7.10. Conclusion
What Historical Interests Meant in Antiquity
As noted in chapter 6, ancient biography was closely related to ancient historiography. But while modern historiography and biography developed from their ancient namesakes, the ancient conventions were not quite the same as their successors, and it is anachronistic to judge ancient works by criteria that did not yet exist. Still, ancient thinkers were not as uncritical as some readers today suppose.
Knowing that ancient biographies used historical information is of only limited help for us to evaluate their value as historical sources unless we have a sense of how historical writers in antiquity handled information. What did ancient readers expect in historiographic works? How much did historians adapt and fill in the material that they inherited? After addressing this question with respect to the Gospels as ancient biographies, I will briefly explore the particular example of Luke-Acts, which was composed as a work of ancient historiography (see ch. 8).1
7.1. Concerns for Rhetorical Presentation
Biography was a form of historical writing (ch. 6), and history-writing was a form of literature.2 As literature, history could include valuable literary techniques such as suspensefully or surprisingly holding back information until the appropriate moment.3 Most surviving histories from the ancient Mediterranean world rework still earlier narratives to provide a new “literary presentation of a known tradition.”4 Competent writers were expected to distinguish their work from those of predecessors partly by placing their own twist on their material. During the period of the empire, rhetoric heavily shaped Roman literature.5
Some estimate that barely 2 percent of Greek histories have survived, apart from fragments and summaries.6 The most elite and rhetorically sophisticated authors are disproportionately represented, since their work most appealed to those most able to pay for its reproduction. This factor may help explain why ancient historiography was more reader-driven (better, hearer-driven) than its typical modern academic analogue.
Not surprisingly, therefore, rhetorical artistry pervades most extant historical writing from antiquity.7 Some writers emphasized rhetoric more than others; these include Dionysius of Halicarnassus8 and Josephus9 (in biographic works, e.g., Isocrates).10 Sallust regularly displays rhetorical tropes in his historical writing.11 In the early empire, elite historians were often also orators.12 Historians were interested not only in accuracy but also in plausibility and probability, as in rhetoric more generally.13 They might claim to prefer truth over style, but so did orators; such claims merely show that they dealt with information as well as style.14 Certain features became conventional in depicting certain sorts of scenes, but then, many such details would be expected to recur in such circumstances.15
Although rhetorical styles varied,16 elite readers expected historians to compose in the style considered appropriate to historiography.17 Perhaps in contrast to some first-century thinkers,18 later elite hearers, shaped by the Second Sophistic, preferred history in the “grand” (splendide) style.19 Already in the first-century BCE, some writers, including the historian Dionysius, already advocated the literary use of old Attic Greek rather than the common language.20
The respective measures of historical information and rhetorical presentation varied from one historian to another, but historians in general both appealed to the historical research tradition and sought to represent the past persuasively.21 Although a renowned orator, Tacitus22 recounts considerable, solid historical information.23 Likewise, Suetonius, despite his interest in rhetoric,24 avoids embellishment and would not easily be classed a “rhetorical” historian.25 Even the earlier, populist historian Theopompus did genuine research.26
Ancient readers expected historians to provide cohesive narratives rather than merely disjointed or even loosely organized information, which sometimes required authors to fill in gaps in their information. Chronology and outcomes provided some cohesiveness, but some details could make sense only in light of other ones. Thus historians would make inferences based on information they had and then provide their best guesses as to what the scene should have looked like. Both ancient and modern historians offer inferences from probability; what differs are the ways that we narrate those inferences and the particular assumptions (based on differing perspectives) that inform those inferences. Modern historians (and NT scholars) speculate regularly, but in ancient writing the speculation filled out details in depictions of events. Ancients narrativized their history, recounting it in story form.27
Still, interest in rhetorical framing did not correspond to lack of interest in historical truth.28 One ancient critic emphasizes that, for all their commonalities, history and oratory are different disciplines: rhetoric focuses on trivial narratives, and history on famous deeds;29 style, vocabulary, rhythm, and subject matter all differ.30 In a later period, another historian emphasizes that he has sought to provide both tasteful literary style and historical accuracy in his history.31 Because historians developed a factual “core” when they narrativized history,32 we cannot easily separate history’s story/narrative from its extratextual, factual past.33 Ancient historiography allowed for flexibility in recounting the information, but mainstream historians envisioned their genre as based on facts.
This interest shows up in the ancient equivalent of scholarly peer review. Historians could criticize other historians whom they deemed more interested in showing off rhetorical skill than in historical truth.34 Lucian expresses this concern in a particularly emphatic manner, lambasting authors who excessively embellished histories.35 One should produce narrative continuity36 but avoid lavish and irrelevant description.37
