Solo

This is the sort of suggestive analogy which inevitably misses important points. First, I take it that Detering considers the wolf's dressing up as grandma also a mythical element. But more importantly, in the myth, Grandma and LLRH are restored to life by the hunter, in no ambivalent terms and status-quo-ante, while Jesus for all the artful dodging, remained dead to rights, as far as the canon is concerned.

This reminds me of my dad's story about his friend who went to church every time some important issue was pending in the belief that the Almighty will be assuaged by the unpretentious display of confusion on the issue of his existence.

You are mixing up issues. Whether Kim Jong Il existed, will be a historical question in the future, quite apart of considerations whether he was the Immortal Son of the Proletariat, or the Sun of the Twenty First century, or what celestial events accompanied his birth.

Jiri

gstafleu

I wonder if you aren't missing the point here: if you take away the "supernatural" elements from LRRH she stops being a person of interest and turns into Yet Another Little Girl. She is then nothing special, so why write a story about her. It is the "supernatural" elements that create the story. Without them she really isn't LRRH in any useful sense.

Same with J and M: if you rationilize them nothing is left to build a religion on. So even if there were "rationalized" HJ and HM, they wouldn't be what their religions are built on. And it is the religions that are of primary interest, any such historical kernels are secondary.

Gerard

Solo

No argument there: we all agree that LRRH is a figment.

Big argument there: both are asserted to have been historical; both are founders of religions. In the case of J, the mythical elements displaced historical ones to a degree where for all intents and purposes we cannot reconstruct the historical figure and events around him with any degree of reliability (with what we currently have). Yet, on the evidence of the texts themselves and the evolving traditions it appears that J. did exist and was executed. With M, the mythical material comes nowhere near defining the personage. In fact, I know of a number of critical events around M. which are so deeply embarrassing to the religion he founded that any civilized human should repudiate them. The mass slaughter of the men of the Jewish clan of Banu Qurayza who surrendered to Mohammed, would be a prime example.

All of this should be absolutely irrelevant to a historian. All he or she should care about, is the sources of the information, and how it can be verified.

Jiri

Laura D.

I briefly comment on the coin side-issue. First, I do respect the idea of digging into the record to determine, "What do we actually know about the historical Muhammad?" But while I can respect skepticism, I think we carry it a bit far when we start scoffing at the Islamic nature of these 700 A.D. era coins.

The dates are printed on the coins. The language is Arabic--it just is. Plus, remember, the North Arabian system of writing was really just developing around the timeframe of Muhammad. We have very little examples of pre-Islamic North Arabian (as opposed to the South Arabian script) writing. Pretty much the entire written record we rely on for our history of the Islamic world comes from two to three hundred years after the Hijrah. In short, the system of writing on the coins (as opposed to the words themselves) is post-Qu'ran.

The phrase in the lower right coin, which states, "There is no deity except (the one) God alone. He has no equal" is about as monotheistic as we can get and since the only monotheists in North Arabia during the Jahiliyah were a few Jewish colonies, some Christians (primarily Nestorian and Coptic), and a few Hanifs, we can date the phrase post-Qu'ran (It's not a Jewish or Christian phrase, the other monotheistic candidates). The phrase on the lower left hand coin, the phrase running around the center, states, "In the name of God. It was minted (struck) and then it looks like it gives the location of the mint and a date, but I can't make them out.

As for the top coins, the Arab-Sassanian coins are like that (the pictographs). The Arabs had just conquered the Sasanian Empire and used the Sasanian Drachm as their monetary system for awhile. They slowly transitioned to including Arabic sayings over time, replacing the Pahlavi script. 'Abdul Malik Bin Marwan was the Caliph who went to the purely epigraphic Dirhams (the lower coin in the picture). Archaeologists have actually dug up some of these mints. The history of the Umayyad Dynasty, which is the era of these coins, isn't that controversial. It's when you reach back 100 years into Muhammad's time that it gets dicey.

In any event, for the record, I fall into the "an historical Muhammad did exist (although his original name has been lost in antiquity), he did live in North Arabia within a few hundred miles of where Mecca is now located, he did have some followers, and he did lead those followers to some sort of victories, and we don't know much more" camp.

Anyway, you now have my opinion.

God bless,

Laura

post tenebras lux

Hi Laura D, many thanks for the translations and welcome to IIDB. Whilst the phrase on the coin certainly sounds monotheistic, am I right in thinking that it is not an actual Koranic quote?

Is it, in fact, evidence that the Koran, as we know it now - and as the muslims claim it always was, did not yet exist? Reminds me of the 'Koranic verses' on the mosque in Jerusalem that aren't actually in the Koran either.

Laura D.

Honestly, I am unsure whether that phrase is in the Qu'ran. In any event, I would not argue the phrase on the coin constitutes evidence that the Qu'aran as we know it existed when the coin was struck. I think the earliest surviving pages of the Qu'ran may date around the 10th century.

God bless,

Laura

gstafleu

Would you mind explaining how you reached that conclusion (not trying to be snarky here, just wondering)? My personal approach is to assume that any mythical/religious hero-types are "unreal" unless good evidence to the contrary is present. Perhaps you start from the opposite view? Or perhaps there is solid evidence?

Gerard

Laura D.

No, you ask a fair question. Not that I mind well done snark if it brings a smile.

