From the General to the Particular

Wendy Doniger seeks to understand mythology as a universal human phenomenon and attempts to identify common characteristics among mythologies. Considering my interest in mythical creatures within Ancient Israelite religion, this book was of particular interest to me. However, rather than focusing upon her understanding of mythology, her book brought another concern to mind. In particular, I found it very interesting how her book clearly demonstrates the necessity that humans relate the similar to the different, or the particular to the general. This necessity appears to be a deeply ingrained disposition within the human psyche and sheds light on how we must approach the study of mythology, and, more generally, religion.

To clarify what is meant by working from the particular to the general, I do not insinuate that we begin to studying the world by examining the tiniest particles and moving from them to the next tiniest particles, etc. Rather, I speak about the human tendency of moving from what is most familiar in everyday life to the more obscure. Consider the shepherd boy who spends his days tending to sheep. From his everyday experience, he knows that sheep are short creatures, with a thick fleece, etc. Clearly, the shepherd boy will recognize a sheep when he sees one; moreover, if he has a flock consisting of both white and black sheep, he will know that they are closely related creatures. If the boy has never seen any other animal other than sheep, and one day a goat from the neighboring hills wanders into his flock, will he consider the beast to be identical to the sheep in his flock? Certainly not! He will say, this creature has four legs, two eyes, etc., but where is its fleece? However, since he has not been previously exposed to any other sort of animal except sheep, he might even be inclined to label the goat a short-haired, horned sheep (or something similar) based on its comparison to the sheep.

Instinctively, humanity appears to have this tendency to compare and contrast things that are new and unusual to what is more familiar. Consider what Doniger says about the caveperson (who is our ancestor) and the saber-toothed tiger; namely, that even though the tiger has some differences in appearance to the lion that the caveperson decides to run from the tiger as he did from the lion (28). Doniger uses this example to strengthen her argument for the comparative mythologies approach; however, I contend that this example demonstrates a more universal human necessity of moving from the general to the particular or, similarly, to move from ‘the similar’ to ‘the different’. Here for the caveperson, the lion acts as the general or similar and the tiger as the particular or different.

Similarly, Max Muller makes the case that religion results from the experience of the particular and the contemplation of what lies beyond the finite. Max Muller demonstrates how this is the case for the ancient Aryans and demonstrates that through examining the pre-Buddhist period we can examine through linguistics how the notion of the divine evolved out of the human contemplation of the other (The Hibbert Lectures 1878: 145-152). Hence, Muller demonstrates how the human understanding of the divine or infinite (what is general) derives out of studying what is more familiar (the finite).

This is precisely the underlying point Doniger is getting at in her approach to the telescopic and microscopic view. She iterates this quite clearly in her reference to Oh What a Lovely War when she discuses the hero who is sitting under the tree which turns into a cross and disappears into a sea of crosses (20). What the viewer is really doing here is identifying with one particular person and using that person as a gateway to better understand all of the members of the graveyard. Were other soldiers like the hero of the film? Did other soldiers enjoy reading under trees? We use the protagonist as our point of comparison when it comes to the other soldiers buried beneath the white crosses. Since the protagonist is what is most familiar to us, he is used as a sort of prototype by which we can judge the identity of the other soldiers, in how they are both similar and deviate from the hero.

Finally, I wanted to note how Doniger’s own approach to the study of mythology utilizes the approach of comparing what is more familiar with what is less familiar. In particular, consider her discussion on Tamar and Judah, and Helena and Betram (36-41). Her approach is to first of all discuss what is similar between the two (36), and, then, she proceeds to discuss how the “gaps” in the Tamar and Judah story might be filled by examining comparable myths (40-41). Hence, she moves from what is more general amongst these stories to examining the missing details in the stories (what is more specific).

It seems to me inescapable to leave the method of moving from what is more particular to the more general. Moreover, this position is evidenced by Doniger’s notion that within the myth is both the microscopic and the telescopic. This demonstrates that humans must work from what is more readily available on an everyday level to what is more unusual. In particular, what she demonstrates, similar to what Muller upholds, is that humans require some sort of basis or anchor in everyday life in order to attempt to understand the divine (as is the case in Job and the Bhagavata Purana). The upshot of this human tendency of working from the general to the particular demonstrates that humans are unable to escape a categorical approach to learning, and, thus, it appears that the European project of comparative theology as really being a comparison of Christianity, to the other world’s traditions, as Masuzawa examines, is an inevitable sort of human reaction since humans have the tendency to compare what is most familiar to what is unfamiliar.

Hence, it is important to use this approach of the particular towards the general as a basis in pedagogy. Hence, when it comes to the study of religions introducing students to religious studies through a first year World Religions course is quite fitting. In particular, it is important for the student of religion to study world religions in a very generalized way so that upon further study, the student may compare and contrast how individual religious traditions are either similar or deviate from the generalized models discussed in the introductory course.