Other Natural Religions

[Husky]

But Athanassiadi is wrong: e.g. she would make Julian into a pagan monotheist <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':blink:' /> (She co-wrote a book on "pagan monotheism". After sampling it for a bit - the only work of hers available to me here - I was entirely disinterested in any further writing of hers involving/subverting Hellenismos.)





Smith's work takes the trouble precisely to correct the false views of Julian doing the rounds: views that are actually contrary to what becomes so obvious to any objective reader of Julian's own words and actions.

Throughout the work the writer presents prevailing views and then discusses the more correct reading.



For example, the following section from Smith (repeat from earlier excerpt) is to correct the entirely erroneous takes on Julian in circulation today: footnote 11 must be Bowersock, footnote 12 must be Athanassiadi, and from memory Fowden is footnote 13, and 14 would be Bidez. (And Smith has worked through the rest of his thesis to get the reader here: to properly understand Julian and his motivations, versus accepting currently visible hence 'popular' interpretations that are actually at variance with the historical person):

In modern scholarship, too, assessments of Julian and his reign remain at odds. His latest biographers are agreed in ascribing to him a totalitarian political programme which came to nothing and made of him, in his last months, a deeply alienated figure; but they differ sharply in their judgements of the ideological basis of the policy and in their views of the man himself. One offers us the 'Puritanical Pagan' who tried to found a pagan Church - an ascetic revolutionary at odds not only with Christians but with the majority of his pagan subjects too, a bigot whose Neoplatonist interests are informative of little but the eccentric emotional development of an enfant nerveux.11 [color="#800080"](<- Bowersock's opinion)[/color]



Another presents those same interests as an important key to the understanding of Julian's public policy. He is credited with a systematic theory of paideia, a dogmatic syncretism by which Neoplatonic and Mithraic doctrines were linked and given political expression in a theocratic ideology of kingship - an ideology by which Julian sought to impose a pagan monotheism as the religion of the Empire.12 [color="#800080"](<- Athanassiadi's opinion)[/color]



On a warier variant of that view, it is better not to talk of 'monotheism' in Julian's case, but rather of a 'universalism' rooted in a henotheist and Mithraicizing theology which stressed the link between the earthly and the heavenly monarchies.13 On this view, the failure of Julian's cultural programme was uniquely harmful to the pagan cause, because his universalized theory of paganism at last presented the Christians with just the thing they had lacked till then - an all-embracing version of paganism on which they could focus their attack. [color="#800080"](<- Someone else's opinion - Fowden?)[/color]



Many, too, have seen the key to Julian's paganism in the very religion he set himself against:

Pénétré d'influences chrétiennes malgré son idolâtrie, [il] ressemble à un Augustin platonisant au moins autant qu'aux répresentants de la philosophie archaïsante dont il se croyait un disciple ... l'âme inquiéte et tourmentée de Julien est à beaucoup d'égards animée par l'esprit des temps nouveaux. 14

The very intolerance that he showed towards the Christians has been taken to mark his inability to cut free from the habits of mind forged by a Christian education. 15 [color="#800080"](^ Bidez's and some other opinion)[/color]



These are views I do not share. To my mind, characterizations of Julian as an innovative Neoplatonist ideologue or as a bigot hostile to forms of pagan practice and thinking other than his own are the two sides of a false coin. [...]

[color="#800080"](And at this point Smith then proceeds to explain his own educated position on Julian again, which *is* accurate.)[/color]

One can see that at the end of this, Smith is explaining - with reference to the two extremes of Bowersock and Athanassiadi (the others fall in that range) - that they're 'two sides of the *same* false coin'. Essentially both are fictionalising about a Julian they invent for their purpose, whereas the real one's writings and statements about self (including his friends' views of him) is ignored or brushed aside or taken apart and inverted/subverted.



E.g.

- Bowersock barely conceals his severe dislike for Julian (hates him in a very christian manner, btw) and expressly misrepresents him the way the christowest misrepresents Hindu Dharma. It is entirely subversive psy-ops. Infuriating reading. Of course I gave up soon.

- As I said, Athanassiadi projects her own wishes and ideals onto Hellenismos and its voices. Including Julian. She ends up being subversionist, whatever she may have intended. And also: interpreting wildly/misrepresenting history and Hellenismos is not scholarship.



Smith on the other hand just presents Julian's own words, actions and stated intentions (stated to friends as well as the public) and thereby gives an honest presentation of Julian. There's no invention. So the writer spends time explaining why the others who have been interpreting away are wrong - using Julian's own words which contradict them. Smith just wants Julian to be properly presented (something the historian no doubt thought spoke for itself until, I'm guessing, he realised how others got it all so amazingly wrong by their contorting it out of recognition). And to do that he has to discuss the takes of others (the overriding views in recent times, ever since for instance Gibbon went off the eye-catch scene) to show why they are wrong.