7.2. Speaking of Rhetoric . . .
Inferential historical reconstruction applied above all to speeches. Compositional handbooks taught writers how to imaginatively reconstruct speeches, providing reconstructions as true to the occasion and extant sources as possible.38 Historians followed this practice of composing speeches, though again usually as plausibly as possible in light of what was known, and usually even using the gist of a speech when it was known.39 Even inscriptions of edicts were “not exact copies,” and historians had even less reason to “aim at slavish imitation.”40
Some historians, such as the rhetorical critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus, composed speeches more freely than others, such as Diodorus Siculus.41 Philo makes up speeches for Moses in contexts where he otherwise follows the LXX or Jewish tradition fairly closely;42 Josephus clearly takes significant liberties in speeches.43
Nevertheless, historians often instead followed (and adapted) speeches in their sources, whatever the origin of those sources.44 The historian Pompeius Trogus critiques Livy for embellishing speeches too much.45 Yet Livy, though rhetorically adept, reproduces the essential gist of speeches in Polybius, while changing the wording and some details.46 Comparing speeches shows that historians’ speeches for Alexander often reflect a conventional core,47 whatever that core’s origins.48
Ancient authors and audiences alike expected this practice in histories. The pre-Christian historian Diodorus Siculus affirms historians composing speeches, provided they remain appropriate to the speakers within the narrative.49 The pre-Christian rhetorical historian Dionysius comments on a speech “which Herodotus puts into the mouth of Xerxes.”50 The varying versions of Alexander’s speech at Opis show that historians did not expect their audiences to read these orations as verbatim renditions of speeches delivered on the narrated occasion.51 In the early second century CE, Pliny, whose standards for historical accuracy are normally high, praises an orator-historian who provides his characters speeches as excellent as his own, though more concisely.52 Tacitus confesses that he does not need to reproduce Seneca’s words exactly.53 Other historians, too, sometimes explicitly disavowed verbatim reports.54
Composing speeches in histories differs from collecting anecdotes about and sayings of sages, such as we find in sage-related biographies and the Gospels, but the practice does remind us that ancient historical expectations for speech differed from modern ones.55 That the Gospels rearrange Jesus’s sayings in speeches, often where they do not easily fit with one another, illustrates the extent to which the Gospels sought to draw on Jesus’s sayings, as biographers (especially of teachers) normally drew on the sayings of those about whom they wrote.
7.3. Balancing Readers’ Enjoyment and Truth
“Pleasure and beauty” remained valued purposes for any work,56 and readers were supposed to be able to enjoy well-written histories.57 Even generally reliable rhetorical historians could infuse scenes with tragic pathos when the events that they reported allowed it.58 Seeking to communicate the spirit of the times as well as the specific events, one military historian complains, “No one has even been able to deplore the fortunes of this whole period with such tears as the theme deserves.”59 They simply sought to communicate the feeling that surely (one could infer) accompanied the events.
Nevertheless, some historians were stricter, at least in principle. One warns against a historian trying to thrill readers with exaggeration or reconstructing “the probable utterances of his characters.”60 Whereas tragic poets could settle for verisimilitude, he insists, a historian must stick with facts.61
Lucian insists that history’s proper purpose is not to give pleasure but only to be useful; “and that comes from truth alone.”62 Usefulness and pleasure were not mutually exclusive objectives, and Lucian does not reject history’s pleasure value altogether,63 but he emphasizes instead history’s edifying value (i.e., its moral lessons), which flows from truth.64
For most historians, rhetorical interest did not eradicate the goal of historical truth.65 History was still written quite differently “from poetry, drama, oratory, and forensic argument.”66 Even the most rhetorically oriented historians recognized that historical inquiry required not merely rhetorical skill but research.67 Despite sensational elements, Hellenistic and Roman historians retained the critical ideal.68 Information is not inherently incompatible with persuasion or enjoyment.69
Ancient historians, like modern ones, had their favorites and biases. Still, in general, fairness and honesty remained the goal in history and part of the genre’s implicit “contract between author and reader.”70 It may overstate the case to claim that “tendentiousness . . . probably threatened the integrity of historiography no more than in present times,”71 but the public ideal remained fairness.
Ancient historians recognized the danger of biases (typically others’ biases) distorting the historical enterprise. Thus, for example, Josephus complains about the bias of other historians, whom he contrasts, not quite fairly, with his own accuracy.72 Lucian does not rule out evaluating historical figures morally, but he does insist that “eulogy and censure” must be “free from slander, supported by evidence, cursory” and without forensic-style exaggerations.73 Unlike encomia, true history must not include any lies.74 Good historians such as Xenophon or Thucydides may have had their private prejudices, but they tried to publicly evaluate characters fairly, not sparing their favorites.75
Modern critics try to take into account ancient authors’ biases. Nevertheless, they sometimes differ regarding what those biases were, for example, the degree of Sallust’s bias.76 Xenophon was mostly evenhanded in his history,77 except for failing to fully credit his enemy Epaminondas.78 One modern critic identifies Tacitus’s biases79 yet commends his “candor” for often including information contrary to his own biases.80 Sometimes historians who favored figures provided panegyric for them separate from—and sometimes in opposition to—their more honest narration of deeds.81 Historians today can sometimes offset ancient writers’ biases by comparing multiple sources.82
The pre-Christian historian Polybius recognized history’s epideictic function: historians must evaluate whether figures merit “praise or blame.”83 But while one could exaggerate someone’s achievements in a pure encomium, history must assign “praise and blame impartially,” following strict truth and explaining why the person merits this verdict.84 Not even Polybius was invariably “objective,” but he sought to be fairer in history than in eulogies. When reading ancient historians, modern historians normally take epideictic factors into account, rather than simply discounting the value of their evidence.85
