly late enough for Christianity to have been an influence, the timing of these inscriptions certainly doesn't show a movement from a 20-year period to eternal efficacy.

The bottom line: early 20th century scholars are not to be trusted, but neither are early 21st century scholars. Look at the sources yourself.

lycanthrope

When you all say look at the source, that would mean I need to be well versed in Greek or Latin wouldnt it? But I dont know these 2 languages at all...

andrewcriddle

Most of the issues are reasonably clear in a competent translation. I think the point is that you should for example read (in translation) Pausanias as well as books telling you what Pausanias supposedly says about Greek myth and ritual.

Andrew Criddle

DCHindley

I was first introduced to the idea that the ancient mystery religions influenced early Christianity from Martin A Larson's The Story of Christian Origins (Village Press, 1977), which to its credit a lot of references to source materials in 20 pages of notes, although it tends to summarize rather than directly quote them in the main body of text. At 662+ pages, it provided a lot to chew on. Even so, I tended to take his summaries with a grain of salt.

Later I found a remaindered copy of J. M. Robertson's Pagan Christs (Dorset Press, reprint with new introduction 1966 [originally published 1903]). It shows the cross influences between Christianity and Mithraism, and calls the Christ story a myth, and engages in a little cross cultural comparison to tribal myths among ancient Americans. Hardly any sources are cited, and those that are are either passages from the NT or other tertiary academic literature, in German. Not much help, really.

There is also James G. Frazier's The Golden Bough: The Roots of Religion and Folklore, (Crown Publishers, 1981 edition, combines the two original volumes published 1890 as The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion). Very well researched and heavily footnoted, citing original sources as well as tertiary scholarship. Any Jesus Myther who does not have this book is a fool.

Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy's The Jesus Mysteries: Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God? (Harper Collins 1999; Harmony Books, 2000) cites a lot of material, but IMHO ends up proving not so much that Jesus myth derives from Paganism, but that there is a universal mystery resembling Carl Jung's instinctive psychological archetypes that all peoples subconsciously subscribe to, of which Jesus dogma and the Pagan mysteries are all simply manifestations. Wow ...

Bulfinch's Mythology (Crown, 1979) is a compilation of several works by Thomas Bulfinch (b.1796 - d.1867), particularly The Age of Fable (1855), The Age of Chivalry (1858), Legends of Charlemagne, or Romance of the Middle Ages (1863), which seems to have been first published together in 1913, plus several other sets of legends published by others. It is a little prone to musing romantically about days gone by and in my mind is far inferior to Frazier's Golden Bough, but interesting for the cross section of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Eastern, Norse, European and other popular folklore and myths of several ages.

DCH

Clivedurdle

http://academic.csuohio.edu/as227/spring2003/geertz.htm

Anthropology and Sociology has moved on since Frazier in very interesting directions.

Gnosis, mystery and Christs are examples of symbolic interaction.