On 7 March 2010 00:05, Khem Caigan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Jake Stratton-Kent doth schreibble :
>
>> Also, given the quantity of etymological citations you provided, the
>> weight of the opposing view should commend itself to you. ;)
>
> Ah, but having cut my teeth on the likes of Godfrey
> Higgins, Gerald Massey and < shudder > Laurence Waddell,
LOL - I avoided them and don't regret the loss to my appreciation of
Kenneth Grant! There are limits to my interest in historiography.
However, I did read Frazer's Golden Bough in the public library over
about a two week period, about 36 years ago. Don't regret that, being
able to 'unlearn' is a useful skill.
> I am not certain that mere etymology possesses any sort
> of /academic/ weight at all - it seems more in the way
> of a ludibrium, or rhetorical jugglery ( and doesn't
> Plato refer to Socrates as a /goes/ somewhere or other?).
LOL - Plato uses the word a lot, and IIRC he does tease Socrates with
it. Of course, he also uses it in connection with 'the initiation of
the dead' etc.,
Although the earliest literary uses refer to the Idaean Dactyls (a
very significant connection with techne), these have to be a
'back-dated' use,. Even these references include Orpheus; tending to
support the thesis that the goes was an 'Orphic' innovation;
coinciding with known changes in funerary customs in the polis.
> By-the-way, for a treatment of the idea of the sky as
> the /otherworld/ in relatively recent times, see :
>
> Alastair Fowler ~ *Time's Purpled Masquers : Stars*
> *and the Afterlife in Renaissance English Literature*
> (Preview @GoogleBooks)
> http://tinyurl.com/yz5nay9
cheers, may just do that, my local library are good at ordering stuff.
ALWays
Jake
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