Often biographers inferred what matters they could beyond what was explicit in their sources,86 especially regarding motivations.87 Plutarch could depict different motives for the same character at the same time in different lives.88 Of course, a person can have multiple motivations, and various explanations for actions are possible, but Plutarch’s inferences fit his respective narratives.89 If inferring motives and uncovering thoughts was a biographic interest, it was not foreign to some forms of historiography more broadly; the rhetorical historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus praises the earlier rhetorical historian Theopompus for doing just that.90
Assigning motives to characters was a common practice.91 Thus, for example, biography and other history-writing regularly lists envy as a motive for hostility,92 sometimes even as a statement of general political life.93 We need not suppose that they were always wrong about the assumption; envy was common in the agonistic, honor/shame society of ancient Mediterranean cities.94 Sometimes, however, historians demurred from speculation about protagonists’ plans apart from what could be inferred from their character.95
Historians usually have interests in their subject matter, probably beyond merely achieving tenure.96 Even today, historians select the events they will report based on what they find to be of greatest interest or of greatest relevance to their focus.97 Historiography is constructive, involving social memory;98 history-writing involves an “interplay between event and narration,” between an event and its interpretation.99
Yet, even more overtly than today, ancient historians wrote from moral, political, and/or religious perspectives.100 Ancient historians themselves, including the critical Polybius, recognized that they had interpretive grids.101 Even writers intending to write the most accurate history often “enhanced” their narratives somewhat for literary, moralistic, and political purposes.102
7.6a. Political and National Agendas
Historians recognized the value of historical discourse for politics.103 Historians usually displayed, in varying measures, national or ethnic biases, such as a pro-Roman Tendenz,104 an anti-Aetolian bias,105 a pro-Athenian bias,106 or a pro-Judean apologetic.107 Historians whose information was largely factual might also include stories that first circulated as imperial propaganda,108 and they clearly included perspectives influenced by their political milieu.109
Historians often tried to evaluate character impartially.110 Thus, despite Thucydides’s biases as a participant in the Peloponnesian War, he proves surprisingly impartial.111 Despite Polybius’s pro-Roman Tendenz, he notes that he often praises both Romans and Carthaginians, though only so he can set before statesmen proper models for conduct.112
Although history is not always written by victors,113 victory typically does affect its long-term preservation.114 Nevertheless, historians often report sympathetically both sides of a conflict.115 Lucian criticizes historians who praise their own leaders, while slandering the other side, as engaging merely in panegyric.116 Herodotus, one of the earliest historians, criticizes Greek failings, praises Egyptians, and honors both Spartan and Athenian virtues.117
Nor were characters always simply stereotypes. Biographers included both “flat” and “round” characters.118 A historian who focuses only on what is negative about a character can be accused of malice, unless this approach is necessary for the telling of the story.119 Conversely, Callisthenes, though an eyewitness, reported only Alexander’s heroism, hence was dismissed by posterity as a flatterer,120 since the other side of Alexander was already well-known.
Partisan agendas were not limited to politics, also appearing among schools of thought.121 Biographers also wrote at times for apologetic and polemical purposes.122 Likewise, historians, and particularly historians belonging to subjugated or despised peoples, composed apologetic historiography.123
7.6b. Historians’ Moral Agendas
Those who distinguish ancient biography from ancient historiography on the assumption that only the former offered moral lessons display their lack of knowledge about ancient historiography. Historians may have tended to highlight political interests more whereas biographers tended to highlight ethical interests more,124 but such interests inevitably overlapped.
The moral agenda constituted a paramount element of ancient historiography; one taught history not simply to memorialize the past but to draw lessons from it.125 Although moral agendas were common to many genres,126 they characterized ancient historiography far more often than they characterized novels.127 Some historians, such as Thucydides, were more interested in raising moral questions than in answering them.128 Most historians, however, sought to communicate some moral lessons through their historical accounts.129
History, ancients opined, preserves the memory of honorable or shameful acts for posterity and moral instruction.130 As Edwin Judge observes, “The ancient historians . . . took it for granted that remembering the good and evil deeds of others was morally instructive.”131 Or as Jörg Rüpke emphasizes, “Exemplarity is by no means necessarily opposed to history”; it simply finds lessons in the past with values considered consistent with “continuing normativity.”132
No less a careful ancient historian than Polybius begins his multivolume history by observing its utilitarian value: people “have no more ready corrective of conduct than knowledge of the past.”133 History alone can prepare us for crises without us having to experience them firsthand, he notes;134 it provides strategies, warnings and other instruction.135 Sometimes Polybius explicitly digresses to give lessons related to the events narrated.136 He “treasured history as a sound inferential basis for present and future political activity.”137
Likewise, Tacitus, one of our most reliable historical sources for the early empire, viewed exposing vice and praising virtue as his historical obligation.138 He emphasizes that the study of honorable persons promotes virtue;139 he omits material not of value to history’s moral objective140 and freely editorializes when he thinks it appropriate.141 Lucian, a stickler for historical accuracy, nevertheless values moral lessons in historiography, provided they flow from truth.142
The same can be said for other writers about the past, for example:
Historians frequently included even moralizing narrative asides to interpret history’s meaning more directly for their readers, to illustrate the fulfillment of prophetic utterances, or to provide the author’s perspective.147 Jewish historiography was certainly no less interpretive.148
7.6c. The Value of Moral Examples
Historians felt that history provided moral instruction because the behavior of historical persons offered positive or negative moral examples. Roman emphasis on honor extended to posthumous memory, elevating further the importance of history as a means of preserving and perpetuating memory. Part of the point of history-writing, no less than that of biography, was honoring those who merit it, thus motivating meritorious acts.149
