Robin Hood is not Real. Or is he?

[PavlovtheCat]

DD is 5, and learning about different people from history. They have looked yesterday at Robin Hood, not sure if a child asked or it was planned.

Teacher told the class categorically that he was Not Real. He was made up.

But. Jesus is very definitely Real. And absolutely the Son of God.

It is not a religious school and I am wondering why the school would take a stance that one element of english folklore based in religion is absolutely real over other folklore being not real.

We talked about the fact that it is hard to say for sure if he was real or not because things were not recorded in writing very well at that time, like Jesus but that, like jesus, lots of people do beleive he was very real. She is not convinced, because her Teacher knows Everything.

I don't know if I am making a big deal of this (in my head, not so DD can hear) but I really think the school should think more carefully about the information they impart that our children put so much weight on.

DD does not always tell me everything she learns at school (obviously, being only 5!) so who knows what other Facts they are imparting?!

I am wondering if I should be putting this in AIBU section...but am scared as I probably am being!

Ahh, I never knew that distinction. Is it an oral/literate distinction then? Because if so, RH is legendary.

I thought Robin Hood was an exaggerated story based on a real person.

I've been to Little John's grave in Hathersage churchyard.......at least I have a distant memory of doing so.

Can I add a little geeky bit about Jesus.

Josephus was the earliest reference cited but he was born in 37AD and wrote his works around 90AD, so at least 60 years after Jesus died. Plus we only have his works thanks to the Christian church and monks who copied and recopied them which is why the references to Jesus are so contentious among scholars.

Tacitus was born in 56AD and mentions a Christus/Chrestus not a Jesus of Nazareth.

Caius Suetonius Tranquillus was born in 69AD and again mentions only a Chrestus.

Pliny the Younger was born 61AD and merely noted that the Christians worshipped 'Christ'.

So there are no actual eye-witness accounts other than the New Testament (which was also compiled after the fact and retranslated and reorganised repeatedly before it reached us).

Judea at the time was a hot bed of religious groups and there were many who claimed to be the Messiah- www.livius.org/men-mh/messiah/messiah00.html#overview -scroll down to Ancient Claimants. I think Jesus of Nazareth may have been a real person, possibly, but that his story was conflated with those of others who were also doing something similar at the time.

here for Atheist perspective

here for Christian

Robin Hood has historical references- from Wikipedia here

"From 1228 onwards, the names 'Robinhood', 'Robehod' or 'Robbehod' occur in the rolls of several English Justices. The majority of these references date from the late 13th century. Between 1261 and 1300, there are at least eight references to 'Rabunhod' in various regions across England, from Berkshire in the south to York in the north.[26]"

So real, again, possibly, but made a legend at a later date.

If we'd been alive when Robin Hood was supposed to be alive, we might well have believed it was historical, verifiable fact that Jesus came to England on a trading mission for tin, with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea.

(Just to confuse the question of whether Jesus is an English legend.)

I do hope your DD is taking notes of all this pavlov.

I'm not sure I'd go with that definition of the distinction between myth and legend. My dictionary suggests the two terms are pretty much interchangeable the distinction, if any, being that a legend does not include anything that is entirely outside the range of possibility, although that is interpreted somewhat flexibly as many legends include miracles.

And I disagree with OnlyANinja. Historians place Jesus very firmly in the realm of historical characters. They say he was a Jew who was regarded as a teacher and healer, was baptised by John the Baptist and crucified for sedition ont the orders of Pontius Pilate. All of that is regarded as historical fact. Historians would agree that we don't know how close the gospel accounts are to the truth but they regard Jesus as far more definitively historical than Robin Hood.

I would be entirely unimpressed at a teacher telling my DC that it is FACT that Jesus is the son of god .

"some people believe . . . " is always the line I used and if my class (Y6) ever asked me if I believed I said no.

Not all historians, I don't think, phr.

I don't think there's ever much consensus about stuff like that, is there?

Incidentally, one of my mates got rapped over the knuckles for saying in front of a class of undergraduates that God and Jesus one and the same - she had to explain she wasn't actual proselytizing so much as teaching some theology 101.

Some historians do. Some don't. Many of the professors who I had the pleasure of being taught by had differing ideas about Jesus and the level of historical 'truth' around his story.

The problem is that Robin Hood isn't tied to a major religion, so any criticism of his sources can be done relatively safely. But any public suggestion that Jesus may not have existed exactly as portrayed in the Christian religion, or that he might not be real attract an awful lot of criticism, disapproval and often hate mail and threats. It also sets a historian up as an 'atheist' no matter what their own personal belief. So there tends to be a sort of accepted historical fact bare bones agreement especially in books that are written for the wider market, rather than pure academia.