Julian is straightforward (his fundamental *motivations* are). Smith can therefore present him straightforward.



I had been looking for the *right* book (my kind of book) - like I said, there are so many bad books out there on Hellenismos and Julian. And it was certainly a hard lesson to learn: that not all books that involve/insinuate Julian into their title/topic need be remotely accurate.



But one knows a good book simply had to be out there: what were the odds that everything could be junk? Finding/reading Smith's work was a pleasure, not least because it cohered so thoroughly with my own views on the matter. And this sense of vindication is not at all that of a flattered ego - I may be guilty of that in a thousand other instances, but not here - but rather that anyone who genuinely cares about the subject matter wants the view set right. (I fancy Smith was provoked to write the book upon finding a dearth of modern literature doing the subject justice.)

Because it must be the *correct* view of Julian that is presented, so that people can understand him as he actually was and his motivations. It matters, the truth matters.

Julian's words are there for any heathen to understand: in many respects (qua driving force certainly) he is transparent. One merely wants a historian - and I do mean a real scholar - to coherently explain them in direct language. Then one can use these expert words to thus have said what one wants stated/known about Julian.

He existed. And he existed as Smith has explained - and through use of references to Julian's own words.



"How hard can it be to understand Julian," one would think. But things become murky for the undecided masses when there's a lot of calculated psy-ops and subversion afoot regarding Hellenismos in the west. It's very scary. What's scarier is that people actually *believe* it (fall for it), despite the fact that they can read Julian's words for themselves and easily *know* better.





With this book, Smith was setting the general view - which had been hijacked by faulty opinion - right. (It's why I said it's a much needed book.) And in doing so, he accurately conveys who Julian was and his reasoning, and at the same time gives meaningful glimpses into the religion of the Emperor (as well as that of the empire's Hellenes). It really is the only good English language textbook on Julian out there (as far as I know, but it's not like I haven't looked...) - minus presumably Gibbon.



Bowersock would paint Julian a persecutor who intended to exterminate *christians* from the first. But notice:

For the moment, I set aside the matter of Julian's credentials as a 'persecutor', and focus on the larger argument that his policy involved a turn-about from a tolerant stance to a conviction that Christianity must be actively repressed. This widely accepted interpretation of the policy was crisply rejected by Bowersock: in his view, Julian's view of Christians was utterly intolerant from the first and he never contemplated any other solution to the problem they posed than their total elimination.121 That claim is very strong and needs to be qualified, but in my view Bowersock was right to reject the basic notion of a slide from toleration to persecution in the reign: as a general interpretation, it is highly misleading. In the first place, there is an elementary distinction to be made between ends and means.

Note that Smith clearly explains that he only *superficially* agrees with Bowersock: that is, the agreement is only with respect to the *evenness* of Julian's intention (that he didn't have a change of heart and at some later stage decide that christianism must go permanently and completely), but explains that from the start Julian was determined to end *christianism*, and moreover did not intend personal harm to *christians*, but rather intended to revert the empire. (<- He was correctly convinced that all the GrecoRomans, the empire belonged to his Gods.)

So Smith explains that, to Julian, it was ultimately 'a battle for men's minds' and that Julian was determined that 'his fight with christianism (referred to alternatingly as church + christianism as a 'socio-cultural force') was 'a fight to the finish'. Of course Julian hated christianism: he knew what it spelled to his religion and people/country, and the world at large (FCJ in his CG: ~"I think it expedient to set forth to all mankind the reasons by which I was convinced that <jeebus never existed/christianism is an *evil* sham>").

And so Smith does not brush over Julian's consideration of christianism, nor pretend it was anything else/anything less. But the motivation matters and that is what needed to be set right, rather than let vituperative Bowersocks do a psy-ops on Julian.

The GR Gods motivated Julian, the thought of them was behind his every intention and act. In his Oration to the Mother of the Gods, Julian explains what he wants for all of Rome and its people, *and* what he wants for himself. His Gods matter most to him, and so, everything he did was for his Gods - and hence for those who belonged to his Gods (i.e the Gods' offspring who make up his country) - alone. That makes him like a Hellenistic equivalent of Hindoos (e.g. as seen in their "maata cha parvati devi pitaa devo maheshwaraH | bandhavaah shiva bhaktaashcha swadesho bhuvanatrayam". <- And similar, for all my Fathers and all my Mothers).





Here. Explains what is wrong with Bowersock/Athanassiadi/etc. And why heathens would actually want Smith's work instead. Explained by someone articulate - yay.

I suspect this reviewer is a heathen himself - a Hellene at heart. (Must be a heathen for him to accurately understand. Also, he is interested in Julian - for the right reasons and has the right views about him. Great taste.)