Historians, both Greek and Roman, thus considered whether characters merited praise or blame.150 Some historians might criticize other historians for getting the mixture wrong,151 but no one questioned whether history provided moral illustrations. Thus Polybius does not devalue praise and blame but insists that it be applied to the appropriate persons,152 and only when recounting their behavior.153 Even Lucian permitted it within careful bounds.154 Historians’ interest in these matters reflects the broader value assigned to imitating moral examples in antiquity.155
Historians generally believed that if one understood why events happened,156 not merely historians but also statesmen157 and orators158 (both of which some of them were) could use these events and actions as precedents and guides for future decisions.159
Dionysius of Halicarnassus expressly lists three purposes for writing history: first, that the courageous will gain “immortal glory” that outlives them; second, that their descendants will recognize their own roots and seek to emulate their virtue; and finally, that he might show proper goodwill and gratitude toward those who provided him training and information.160
Similarly, Jewish interpreters in Greek understood biblical narratives as providing moral lessons: the writers recorded examples of virtue and vice for their successors to emulate or avoid.161 They could also employ postbiblical models for virtues.162 Because Josephus repeats so much of the biblical narrative in the Antiquities, one can frequently observe the way he adapts biblical characters to accentuate their value as moral models.163
Many historians displayed theological perspectives. Contrary to some modern interpretations of ancient historiography, some ancient historians did think in terms of cause and effect, though not all of these causes were divine.164 Historians’ moral illustrations, social commentary in speeches, and political interests often reveal their distinctive philosophic and theological perspectives.165
It is particularly important for understanding the Gospels that most ancient historians also sought to interpret the divine will in some patterns in history.166 Oracles and omens were said to reveal Rome’s divine destiny,167 and oracles could function as plot-moving devices.168 Escapes could be attributed to deities,169 and history’s lessons include the need for piety toward the gods.170 Elsewhere historians often emphasize deities punishing violations of temples, for example.171 Strange as it seems to many readers today, through much of the past people believed that recognizable patterns existed in history.172 Hellenistic historians perceived providence in history,173 as did Josephus.174 Luke’s understanding of God’s providential guidance of the early Christian movement closely fits the programmatic role of providence found in some other Hellenistic historians.175
Early Christians expected to learn theology not so much from abstractions as from history, since they inherited Jewish Scripture (Rom 15:4; 1 Cor 10:6, 11).176 Even most Hellenistic Jewish intellectuals viewed most of Scripture as both historically and theologically true.177 Apart from Apuleius’s second-century Metamorphoses, few novels shared the religious propagandistic function found in much Jewish historiography, perhaps simply because a polytheistic environment could take polytheism for granted.178 Interest in history distinguished most Jews and first-century Christians from circles such as mystery cults.179
7.7. Editorial Perspectives and “True” History
Ancient biographers and historians could present the same information from the standpoint of strikingly different evaluations.180 Because of the authors’ different emphases, for example, pictures of Alexander’s character diverge starkly in surviving sources, in ways far beyond the more moderately different portraits of Jesus’s essential character in the Gospels.181
A range of interpretive variation, however, is not surprising. Even today, different biographers frequently offer divergent perspectives on their subjects in their selective narrations.182 Dunn points to the varying estimates of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher today as examples,183 or varied attempts to “explain” the evil of Adolf Hitler.184 Laistner points to how it took perhaps a century for British and US historians to be “fair to both sides” regarding “the American Revolution.”185 Biographers exercised even greater editorial and compositional freedom in earlier eras.186 Even today, no historian can escape subjective bias; but a perspective concerning events does not discount the information about the events that historians include.187
Similarly, even news outlets in different countries (and sometimes in the same country) select and “spin” news in very different ways,188 but the vast majority of free media still use genuine data. Authors write from particular perspectives, and readers evaluate their perspectives (e.g., theodicy for the gods, capitalism, or globalism) from our own perspectives (e.g., Enlightenment rationalism, Marxism, or nationalism). Recognizing writers’ perspectives does not, however, require us to assume that they falsified their data. In Luke-Acts, for example, when Stephen (Acts 7:2–50) or Paul (Acts 13:17–37) preach from biblical history, their retellings are selective but substantially correct rehearsals of the tradition that they narrate.
Ancient historians communicated moral, political, or theological points on the basis of stories that they believed to be true (or at least time-honored). One could produce an abstract or epideictic treatise without composing it in the historical genre, though even such treatises often used historical examples.189 As Geza Vermes points out, “A theological interest is no more incompatible with a concern for history than is a political or philosophical conviction,” and we can allow for these interests in interpretation.190
The same is true for apologetic interests.191 Various Near Eastern peoples, especially priests guarding their sacred traditions, felt a need to respond to Hellenism’s cultural imperialism,192 frequently doing so by means of apologetic historiography.193 Hellenistic Jewish historians thus reshaped their traditions in more Hellenistic forms to stress Judaism’s greatness and antiquity.194 Philo’s Flaccus is probably a short example of Jewish apologetic historiography.195
The fullest example is Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, emphasizing God’s providence in Israel’s history.196 He seeks to vindicate the Jewish God vis-à-vis Roman gods or Fortune, showing after the loss of 70 CE that the defeat belonged to God’s plan.197 For example, Josephus’s story about Moses may challenge Alexandrian anti-Jewish propaganda influential in Rome.198
7.8. Concerns for Historical Information
Although historians adapted material, filled in speeches and sought to instill morals, they did not normally invent events in their sources. Even those that accused others of extensive embellishment rarely accused them of inventing battles and the like.
7.8a. Historians’ Concern for Accuracy?
