History Vs. Legend
A very good series of posts over at Boston 1775 this week on the story of George Washington learning about Hanukkah. The story itself is heartwarming and the sort of story we want to believe, it could even be true, but there is no evidence to support it at all. We want our history to be heroic and legendary, but looking at our present we see that with very rare exceptions it almost never is. J.L. Bell writes about the legend in a sympathetic way, he isn’t out to trash the story itself, but he does want to make its historical authenticity clear. I am impressed that he keeps the balance between being sympathetic to the legend and its intent and the needs of a historian, this is a very hard balance to keep.
February 17th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Thank you for your comments on the balance of those postings. That’s indeed the path I was trying to walk, recognizing the quality of the story and the book as a fable, and also tracing how well-meaning people have come to believe that it’s true.