To find just one example of this kind of sophistication, we need only look at Stark’s account of the growth of Christianity in the earliest centuries after the death of Jesus. This is often belied by its easy, popular prose style, but one does not have to look far into the footnotes, or think deeply about the arguments, to realize that Stark is applying his well-known work in the study of religious growth in general to the very specific 2000 year history of the faith which shaped the Western world from top to bottom. In addition to being a well-documented work, it is a methodologically sophisticated one.
What is perhaps more remarkable is the nuanced way in which Stark approaches this evidence.
His assertions are invariably backed up with copious, well-documented evidence. All this could make Stark seem like a crank, a writer of those alternative histories that take the thinnest thread of evidence and try to weave it into what amounts to a shoddy piece of work.
0 kommentar(er)
