[gothic-l] Re: "Eruli", "Goths", "Danes" and wherefrom the runes

[Dr. Dirk Faltin <dirk@smra.co.uk>]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "bobbusam <bobbusam at y...>"
<bobbusam at y...> wrote:
> Let me inject a word of caution.
>
> Dirk writes> > Again, the Goths of the 5th/6th century were
> Christians! In fact, a large part of the Heruls were likely also
> Christians, some of them even Catholocs as is suggested by tomb
stone
> inscriptions from Concordia (see Fibinger).
>
> The Goths and Heruls of this period could not have been Christian
in
> more than name. There is no evidence to suggest that they actually
> believed in Christianity as such.




Tell, me that you are joking please;-) Of course, most Goths were
firm and astute Christians in the 5th and 6th century. They had their
own bishops and theological tradition. The process of convergence
started already in the late 3rd century. Theoderic the Great, himself
was proud to be born to Christian parents. In fact, his mother was a
Catholic, and possibly a Roman.






The Goths adopted an heretical form
> of Christianity for which they would be damned in the eyes of
actual
> Judeo-Christian peoples.


You are talking about Arianism, which the Goths adopted from the
Romans. Arianism was the mainstream form of Christianity in the 4th
century, when the Goths adopted Christianity. Later this brought them
at odds with Catholiscim which replaced Arianism in the Roman empire.




I suspect that this decision was made for
> political, not religious reasons. Choosing an heretical brand of
> Christianity helped them to win the trust of their mainly Christian
> subjects while at the same time keeping them seperate racially and
> politically.


They did not chose a heretical brand of Christianity, but adopted
Arianism, which was the mainstream brand of Christianity at the time.
Note, Emperor Valens was an Arian, as many of his predecessors.!






I would call it a kind of segregation of churches. The
> eventual failure of the Arian church as a religion seems also to
> proove that its real purpose was political and not religious. I
> suspect that most Goths were entirely agnostic businessmen with a
> penchant for battle.
>
>  Those Heruls who had retained paganism,
> > had
> > > likely nothing to do with the Asir gods, but from the
> > archaeological
> > > remains of the Hegykoe group likely followed a syncretic form
of
> > > steppe-nomadic Shamanism and Germanic and other paganism.
>
> I suspect that they followed whatever brand of religion furthered
> their economic prospects, Germanic or not.



That is not the point in the present discussion. The point was that
they were not the creators of something that was called 'Asatruism'
earlier.





> >
> > ## That can well be right, but this "Germanic and other paganism"
> > could have been the earlier form of Asatru as we know it and can
be
> > evaluated from Icelandic material.
>
> The earlier form of this religion would undoubtedly be the
> Scandinavian one. It would also be the least corrupt form. Goths
and
> Heruls were emmigrants who came into contact with many kinds of
> people. Whatever religion they followed must have degenerated
> accordingly. Their later Christianity degenerated to the point that
> it became extinct.



Where did you take that notion from?

Cheers
Dirk



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