From lockyert@mweb.co.za Sun Aug 5 05:07:40 2001 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.7]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.04) with ESMTP id f75C7c074350 for ; Sun, 5 Aug 2001 05:07:39 -0700 Received: from jhb-imta.mweb.co.za (jhb-imta.mweb.co.za [196.2.48.244]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.04) with ESMTP id f75C7ZX17706 for ; Sun, 5 Aug 2001 05:07:36 -0700 Received: from al40 ([196.30.238.126]) by jhb-imta.mweb.co.za (Sun Internet Mail Server sims.3.5.2000.03.23.18.03.p10) with SMTP id <0GHL00HMNG3MUZ@jhb-imta.mweb.co.za> for classics@u.washington.edu; Sun, 5 Aug 2001 14:02:12 +0200 (GMT-2) Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2001 14:02:47 +0200 From: Terrence Lockyer Subject: Josephus and the Bible (and Herodotos and Photios) To: Classics List Message-id: <003001c11da7$0550a640$7eee1ec4@al40> MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 Content-type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 X-Priority: 3 Status: O X-Status: On Sat, 4 Aug 2001, Patrick T. Rourke wrote : > But in the same Bible which tells me that it did, : > I'm also hearing of a talking ass, and a man : > having been in the belly of a whale... among : > other things. : : One cannot impeach the Bible as an historical source : tout court because the Bible isn't one text. Quite apart from this, if we are to disregard as historical evidence any text or collection of texts containing a narrative or narrative element that appears improbable from the standpoint of modern ancient history (I'm sure you know what I mean by that), then we are going to be left with precious few sources. If we are further to exclude as evidence any statement that is not independently corroborated (and it seems to me that, to be consistent, we should also have to disregard any statement that is either wholly or partly contradicted by a statement elsewhere), fairly soon it will become extremely difficult to make any historical statements at all about the ancient world (and many other periods, for that matter). Oh, and by the way, I had thought that the biblical text did not actually name the creature as a whale. Is that not a more modern interpretation? As for the more recent claim that Herodotos 'just narrates stories', it may be useful to look at his own stated reasons for narrating the stories he does. In the preface to the *Histories*, we find stated explicitly an intention to preserve the memory of certain deeds (great and marvellous ones, to be specific, which characterizations themselves imply both selection from a wider field and an ideological position in the form of criteria for selection) so that they do not become A)KLEA=. Now, this must mean that he attaches a certain importance to these events and, by implication, to those who were involved in them. His successor, Thoukydides, would, at *Histories* 1.1, commence an explicit attempt to devalue these events and others in favour of those he considered especially significant (and these happen to be events in which he himself was involved). So, at the very beginning of what the modern academic discipline of Classics describes as (extant) Greco-Roman historiography, we have two authors each of whom claims special significance for his narrative and special validity for his approach to it (Herodotos 1.5.3 elevates personal knowledge over stories told by others, and Thoukydides 1.21-2 explicitly claims that his approach has superior validity). In short, show me the writer of history (in the very broad sense of events claimed by one or more individuals to have actually happened) whose perspective is entirely disinterested, and I may just begin to believe in miracles. And finally, since Photios has been mentioned, it is worth reminding ourselves that a cleric of the ninth century CE is *at best* a secondary source for anything he tells us about the authors who appear on his reading list. Terrence Lockyer Johannesburg, South Africa .