Not only [the above], but also a way of
taking
apart ancient texts and finding out that they
don't
mean anything after all. This technique, which began
in the late
19th century, assumed that works as old as
parts of the
Old Testament (most notably the
Pentateuch), the
Iliad, and the
Odyssey couldn't possibly have been
written
way back when. They also
hit upon the idea
(
laird knows why)
that none of these works could have been
written by
a single person, and most certainly were
cobbled
together by the
RAND Corporation,
Francis Bacon, or a
secret council of the
Roamin' Catlick Church.
Although the ideas that percolated out of this morass
were created in ignorance of the actual age of written
language (in other words, they didn't know back then
that writing was around a lot earlier than they thought:
archeology was not as advanced as it is now), their
ideas have not undergone the drastic re-evaluation they
so richly deserve, except in rare
instances, viz., the work of Milman Parry.