Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

George:

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 9:44 PM, George Athas 
<George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>wrote:

> Karl,
>
> Thanks for your thoughts. I enjoy sparring with you.
>

Thanks for the compliment.

>
> Our conception of history is different to the ancients, even though there
> is significant overlap (both are trying to understand the past). When we
> construct the past, we do not normally resort to the categories of folklore
> or myth.


I don’t know about Australia, but here in the U.S. most people are very
ahistoric: history means nothing to them. Evolution, the belief they were
indoctrinated with in public school is a folklore or myth to them. Not far
different from “Once upon a time…” fairy tale to them. (E.g. once upon a
time dinosaurs roamed the earth.)

We, on the other hand, look at history differently than common in popular
culture.


> If anything, we try to get behind these. The ancients didn't have the
> investigative paraphernalia that we possess today to do this, and so their
> investigative paraphernalia were popular memory, myth, and creative
> imaginations.


But some hung onto written histories as well. But that was a tiny minority.


> They didn't have teams of archaeologists digging up the past in a
> controlled dig for academic purposes. They did not have archives of daily
> newspapers, encyclopaedias, museums, the internet, or large popular
> cemeteries with headstones and detailed information. They didn't have
> publishing houses, a 'media', universities, and democratic governments with
> freedom of information. They didn't possess the scientific and technological
> knowledge we have today.


Are you spreading with too broad a brush? Were all ancient peoples alike in
their views of history? I don’t think so.

For example, when I look at the god myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans,
also many Norse sagas and Enuma Elish, I see they all have that “Once upon a
time…” ahistoricity that typify myth, embellished with creative imaginations
with a possible kernel of remembered history.

The Bible is different. It gives dates, making the events datable provided
we have accurate copies uncorrupted by copyist errors. This is written from
the same cloth as we consider modern history.


> Just think about Gen 1 - the sky is a hard dome!


As a lexicographer, this is wrong! The word means “expanse” from a root
referring to expanding, spreading out. I have heard this myth that Genesis 1
refers to a hard dome of the heavens several times, but I don’t know where
it came from. All I know is that it is wrong. (Oh yes, for this response, I
reviewed 27 verses where the verb to expand and the noun expanse are found
to make sure I am not making a mistake.)


> But it actually isn't. If the ancients could have blasted off into orbit,
> Gen 1 would have looked vastly different, even though the basic message
> might have been the same.
>
> Put all that together, and I think it's safe to say that the ancients
> conducted history in a very different way to us today. Ancient documents
> tell us how people conceived of history, but not always about the actual
> history itself.
>

Again I ask, are you painting with too broad a brush?

>
>
> Regards,
>
> GEORGE ATHAS
> Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
> www.moore.edu.au
>
> Karl W. Randolph.