Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 June 17

= June 17 =

Euhemerism and opposite
What's the opposite of euhemerism? I'm familiar with the concept of largely because of Snorri Sturluson's argument in his Edda, according to which the Nordic gods were historical figures who developed supernatural attributes in post-mortem legends, but I've never heard of the opposite, whereby a god gradually gets a human story and loses his divine story. Our article on King Arthur notes that some historians believe this to be true of him: "Some scholars argue that Arthur was originally a fictional hero of folklore—or even a half-forgotten Celtic deity—who became credited with real deeds in the distant past. They cite parallels with figures such as the Kentish Hengist and Horsa, who may be totemic horse-gods that later became historicised." If there's an article about such a concept, I'd like to link it, but I couldn't find anything online about the opposite, aside from some reference to scholars of Chinese folklore who use "euhemerism" itself as that opposite. Nyttend backup (talk) 18:51, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

PS, "historicisation" doesn't seem like the answer, whether you mean the subject of the historicisation article or anything else. Euhemerisation is specifically a folkloristic concept (as opposed to concepts like divinization, a person literally becomes a god, e.g. Roman emperors, or apotheosis, an artistic depiction of semi-divine glorification), and likewise I'm seeking something that's particularly a matter of folkloristics. Nyttend backup (talk) 19:04, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The Encyclopedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences ..., Volume 13 speaks of gods becoming degraded or depontentiated into heroes. See https://books.google.com/books?id=94d9u6N35-kC&pg=PA374&lpg=PA374&dq=gods+degrade+heroes&source=bl&ots=_F6VkBfeyf&sig=ACfU3U2omadwHWot0oBWDYHjeMcDw9pbvg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiN0InKy4nqAhVJRDABHe88AmUQ6AEwBXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=gods%20degrade%20heroes&f=false --Khajidha (talk) 19:36, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Unfortunately no depotentiation article and nothing relevant at degradation, but still it's interesting to know that there's a term for it.  Nyttend backup (talk) 13:01, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * But if heroes could really be 'historicized' gods, how do they know that the gods they started with were not deified heroes several centuries before? The bottom line is that some (presumably celtic) warlord has terribly beaten the Saxons in the late 5th or early 6th century, whether his name was Arthur or for my sake Little Paul. 2003:F5:6F06:8700:A55E:59B6:FAEF:B44D (talk) 23:44, 18 June 2020 (UTC) Marco PB
 * They/we don't know, except to the extent that there's any actual or inferred evidence, which different people may interpret differently. There might even have been several cycles of the process. What we do have good evidence for is that, in general, beliefs about deities seem to evolve quite rapidly, in parallel with the way that languages evolve.
 * You probably already know that most European and various Asian and Indian languages seem to have diversified from a single ancestor we refer to as Proto-Indo-European (PIE) originally spoken in the Pontic–Caspian steppe some 5,500 (± 1,000) years ago, probably by the people of the Yamnaya culture. We have also been able to deduce some information about the deities they believed in: you can read about these in Proto-Indo-European mythology and you'll notice that some of them seem to be earlier version of gods and heroes who feature in more recent and familiar mythologies.
 * (Regarding Arthur, my own favoured candidate for the origin of his myth is Owain Ddantgwyn, but there are several other possibilities, and doubtless a good deal of originally separate story elements being blended together.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.203.10.153 (talk) 19:40, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Interesting; perhaps we should add Owain to Historicity of King Arthur? Alansplodge (talk) 13:58, 20 June 2020 (UTC)