Hi there,
I've received a warm welcome in my previous post about WWII so I hope to make it two for two. My question is how do historians verify religious claims. However, I'd like to split this into two categories and provide examples for context.
Plausible claims
These are claims that are plausible within the context. For instance, could there be a soldier that did great in combat and was known in a particular war? Sure, it's plausible to have such a soldier. Does this mean that his mother was a water nymph? No.
Implausible claims
Jesus is a good example here and if you can focus on him, that would be appreciated. From the historical angle, I know that Jesus is an actual person who existed, was baptized and crucified. But he was also born to a virgin, performed various miracles, and came back from the dead... which are implausible claims.
How do historians deal with these? Does it make sense that they take the same approach for all religious claims? For instance, studying ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Mayan, or Chinese beliefs? It seems like if they accept some accounts from one religion, they have to accept similar accounts from other religions which have similar claims and amount of evidence.
I'd appreciate any insight and thank you!
Heya, I hope you don't mind if I use an example closer to my own expertise--women who claimed Jesus was talking to them. ;)
When historians are confronted with claims by past people (because that is what they are) of phenomenin we can't prove, like divine revelation, the most common and accepted approach is known as "functionalist." That is, we look at the claim in context. What did it mean to the person/people making it, what social and cultural conditions enabled that claim, how was it received by others. In other words, how did it function in contemporary (past) society. So instead of saying Mechthild of Magdeburg did or didn't hear voices, did or didn't hear God's voice, did or didn't make up the whole shebang, we look at why she could claim to have done so, and why people listened (or didn't). Medieval people did believe in ongoing intervention by God in the world, and Mechthild was writing and teaching in a tradition that viewed unusually devout "holy women" as privileged vessels of God's grace. At the same time, we consider what made her willing to make that claim and the effect it had on her life. Medieval women were not allowed to preach and teach about religion in public. Claiming divine revelation allowed them to write about theology--under certain other conditions, and usually at significant risk, which are subjects historians have also explored in great detail.
So I guess you could say, the basic approach is to try to recapture the past's view of whatever phenomenon, as expressed through surviving sources.
Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century nun and visionary, offers a fantastic example of the shift in scholarly views from "judging" to "understanding." From the late 19C through the 1970s, even, a rich body of scholarship tried to figure out what her visions "actually were." (Give "hildegard bingen migraines" a Google). But as Barbara Newman, one of the greatest Hildegard scholars, has pit it, the question we ask today isn't what WAS it, but what it meant:"What did it mean to say 'I saw'"?