eugyppius

... connecting their ideas to the empty theoretical apparatus of Saidian Orientalism or whatever. One night after we both had a lot of scotch, he confided that he only ever had a few semesters of the language he supposedly worked in and still "struggled" with it.

He was hired by my Uni *because of his expertise in this field*, which at the level of language did not exceed that of many second- or third-year undergraduates.

There are many entirely fake historical events based on smooth-brained misreadings of straightforward statements. For 30 years people in my field have been writing about the supposed exile of this figure - we will call him a theologian - which never happened.

You have to read all about the supposed political significance of his exile & what it means for this or that, on and on. In fact, the only source for this 'exile' are a few of his own remarks in a prologue to one of his tracts.

The passage, in the edition everyone uses, is poorly punctuated at this key moment and everyone has just misunderstood what he is saying.

Likewise, real events are surely suppressed or ignored, down to equally astounding stupidity. Early in my career I came upon the work of some august wahmen, whose well-received thesis was flatly contradicted by a key historical document.

What did she & her students do? They decided this document was an old forgery. No arguments or anything. Just: "It's fake." She says it, her students say it, now everyone says it.

They got colleagues responsible for standard reference works in the field (indices & registers that track things like papyri and give them numbers) to agree that it was a forgery so now this is established opinion.