Contrary to what some have argued, ancient historians generally did care about accuracy regarding events and evaluated fellow historians accordingly.199 They did not deem factual and rhetorical goals incompatible so long as rhetoric was kept within appropriate bounds.200 Of course, not all historians agreed as to how much was appropriate, nor were all of them equally careful. Tacitus,201 Herodotus, and Thucydides followed their material more carefully than, for example, Strabo or Plutarch.202 But even Caesar, plainly writing from his own, honor-hungry perspective, did not likely deliberately falsify evidence.203
Ancient historians and their audiences expected the following features of history-writing, notwithstanding rhetorical embellishments:
Some suppose that historians’ claims to pursue accuracy were merely a literary convention of historians. Yet, while some writers parodied this convention and some earlier historians embellished freely214 and even some historians in the early empire failed to live up to the aspirations expressed in such claims, historians were not alone in this demand for correct information in historiography.215
•The geographer Pausanias explicitly distinguishes historical research from childhood knowledge of choruses and tragedies.216
•Aristotle distinguishes “history” and “poetry” not by their literary style, since one could put Herodotus into verse if one wished; but history recounts what actually happened, whereas poetry (i.e., epic poetry and drama) recounts what might happen.217
•Thus, for Aristotle, poetry is more philosophical, conveying general truths, whereas history conveys specific facts.218
•In the first century BCE, Cicero recognized the standard expectation for historians to avoid falsehood and partiality.219
•The first-century CE rhetorician Quintilian divides narrative into (1) epic poetry and tragedy, which differs from current reality;220 (2) comedy, which plays on realism; and (3) history, “which is an exposition of something done.”221
•Likewise, Quintilian suggests being ready to provide illustrations both from history and from the fictional genre of poetry;222 historians provide genuine facts.223
•The second-century satirist Lucian is particularly emphatic:
•History employs rules “different from poetry and poems,” which can blame their excesses on inspiration.224
•True history must not include the slightest lies;225 its utility comes from truth alone.226
•Only bad historians invent data.227
•The historian must recount only what happened, sacrificing to no deity except Truth.228
•Truth “is the one thing peculiar to history,” he noted; one writing history must ignore all other concerns.229
•The historian must be faithful to truth, not flattery.230
The perspectives of Pliny the Younger (61–113 CE) are instructive. He was not a historian himself, hence was not simply following polite literary convention, the idea that some use to dismiss historians’ claims about their own work. Ideal subjects for history offer original and interesting material, he opines, but only so long as the material is based on genuine facts.231 History’s primary goal, he recognizes, is truth and accuracy rather than rhetorical display.232
Of course, ancient historical standards demonstrate only that others would evaluate historians by this ideal, not that they always lived up to it.233 Historians who should have known what happened sometimes gave quite different reports.234 Still, historical objectives contrast starkly with the lack of any such objectives in fictional works. Their interpretive biases and other frailties do not prevent our use of the significant information they actually contain.235
Because their works were public, historical standards did limit gratuitous errors. Major deviations without good reason from what was already known would undermine an author’s claims.236 Those thought guilty of inadequate research or lack of firsthand acquaintance with their reports were likely to be doubted.237 Historians criticized other historians when they appeared to fail such tests.238
Hellenistic Jewish historians also valued historical information. Beyond speeches, even Josephus “does not create events or incidents, either out of his head or by midrashic exposition.”239 Even much-maligned 2 Maccabees240 includes much historical information; as a condensation of Jason of Cyrene’s work, the author is probably not inventing many new scenes, even if his Jason or earlier storytellers had added some. Second Maccabees may be independent from 1 Maccabees yet shows some major points of agreement with it.241 Although we must allow for some hyperbole in Maccabean literature242 as well as some likely errors or adaptations,243 external evidence confirms some of the claims in 2 Maccabees.244
History was supposed to be truthful, which does not tell us the extent to which it, and especially to which a given historian, was constrained by prior information. We can test the degree of fixity and flexibility in some historians, however, by comparing them with their sources where those remain extant, as with some Gospels. For concretely mapping information content and flexibility, see chapters 10–11 below.
Although Greek historians had their weaknesses, primary research was one of their strengths.246 Even the Greek term often used for research or investigation, ἱστορία (historia), indicates what many from an early period regarded as historiography’s central characteristic: questioning those with firsthand knowledge before weaving their responses into a cohesive narrative.247 Greek historians often traveled to the locations of events and consulted those whom they considered reliable oral sources.248
Herodotus, who traveled widely, initiated this emphasis on research;249 Thucydides, who cross-examined his sources, assumes this approach as the standard.250 Diodorus Siculus claims to have consulted records251 and to have visited many of the relevant sites.252 Although most of the subjects for Philostratus’s sophistic biographies were long deceased, he interviewed some who remained alive, even on multiple occasions.253
Polybius most fully articulates the strictest criteria for evaluating other historians. For him, investigation is “the most important part” of writing history.254 This investigation consists especially of interviewing people, critically evaluating reports, and accepting what prove to be the most reliable sources.255 He disparages those who depend only on written sources256 instead of traveling to sites and interviewing witnesses.257 Condemning writers who sought to make guesses sound plausible, Polybius also notes that in his research he had also come across documentary evidence.258
In practice, not all historians in this period traveled.259 Because of senatorial records, Roman historians often had sufficient information for their interests without the need for field research,260 and because Romans’ interest was more in providing examples than history for its own sake, Roman historians sometimes appear less careful with facts than Greeks.261 But in any case, the Greek practice dominated the eastern Mediterranean, from which the Gospels, written in Greek, hail.
7.8c. Peer Review: Developing Consensus Standards
Peer review from fellow historical writers made getting one’s facts right a matter of honor.262 Inventing events (rather than merely embellishing relevant details) risked refutation and serious denunciation, making most guilty works unlikely to survive their patrons’ prestige interests. Historians criticized other historians for being just five years off on a figure’s age.263 Some historians especially criticized predecessors who valued rhetorical framing above accurate information;264 more gently, some claimed that their predecessors embellished or omitted some key matters only because they lacked sufficient information.265 Less easy to avoid were charges of distorted perspectives,266 since the accusers, of course, had perspectives of their own.