1. Review of Athanassiadi & co.'s "pagan monotheism".

1.0 out of 5 stars lies, damned lies, and pagan monotheism, January 13, 2008 By Curtis Steinmetz

"Alien Anthropologist" (just outside the beltway) - See all my reviews

(REAL NAME)



The various authors of this book do not produce one single Pagan source who proclaims "I have renounced the belief in many Gods". Going back to at least Homer (8th century BC or earlier) Pagans had been able to conceive of a "Supreme" God (ie, Zeus) - without in any way abandoning all the other Goddesses and Gods.



The authors of this book want us to believe that the more well educated, and especially the philosophically inclined, Pagans of late antiquity had completely abandoned polytheism. But no Pagan is more representative of this group than the 5th century Athenian philosopher Proclus. Proclus' biographer (his student Marinus) goes out of his way to list the various Goddesses and Gods that were most revered by Proclus: Pan, Cybele, Asclepius, and Hermes - among others. Another figure representative of late antique Paganism is, of course, Julian ("the Apostate") - whose biographer (Libanius) tells us that Julian was loved by the Gods - especially Zeus, Athena, Hermes, the Muses, Artemis and Ares.



There is no there there. There were no "pagan monotheists". No one can name even one person who fits that label among all the Pagans from late antiquity. [color="#0000FF"]It is really too bad for all those who have jumped on this faddish bandwagon that Pagans wrote extensively about their beliefs concerning religion. No amount of hand waving can explain away the explicitly polytheistic nature of Paganism - including most emphatically the philosophically inclined Paganism of late antiquity.



The most perverse thing about this book is that it puts forward the Orwellian argument that the philosophical Paganism of people like Julian and Proclus provides a "missing link" in the transition from Paganism to Christianity. In fact, and as all students of this period know full well, Julian and Proclus (etc) were the most determined opponents that Christianity faced![/color]

2. Their review of Smith's book

5.0 out of 5 stars THE book on Julian!!!, December 7, 2007 By Curtis Steinmetz "Alien Anthropologist" (just outside the beltway) - See all my reviews

(REAL NAME)



This is the only recent book (in the last several decades!) in the English language on Julian that is accurate and reliable. It is extremely well written - Smith has a very clear and engaging style. At the same time it is a very scholarly book that makes the kinds of demands on the reader that any book with lots of footnotes makes.



Even more importantly - Rowland Smith has produced the single most important scholarly work on late antique Paganism available in the English language. Seriously. More important than Sarah Iles Johnston's "Hekate Soteira", more important than Pierre Chuvin's "Chronicle of the Last Pagans", more important than the work of Ramsay MacMullen and Robin Lane Fox, etc.



"Julian's Gods" presents the story of the last Pagan emperor of Rome. The author deals in great depth with the spiritual dimension of its subject - which is the main reason why people are interested in Julian in the first place. This is a difficult subject, because Julian's Paganism is both a complex issue on it's own - and also a very contentious issue among modern day scholars - and also among modern day Pagans.



Rowland Smith takes great pains to calmly and cooly rebut the distortions found in G.W. Bowersock's psychotic rant "Julian the Apostate". Smith also clears up much of the confusion caused by Polymnia Athanassiadi's loopy "Julian and Hellenism: An Intellectual Biography". Both Bowersock and Athanassiadi fail to understand the seamless continuity between Platonic philosophy and traditional Hellenistic Paganism.



The thing that distinguishes Smith's treatment of Julian (and his Gods) is that he eschews the rigid, anachronistic approach of so many modern scholars who study late antique Paganism. That faulty approach is epitomized by R.T. Wallis' horrid little book "Neoplatonism" - one of those books that, like watching FOX News, actually has the ability to suck knowledge out of one's brain the more one is exposed to it. Smith allows ancient sources, as much as possible, to speak for themselves. Smith steps lightly with his interpretations of those sources - and his interpretations are thus consistent with what ancient sources say about themselves and about each other. There is no magic (or time travel) involved in such an approach - simply a meticulous and respectful treatment of the rich bounty of primary sources that we have at our disposal. The result is that where Bowersock psychoanalyzes Julian, and Athanassiadi romanticizes him, Rowland Smith succeeds in understanding Julian - and achieves an understanding that would be comprehensible to Julian himself and to his contemporaries.



Smith not only understands Julian (and late antique Paganism generally) - he also succeeds in articulating and motivating that understanding for a wide audience. This is solid scholarship combined with excellent writing.

Oh bravo. Very well put (minus the confusing use of "Pagan" when he's referring to Hellenismos).



Smith's beautiful book. These couple of reviews by a lay heathen-ey (Hellenistic?) sort of person. The material of Hellenes at YSEE. A Portuguese Hellene. A Fries site.

My list of (sole) preferred visible voices is growing. Soon they will drown out all the vocalists I don't want to hear. Maybe I don't need to rule the world in order to have my way after all. Hehehehehe.