Okay, you start with the basic proposition that mythic/religious hero-types (e.g., Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Alexander, Muhammad, and Santa Clause) are not in any sense historical. Sorry, I slipped in Alexander just to see if you were napping; we all know our fair-haired, sexy, world conquering, makes-a-beautiful-but-oh-so-young-corpse is the real deal. But as to the others, we dismiss them as mythic absent evidence to the contrary.

I apply a different hermeneutic. And let me say upfront, I’m not about to say anything you have not already read in multiple threads, but you did ask. I look at how mankind tends to create its religions and mythic figures.

We can take the Mormons’ Joseph Smith ("The first thing which I thought of was, whether Joseph had taken the keys of the kingdom with him from the earth"), Scientology’s L. Ron Hubbard ("I know with certainty where I was and who I was in the last 80 trillion years"), David Koresh (he’s coming back in March 2012), or even Cao Dai’s Ngo Van Chieu (Victor Hugo is a saints—I might be willing to accept this one). In each of these personality cults, we note that they base their believes on a central, historical mythmaker. I see this as relating to the basic nature of how believers launch real people into the divine realm of mythic heroes.

And I believe it’s true (a Christian and talking about belief, feel free to safely dismiss me from the rational person camp and catch a quick snooze) that believers not skeptics create the fervor necessary to launch a new religion.

So while a skeptic may fashion a man from whole cloth, a believer is going to latch onto a mythmaker, someone with charisma and personality, and they are going to sell that man to the followers of this new religion.

In any event, this may help explain why I set my initial switch in favor of the idea that a strong, vibrant myth likley has an historical kernel of truth at its heart. Thus, when I evaluate the historical evidence for the man behind the myth, I apply ordinary evidentiary standards to ordinary events. But for extraordinary events, I apply extraordinary standards, e.g., “I met a man who lived at 327 Main Street and walked on water.”

Show me utility bills, someone who knew the guys, and I’ll accept, “Yeah, a man lived at 327 Main Street.” But I’ll dismiss multiple sworn declarations from eyewitnesses who watched the man walk on water. I need more.

One of the things I like to do is trace the history of old ballads and songs. “Stagger Lee” is one of those songs that you will find versions of past John Hurt’s 1920 version. The earliest verifiable versions may be around 1900, but some argue they go farther back. There is an entire body of myth that build up around “Stagger Lee” beyond just the song. We have stories of white sheriffs trying to arrest him and then him going down to the devil and taking over, etc. Now I’m not saying anyone believed those stories. But interestingly, there is reasonable factual basis to believe an actual man named Lee “Stag” Sheldon shot and killed a man named William Lyons in 1895. So again, we see the creation of a myth tied to an actual historical man. And these examples are rampant; look at Daniel Boon, Davy Crocket, or even King Arthur (an interesting and no doubt, controversial example).

So I understand your view that it is more likely man creates mythic heroes out of whole cloth (the prevailing view in this forum). And you know (if not accept) my assumption that ancient man like modern man tends to hang his mythic heroes on some historical hook.

Clivedurdle

Not quite!

A story gets told about something or someone! The person in the story might not have caused the story, or an outsider interpreted something. Why did that matter draw someone's attention? Why not a story about what happened to the bloke next door?

There is not necessarily a direct causal chain between an event or a person and stories about that event or person.

So you have three choices, no historical kernel, stories based on a real person, stories caused by the real person.

Jesus I put in the superman camp, mo might be another superman or we have stories about this warlord but he did not start this religion. With Ghenghis Khan we have clear comments by outsiders - why not with Mo?

gstafleu

Hi Laura,

you make some good points. Does that mean I'm now an HJer? Not quite .

You position a number of distant religious heroes (Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Alexander, Muhammad, and Santa Clause--I was awake enough to catch Alexander, and I'll forgive you SC!) against a bunch of more contemporary ones (Jo Smith, L. Ron Hubbard etc.--We could add Rabbi Schneerson to the list, not to mention the Dutch Lou the Eelmonger (Lou de Palingboer (ever heard of that one (and don't you get confused by all those parentheses?)))). But is that a fair comparison?

The distant heroes are all pretty elevated (well, except A and SC). J for example was supposed to be the pre-existent creator and sustainer of the universe. I don't think the more recent versions have quite reached that level yet, and at this point it is not clear if they ever will (I got that example from Earl Doherty's review of Robert Prices Deconstructing Jesus, which you can find at here).

Another list of distant heroes might contain say Heracles, Odysseus and the like. Perhaps not quite as elevated as your list, but definitely fictional. So why would we believe in the historicity of your list and not mine? In practice, I would suggest, because there are an awful lot of people doing some active believing!

Doherty points out (and I really have to find a good book about this) that it is well known that cults tend to fabricate a founder even if there wasn't one. That would be an alternative explanation for the existence of a "myth maker": the myth maker is a made myth (play the theme from "The Godfather" in your head).

Nevertheless I'll agree that yes, there could have been an HJ, HM etc. But it seems that if so, they will remain forever hidden, and their historicity will remain hypothetical. Contrast this with the historicity of e.g. Caesar, which is far from hypothetical.

Finally, the H-versions that most people on this forum hypothesize are usually severely diminished from the "originals," at least as presented by the various creeds. I wonder how useful that is, see my Little Red Riding Hood Post above.


Gerard