lpetrich

Lord Raglan is best-known for constructing a Mythic-Hero composite biography from the biography of several of them, like Moses, Oedipus, Romulus, Hercules, Zeus, etc. I think that it is important for the historical-Jesus question because Jesus Christ fits so remarkably well. So one can ask if anyone well-documented has had a biography that got Raglanized, as it were, and what factual details survived this Raglanization.

Here is his profile:

(1) The hero's mother is a royal virgin, while
(2) his father is a king, and
(3) the father is related to the mother.
(4) The hero's conception is unusual or miraculous; hence
(5) he is reputed to be a son of a god.
(6) Evil forces attempt to kill the infant or boy hero, but
(7) he is spirited away to safety and
(8) reared by foster parents in a foreign land. Besides this,
(9) we learn no details of his childhood until
(10) he journeys to his future kingdom, where
(11) he triumphs over the reigning king and
(12) marries a princess, often his predecessor's daughter, and
(13) becomes king himself.
(14) For a while he reigns uneventfully,
(15) promulgating laws. But
(16) he later loses favor with his subjects or with the gods and
(17) is driven from the throne and the city and
(18) meets with a mysterious death,
(19) often atop a hill.
(20) If he has children, they do not succeed him.
(21) His body is not buried, yet
(22) he has one or more holy sepulchers.

I have several problems with that list; some of them Lord Raglan himself had tried to clarify. So one should be careful to avoid being too literal-minded about it.

I think that (1) ought to broken into two, royalty and virginity. The latter one is from many mythic heroes being first or only children; it could well have been the first time for their mothers.

And strictly speaking, (9) is the rule rather than the exception for most people who've been written about, as Lord Raglan himself had conceded. However, I think that it is significant if some dramatic infancy story was told about the hero.

In (11), one may want to expand that to some more general big enemy, like some monster or wild beast.


There are a couple of omissions from his profile that I think may be worth adding to it.

Childhood precocity is a common mythical motif, at least according to Robert M. Price; that's in evident in the Gospel of Luke and in the Infancy Gospels.

And a big one that Lord Raglan omitted was prophecy fulfillment:

Jesus Christ was presented as fulfilling various Old Testament prophecies, even if some of them were out-of-context quotes and mistranslations, like Isaiah's virgin prophecy. And some magi visited King Herod asking to see the new King of the Jews; they were alerted by seeing a mysterious star.

When King Laertes and Queen Jocasta had Oedipus, they discovered that he would grow up to kill Laertes and marry Jocasta. Which he eventually did, despite their efforts to thwart that prophecy.

King Amulius of Alba Longa discovered that Rhea Silvia would have a son who would grow up to overthrow him. So he made her a Vestal Virgin, though that did not keep the god Mars from making her pregnant. She had Romulus and Remus, and they were put in a basket which was placed in the Tiber River. Romulus eventually grew up to overthrow King Amulius and found Rome.

King Acrisius discovered that his daughter Danae would one day have a son who would overthrow him. So he had her locked in a tower. But one day Zeus appeared to her as a shower of gold and made her pregnant. She had Perseus, and the two escaped by being put in a box and tossed into the Aegean sea. Perseus grew up, and in an athletic contest, accidentally killed Acrisius with a discus he threw.

The god Kronos learned that his partner Rhea would one day have a son who would overthrow him. So he swallowed his children as Rhea gave birth to them, though when Zeus was born, Rhea fooled Kronos by feeding him a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. Zeus grew up, made Kronos vomit up his brothers and sisters, and Zeus and his allies fought and overthrew Kronos and his allies.

The wicked King Kamsa discovered that his cousin Devaki would one day give birth to a son who would kill him. So he killed each son that Devaki gave birth to. But when she got to her eighth son, Krishna, she had him switched with someone's daughter and raised by that daughter's family. He grew up, and eventually killed King Kamsa.

When Siddhartha Gautama was born, his father, King Suddhodhana, discovered that he would one day grow up to be a great religious leader. Since King Suddhodhana wanted Siddhartha to succeed him as king, he kept him from scenes of suffering and death and the like. But he saw such scenes, and he left his family to seek the answer. And as he did so, he became the Enlightened One, the Buddha.

I note in passing that though Lord Raglan mentioned neither Krishna nor the Buddha, Krishna nevertheless fits Lord Raglan's profile very well, and the Buddha a bit less so. He also did not discuss Jesus Christ, out of concern about starting controversy, though Alan Dundes did take on Jesus Christ.