The ancient paragon of critical historiographic method is Polybius. Polybius denounces authors who sensationalize their story too much to make it more graphic and provide cohesiveness.267 He condemns those who include hearsay about distant lands that cannot be verified.268 He complains about one historian’s often contradictory accounts and “careless statements.”269
Polybius’s invective against the rhetorical historian Timaeus270 is unfairly harsh.271 Nevertheless, it illustrates the demands for accuracy to which ancient historians could expect to be subjected by their severest peers. Polybius complains that Timaeus’s work reveals that he was unacquainted with the location about which he writes,272 failed to investigate adequately,273 and mixed up his facts even when he did investigate properly.274 Even though most ancient writers mentioned sources only sparingly, Polybius accuses Timaeus of inventing any sources that he fails to identify.275
Yet the most important standards are wider historiographic standards that Timaeus himself shares in principle. He admits that falsehood is the worst vice in writing history and that those who write falsehood should find a different name for their book than history.276 Both historians agree that it is not a work’s form, but the truth of its content, that makes it history.277 In the early empire historians continued to insist on such standards, at least for others.278
Hellenistic historians may have rarely met Polybius’s standard (probably often including Polybius himself),279 but most of our surviving examples remain rooted in genuine events. Moreover, Thucydides (also a careful historian by our standards) remained a primary model,280 sometimes even for more rhetorically oriented historians.281
Although many scholars rightly underscore the rhetorical side of ancient historiography, it is unfortunate that some who do so also count this form of presentation against its historical value. On the basis of that emphasis, some knowledgeable scholars write as if the line between history and fiction is fairly thin.282 Yet neither perspectives nor rhetorical strategies precluded ancient historians from using primarily historical information.283 Although they exercised freedom to select, adapt, and often embellish their material, ancient writers made explicit claims to the effect that their material itself should be factual.284 This practice differs starkly from typical ancient novels.
7.9a. Examples of Source-Usage
Good historians expected other good historians to consult sources when possible,285 a practice mandatory only in information-based writing. Historians usually had multiple sources.286
Herodotus and Thucydides were perhaps the two most widely read historians in antiquity,287 and both wrote especially based on the information available to them. Ancient readers recognized that Herodotus wrote more for his audience’s pleasure than Thucydides did;288 his charm consisted especially in making his readers feel that they were reading stories rather than history.289 Thucydides, however, had superior access to the events that he recorded, and he acquired a reputation for notably accurate history-writing.290
That Herodotus depends on prior information does not mean that all of that information is correct, nor does it mean that he correctly interpreted all of it. Herodotus sometimes misunderstood his oral sources in his travels, and he could not read other nations’ written ones.291 Yet even Herodotus, who mostly pioneered292 the sort of ethnographic research he undertook, genuinely depended on prior information. His depiction of the eastern Mediterranean coastal regions fits what other sources reveal of these regions.293 Against some more radical critics, Herodotus’s vast array of citations scattered throughout his work demonstrates his genuine travels and research.294 Herodotus also displays far less Hellenic bias than we might expect.295
Even the rhetorically focused, pre-Christian historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus emphasizes that historical inquiry requires not merely rhetorical skill but research.296 By virtue of their trade, ancient historians depended on sources, whether oral interviews or earlier texts.297 When their sources were written, they usually adapted or at least paraphrased them to make them their own.298
Where ancient historians and biographers do not cite their sources, modern scholars debate about what sources they may have used, including many that are now fragmentary or no longer extant.299 Nepos’s biography of Themistocles closely follows some sources that happen to remain extant even today, even though he cites them only rarely.300 Sometimes even some later historians had access to information that some of their predecessors lacked or omitted.301
Although, for reasons of style, historians did not acknowledge all their sources,302 elite authors often felt constrained to indicate some of them,303 especially if their elite readers might recognize them anyway. A historical writer who omitted information available to some of his predecessors might explain that he had read almost everything but did not judge it all suitable for inclusion.304
The Gospels do not identify specific sources for the gospel tradition, but any Gospel synopsis reveals that at least some Gospels used some sources. The Evangelists’ reticence to name sources might follow some Jewish conventions on this point; in some such works we can identify the sources only because they are extant.305 The more popular audience anticipated might be a more important factor, since popular works of various genres were less likely to cite sources.306 Earlier exaggerated contrasts between elite and popular literature aside,307 the Gospels do not reflect an elite audience.308
Perhaps most important, they may fail to specify their sources because the shared tradition had not yet diverged widely regarding these events of a recent generation. Moreover, ancient historians most often mentioned their sources only when they conflicted309 or the author disagreed or was unsure about their reliability.310 Although writers often cited eyewitnesses when this might add authority to their claims,311 recent eyewitness or oral sources did not always require documentation.312 Writers of contemporary history often lacked “variant versions.”313 A historian might also more generally refer readers interested in more detail to “other historians,”314 not unlike Luke’s oblique reference to other authors in Luke 1:1 (cf. 1 Cor 15:6).
The limited extant first-century sources available today should not be used to judge what sources ancient writers typically had available.315 Ancient authors obviously had access to many sources that are no longer extant.316 For example, Pliny the Elder, while explaining that he could not survey everything,317 notes that he surveyed about two thousand volumes and supplemented them with other data. He complains that many of these sources plagiarized others without crediting them.318 Other cases were not plagiarism but deliberate literary referents to classic works, for those ingenious enough to catch them.319 Seneca’s secretaries recorded the philosopher’s dying words, which Tacitus decides not to report because, he claims, they remained too well-known in his day to merit repetition in his work.320 Tacitus normally follows annals and earlier histories (sometimes specified only when they became notorious),321 but also consulted personal memoirs from perhaps half a century earlier.322
7.9b. Critical Use of Historical Sources323
Historians not only had sources, but they were sometimes critical of them. Although accuracy of one’s sources was not important in all genres, it was important for historians,324 who often sought to confirm their information.325 Likewise, Philostratus, in his biographies of sophists, complains that his research provided no definitive resolution of which of two divergent sources was more accurate;326 his concern in wanting to resolve this question was thus historical accuracy.
