admirable feats of hermeneutics

 peter wrote: are you familiar with this site?
http://www.metahistory.org/


deb:

No. Interesting. "Heir to Elaide and Campbell" -- tall order!

I tend to read people like Gershom Scholem, Peter Brown, etc. It's not so much Eranos or Pacifica: archetype first. It's primary texts and history in a hard empirical way, with fresh eyes, new translations. Actually Jung was the latter in first approach as well, which is what he meant when he said he wasn't a "Jungian." I think he was speaking of more than becoming mere dogma. Joseph Dan in his intro to Scholem's On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead has an important discussion on being aware of the differences between the historical-philological and the archetypal approach; the "difficulties involved in achieving and maintaining the methodology of the history of ideas." Jung understood this, and it's why he needs to be read directly. Whole.

So much writing about religion is clueless in approach -- mere "admirable feats of hermeneutics" as Scholem would say.

But then I tend to think language itself carries the archetypal in its hypostatic nature. Being our tool of thought, it means you can't really ever stand away. Not anymore than you can stand apart from the chain of life you are ever part of. But that's just my personal belief.