GakuseiDon

Did Dundes believe that a high score was an indication of ahistoricity, though? From what I understand, he didn't. One well-known and infamous apologist (I won't use the name since it acts like a lightning rod!) quotes Dundes as saying:

I have no position on historicity; structural analysis is irrelevent to history. Raglan had a different bias; he was interested in disproving the historicity of the lives of the heroes... There is no way of knowing a priori whether a given individual is historical; that is a separate issue. Some people were concerned that I did not discuss the religiosity of the life of Jesus. Obviously, that is a very important issue, but again, here I take no position. Structural analysis per se says nothing about it, nor does psychoanalytic criticism.

Can you expand on why you think Raglan's list is important for historicity?

Chris Weimer

Jesus does not fit so well if you consider his earliest sources. Take out the later gospels (Mt, Lk, et Jn) and you lose quite a bit. You're left with an ordinary biography then.

youngalexander

Take out Mk and you are left with zero (ie. Paul).

mountainman

According to this page -
http://faculty.dbcc.edu/eaton/Hero/Raglan.htm

here is ...

How Some Heroes Scored

Oedipus scores 21
Theseus scores 20
Moses scores 20
Dionysus scores 19
Jesus scores 19 ********
Romulus scores 18
Perseus scores 18
Hercules scores 17
Llew Llaw Gyffes scores 17
Bellerophon scores 16
Jason scores 15
Mwindo scores 14
Robin Hood scores 13
Pelops scores 13
Apollo scores 11
Sigurd scores 11.

The page also offers the opinion:

"The higher a particular hero scores,
the closer he is to the UR-archetype
of the sacred hero-king of prehistoric religious ritual;
a historical hero is likely to share rather few
of the mythical characteristics."



Pete Brown
AUTHORS of ANTIQUITY
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_029.htm

mountainman

FWIW here, I would rank Apollonius of Tyana
http://www.mountainman.com.au/apollonius_of_tyana.htm
with the score of 5
(Being these numbers only: 4,5,15,21 and possibly 22)

Here is the bibliography for the author Apollonius:
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essene...of%20Tyana.htm


Pete Brown
AUTHORS of ANTIQUITY
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_029.htm

lpetrich

In other words, use only the Gospel of Mark? That's essentially saying that the other Gospels contain unhistorical stuff.

But if one uses only Paul, it gets even worse. Paul only has such biographical tidbits as Galatians 4:4, which tells us that he was "born of woman, born under law", and (the pseudo-Pauline) 2 Timothy 2:8, which tells us that he is "from the seed of David".

Even if they themselves preferred to avoid the question of what the Lord Raglan profile has to do with historicity, I do think that it can be useful there.

Well-documented people typically score very low, seldom over 5 or so; I've tried scoring such well-documented notables as Charles Darwin and JFK.

It is amusing to think of how Charles Darwin's biography would have to be changed to fit Lord Raglan's profile better. Changes like:

* CD is a first or only child.

* CD's parents come from families of eminent scientists (Erasmus Darwin, his grandfather, does not quite cut it).

* Someone orders CD killed when he was a baby. Imagine a Bishop of Shrewsbury having a dream of someone being born in his town who would convince many people that we are descended from monkeys and apes.

* CD's parents get the baby CD to safety in Canada or Australia or ..., and leave him with a family who raises him.

* After growing up and returning to Britain, CD debates a leading cleric and humiliates him, something like a common but likely unhistorical account of the Huxley-Wilberforce debate.

* Late in his career, CD's colleagues turn against him, calling him an absolute, total crackpot and banishing him from their ranks.

GakuseiDon

Well-documented modern people, yes. But that is hardly comparing apples to apples. How does Sherlock Holmes compare on the Raglan scale, and what does this suggest? Or William Tell?

Dundes apparently said that "there is no way of knowing a priori whether a given individual is historical; that is a separate issue", so I don't think Dundes would have supported you.

mickw

iirc, Abraham Lincoln scores fairly high on this scale. . can any history buffs here confirm this?

lpetrich

Someone once came up with a rather facetious evaluation of how well Abraham Lincoln fit, finding that he had a perfect Lord Raglan score. A more serious evaluation, however, reveals a very low score. His parents were illiterate backcountry farmers, his Presidency was not exactly uneventful, and he never came close to being impeached.

And GakuseiDon is very likely correct that Sherlock Holmes has a low Lord Raglan score. I am not familiar with mundane sorts of literature, so I cannot comment very much on that. But turning to science fiction and fantasy, one does find a few characters who have a better fit, like Harry Potter and Anakin, Luke, and Leia Skywalker.

But my original question still stands: is there anyone well-documented who has a high Lord Raglan score?