Sources did diverge, especially though not exclusively regarding the distant past. Ancient authors often cite varying accounts, even when preferring one above another.327 Arrian prefers above other sources his two earliest ones, which often agree, and he chooses between them when they diverge;328 when sources diverge too much he frankly complains that the exact truth is unrecoverable.329 At one point Plutarch names five sources for a “majority” position and nine for a minority one,330 plus an extant letter attributed to the person about whom he writes. He then reminds his audience that the minor divergence does not affect what he considers more significant, namely, our view of his hero’s character.331
Although there were plenty of cases of historical credulity,332 and ancient historians were less critical of their sources than are their modern successors,333 the more critical writers tried to distinguish or even explain, when possible, which sources tended to be more accurate.334 They evaluated them based on:
•inscriptions;335
•material remains;336
•a criterion of coherency with other external evidence337 such as
•known customs of a report’s day338
•other historical context339 (including chronological data)340
•coherence with documentary sources341
•consistency of reported behavior with a person’s other known behavior (something like form critics’ criterion of coherence);342
•internal consistency;343
•historical plausibility;344
•reason;345
•removing what they took to be some sources’ bias;346
•comparison with earlier sources;347
•consistency with the person’s character;348
•and sometimes even stylistic criteria for authenticity.349
Following the probability argument standard in the law courts,350 the rhetorical historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus challenges an event recounted in earlier histories because of intrinsic improbabilities in their accounts.351 Arrian often evaluates various reports by comparing them (as I do in ch. 10); he notes that one story too prominent to ignore is not reported by any of the eyewitness writers, hence it is likely unreliable.352 When not offering their own evaluation, some authors simply urged readers to use discretion.353
Rather than simply rejecting given writers without reason, biographers usually did not consistently accept or reject any particular writer’s account unless they found it consistently coherent with or contrary to available facts.354 Still more conspicuously, they regularly cited sources where they felt that citations were needed.355
7.9c. Historians and Critical Thinking
Thucydides sometimes had to evaluate conflicting claims of eyewitnesses;356 Livy was sometimes quite critical,357 even if not consistently so.358 Likewise, Arrian critically evaluated even his best sources;359 some modern historians think that he evaluated some of them too strictly.360 Biographers, too, might evaluate sources’ or witnesses’ biases or motives.361
When a distinction between accurate and inaccurate sources proved impossible, writers often simply presented several different current opinions on what had happened.362 A writer might simply admit honestly that he did not know how something happened.363 Josephus sometimes leaves final decisions about causation to the reader’s discretion.364 They could openly note that specific figures they took over from earlier annals could be exaggerated, yet they emphasize that the exaggeration did not affect the point that the slaughter was in any case great.365
Even Herodotus, who reports a range of sources without evaluating their accuracy, does not assume their full accuracy; he expressly expects his audience to understand that they are responsible to decide for themselves.366 One could report a myth in one’s source without commiting oneself to accept it.367
Biographers also shared this interest. In contrast to the earlier writer Xenophon, most biographers from the late Republic and early empire tried to assess their sources critically so they could discover genuine information about their subjects.368
Historians were concerned for rhetorical presentation, even to the extent of reconstructing some speech events with the most plausible guesswork possible. They inferred motives at times. They wanted readers to enjoy their narratives, yet they regularly insisted on maintaining truth about the events. Bias was inevitable, but the ideal in principle was objectivity, and this ideal often limited the most unfair effects of biases.
Ancient writers had their agendas, whether political, moral, or theological, often more overtly than their modern successors. Nevertheless, both historians and others repeatedly affirmed the ideal for accurate information in historical and biographic works. The eastern Mediterranean historical practice relevant to the Gospels included investigation, such as interviewing surviving sources that had been close to the events narrated.
Such consensus standards imposed some unofficial constraints on respectable historians’ embellishments. Rather than historians making up events, they used sources, and often used them critically. In contrast to some modern assumptions about ancient historiography, the latter did value the preservation of historical memory.
1. I refer to Greco-Roman historiography. For discussions of earlier Israelite and ancient Near Eastern historiography, see Van Seters, Search; Frahm, Jansen-Winkeln, and Wiesehöfer, “Historiography”; Millard, Hoffmeier, and Baker, Historiography; for some possible parallels with Greek historiography, cf. Van Seters, “Historiography.”
2. Becker, Birth, 59–60, 63.
3. Pelling, Texts, 69, 89; Keener, Acts, 1:63. Novelists of course deliberately create suspense; cf., e.g., Doulamis, “Storytelling.”
4. Bosworth, Arrian, v. Note, e.g., Philostratus’s probable reworking of Damis (Life of Apollonius 1.3.1, in Robiano, “Apologia,” 100).
5. Winterbottom, “Rhetoric”; cf. Penner, Praise, 129.
6. Schepens, “History,” 54, citing Strasburger, “Umblick.”
7. See Laistner, Historians, 3, 8–9, 30–31, 44; Meister, “Historiography: Greece,” 421; Rebenich, “Prose”; Byrskog, Story, 203–13; Rothschild, Rhetoric (esp. 65–66, 291). Matijasik, Canons, should be useful, but was published too recently for me to engage personally here.
8. See Fox, “Dionysius.”
9. Cf. Botha, “Rhetoric and Josephus.” Even his War might contain Greek tragic allusions (see Forte, “Echoes Revisited”), e.g., in maternal cannibalism during the siege of Jerusalem (see Chapman, “Cannibalism,” 422–24, on War 6.199–219). As we have noted, tragedy did influence the writing of history (for discussion of the complex relationship, see esp. Rutherford, “Tragedy”), as it influenced many genres (Rutherford, “Tragedy,” 513).
