Thesis advisor: Natana DeLong-Bas / Throughout history, the idea of “hidden wisdom” and “primordial truth” has been a perennial fixture of innovative or heterodox beliefs. Repeatedly, novel methods of thought, be they religious, political, or social, have been introduced as a product of a vaunted time and space: lost secrets of the Persian magi, rediscovered wisdom of Solomon, uncovered Egyptian mysteries, etc. This persistent trope begs examination, and highlights one of the oldest trends in human thought: to find legitimacy in tradition, imagined or otherwise. Furthermore, the literature seems to always point towards a land in the greater Middle East as the font of wisdom - even in the writings of people from the Middle East, who simply attribute works to peoples and lands different from their own. Finally, in more modern times, there is a tendency to lean upon the narrative of a lost past for purposes of cultivating a new national identity, especially by peoples grappling with the overbearing mantle of Arabness or the struggles of a stateless people. Overall, the lost golden ages of the Middle East serve as the ideal wellspring of legitimacy for unorthodox ideas regarding the divine, the state, and the nature of a people. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Middle Eastern Studies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_109455 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Wright, Taylor Hayden |
| Publisher | Boston College |
| Source Sets | Boston College |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, thesis |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0). |
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