Re: Sin once more

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:

>
> At 2:25:47 PM on Saturday, August 2, 2008, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> > <BMScott@> wrote:
>
> >> At 12:53:42 PM on Saturday, August 2, 2008, tgpedersen
> >> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >>> The standard theory wants us to believe that whoever
> >>> translated Isidor's Miles Hispaniae to Mil Espain knew so
> >>> little Latin that he didn't recognize the word miles
> >>> "soldier", tranlating it instead as a proper name.
>
> >> No, it doesn't. Re-read Ó Corráin:
>
> >> One of the nodal characters in this legend is Míl of
> >> Spain, a transparent literary invention (= Miles
> >> Hispaniae, `Soldier of Spain').
>
> >> Note the key phrase: 'literary _invention_'. The
> >> transformation of <miles> to <Míl> is taken to be
> >> deliberate.
>
> > OK, so in order to impress the learned world with the
> > great age and wisdom of the Irish people the authors of
> > the Lebor Gabala Erenn re-interpreted the Latin word
> > miles, which learned people would have known from their
> > first year of studying Latin to mean "soldier", and
> > reinterpreted that to be a name?
>
> No. Where did you get 'in order to impress the learned
> world'?

The impression I get from all the debunkers of mediaeval sources of
history is that the motive for creating these false stories was a wish
to decorate the ethnic community of the writers with a history as long
as that of the classical world, because length matters.

> Never mind; you clearly have no intention of taking existing
> scholarship in this area seriously enough to absorb the
> actual arguments.

I would love to take existing scholarship in this area seriously
enough to absorb the actual arguments. What are they?

> I will merely point out that medievalists as a group aren't stupid;

As a group, everybody's stupid.

> if these sophomoric objections had any real merit, they'd have been
> taken into account long ago.

I see. So whatever I say has either been taken into account by
existing scholarship, in which case it is superfluous, or it hasn't,
in which case it has no merit? Who's being sophomoric now? Or should
we suggest an earlier stage?


Torsten