Bananque Republic
The Gospel of Rizal According to Zaide
Rizal’s Life, Works, and Writings of a Genius, Writer, Scientist, and National Hero by Zaide – this reads not so much of a sober historical biography, but as a gospel of Jose Rizal, a hagiography of a deified savior of the Philippines. There is a paucity of critical analyses of historical data, and an overly credulous acceptance of anecdotes and unsubstantiated stories.
As is quite common to early Filipino historians like Zaide (Agoncillo is another example), their methodology is nothing more than creative story-telling and recounting legendary embellishments as though they were fact. To them, the historico-critical method of modern historical scholarship does not exist, or if it does, they definitely did not use it.
And what's with all these overly religious language? Anything that Rizal ever possessed is god-given, and he rarely makes mistakes, and if reported, the author is quick to make lame excuses as to why he was wrong, or was unsuccessful (he would probably make a good Christian apologist, in my opinion). His family name had an auspicious beginning, and it was said that he even prophesized his eventual greatness where people would build monuments in his honor. Maybe Zaide should have read Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth to see the numerous methodical motifs his portrait of Rizal has, and maybe, just maybe, he would be skeptical of even a few of the things he read about the Great Hero.
And there was even a passage in Zaide's book of Rizal’s success being due, for the most part, the divine providence (p.19). Is this what passes as scholarship back then? Aside from the fact that it is unverifiable, it is nothing but crass proselytizing. For shame.
There was even a tidbit about "heredity influences" on Rizal. Words cannot express the sheer superficiality of Zaide's scholarship in Biology, so he wrote his entry at length:
"According to biological science, there are inherent qualities which a...
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