Acharya S, Pygmy Lawgiver and the role of experts

[GakuseiDon]

I thought I'd split this out in its own thread, given that relying on the views of experts is a topic that pops up frequently on this board.

DM Murdock (aka Acharya S) released in 2014 her paperback book "Did Moses Exist? The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver", mounting a case that there were many "lawgiver" figures in ancient mythology. In her book, she postulates that the original one may well have come from the Pygmies.

The quotes below are taken from pages 269 thru 271 in Murdock's "Did Moses Exist?". (I've only read the parts available on Google Books.) Note that Murdock didn't make any of this up, she is merely quoting other scholars, mostly Dr Jean-Pierre Hallet, a genuine scholar on African Pygmies, from his book "Pygmy Kitabu: A revealing account of the origin and legends of the African Pygmies", from 1973.

Murdock writes, starting on page 269:

• Pygmy Lawgiver
  
  The idea of a divine lawgiver dates back milennia, possibly to the earliest human communities. Among these groups would be the Pygmies of Central and South Africa, whose legends were recorded in modern times by Belgian antropologist Dr. Jean-Pierre Hallet (1927-2004). For decades, Hallet lived on and off among the peaceful Pygmy people of the Congo named Efe, recording their traditions as pristinely as possible and demonstrating they had not been influenced by biblical tales at that point.
  ...
  Hallet and Pelle devote considerable space to the lawgiver legends, remarking:
  
  • ... The Egyptian founders of man's oldest historic civilization identified the Pygmies with their great ancestral gods.
    
    The God of these beautiful Pygmy "gods" is represented as the Giver of the Law...
  ...
  As stated by Hallet and Pelle, the Pygmies claimed that "in ancient times their lawgiving father-god-king reigned near Ruwenzori, the Mountains of the Moon." The scholars further remark:
  
  • In this neighborhood, according to the Pygmies, they received the deity's laws and commandments. Moses' book of Exodus locates the lawgiving scene at a mountain called Sinai... By placing the lawgiving scene at Sinai, the mountain of Sin, the Bible seems to confirm that the commandments were handed down from the Mountain of the Moon.
  Hence, we have a lawgiver associated with mountains.

The Mountains of the Moon are in east Africa. Acharya S/D.M. Murdock has an article on her webiste where she quotes Dr Hallet to speculate that the Mountains of the Moon in Africa were the site of the original Garden of Eden stories, created by the Pygmies. Also that the Pygmy Christ was born of a virgin, died for the salvation of his people, arose from the dead, and finally ascended to heaven. Dr Hallet believes that the Efe Pygmies had been in isolation for thousands of years, so couldn't have been influenced by outside beliefs. He regards, therefore, that the Pygmy beliefs are the source of many of the European mythologies amongst the Egyptians and the Greeks, either directly (via captured pygmies sent to Egypt in ancient times) or indirectly. This is a fantastic discovery... the Pygmies are the source of the myths of Horus, Osiris, Dionysus, Moses and Christ? Incredible and thought provoking, if true!

As stated above, Dr Hallet is most definitely an expert on African pygmies. He lived among them for a number of years, and recorded the lives and customs of the Efe Pygmies in great detail. I've read parts of his "Pygmy Kitabu" at the local State Library and Murdock is representing him fairly as far as I can see.

Obviously given the significance of Hallet's claims, Murdock should have delved into them further to see what other scholars believe. One criticism of her books that many make (including myself) is that too often she repeats information from sources uncritically, and seems to hide behind the fact that she "isn't making things up". And she repeats many weird claims indeed!

On Hallet: I've found few reviews of his book. Here is a short one by Colin Turnbull in American Anthropology journal, 1975. He is very critical of Hallet's claims about the Pygmies being the source of many religions and Hallet's distain for modern anthropology. But Turnbull makes the point that it would be a shame to ignore the book and believes that "writers like Hallet, popular and unacademic, do have something to offer us."

So what do we do with claims like Hallet's? He said that the Pygmies had no outside influence when they told him their myths. Obviously that can't be the case now, even if it were true then (which seems unlikely), so it would be difficult to reproduce Hallet's research. Yet to ignore such fantastic claims would mean we lose fascinating insights to the origin of many European myths. Should researchers spend time to reproduce such work?

[Roger Pearse]

I would certainly want to know that these claims are accurate; and that they are not the outcome of either presuppositions by the scholar or missionary influence. After all, however isolated they may once have been - can this be verified? - they certainly are not now.

[GakuseiDon]

I agree, such research would be very difficult to do nowadays, certainly the Pygmies haven't been isolated at least since the time of Hallet, half a century ago. Probably the best that can be done is to verify that the Pygmies actually held the beliefs that Hallet claimed they did, to see whether Hallet in fact reported them correctly rather than through some ideaological bent.

