"Most later historians, and some of his contemporaries, have regarded Müller as essentially Romantic in maintaining a categorical distinction between Greek and other cultures. In Orchomenos he denied the charge and, after apologizing for having treated Greek mythology as if it were all mythology, he claimed that Greece was part of the world, and that therefore Greek mythology had the same basis as that of the rest of mankind. What he objected to was the belief in colonial bonds and the wholesale borrowing of Greek religion and mythology from the East. He was convinced that he had shown these to be unhistorical, though illusions about them had led all previous research astray.In Prolegomena, Müller made an eloquent appeal for scholars to do what he had failed to do, and investigate all mythologies for insights into the Greek one. The ‘anthropological’ school of the Cambridge Classicists James Frazer and Jane Harrison, which flourished at the beginning of the 20th century, in no way overstepped these bounds. What Müller outlawed was any special relationship between Greek and Eastern myth. Indeed, as he put it, ‘the entire book is opposed to the theory which would make the majority of myths importations from the East.’"
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Historians from EnglandJews from the United KingdomUniversity of Cambridge alumniUniversity of Cambridge facultyCornell University faculty
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6. Hellenomania 1, 1790–1830 (p. 313)
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Martin Bernal
Martin Gardiner Bernal (10 March 1937 – 9 June 2013) was a British scholar of modern Chinese political history. He was a Professor of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. He is best known for his work Black Athena, a well-known, controversial work which argues that the culture, language, and political structure of Ancient Greece contained substantial influences from Egypt and Syria-Palestine.
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