A quick post tonight

Amalgamating two elongated 'Confusion Posts'

Number 1

'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there' is, of course (as Wikipedia reminds me) from L.P Hartley's The Go-Between (1953). The idea that the past is somehow 'different', that it judged and must be judged differently, has good basis. The common outlook on life has identifiably and radically changed within the last few decades. If one was to go further and compare 2010 and 1910 the contrast would become more stark. Changes in technology, culture, politics and fashion have altered society substantially over that period. It has, I believe, also changed the individual's outlook upon life and the world substantially over a similar period. It is a personal belief, and not one that I've ever done any sort of research into, that the British do live in a faster-paced and more resource-filled society than we did in 1910, but also into one that is in many ways more fragile.

The question is though to what extent, for lack of a better word, 'outlooks' have changed over that period. The Mediterranean World in the time of Philip II of Spain is a book that I need to read, by the French Annales historian Fernand Braudel*. In it, to my understanding, Braudel arranges the book into three 'layers' of time. The first is the geographical, in which the passage of events is monumental, measured and irresistible. The second is the social and cultural, which operates more quickly. This layer deals with socio-political groupings, as opposed to the concentration on the environmental in the first layer. The third is the 'time of events', a history of names and immediate occurrences.

As I said I've not read The Mediterranean World, so please don't put that much store by what I've just written. The idea that I see Braudel suggesting, that of a multi-layered history within a (psycho)geographically defined area is an interesting one however. It suggests to me that there may be common psycho-philosophical linkages between our ancestors and ourselves. Now, this needs to come with the caveat that I'm a modernist by trade and therefore more likely to see such linkages than a medievalist, classicist or paleo-historian. Nevertheless, it's an idea I might take up at some point - the past may be 'another country', a land not our own where different views are taken and different practices performed, but it is still populated by the same bare stock of humans.

Number 2


The quote I was confusing Hartley's maxim with was 'The Undiscovered Country', from either Hamlet (Act III, Scene 1, as my compendium reminds me) or from Star Trek VI depending on your taste (mine edges towards Star Trek VI). The difference is not just between high and pop culture. In Hamlet the Undiscovered Country is the existence beyond death ('But that the dread of something after death,-/The Undiscovered Country from which no traveller returns'). In Star Trek VI the Undiscovered Country is the future ('I offer a toast. The Undiscovered Country.....the future' - Chancellor Gorkon during the dinner scene on the Enterprise).

Which allows me (I think) to get onto my other topic for tonight and continue this theme of Christianity and History jogging through this blog. It's impossible to address Christian faith without allowing for the historical perspective. For one, Christian theology is essentially positivist in its view that historical events will one day end - with the Second Coming (although its view on human nature it seems prevents it from being Whiggish). On an individual note Luke 1:1-3 describes how the writer, having 'carefully investigated everything from the beginning' has decided to write a 'careful account' of the life of Christ (quotes from the New Living Translation). Even the more metaphysically-inclined John writes in John 21:25 that 'Jesus also did many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written'. The implication, to my mind here, is that the Gospel writers had what we today would consider historiographical methodology in mind when they wrote their accounts.

(John, I believe, was more inclined towards presenting the supernatural, holistic truth of Christ rather than the more historically-based one given in Luke).

However this all raises the question of the relationship between one's faith and profession if you are a Christian historian. Modern interpretations of the Rankian principles of source analysis** emphasise that no matter one's ideological perspective, any historical assertion must be based firstly on primary source material. No one event has, at the more complicated level of analysis, a single universally-agreed narrative. As long as your perspective is written with primary source material in mind and provable by well-structured referencing then you are free to argue whatever you like. For instance, I believe that John Keegan's A History of Warfare (1993) is at its heart a deeply flawed book that puts across a discreditable anti-Clausewitzian argument that in no way disproves the strategic theoretical aspects of On War (1832). However I also believe that is a viable work of history, in that Keegan shows his working freely and musters acceptable levels of primary source material to support his argument (I just happen to disagree with the conclusions he reaches).

Alrighty then, you might argue, so what? The historical argument for Christ's earthly ministry is old hat - you yourself posted a link to a William Lane Craig paper on it a few days ago. How do we marry together Christian beliefs and Rankian principles though? A recent conversation with a good friend at St. Leonard's reveals that while he has made the conscious decision to believe in the literal truth of Genesis 1-3 (the Creation story), I still have problems with it. I'm not at all comfortable with the idea of mythologising the Eden narrative, given New Testament statements over its reliability (that it is a reliable account), but the Rankian in me argues that I cannot condemn fellow historians for departing wholesale from available source material and then freely do so myself. The immediate get-out clause is that with the transcendental nature of God there is an avenue for anti-divine theories of creation to be discarded, but I feel I need to do more thinking/reading/praying before I make that jump.

* PS: I promise a blog post explaining the Annales school of history, with special reference to Le Roy Lauderie's Carnival at Romans (as that's the only Annales book I've actually read) sometime. Possibly as soon as I actually understand the School.

** OK, and another on von Ranke. I may combine the two into one massive post on historiographical methodologies and cultural perspective, I warn you of that!