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Book Cover
E-book
Author Harrison, Thomas, 1969-

Title Divinity and history : the religion of Herodotus / Thomas Harrison
Published Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2002

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 320 pages)
Series Oxford classical monographs
Oxford classical monographs.
Contents 1. Introduction: Divinity and history -- 2. Solon and human fortune -- 3. Miracles and the miraculous -- 4. Divine retribution -- 5. Oracles and divination -- 6. The unity and multiplicity of the divine -- 7. The limits of knowledge and inquiry -- 8. Foreign gods and foreign religion -- 9. Fate and human responsibility -- 10. Epilogue -- Appendix 1. Cooper on the 'intrusive oblique infinitive' -- Appendix 2. The names of the gods
Summary Critics of Herodotus have generally shown an unease in the face of the religious passages of the Histories, a sense that he 'lets himself down' by delving into matters irrelevant to the proper purpose of history. They have tended consequently to latch on to isolated instances of skepticism in an attempt to vindicate Herodotus from imagined charges of obscurantism. Historians of Greek religion, on the other hand, by their concentration on ritual as the central feature of Greek religious experience, have often neglected the value of literary sources as evidence of religious belief; indeed the term belief has become something of a dirty word. In this book, the first full-length study of the subject in English, Dr Harrison not only places Herodotus' religious beliefs at the center of his conception of history, but - by seeing instances of skepticism and of belief in relation to one another, and by the use of analogy from anthropological literature - also redresses the recent emphasis on the centrality of ritual
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Herodotus -- Religion
Herodotus. History
SUBJECT Herodotus fast
History (Herodotus) fast
Subject Religion
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780191715112
0191715115
0199253552
9780199253555