From: richard@ex-parrot.com   
      
   On 23/04/18 13:14, Doug Laidlaw wrote:   
   > On 23/04/18 00:13, jen53genealogy@gmail.com wrote:   
   >> The source for this genealogy (true or not) comes from the Asser's   
   >> Life of King Alfred, written in 893. Did Alfred the Great give him the   
   >> information, did he believe it, know it for a fact, who knows, but some   
   >> of the replies here scoffing at it are childish. It is a source like all   
   >> others, it is not always factual but all we have to go on until proven   
   >> or disproven.   
   >   
   > What you say is fair comment, but did Alfred know his lineage back to   
   > Adam as a fact?   
      
   That strikes me an interesting question.  There seems little doubt that   
   Alfred was educated by the standards of the time.  He was exposed to the   
   Vikings so will have been aware of the Norse religion, and he will have   
   doubtless been aware that a couple of centuries earlier, his   
   predecessors practised substantially the same religion.  He will have   
   been familiar with the Norse god, Odin, and his Saxon equivalent Woden   
   who appears in the pedigree of the Saxon ruling houses, as given in the   
   Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.   
      
   He'll also have been aware, if only vaguely, that there were differences   
   between the various pedigrees in the generations before Cerdic, and   
   particularly before Woden.  It's probable therefore that he would not   
   have considered any one form of this pedigree infallible, even if he   
   believed that something along those lines was true.  (Many of the   
   inconsistencies we see in versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle perhaps   
   post-date Alfred's time, but the pedigree is found, complete with   
   variations, in other contemporary sources too.)   
      
   Accepting that Alfred believed literally in Adam and Eve and did not   
   believe in the Norse deities, how did he square this with the fact that   
   his pagan predecessors claimed descent from Woden and his own charted   
   descent from Adam and Eve passed through Woden?  Did he believe Woden   
   existed but as man, perhaps some early Germanic hero or minor king?  Or   
   did he consider Woden to be a legendary figure not grounded in fact?  A   
   number of interesting papers have been written on the subject, and there   
   are as many views as there are historians who have explored the subject.   
     One view I've read is that by Alfred's time, educated Saxons did not   
   generally believe in a literal Woden but considered him more a metaphor   
   for what, in later centuries, came to be know as the divine right of   
   kings: a descent of convenience to explain why the Cerdicingas were king.   
      
   However I think the question itself is a category error and that the   
   Saxon view of history freely conflated truth with legend such that the   
   question was not one that would ever have occurred to the people at the   
   time.  Perhaps it would be better to say the people of the time probably   
   saw truth in the descent, but it would not have occurred to them to ask   
   whether it was a literal truth or metaphor: they would have seen it as   
   both, and the inconsistencies between versions would not have bothered   
   them.   
      
   Richard   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)