More Groundless Speculations in Lundahl (2022y) About Hercules, Demons and Samson
Kevin R. Henke
November 28, 2022
Lundahl (2022y) is a relatively long response to statements that I made in Henke (2022bx): “Lundahl (2022L) Rambles on and Fails to Make Any Mythology Look Believable.” In Henke (2022bx), I made the following statements:
“In this essay, I’ll just comment on the following four paragraphs from Lundahl (2022L):
“This very disingeniously bypasses my distinction between "divine myth" and "heroic legend" - and the ways in which either is supposed to be in any way known by those back then believing them.
I confirm that no one should believe Chaos gave birth to Gaia, Eros, Erebos and Nyx, and Gaia then to Ouranos. It is also not in any usual way a historic claim. The historic claim involved is, Nine Muses revealed this to Hesiod. And to Hesiod alone.
This is a very far call from Achilles facing battle after battle with no wound - which was explained by his mother being a goddess who had gotten half way through the process of making him into a god. Francisco Franco faced battle after battle on the Rif, and was never wounded, and Muslims on the Rif had their fairly superstitious stories about why this was. We should believe Franco wasn't wounded, we should not believe in the superstitions on how you become what is called "kugelfest" in German. Dito with the difference between Achilles and his lack of wounds, and the "divine mother" - similarily, believing Romulus founded Rome doesn't involve believing Mars was his actual physical father or even existed, and believing "Hercules was a strong man, not a god / not God" does not involve believing Zeus was his father or even existed. Unlike Gaia and Ouranos, Achilles, Romulus and Hercules have evidence of the type I classify as historical.
Now, Hesiod getting a revelation from the Muses is confirmed by no miracles, but Moses getting revelations from God is confirmed by miracle after miracle - according to the kind of evidence I consider as historical. The amount of material in Genesis that depends on Moses' getting a revelation is basically the six days account - the rest involve human observers and an at least theoretical lineage of memory, and this involves Genesis 3. Very few aspects would need Moses or some other previous person to be prophetically known - it would involve the identity of the four rivers and the divine plan behind the confusion of languages at Babel - that behind driving Adam and Eve out could have been known directly to them.”
Because I am a geologist, I was actually thinking of Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess, when I wrote the bolded sentence in the above quotation from Henke (2022b). Nevertheless, frankly, I don’t care about Mr. Lundahl’s efforts in Lundahl (2022L) to divide questionable and unreliable stories into “divine myths” and “heroic legends.” Unless Mr. Lundahl actually has archeological or other external evidence that demonstrates that any of the ancient characters mentioned in Lundahl (2022L) actually lived, he just might as well be dividing Superman, Mickey Mouse and Daffy Duck into his categories. People have always believed in urban legends, myths, and stories that have no evidence of ever happening. The ancient Greeks, Romans, Hawaiians and Hebrews had questionable or outright false beliefs, and so do modern Christians, Jews, Mormons and Scientologists. Mr. Lundahl should be separating the individual stories into likely fiction, plausible, and history supported by archeology and other external evidence instead of wasting time on a worthless classification system involving “divine myths” and “heroic legends.”
It’s good that Mr. Lundahl does not believe that the god Mars exists or that anything supernatural happened to Francisco Franco when he was in battle. We certainly have good historical evidence that Spanish general and dictator Francisco Franco lived. Sometimes soldiers fortunately escape being wounded or killed in battle. That’s not unusual. My dad fortunately was never harmed by the V1 and V2 rockets that exploded around him during WWII. However, just because Franco lived, that does not mean that we should automatically believe every story about him, no matter how realistic it sounds or how well it might fit into one of Mr. Lundahl’s “historical” categories. Sometimes heroic war stories are just made up. Nevertheless, what does the reality of Franco have to do with the Achilles’ story? Where’s the evidence that Achilles actually lived? Where’s the evidence that Moses ever existed?
Although it’s certainly possible that someone named Romulus actually lived and was involved in starting Rome, we need to be skeptical of his existence until evidence comes forward to demonstrate that he was not a myth. We also need to carefully separate any possible historical evidence for Romulus from any myths about him. The same thing is true about Hercules. Where’s the external evidence that he existed? Why should we automatically believe the stories associated with Hercules any more than Samson in the book of Judges? Again, with any story, skepticism should be the first reaction and anyone advocating for these stories needs to immediately accompany their advocacy with good external evidence and not esoteric and worthless rambling about “divine myths”, “heroic legends” and “first known audiences.” Lundahl (2022L) has failed to demonstrate that we should believe in Moses any more than the god Mars. [my emphasis in bold and italics]
Lundahl (2022y) then comments on various parts of this section. I responded to these comments starting in Henke (2022Lu). This is what Lundahl (2022y) said about my bolded and italicized comments about Hercules and Samson in Henke (2022bx):
“We should believe both, and Beowulf as well. Hercules is not restricted to one spectacular text, you have a very prosy text by Eratosthenes which involves the Return of the Heraclids as one of the landmarks of Greek history after the Trojan War. And the spectacular texts are in fact usually not more than average demonic. Apart from obviously theological claims, like being born through Zeus impregnation or getting to Olympus and marrying Hebe from his funeral pyre. Going mad and killing one's children is precisely the kind of thing that the demons could do.
Of the twelve works, only the last two were such that for cosmological reasons we must reject the reality, and the originally agreed number was in fact ten. Hercules could very well have added the last two simply by bragging.”
Mr. Lundahl provides no good external evidence to think that either Hercules or Samson ever existed. Multiple texts are worthless in confirming history unless they can be demonstrated to have been independently written (Henke 2022b). Also, as usual, Mr. Lundahl needlessly blames some of the stories associated with Hercules on demons. This is again another example of Mr. Lundahl invoking groundless and superstitious speculations about demonic activity to explain groundless stories about Hercules. Mr. Lundahl is senselessly piling fiction upon fiction for no good reason. He simply fails to realize that many popular fables are deliberately written to sound historical (e.g., the New Testament Gospels as explained in Carrier, 2014, pp. 387-509 and the Old Testament stories exposed as fiction in Finkelstein and Silberman 2001 and Tobin 2010). Without first embracing skepticism and demanding good external evidence before accepting any story, Mr. Lundahl has no reliable and objective way of separating history from works of fiction pretending to be history.
References:
Carrier, R. 2014. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, Sheffield Phoenix Press: Sheffield, UK, 696pp.
Finkelstein, I. and N.A. Silberman. 2001. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts: The Free Press: New York, USA, 385pp.
Tobin, P. 2010. “The Bible and Modern Scholarship” in J.W. Loftus (ed.) The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails: Prometheus Books: Amherst, NY, USA, pp. 148-180.