There is also the question of how Hallet's research affects Murdock's own theories. Astrotheology is the belief that theology was developed from observations of the skies. Yet here Murdock is proposing that the origins of the myths of Osiris, Horus, Isis, Christ, Moses, etc, were taken from the ancient Pygmies. Since (as reported by Murdock via Hallet) the Pygmies had a global civilization, and Hallet doesn't report any astrotheological beliefs of the Pygmies, Murdock's view of astrotheology as the basis for the commonality of religions throughout the world becomes unnecessary.

[Peter Kirby]

You've written on this topic before, I see:

http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakuseid ... gmies.html

[GakuseiDon]

You've written on this topic before, I see:

http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakuseid ... gmies.html

That was about Acharya S / Murdock's "The Christ Conspiracy", where she discussed Pygmy myths as the basis for Christianity, whereby the Pygmies believed that a Pygmy Christ was born of a Pygmy Virgin.

This thread is completely different. This is about her recent "Did Moses Exist?", where she discusses Pygmy myths as the basis for the story of Moses, whereby the Pygmies believed that a Pygmy Lawgiver ascended a mountain and received commands from a Pygmy god.

But I also see it as the role of experts in fringe theories. Murdock didn't make anything up other than "connecting the dots" provided by Hallet and others. Hallet was a real scholar who reported, apparently in good faith, what the Pygmies were telling him about their own myths. The linkage here, beyond trying to justifiy Hallet's views, is how to deal with one genuine scholar making a case for some fringe position. Morton Smith, John Allegro, etc, come to mind.

[Peter Kirby]

But I also see it as the role of experts in fringe theories. Murdock didn't make anything up other than "connecting the dots" provided by Hallet and others. Hallet was a real scholar who reported, apparently in good faith, what the Pygmies were telling him about his own myths. The linkage here, beyond trying to justifiy Hallet's views, is how to deal with one genuine scholar making a case for some fringe position. Morton Smith, John Allegro, etc, come to mind.

Fringe theories are advanced all the time. Sometimes we come to call it the progress of science. The question is, does this seem best described that way?

[GakuseiDon]

For Hallet's claim: "fringe" definitely applies. Probably "claim" is better than "theory" though.

[Bertie]

One factor in play, I think, is that experts particularly in highly specialized or rare fields of knowledge can develop a sort of tunnel vision resulting from the fact that they rarely get qualified critical feedback. They end up overrating the importance of their own specialty.

Bringing things closer to home, I think we can see this phenomenon with regard to Elaine Pagles or the late Maurice Casey. Because the number of people qualified in Coptic or NT-era Aramaic is so small, these people can go out there with theories that put their own preferred specialty at the center of Christianity and few people have the skills needed to reel them in.

All is not lost, though, because in scholarship the ability of a theory to withstand direct refutations is not the only way to evaluate it. We can also evaluate it by seeing whether other scholars have picked up on the theory and developed it in interesting and useful directions and whether present-day scholars are still doing so. For example, theories like Markan Priority and "Jesus was Apocalyptic" have stood a test of time and many scholars have built on them to this day; that doesn't mean they are right, it just means those theories have to be taken more seriously; the bar is raised to blowing them off. (Of course, even this "test" is hardly foolproof — scholars built a huge castle of sand on the Two Source Hypothesis — that is, Q — and it rather boggles my mind that this theory ever got accepted in the first place; the case for Markan Priority without Q is overwhelming.)

[Bertie]

One additional thought — when a super-specialized expert leaves his home turf to make sweeping claims of importance for his subject, he is vulnerable to counter-evidence that does not require direct engagement on his specialized expertise.

For example, the "prehistoric pygmy global civilization" hypothesis makes maybe-falsifiable predictions on archeology, art, literature and so forth outside of the pygmies and their historical territory. A possibly-strong argument from silence against the "prehistoric pygmy global civilization" hypothesis might be made by observing the absence of pygmy remains in archeological digs outside the places where mainstream scholars would expect them (likewise, their absence in world art and literature or whatever). Turning to my Maurice Casey example, while few are able to engage him on Aramaic, it is another matter to point out that some of his examples of NT Aramaic origin may have alternative explanations in Greek grammar and usage, as some scholars have done.

[GakuseiDon]

Acharya S does claim that "Pygmy remains and culture are found around the globe, including from Egypt to India" in "The Christ Conspiracy" (page 389) and that there are linguistic similarities between Pygmy, Mayan, Caribbean and Tibetan languages (page 396). Also that "Mummified remains of little people or "aliens" are reported to be found in caves or in Tibetan monasteries." Her sources don't appear to be reliable though.

Good point on what happens when a super-specialized expert makes claims in other fields. But we really need those experts to move into new fields. I think historical Jesus studies have benefitted from experts from various fields, like sociology, psychology, taking up the challenge of applying their fields into historical research. I think Carrier's myth theory will soon disappear given how poorly evidenced it is, but his work on taking a Bayesian approach may have far-reaching impact on historical studies.