Roger Pearse

In 1800 Homer's world was considered real. By 1850-ish he was not, and the idea was considered risible.

Schliemann's work showed different; that somewhere in the origins of those poems is real memories of the Mycenaean period, and that has been the view since.

My reference to "two centuries" seems to have confused; but I would have thought that the change in the climate of opinion from the certainty that Homer was fiction occasioned by Schliemann's discovery must be in almost every book on the history archaeology, however elementary. I certainly learned it as a boy.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

lysår

The Bible is a document with historical context, but it's not an accurate document "of" history. Sure there may be real world elements in it like the rise of the Roman empire, or some major natural disaster.

But, it's also full of anecdotal, recitalist, and moralistic agenda. = Opinion.

I mean come on just because the Greeks were real, and documented some history accurately, doesn't mean the four humours were an accurate representation of the human body.

Remember history isn't a science, it's science's job to determine if the historical record is accurate when possible.

spin

I don't know about the "risable" part, but the rest is basically correct. By Schliemann's time the Homer material had gravely been called into doubt. (The nineteenth century was simply more scientifically oriented.) That was the context which brought Schliemann "prove" Homer.

But what do you think Schliemann's work actually showed?

What you learnt about Schliemann's "discovery" doesn't make it particularly meaningful. His antics simply gave those who wanted to believe a little incentive.


spin

Roger Pearse

The editions of Tertullian produced under the influence of "l'hyperscepticisme" by the brilliant Emil Kroymann are generally considered unsound today, because they show too much arbitrary interference with the text. Few today would consider the too-well known methods of debunking to be anything but a manifestation of the wishes of the debunker.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

spin

That's interesting, Roger, but your exact point in providing this little nugget?


spin

Roger Pearse

Perhaps if I highlight the most relevant section of your comment in bold, that will help. But I'm really commenting to the whole idea that the hypersceptical period of the mid-19th century was the best scholarship. It seems unlikely, as a general proposition; and I thought some specifics would help.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

spin

Not really, Roger. A change happened in the 19th century regarding the scholarly approach to Homer, which I explained by the fact that the era was more scientifically oriented (obviously than previous times). Perhaps you could give the crayons version of how your excursis on Kroymann was relevant to our discussion of Homer and Schliemann.


spin

gentleexit

It's probably better to say that after antiquity, Troy no longer resonated and Homer was reduced to poetry. Until Christianity dominated, the city that succeeded Troy (New Ilium) was visited by many up to Julian. After Julian, nothing and no interest.

The much-maligned Schliemann was right about the site of New Ilium containing much older settlements. He was wrong about which coincided with the Mycenaens or the end of the Hittites. He concentrated on what is now called Troy II, a very early settlement. As he dug down, he unfortunately discarded and mixed up some valuable middle and later material.

The German after him was careful and exposed the layers of Troy carefully - I through IX. An American dig in the 30s showed sublayers. From the 80s through today, there are two teams. One works on pre-Hellenic Troy (including Homer's). The other on Hellenic and Roman Troy (XIII and IX). Their work has mapped the change in the Trojan plain over the millenia and exposed a much larger extent for Troy VI (the Homer Troy), a "broad" and "mighty city" including an encircling trench and wall behind it. Before them, everyone had concentrated on the citadel (the Pergamos). To take this city (extent 50 acres) would have been immensely difficult but very strategic - it commanded the Hellespont. It dominated many settlements in its plain and from the finds, it was very wealthy. After VI fell, Troy never recovered and was much smaller - it even vanished at one point before a Hellenistic resurrection.

One thing to emphasize about the current work at Troy is that the purpose is not to "prove Homer right". It is not a "holy effort" (in comparison to ...). The site is so rich, it merits careful evaluation in and of itself. Strong validation then that objectively mapped plain and city coincide with the backdrop of the Iliad.

Beyond the city itself and its mapped plain, we know the site of most all of the towns Homer catalogued: "Zelea under the foot of Ida who drank the Aesepus' dark waters", "Percote and Practios, ... Sestos, Abydos and gleaming Arisbe", ancient Dardania, on and on.

Homer's natural descriptions - both topology including what you can see from where, vegetation, animal life, rivers ("flow from the crests of Ida down to breaking surf, the Rhesus and the Heptaporus, Caresus and the Rhodius, Grenicus and Aesepus ... and Simois' tides") are accurate and particular to the area.

He wrote in the eighty century and obviously visited the Troad. The greatest Troy, VI, whose time coincided with the end of the Hittites, fell centuries before him. There was a much poorer settlement there in his day but the fall of its great antecedent was obviously in folk memory (and ruins) and known far beyond the Troad or else why did it spawn his work and so many others?

My point on Homer vs Bible is that Homer meets the criteria of Historical Novel. Lot's of accurate backdrop including his grand plot. His characters are fictional.

But the Jewish Bible doesn't reach such a level. Its background material - the movement of people's, the fall of great cities, etc. etc. has never been found in the ground. So both its foreground and background are fiction. It is not "based on a true story". Only blind faith can make the bible less fictional than Homer.

Roger Pearse

I don't claim to know, but I wonder whether this is right. Byzantine interest in the classics was endless, you know (N. G. Wilson's books "Scholars of Byzantium" and "From Byzantium to Italy" discuss the scholarship on the classics through to the end of that state). The emperor and his court even chose to speak Attic Greek, rather than the vernacular, right to the last, which reflects the obsession with antiquity of that curious state. Their school system remained centred on the Greek classics, which accounts for the preservation of much ancient Greek literature, and Homer certainly stood high in that number.

As I say, I do not know; but I suspect that a search among Byzantine writers would turn up an interest in Troy.

Come to that, Eusebius' Chronicle itself uses the fall of Troy as one of its key dates to synchronise all history, and consequently this has to find its way into all subsequent chronicles. I'm working on translating Agapius (10th century Arabic Christian historian) at the moment, but haven't got that far. However I would be astonished if it isn't mentioned; he uses, at 4th or 5th hand, so much from Eusebius.

PS: I've had a quick skim of Agapius, and he really doesn't do much on Greek history at all. I can't see Troy; I can see Alexander, and Ptolemy; Romulus and Remus and bits of Roman history, and endless retellings of the OT. So perhaps I was wrong.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

rlogan

Hi Roger


Not similar in the slightest.

This sort of comment is why I dislike "dueling analogies" so much in BC&H.

Seems to me analogies here are used primarily to divert us from accurate analysis, although there are certainly exceptions.

Front to back in the NT you have fiction. A good deal of it is spectacular fantasy, as in the examples I gave, whereas other portions are more mundane liturgical tracts sandwiched loosely with a wrapper of phony ostensible purpose. Letters of Paul, for example - on the face of them they aren't letters. It's amazing that people can even buy into the ostensible purpose. Sure, Paul wrote dozens of papyrus leaves about some conflict amongst a church, a letter ostensibly to resolve that conflict, without saying what it was or how it should be resolved, or even mentioning it at all until the 14th leaf or whatever - but boy howdy is it chock full of other things, and most especially the little nugget about obeying central church authority. Yeah - Jesus was real big on central church authority. And given the vast resources of the church at the time we would expect of course an expensive tract to be produced and delivered right before Paul goes there himself.

In short, you have even the mundane stuff as fiction.

The apologist of course wants to pretend that if you pour over some biography of Lincoln and find a mis-spelling that they have found some huge hypocrisy in historical research for not accepting the Bible, this front-to-back fictional religious material, as accurate history.

If you had some writer saying he got his information on Lincoln from a vision he had on the subway, then you'd be working with an analogy that parallels biblical tracts.

Cheers.