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Author Topic: Did the Scythians even have a religion?  (Read 3533 times)

Rayne

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Re: Did the Scythians even have a religion?
« Reply #15 on: December 14, 2013, 10:50:30 am »
Quote from: Jenett;132508
The thing that immediately strikes me about them is that they are all extremely short. Looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythian_religion, I see:

1 page from a massive encyclopedia. (Blackwell Publishing is, in this case, an arm of Wiley, who are well known for library reference works, though I'm not as familiar with the Blackwell imprint.) However, any time you have a single page in a 498 page volume talking about a given topic, you can tell that there's not much detail there.

The 1827 book is - well, from 1827. Which is a little problematic. (Also, only two pages are cited, so there's clearly not much detailed information.)

Herodotus has already been discussed earlier, but again, all the problems of Herodotus. (And more to the point, this is a translation from 1904, which means that - well, a century of "how do we translate this better" has happened since. (Which can be particularly relevant if you're talking about social customs: another century means that there are more texts from other sources that have since been translated that might have parallel words, phrasing, or implication.)

The Rolle book again just cites 2 pages, and is 30+ years old now. (Though the Univ. of California Press suggests it's a good source as far as it goes.)

The Cambridge History of Iran - good publisher, likely high quality work, but the same two pages thing.

What I'd be *really* curious about, if I had these sources at hand, would be looking to see which of them cite each other.

 
I didn't have much time to look through them last night (even just the list), which is why I asked....and got the sort of analysis I was hoping for! Thanks Jennett!!

The ONLY one I have any familiarity with is Herodotus, and I have a modern translation/edition.
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Aiwelin

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Re: Did the Scythians even have a religion?
« Reply #16 on: December 14, 2013, 01:27:29 pm »
Quote from: Jenett;132508
What I'd be *really* curious about, if I had these sources at hand, would be looking to see which of them cite each other.

 
This is something not a lot of people think about, and bothers me so much about wikipedia citations.
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Re: Did the Scythians even have a religion?
« Reply #17 on: December 14, 2013, 01:59:04 pm »
Quote from: Aiwelin;132538
This is something not a lot of people think about, and bothers me so much about wikipedia citations.

 
That's not really a thing to blame Wikipedia for - you see the same thing all over academic writing. (This is why it's really critical to go look at the sources, and their sources, and so on, as much as you can if you're doing original research.)

At the same time, when you see a bunch of tertiary resources (encyclopedias and other reference works), it's always really good to be asking "Where'd they get this info? Who wrote it?" For most of those reference works, it's someone who does know the field well, but it's not always someone who knows that bit of the field brilliantly. Or who is necessarily awesome at writing about it.
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Did the Scythians even have a religion?
« Reply #18 on: December 16, 2013, 09:36:39 pm »
Quote from: Valentine;132293
...that the Nile sometimes runs backwards...

I love this bit, mainly because so many people call a river running south to north a backwards running river. :)
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Re: Did the Scythians even have a religion?
« Reply #19 on: December 16, 2013, 09:41:31 pm »
Quote from: veggiewolf;132765
I love this bit, mainly because so many people call a river running south to north a backwards running river. :)

 
Well, and that bit is actually based on a misunderstanding of an actual natural phenomenon.  Herodotus had a lot of almost-but-not-quite-accurate information to work with.
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Re: Did the Scythians even have a religion?
« Reply #20 on: December 18, 2013, 07:20:46 am »
Quote from: Valentine;132768
Well, and that bit is actually based on a misunderstanding of an actual natural phenomenon.  Herodotus had a lot of almost-but-not-quite-accurate information to work with.

 
So you're basically saying Herodotus was in de Nile?



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