Eric Hobsbawm vs. the Mythicists

Last updated on: January 25, 2011 at 12:29 pm by James F. McGrath

Eric Hobsbawm vs. the Mythicists 2011-01-25T12:29:00-05:00 James F. McGrath

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One popular quote found on mythicist web sites and in comments, mined from the second edition of Eric Hobsbawm’s Bandits, says “In no case can we infer the reality of any specific ’social bandit’ merely from the ‘myth’ that has grown up around him. In all cases we need independent evidence of his actions” (revised edition p.142).

As is typical of pseudoscholarship, here we have a quote removed from its context and which, taken on its own, might sound like it could support the viewpoint of those doing the quoting. In fact, however, this is a quote added to a work that reflects mainstream historiography, and uses sources in ways that mythicists criticize. While mythicists claim to be concerned for rigorous historical methodology, in fact the focus is entirely on Jesus, and regularly ignores what mainstream historical scholarship does, or how it provides the tools and methods used by those working in mainstream historical Jesus studies.

Since I have the original edition of Hobsbawm’s Bandits readily to hand, I will quote from there. If anyone has the second edition and wishes to provide page numbers for that edition and/or indicate changes that may have been made in the interim, I would welcome them.

Hobsbawm’s book is a study of a category of figures which he refers to as “social bandits.” The archetypical figure of this sort is Robin Hood, and in the role of ideal type Robin Hood gets mentioned often in the book, alongside a range of figures from a wide array of societies and periods in history. Hobsbawm regularly draws on the only historical source available about some of the figures mentioned – folksong.

Towards the end of the volume, Hobsbawm writes, “One might suggest that the memory of a purely oral culture – and those who perpetuated the fame of bandit-heroes were illiterate – was fairly short. Beyond a certain lapse of generations the memory of an individual merges with the collective picture of the legendary heroes of the past, the man with myth and ritual symbolism, so that a hero who happens to last beyond this span, like Robin Hood, can no longer be replaced within the context of real history. This is probably true, but not the whole truth. For oral memory can last longer than ten or twelve generations” (p.111).

In response to criticism, Hobsbawm qualified his stance slightly, so that in the second edition it seems that he emphasized that the historian cannot determine from the later myth the reality of what an individual bandit was like. He does not appear to have been addressing what the mythicists claim he was, namely whether it is ever possible to ascertain even the likelihood that a particular figure existed. His qualifications must be placed in the context of Hobsbawm’s clear statement that oral tradition and memory could preserve information for many generations, a point he continued to maintain in later publications (see below).

This doesn’t mean that Hobsbawm approaches such folkloric traditions with a naive, gullible credulity. He approaches them as a critical historian, recognizing their capacity both to preserve and to distort. “Most oral history today is personal memory, which is a remarkably slippery medium for preserving facts. The point is that memory is not so much a recording as a selective mechanism, and the selection is, within limits, constantly changing.” (Hobsbawm, On History p.206; quoted by Slatta). These are exactly the same points about memory that Dale Allison and others working in the domain of historical Jesus studies also make.
Mythicists like the quote from Hobsbawm I gave in the first paragraph, taken out of context. If only they read his book in its entirety, they might or might not agree with him, but at the very least, they might realize that mainstream historical Jesus scholarship is simply one application of a wider array of historical approaches, tools and methods found across the breadth of academic historical studies. And in fact, they might realize that many scholars of the historical Jesus would agree with Hobsbawm’s critics that, at times, he was far too willing to trust oral traditions and folklore. As Hobsbawm himself puts it (in “Social Bandits: Reply,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 14:4 (1972) 504), “My view is that the myth cannot be divorced from the reality of banditry.” And again later in the same short article, “It seems simplest to assume that there is some relation between a bandit’s real behavior and his subsequent myth” (505). In contrast, many historical Jesus scholars are determined, to whatever extent possible, to separate myth from reality. But they and Hobsbawm would surely agree that it is a far more difficult, painstaking and challenging process than either conservative apologists or mythicists seem to grasp.

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