From the New Oxford Review back in December 1994. Writing the history of a religious institution involves understanding concepts and language within their historical and cultural context. Otherwise, the risk is taken that history will be rewritten to suit current preoccupations. Boswell’s attempt to prove that the Byzantines regarded adelphopoiesis as a form of marriage fails because […]
It is the way of advocacy scholarship to seize upon snips and pieces of “evidence” divorced from their historical context, and then offer an improbable or fanciful interpretation that serves the argument being advanced. That is the way egregiously exemplified by Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. David Wright, the author of the pertinent encyclopedia article on […]
Like me you’ve probably seen this sort of thing doing the rounds on teh intarweb recently: Prof John Boswell, the late chairman of Yale University’s history department, found there were ceremonies called the Office of Same-Sex Union and the Order for Uniting Two Men in the 10th to 12th centuries. The medievalist published Christianity, Social […]
