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JOHN KARL EVANS
Graeco-Roman religion, one badly misses the kind of lively discussion that Maurice Freedman's claims about the nature of Chinese religion have generated among sinologues. Freedman vigorously contends that "a Chinese religion exists; or, at any rate, we ought to begin with that assumption;" and further that it is possible "to trace ruling principles of ideas across a vast field of apparently heterogeneous beliefs, and ruling principles of form and organization in an equally enormous terrain of varied action and association." Arthur Wolf just as vigorously denies the existence of a Chinese religion, "in part because priests were not preachers. Rather than attempting to educate the masses, they treated their knowledge as a professional secret. This allowed different sects, and within each sect different lines of descent, to develop their own ideas, and eventually created a vast gulf between the ideas of the priest and the beliefs of the peasant." Whether one agrees or disagrees with Freedman is immaterial; it is as a heuristic device that his argument is most useful, for it compels us to think analytically about the vast body of data for Chinese religious practices now at our disposal.
Interpretation of the evidence is obviously, therefore, the second fundamental difficulty that diversity of belief creates for historians of Roman society. It would be fair to say that at present we know much of the facade and little of the substance of Roman religion, for however exhaustive, a mere cataloguing of the evidence will never yield insights into the meaning of the various religions practised within the empire, nor will it explain how their interaction could be at once conflictive and syncretistic. Fortunately, it would also be fair to say that the search for answers is now underway, and that it is pushing scholars in new and promising directions. In his recent book Death and Renewal, Keith Hopkins, the newly appointed Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge University, challenges us "to develop ways of expressing Roman experience. This involves wondering 'What was it like to be Roman?', and 'In what ways were their experiences and reactions different from our own?'" He invites us, in short, to explore what he defines as "the limits of the value of empathy as a tactic of historical analysis."
17 The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the value of a comparative approach, and particularly the potential inherent to comparative analyses
122
JOHN KARL EVANS
Graeco-Roman religion, one badly misses the kind of lively discussion that Maurice Freedman's claims about the nature of Chinese religion have generated among sinologues. Freedman vigorously contends that "a Chinese religion exists; or, at any rate, we ought to begin with that assumption;” and further that it is possible “to trace ruling principles of ideas across a vast field of apparently heterogeneous beliefs, and ruling principles of form and organization in an equally enormous terrain of varied action and association.” Arthur Wolf just as vigorously denies the existence of a Chinese religion, “in part because priests were not preachers. Rather than attempting to educate the masses, they treated their knowledge as a professional secret. This allowed different sects, and within each sect different lines of descent, to develop their own ideas, and eventually created a vast gulf between the ideas of the priest and the beliefs of the peasant. → Whether one agrees or disagrees with Freedman is immaterial; it is as a heuristic device that his argument is most useful, for it compels us to think analytically about the vast body of data for Chinese religious practices now at our disposal.
Interpretation of the evidence is obviously, therefore, the second fundamental difficulty that diversity of belief creates for historians of Roman society. It would be fair to say that at present we know much of the facade and little of the substance of Roman religion, for however exhaustive, a mere cataloguing of the evidence will never yield insights into the meaning of the various religions practised within the empire, nor will it explain how their interaction could be at once conflictive and syncretis- tic. Fortunately, it would also be fair to say that the search for answers is now underway, and that it is pushing scholars in new and promising directions. In his recent book Death and Renewal, Keith Hopkins, the newly appointed Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge University, challenges us "to develop ways of expressing Roman experience. This involves wondering "What was it like to be Roman?', and 'In what ways were their experiences and reactions different from our own?"" He invites us, in short, to explore what he defines as "the limits of the value of empathy as a tactic of historical analysis."
17 The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the value of a comparative approach, and particularly the potential inherent to comparative analyses
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