An Indian metaphor in St John's Gospel

Extract

“Influence-research” is not a field to itself. It boasts no experts. Where cultures are sources of national or professional prestige the Einflussforsche's task can be thankless. Cultures are admired as self-consistent, and if possible original. Where indebtedness is notorious – e.g. East Asian artefacts’ effects on European taste – research into it may be conducted without grief. But since unacknowledged indebtedness affronts the increasing specialization of our times tentative disclosures may be accused of implausibility. One is asked “How could such a thing happen?rdquo;, and “What does it add up to?” Learned journals have published many strange “parallels”. Effects are cumulative: quum singula non prosunt multa iuvant. News, for example, that famous stories have migrated over great distances causes no apprehension. But where anomalies bring distant, even antagonistic cultures into confrontation, without a proved contact, one may become impatient. “Influence-research” remains the Cinderella of the sciences, and she has plenty of Ugly Sisters. One may take a trivial example. Judaism has for centuries presented rabbinism as its normative model; and then news accumulated that Yahweh was once seen as a manifestation of Apollo, with an accompanying osmosis from pagan towards Jewish symbols and fashions. This flouting of the standard set by the sensational Maccabees books put the results, such as they were, under a cloud.