|
|
Christian Indie Radio
GetChristianMusic
Solid Walnut Music
|
|
|
|
|
|
Devotionals
|
|
Cartoons
Culture
Family
Games
Health
Homeschooling
Humor
Inspiration
Kids
Men
Ministry
Parenting
Poetry
Teens
Women
|
|
Statement of Faith
Contact Us
|
|
|
|
Early Jewish Historical Writings
column: The Wesleyan Way
by Carl F. Phillips (Carl's bio)
Send this page to a friend
The best way to make history interesting is to describe it in story-telling terms, and nobody was better at that than the authors of the Old Testament. If we read from Genesis through 2 Kings we find ourselves involved in a continuous narrative of Israeli history that begins with creation and leaves us with the conquest of Jerusalem by the Assyrians.
This history was appreciated more and more by Israelis from about the third century B.C. onward, as they returned from captivity in Babylon and began to rebuild their city and their temple. Not only did these Old Testament books serve as a model of how to write history, but they also set the theme for just about all kinds of religious writing. Even fictional stories of the day were written around the events covered by this history of the culture.
Greek historians differentiated between their mythological period and the historical period. The former was written largely by quoting obscure sources, and covered the time when stories were passed down by word of mouth. The latter was either composed of information from verifiable sources, or else was lifted from the work of other authors. Israelite historians, on the other hand, wrote a continuous narrative, and drew no line of demarcation between ancient mythological history and the more recent written records.
Several books of the Apocrypha are historical compositions. Each one, however, is unique.
The Apocryphal book of 1 Maccabees was written around 100 B.C. by an anonymous author writing in either Aramaic or Hebrew - the original manuscript, of course, has been lost. But it was written in an much older style, similar to the style of the books of Chronicles. 1 Maccabees relates the causes and the progress of the Maccabean revolt. Its narrative begins around 175 B.C. with the Syrian king Antiochus IV. It tells of the Jewish revolt against the Romans instigated and led by Mattathias and his sons, and concludes with the death of Simon, the last surviving son, in 134 B.C. One of the reasons this book was not included in the Bible is that the reliability of its author in keeping his facts straight and unembellished has been called into question. Apparently, even though he made a deliberate attempt to write in a language used in Old Testament writings from the past, his research resembled that of the Greek armchair historians - those who relied on the works of others, and who even re-wrote some of their sources to fit their own purposes.
The Apocryphal book of 2 Maccabees is the condensed version of a five-volume set of works by Jason of Cyrene. This is a history of the Jews in the Holy Land, written around 175 B.C. The story is easy reading, and appears to be fairly well researched.
You don't need to be a Bible scholar to understand why the Apocryphal book of 1 Esdras was not included in today's scripture. Among the problems with this book is the way it copiously utilizes legitimate scripture to hold itself together. A reading of 1 Esdras, then of 2 Chronicles 35:1-36:23, the Book of Ezra, and finally of Nehemiah 7:38-8:12 reveals where the author of 1 Esdras got the bulk of his information. The story he told was already in the Bible, in other scriptures.
Even though some of the works of the Pseudepigrapha attempt to pass themselves off as legitimate history, they, too, condemn themselves with their interpretive re-writing, their expansions of legitimate Old Testament text to make it say what they wanted it to say, and their paraphrasing of older books rules them out as reliable. That's how such books as Jubilee and Biblical Antiquities came to be classed as Pseudepigrapha - or, in plain English, forgeries.
In the third century in Egypt a man named Hecataeus was hired by Pharaoh Ptolemy 1 to write a flattering historical treatise that would be referenced by both Greek and Jewish historians as they worked to commit their respective cultural backgrounds to writing. Unfortunately for these later historians, On the Egyptians was largely propaganda, being written primarily to please the eyes of Ptolemy 1. Artapanus, Eupolemus, and another author trying to pass himself off as Eupolemus - all of them copied and borrowed from the Egyptian document. The original works of these three people have disappeared, but we know of their existence because later authors copied blocks of their work and gave them credit for it.
It is just as well, because these three all tried to paint a falsely rosy picture of Jewish history. About all they accomplished was to record their own interpretation of the existing Scriptural record. Apparently they wanted to show how much older, and how much more advanced was Jewish civilization compared to the other world cultures. So, like their Greek counterparts, they manipulated and rearranged the historical record to impose their moral views on Jewish society.
Josephus, who was born shortly after Jesus was crucified, and was a contemporary of Mattathias and his sons, wrote two very thorough histories of the Jews. The shorter of his two manuscripts, written in Greek, was Wars of the Jews, which - like the works of many of his Greek contemporaries - focused on war as the primary historical event of his time. Wars of the Jews features the first Jewish revolt in AD 66.
His longer manuscript, recorded in 20 volumes, is entitled Antiquities of the Jews. This book compares favorably with the Roman Antiquities by Dionysius.
Josephus was probably one of the more accurate historians of his day, and many of Paul's letters can be dated with considerable accuracy because they refer to events recorded by Josephus in one or the other of his books.
It comes as no surprise to learn that the Bible matches up much better, in both events and dates, with Jewish historians than it does with Greek and Roman writers. For the most part, the Jewish writers, like good journalists, were more conscientious in checking out their facts.
In short, the Bible contains what is undoubtedly the most accurate recorded history of its time in existence today.
Copyright 2001, Carl F. Phillips. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.
| About Carl F. Phillips: Born March 1933 and raised in the mountains of western North Carolina, near Asheville. Attended college at Warren Wilson in Swannanoa. Enlisted in the Navy, earned a commission in the Marines, flew jet reconnaissance photography. Married, divorced, and remarried, I have four children -- two boys and two girls. Lived in Port Isabel, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, for more than 20 years. Received a heart transplant July 31, 1991. Direct the choir in my church, lead congregational singing, and teach adult Bible study. Also occasionally fill the pulpit in the preacher's absence. E-mail Carl |
Send this page to a friend: