Raaflaub - Thinking, Recording, and Writing History in the Ancient World

The Ancient World: Comparative Histories

Series Editor: Kurt A. Raaflaub

War and Peace in the Ancient World

Edited by Kurt A. Raaflaub

Household and Family Religion in Antiquity

Edited by John Bodel and Saul Olyan

Epic and History

Edited by David Konstan and Kurt A. Raaflaub

Geography and Ethnography: Perceptions of the World in Pre-Modern Societies

Edited by Kurt A. Raaflaub and Richard J. A. Talbert

The Roman Empire in Context: Historical and Comparative Perspectives

Edited by Johann P. Arnason and Kurt A. Raaflaub

Highways, Byways, and Road Systems in the Pre-Modern World

Edited by Susan E. Alcock, John Bodel, and Richard J. A. Talbert

The Gift in Antiquity

Edited by Michael L. Satlow

The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy: A Politico-cultural Transformation and Its Interpretations

Edited by Johann P. Arnason, Kurt A. Raaflaub, and Peter Wagner

Thinking, Recording, and Writing History in the Ancient World

Edited by Kurt A. Raaflaub

This edition first published 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thinking, recording, and writing history in the ancient world / edited by Kurt A. Raaflaub.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-118-41250-3 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-118-41254-1 ISBN 978-1-118-41311-1 (epub) ISBN 978-1-118-41312-8 (epdf) ISBN 978-1-118-41313-5 (emobi) 1. History, AncientHistoriography. 2. History, AncientMethodology. I. Raaflaub, Kurt A.
D56.T47 2014
930.072dc23

2013030059

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: L-R Sima Qian (Wikimedia Commons), Maya Codex ( J.Enrique Molina / Alamy), Bust of Thucydides (photo Shakko / Wikimedia Commons)
Cover design by cyandesign.co.uk

The purpose of this series is to pursue important social, political, religious, economic, and intellectual issues through a wide range of ancient or early societies, while occasionally covering an even broader diachronic scope. By engaging in comparative studies of the ancient world on a truly global scale, this series hopes to throw light not only on common patterns and marked differences, but also to illustrate the remarkable variety of responses humankind developed to meet common challenges. Focusing as it does on periods that are far removed from our own time, and in which modern identities are less immediately engaged, the series contributes to enhancing our understanding and appreciation of differences among cultures of various traditions and backgrounds. Not least, it thus illuminates the continuing relevance of the study of the ancient world in helping us to cope with problems of our own multicultural world.

In the present case, as in that of some of the earlier volumes in the series, the ancient world is understood very broadly. Here a phenomenon of crucial importance for human civilization, the function, remembrance, and recording of the past, is examined not only in the global social and cultural context of what is usually understood as antiquity but also in that of societies that existed in later periods but are structurally comparable to ancient ones, such as early Japan, the early Islamic world, and the early Americas.

Earlier volumes in the series are War and Peace in the Ancient World (ed. Kurt A. Raaflaub, 2007); Household and Family Religion in Antiquity (eds. John Bodel and Saul Olyan, 2008); Epic and History (eds. David Konstan and Kurt Raaflaub, 2010); Geography and Ethnography: Perceptions of the World in Premodern Societies (eds. Kurt Raaflaub and Richard Talbert, 2010); The Roman Empire in Context: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (eds. Johann P. Arnason and Kurt A. Raaflaub, 2011); Highways, Byways, and Road Systems in the Pre-modern World (eds. Susan E. Alcock, John Bodel, and Richard J. A. Talbert, 2012); The Gift in Antiquity (ed. Michael Satlow, 2013), and The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy: A Politico-Cultural Transformation and Its Interpretations (eds. Johann P. Arnason, Kurt A. Raaflaub, and Peter Wagner, 2013).

Kurt A. Raaflaub

Eve-Marie Becker is Professor of New Testament Exegesis at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. Her main fields of interest are Pauline and Gospel studies, literary history, historiography, and hermeneutics and interpretation theory. Her publications include Die antike Historiographie und die Anfnge der christlichen Geschichtsschreibung (ed., 2005); Das Markus-Evangelium im Rahmen antiker Historiographie (2006); and Writing History in New Testament Times (in preparation).

Marc Zvi Brettler is the Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies at Brandeis University. He has published and lectured widely on metaphor and the Bible, the nature of biblical historical texts, and gender issues and the Bible. He is coeditor of the Jewish Study Bible and the