Euhemerus and Euhemerism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Abstract: This paper looks at the way in which scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries conceptualized the relationship between sacred history and pagan mythology through the lens of their approach to the ancient Greek writer Euhemerus. It argues that the popular contemporary tendency to equate Euhemerism with the historical interpretation of pagan mythology is the product of early eighteenth century French mythography, during which time scholars divested the study of pagan myth from the study of biblical history and thereby sought for new, non-Christian, hermeneutical traditions through which to analyze the origins of pagan mythology more generally.