British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Understanding the History of Ancient Israel

Abstract

Classical History: A Sketch, with Three Artefacts

Professor T. P. Wiseman, FBA, University of Exeter

This paper has two modest aims. The first is to offer a reminder of the chronological range of Greco-Roman history, and the nature of the main narrative sources - Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus. The second is to present three brief case-studies of how archaeological evidence has been used in relation to what the narrative sources tell us: the artefacts in question are a gold mask from Mycenae, an archaic inscription from near Rome, and a gold locket condemned in the nineteenth century as a forgery.

Inevitably, I can offer only a very superficial treatment of a huge subject. But I hope nevertheless that it may have some helpful analogies for historians of ancient Israel. The privileged texts of the classic authors are not privileged in quite the same way as those of the Bible, and the authors' circumstances and motives for writing are much more clearly understood. But the modern historian’s need to deal critically with them, and to avoid privileging what they say over other types of information, may be as acute in the case of ancient Israel as it is in that of 'classical antiquity'. What matters is that the 'will to believe' should be resisted, and inference from artefacts should not be prejudiced by what the texts may lead us to expect.