Special Peoples

Abstract. ‘Special Peoples’ explores the causes and consequences of believing in a chosen people by considering, first, the Serbian case, as seen especially in Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. The mythology, history and genuine Byzantine traditions which have created this East European form of belief in ‘special chosenness’ is then compared with West European developments. While both make use of the Bible, the West (and also Ethiopia), it is suggested, depends more directly on the Old Testament, Israelite model, while the Eastern approach rests rather on the experience of the Christian empire of Constantine. The English, Spanish and French are considered briefly as examples of chosen peoples. The discussion ends with the words of Carl Goerdeler, meditating on the Nazism that was about to kill him, and challenging the whole nationalist notion of an ‘exclusively chosen’ people from Israel on, as inherently prone to genocide.     

Christianity and Indigenous Peoples: A Personal Overview

This article summarizes its author's response over more than 30 years to the various arguments advanced against the possibility of the appropriation of Christianity by indigenous peoples. It sets out the intellectual and evidential reasons for rejecting these arguments. However, it admits that while indigenous appropriation of Christianity is always possible, under some circumstances it has been improbable. Many indigenous peoples have made use of Christianity but in the past there has been comparatively little appropriation by Native Americans or Australian Aborigines. This article explores the reasons for this. When the factors that have accounted for resistance and rejection rather than adaption no longer exist, it may be expected that Aborigines will indeed appropriate Christianity. The article concludes with a brief examination of academic work on African appropriations and suggests that new developments in Aboriginal Christianity will reveal how far comparisons can be made.     

Postmodernist Histories

ABSTRACT

Since 1829, it has been the received and accepted scholarly opinion that Jonathan Edwards did not read the writings of George Berkeley and thus was not influenced thereby in the development of his own Idealism. This essay contends otherwise. With new evidence available, it is shown to be highly probable that Edwards has a historical as well as conceptual connection to the Idealism of Berkeley. A historical connection is argued for by utilizing Edwards’s “Catalogue” to establish a timeline that illustrates when he penned his own Idealist writings in connection to when he read Berkeley. A conceptual connection is argued for by focusing upon both several idiosyncratic Berkeleyisms of style and two Berkeleyan theses also found in Edwards’s writings. Finally, the conceptual connection between the two are strengthened, after demonstrating how Berkeleyan Idealism singularly differs from other prominent Early Modern Idealisms. By examining what Edwards read, how he wrote, and how he thought, a reasonable case is set forth for affirming a historical and conceptual connection between Edwards and Berkeley. Thus, after two centuries of dispute, there is finally justified merit for labeling Edwards as a Berkeleyan Idealist.     

Visual Histories and Photographic Evidence

Over the last decade, historical research into photography in the Pacific has grown and diversified, yet an enormous amount of visual material remains untapped, new approaches and questions await exploration, and most historians still neglect critical engagement with visual evidence. This article, in summarising developments in the historical research of photography both generally and in the Pacific, identifies directions in recent work, and argues that closer links between visual history and Pacific History promise revisions and new vistas of Pacific pasts.     

Histories of anthropology

Timothy H. H. Thoresen, ed. Toward A Science of Man: Essays in the History of Anthropology. The Hague and Paris: Mouton Publishers, 1975. Distributed in North America by Aldine Publishing Company, vii + 232 pp. Biographical notes and indices. $14.95.