On Mon, 23 Aug 2010, Dennis Claxton wrote:
>> Because the demonization would have been there in the ancient and
>> middle ages too. So demonizing those practices wouldn't distinguish the
>> transition to the modern
>
> Why would that necessarily be true? If Ginzburg is right, the benandanti
> had been around for centuries without being demonized.
Yes, them. They were one of the last pagan cults, hidden in a corner, obscured by a dialect. But the whole thrust of Murray's view is that Christianity had been demonizing pagan gods ever since they got into power. We don't have any documents for ancient history or the middle ages. But I assume Ginzberg presumes it worked the same way then. That seems to be what he's suggesting in the introduction. Of course, we can't find evidence for what happened in earlier times. We're lucky we found this evidence. We're lucky it survived in one (or two) corners into recent enough times that documents survive. But if someone now wants to assert this isn't what happened in earlier times, he would have to come up with an alternate theory of how the 99% of other pagan belief was stamped out *without* being demonized. I don't see why somone would want to when this explanation is so satisfying. And then they'd be at square one when we're at square 2. They'd have zero evidence where we've got this.
Michael