"Here, however, I will argue that the cultural politics of Orientalistik were defined much less by ‘“‘modern” concerns — such as how to communicate with or exert power over the locals — than by traditional, almost primeval, Christian questions, such as (1) what parts of the Old Testament are true, and relevant, for Christians? (2) how much did the ancient Israelites owe to the Egyptians, Persians, and Assyrians? (3) where was Eden and what language was spoken there? and (4) were the Jews the only people to receive revelation? The German Reformers’ attempts to clean up God’s Word had involved orientalist knowledge from the first — and indeed sixteenth-century humanists had already struggled with many of the philological and chronological questions that would plague their descendants 300 years later. Although new sources were added, the old ones — particularly the Old Testament, the church fathers, and classical authors — continued to exert a powerful effect on the imaginations of even the most cutting-edge scholars long beyond the Enlightenment."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
University of Chicago alumniPrinceton University facultyUniversity of California, Berkeley alumniLouisiana State University faculty21st-century American historians
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Suzanne_L._Marchand
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Suzanne L. Marchand
12 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Suzanne L. Marchand →
Related Quotes
"Though generated by thoroughly western rivalries and concerns, invoking the Orient has often been the means by which …"
"I have been forced to conclude that German orientalism — defined as the serious and sustained study of the cultures o…"
"There were travel accounts and anthropological disquisitions; there were histories of philosophy and a bumper crop of…"
"..Iamblichus, Pausanias, Plotinus, and Strabo, scholars who wrote in times of relative Greek insecurity vis-a-vis the…"
"But Creuzer was also a product of his age and its aspirations; like Friedrich Schlegel, he was seeking a supra-confes…"
"This opened the way, as Partha Mitter has argued, for Hegel’s insight that since art represented not reality but some…"
"Though they tended to religious radicalism and political liberalism, most mid-century orientalists did not, as had Mo…"
"Despite the author’s commitment to universalism, Carl Ritter’s Vorhalle (1819) already looked in this direction. In t…"
"But the “furious” generation did not want to tarry in positivist particularism, for they thought they now had the mat…"
"What a large number did, however, have in common was the longing to return to subjects left fallow by mid-century sch…"