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| What I wish Christian goggles REALLY looked like. |
My friend recently bought a book for this course which
turned out to have been written in 1864 and so is the perfect example of 19th
century views. The book is The Ancient
City by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, a French Historian. In his
introduction he identifies and stresses the need for ‘cultural estrangement’
for he says that “having imperfectly observed the institutions of the ancient
city, men have dreamed of reviving them among us” (Fustel de Coulanges 1864:11)
and so to remedy this imperfect view of ancient society he suggests that “it is
wise to study them without thinking of ourselves ... with the same
disinterestedness and with the mind as free, as if we were studying ancient
India or Arabia” (Ibid 11-12). So he seems to be on the same page and
advocating the same approach as Bruit Zaidman and Schmitt Pantel in their book
about 200 years later. They say that the study of Greek religion was done for
the purpose of discovering how a monotheistic faith like Christianity was
influenced but “the effect of this interpretation is to refract Greek religion
artificially through the distorting prism of Christianity” (Bruit Zaidman and Schmitt
Pantel 1989:4) and that’s what Fustel de Coulanges seems to have done without
even realising it.
After suggesting one shouldn’t think of themselves his
obvious Christian background still shines through without him even realising
it. When talking about the physical nature of gods his default position is to
talk of the Judeo-Christian god with complete confidence in His existence. “He
[man] knew not that the earth, the sun, and the stars are parts of one same body;
the thought did not occur to him that they might all be ruled by the same being”
(Fustel de Coulanges 1864:121). The thought does not seem to occur to Fustel de
Coulanges that this same being could not exist. Well maybe that is my inherent scepticism
shining through but I say that is simply a part of my upbringing and the society
I live in. No matter how hard one tries your upbringing will just shine
through.
So while thinking about my own upbringing I have been
thinking of how pervasive religion can be. As a child I wasn’t brought up in a
Christian household and I didn’t go to a religious school yet I still participated
in Harvest Festivals in the local church, participated in Christingle services with
my Brownies and sung in hymns everyday in assemblies. Religion and politics are
two subjects never spoken of in my house, except I called my father while
writing this to find out his views and I discovered that he didn’t really believe
in anything but was toying with the idea of becoming a Quaker (because he likes
porridge which just illustrates how not serious religion is to my family). However,
to many families and to societies it is a very serious topic and you do what
you’re told and participate in services no matter what you believed because it’s
what you do. Could that be the same for the Greeks? It was so imbedded in
culture that one doesn’t really think of it anymore. I have sort of already
talked about this is my second post but looking at where my blog is going I wanted
to mention it again.
Bibliography
- Bruit Zaidman and Schmitt Pantel (1989). Relgion in the Ancient Greek City. Translated by Paul Cartledge. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge
- Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis (1864) The Ancient City. Translated by Willard Small. Dover Publication, Inc. Mineola, N.Y.
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