MacMorrigan: "Rather, I would damn-near kill for a balanced Pagan-related histporiography that gives both sides of an argument equal weight and allows the reader to make up his and hear own mind."

Chas: That would be journalism, not historiography.

Me: That's a good point about journalism. Actually I prefer scholarship in which a strong point of view is presented and defended. But many authors do in fact proclaim that they are merely "reporting" on what "scholars agree on" rather than honestly presenting their point of view and defending it. Here is a relevant case example of this kind of "reporting":

"During the late twentieth century it gradually became apaprent that, all over Europe, the conversion of the rulers of a medieval state to Christianity was followed within a relatively short time by a formal acceptance of the new religion by their subjects. There is no evidence for the long-term persistance of paganism as an organized religion of resistance, meeting in secret or associated wth military or political rebellion, once the ruling family of a particular kingdom had accepted the Christian faith and outlawed the traditional ways. This effectively means that paganism as a formal system of religion vanished from Mediterannean Europe after the sixth century, from the western and northern parts of the continent after the eleventh, and from the north-eastern portions after the fourteenth. Among the Saami nomads of the north-eastern regions of Scandinavia is may have lingered into the seventeenth" [Witches Druids and King Arthur pp. 137].

This "argument" consists of two assertions: (1) something (that Hutton agrees with) "gradually became apparent", while (2) "there is no evidence" for something else (that Hutton disagrees with). In other words there is no argument whatsoever (so it's worse than just journalism, it's downright Murdochian).

>> Cliff: There is no "council of bishops" or any such paranoid fantasying. Any consensus, after all, is constantly under attack by a determined set of enemies -- the next crop of graduate students, who must make their reputations by refuting earlier interpretations (or that is how it sometimes plays out in Academia). <<

It is not paranoid to speak of entrenched positions in academic fields. What is "fantasying" is to idealize academia in the way that you seem to be doing. On the other hand it's almost trivial to even quibble about this. Of course the people in the minority (if that's the right phrase) are going to complain that they don't get a fair shake, while those currently in favor are going to insist that everything is above-board. Such is life.

>> Even Ronald Hutton, whom I suspect was being referenced anonymously earlier in this thread, has changed his interpretations between earlier books and his latest (the book on Druids that is coming soon from Yale University Press). <<

Hutton is far from the only one - but he is the one most feted by Pagans. The others are mostly scholars with far more obvious biases, such as:

Wolfgang Behringer (who indulges in a long anti-Pagan rant in his book "Witches and Witch-hunts: A Global History"),
Stuart Clark and Bengt Ankarloo (prinicple spokespeople for the theory that we should thank the Catholic Church for its "moderating" role during the Burning Times),
Norman Cohn (no comment),
Peter Brown (the best of the bunch - but still a person who has dedicated his career to covering up the truth about the "rise" of Christianity).

And while it's true that Hutton has tried to back-track on much of what he wrote in "Triumph of the Moon", it's mostly flailing. Like his attempt to use "Pagan Monotheism" in his defense in "Witches Druids and King Arthur" - never suspecting that he is just repeating a pet theory that Christian triumphalists have concocted to prove the inevitability of Christianity.

Gee, it's a shame that Chas is no longer a member of Tribe.Net, because he represented a good sounding board for alternatine views! But, I had to revive this thread due to recent research in Logical Fallacies (I'm hoping to write an article detailing them at some point):

Anyway, I said: "Rather, I would damn-near kill for a balanced Pagan-related histporiography that gives both sides of an argument equal weight and allows the reader to make up his or her own mind."

Chas then respondeth: "That would be journalism, not historiography."

Actually, I must personally disagree with this assesment. Rather, I would define such behaviour as a Logical Fallacy known as Observatrional Selection (it's also variously known as "Cherry Picking", "Slanting", "One-Sided" argumentum, etc.). Academically, this is a sin when it deprives one's readership of important counter-eviudence--evidence that the author in question is clearly aware of when it can seriously question his or her argument. For example, there was ana rticle published in "Pan Gaia" magazine, called "The Dilemna of the Dying God" where the author concluded that the Dying-and-Rising God mnotif was a filter and that, without it, it's nothing more than a modern construct; an imposition upon the evidence whereby we Pagans have literally poured Pagan content into a Christian mould (her example, not mine!). Now, her primary consenting was an author (whose name escapes me immediately) who wrote an article denouncing the existence of any deties that die and are later "resurrected" or brought back to life as counting as "Dying and Rising Gods" for somevery petty reasons; reasons that usually boil down to fallacious logic. However, in my opinion, her most grevious sin was citing one book that actually blew her main thesis apart: Prof. Mettinger's "The Riddle of Ressurection"! This book states, unequivpcally, that there were ancient Dying-and-Rising gods! But, the author of this article in "Pan Gaia" only cited him when he supported her skeptical view; even then only in a bare-peripheral fashion, when she was talking about the existence of Osirus Corn Mummies! What the....?!?!?! A whole academic book, and THAT'S the only part she pulled out of it?!?!?! Well, it get's worse: you see, whether she intended to or not, she gave a sorely misleading impression about the content of this book to her readers by citing it in such a one-sided fashion at all! In so doing she might have convined her readers that Dr. Mettinger agreed with her point of view, despite (unknown or unacknowledged) evidence to the contrary!

Of course, I have noted numerous scholars (very often extremists and conservative in their leanings) engage in numerous Logical Fallacies, such as ad hominem assaults, and special pleading, etc.! Even Cynthia Eller (in her The Myth of Matriarchy), despite her very obvious Straw Man Argument, One-Sided argument, has committed the academic sin of citing Prof. JP Mallory's "In Search of the Indo-Europeans" in agreement with her; but she is only able to do so, because she has quoted him Out of Context (another Logical Fallacy).

More recently, however, I became aware of another that has, hotherto, been defended either (as by Pagans) a mark of so-called "academic rigor" when, in fact, it's a mark of the weakness of an argument; or to do anything less might be defined as "journalism", rather than *actual* History. In Prof. Ronald Hutton's book, "Witches, Druids, and King Arthur", he claims that Paganism was no longer an extent religion throughout the Med. by the end of the sixth-century. Is this actually so? I have come to doubt this conclusion after reading the work of Prof. Bowersock: In his book, "Hellenism in Late Antiquity", he provides unequivoical source material that Paganism was still an extent and viable religion throughout the Med. during the late sixth-century, and that it was still very popular, and not even on the wane! But, why is this book in question so germane to this discussion? Because, within Hutton's book, he cited several chapters from this book, but he seems to have blatantly ignores this over-whelming counter-evidence provided by Bowersock when drafting his problematic and short-sighted synthesis re: the alleged "death" of Paganism. I, personally, was offended, when I discovered this rather grave ommission.

This is, quite honestly, an academic cardinal sin. I've said what, by now, seems to have been a thousand times that I don't like feeling as though someone's trying to pull something over on me, or like someone (especially a scholar) is insulting my intelligence (which I take the UP-MOST offense to!). All I ask for is HONEST history... That's all I've ever asked for, and it's greatly disturbs me that I see it so infrequently in the works of scholars whom Pagans so often flock to. Perhaps this is an issue more "professional" scholars might keep in mindn when writing their books. After all, this is what has lead me to study "critical thinking" and "logical fallacies", so that I can spot them when I read them, so that I will no longer be decieved in such a manner as previously. I believ something based upon the merrits of the actual argument in question ALONE. ;o)

Take Care,
Wade MacMorrighan