I think that the teacher should have been extra careful precisely because Jesus's historical reality is a firm belief for some religious people and Robin Hood's isn't. If you set up a system where you say religious figures should be treated with more deference (which is what this is), you make out that atheists' beliefs are less important. IMO.

LRDtheFeministDragon - No, not all historians. I was trying to keep it brief. But there is a broad consensus on this one which is as I have stated, and this is not just amongst Christian scholars. Ask the history department at your local university!

it is not dd who is taking notes...

There may be a broad consensus, but if you were to ask the medievalists at your local university, I suspect they would be able to tell you that the evidence for Robin Hood being based on a real person is about as good as the evidence for Jesus being based on a real person.

pav - admit it, your next post:

'DD tells me she is coming round to a sceptical religio-historical position for the existence of Robin Hood. AIBU to think she's G&T?'

I live in Nottingham, my DD I am assuming will be taught that Robin Hood was real, given there is a huge statue of him in the town centre.
She will be confused that he wasn't a fox though.

LRDtheFeministDragon - Let me try and be a little clearer (and apologies for continuing to use the shorthand "historians" without specifying that some disagree).

Historians (including those specialising in the medieval period) believe that Robin Hood may have been based on one or more historical characters but we have not identified those characters with any certainty. There is no incident in the Robin Hood stories that we can point at and say it was an historical event.

Historians believe that Jesus was a genuine historical character who was a Jewish teacher and healer. They accept that his baptism and crucifixion are historical events. However, that is not the same as saying they accept that the biblical account is true. They do not accept either of the two nativity stories nor do they accept some details of the crucifixion story. We have no way of knowing whether Jesus said and did the things attributed to him. You would be hard put to find any historian (including Christians!) who was willing to say definitively that Jesus' miracles and resurrection were historical events.

Many ancient historical characters have stories about things they said and did which are clearly untrue, but that doesn't mean we dispute their historicity as characters.

It is all a bit nuanced and difficult to get across on a message board!

And to a five year old!

I don't agree, and I think that generalizing about 'historians' is kind of the whole point - it's meaningless.

At 5, I don't think it's on to say 'Jesus is definitely real, Robin Hood is definitely made up', when adults who study these topics believe it's complicated to establish what the truth is.

As several people have said, saying 'some people believe Jesus is real' is a nice, easy way to get around this and would I think be fine for a 5 year old.

And by the way, I have this sneaking suspicion that events like King Richard going on crusades (in the Robin Hood legends), are real. What with studying medieval history and all.

I believe there was a man called Jesus, who was a Jew and some people thought of him as a Messiah. He was one of many who emerged in the upheaval of that time period. Twenty or thirty years after his death people were beginning to worship him/an amalgamation of him and other similar Messiah's in a more widespread manner. Anything else is conjecture given the paucity and unreliability of the evidence. This was an impression shared by many of the professors/lecturers who taught me.

I don't know enough about Robin Hood to say (my information on Jesus is based on four years of an Ancient History degree and subsequent interest in the subject) whether he was real or not but I would say that there was at least one man who referred to himself as so, given the presence of the name in the justice rolls. I also would say that there were most likely to be a band of robbers in Sherwood forest given the unsettled nature of life at the time, lack of a police force and evidence of such behaviour in other rural and isolated spots. There was a sheriff of Nottingham (though I don't think that he was a bear) and a King Richard who went on Crusades.

Listen folks, Robin Hood is as real as they come but apparently not as holy as Jesus as we are led to believe. Here's something in the possession of College Library at Eton.

That manuscript is very cute. The monk is having a pisstake though, IMO and as I expect you know.

LRDtheFeministDragon - I wasn't trying to say that everything in the Robin Hood stories is unhistorical. They are clearly in a genuine historical setting. But that is not the same as saying that any of the recorded events of Robin Hood's life are historical.

I don't think anyone has suggested that, though.

Isn't the issue that this class of five-year-olds have been told that Jesus is definitely real, and Robin Hood is definitely not, and in actual fact it's not terribly easy to establish on what basis the teacher could think the historical facts are so very different in the two cases?

The more I think this the more confused I get:

'There is no incident in the Robin Hood stories that we can point at and say it was an historical event.'

'I wasn't trying to say that everything in the Robin Hood stories is unhistorical.'

Eh?