11-06-2008, 08:32 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->....
Another example, pointing towards the west, the "tragedy in history": Here
Flemming Nielsen's book is very important as he does not jump to any early
conclusion but shows the structural similarity between the Deuteronomistic
history and Herodotus (I agree with Clancy when he objects to the obsession with
<b>Herodotus, when Livy is much closer [and the best example of Hellenistic --
well, Hellenistic inspired Roman historiography. </b>However, biblical scholars
traditionally go for the earliest possible date.])
As to history and literature, it is quite interesting to see this insistence of
a priority for the OT. Somehow a comprehensive part of biblical scholarship
cannot see the importance of the quantum leap that happened in Attica in the 5th
century but claim something similar to belong to the Iron Age, to Palestine, to
tiny Jerusalem. Have a look of the two cultures, and you immediately see the
difference: on one side a blossoming self-content culture exploding in al areas
and aspects: Art (e.g. Phidias), philosophy (the Sophists, Plato), literature
(Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes), historiography (Herodotus,
Thucydides), and economy, and on the other one of the poorest material cultures
ever found in the ME with no art worth mentioning, no international economic
explosion, nothing. I do not say that it might not have happened, but as it
seems there was no context for it. Either the borrowing was from Egypt and/or
Mesopotamia, although <b>the genre of historiography belongs to the 4th century at
the earliest, and definitely was inspired by the Greek historiographers, or it
was from Greece, or both, and then we are down in a time when Greek influence
was heavily felt in the ME, and when was that.
</b>
..
Niels Peter Lemche<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Another example, pointing towards the west, the "tragedy in history": Here
Flemming Nielsen's book is very important as he does not jump to any early
conclusion but shows the structural similarity between the Deuteronomistic
history and Herodotus (I agree with Clancy when he objects to the obsession with
<b>Herodotus, when Livy is much closer [and the best example of Hellenistic --
well, Hellenistic inspired Roman historiography. </b>However, biblical scholars
traditionally go for the earliest possible date.])
As to history and literature, it is quite interesting to see this insistence of
a priority for the OT. Somehow a comprehensive part of biblical scholarship
cannot see the importance of the quantum leap that happened in Attica in the 5th
century but claim something similar to belong to the Iron Age, to Palestine, to
tiny Jerusalem. Have a look of the two cultures, and you immediately see the
difference: on one side a blossoming self-content culture exploding in al areas
and aspects: Art (e.g. Phidias), philosophy (the Sophists, Plato), literature
(Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes), historiography (Herodotus,
Thucydides), and economy, and on the other one of the poorest material cultures
ever found in the ME with no art worth mentioning, no international economic
explosion, nothing. I do not say that it might not have happened, but as it
seems there was no context for it. Either the borrowing was from Egypt and/or
Mesopotamia, although <b>the genre of historiography belongs to the 4th century at
the earliest, and definitely was inspired by the Greek historiographers, or it
was from Greece, or both, and then we are down in a time when Greek influence
was heavily felt in the ME, and when was that.
</b>
..
Niels Peter Lemche<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->