10. See Burridge, “Biography.” But biographies were rarely as partisan as genuine forensic speech, where a primary object was legal victory (e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lysias 8).
11. Fronto, To Antoninus 2.6.1–2. A history written in a style between the normal historical and discursive styles could sell well among the rhetorically trained elite (Pliny, Letters 5.5.3).
12. See Pliny, Letters 1.16.4; 2.11.17.
13. Rothschild, Rhetoric, 62–64; cf. Penner, Praise, 217.
14. Rothschild, Rhetoric, 69. One should observe, however, that there is a difference in degree, as we have noted (see, e.g., Pliny, Letters 7.17.3; 8.4.1).
15. E.g., although battle scenes are rhetorically similar in most ancient historians, battles naturally had similar characteristics (Laistner, Historians, 57, 95), and the more militarily knowledgeable historians could get even military details quite accurate (Laistner, Historians, 58).
16. See Rothschild, Rhetoric, 75n58; de Jonge, “Syntax,” 458.
17. Cadbury, Foakes Jackson, and Lake, “Writing History,” 13.
18. Cf. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 10.2.73, 102; 12.10.59.
19. Fronto, To Verus 2.1.14. On this style, see, e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demosthenes 15; Cicero, Orator ad M. Brutum 5.20–6.21; Pliny, Letters 3.13.4; 6.33.7–8; 7.12.4; 9.26.1; 9.26.10; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 6.14; Longinus, On the Sublime. In Latin, use of the grand style for historiography continues as late as Ammianus Marcellinus (Kelly, “Forge Tongues,” 474).
20. See, e.g., Kennedy, “Survey,” 18; Rowe, “Style,” 156.
21. Rothschild, Rhetoric, 69–70, 93, 95; cf. similarly Nicolai, “Place,” 21.
22. On Tacitus’s rhetorical prowess, see Moore, “Introduction,” ix (citing Pliny, Letters 2.1.6; 2.11.17); cf. Tacitus’s Dialogue on Oratory; for embellished scenes, see Hadas, “Introduction,” xvi–xvii.
23. See, e.g., Laistner, Historians, 129; Mosley, “Reporting,” 20–22; Hadas, “Introduction,” xviii; Syme, “Tacitus”; cf. Marincola, “Tacitus’ Prefaces.”
24. See, e.g., Suetonius, Rhetoricians, throughout.
25. Rolfe, “Introduction,” xix.
26. Meister, “Theopompus”; Laistner, Historians, 4–5; but cf. Brown, Historians, 115.
27. See Byrskog, Story, 199–253.
28. Byrskog, Story, 213, 223; Rothschild, Rhetoric, 88–91; Nicolai, “Place,” 21.
29. Pliny, Letters 5.8.9.
30. Pliny, Letters 5.8.10–11. On the distinction between rhetoric and history in Cicero, see Nicolai, “Place,” 21. Pure rhetoric, not bound by historical or other truth-telling conventions, can employ fabrications (Gorgias, Encomium of Helen 11, 13).
31. Dio Cassius, Roman History 1.1.1–2.
32. Byrskog, Story, 223. Byrskog means “core” in a much fuller sense than A. J. Woodman (see Byrskog, Story, 184), believing that ancient historians cared about facts (Byrskog, Story, 179–84). Cf. similarly Eddy and Boyd, Legend, 330–34.
33. Byrskog, Story, 253. The criticisms of Matthews, “Review,” involve not so much Byrskog’s analysis of ancient historiography (which I cite here) but his application of this category to the Gospels. As already noted, however, most scholars do believe that Luke was writing ancient historiography.
34. E.g., Josephus, Against Apion 1.24–25.
35. Lucian, How to Write History 7, 11, 15, 17, 22–23, 43–45.
36. Lucian, How to Write History 50, 55.
37. Lucian, How to Write History 19–20, 44, 57.
38. Licona, Differences, 11, 18; cf. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 3.5.54.
39. See Keener, Acts, 1:258–319; Fornara, Nature, 143–68; Hammond, “Speeches”; Gempf, “Speaking” (esp. 264, 272, 283–84); Marincola, “Speeches,” 121–27; Porciani, “Enigma,” 333–34; cf. also Polybius, Histories 12.25a.4–5; 12.25b.1, 4; Cadbury, Making, 186–87; Laistner, Historians, 129; Walbank, Speeches, 1, 19; Hadas, “Introduction,” xvi–xvii; Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric, 110; Horsley, “Speeches,” 609; Padilla, Acts, 124–38; Padilla, Speeches; Becker, Birth, 98; also discussions on Thucydides, History 1.22.1 (e.g., Porter, “Thucydidean View?”).
40. Aune, Environment, 82, comparing Tacitus, Annals 11.23–25, with an inscription; and Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 12.417–18, with 1 Macc 8:23–32.
41. Bosworth, Arrian, 94–96, noting Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 20.1–2.2 (see esp. 20.1.2; 20.2.1).
42. McGing, “Adaptation,” 124, 128.
43. Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 62.
44. See, e.g., Gempf, “Speaking,” 283–84; Forsythe, “Quadrigarius,” 396; Marincola, “Speeches,” 129.
45. Develin, “Introduction,” 9, noting Justin, Epitome 38.3.11 (trans. p. 238): Trogus used “indirect discourse, since he was critical of Livy and Sallust for having transgressed the proper bounds of history by inserting into their work speeches in direct discourse, but composed in their style.” (Justin’s version of the speech appears in Livy, History 38.4.1–38.7.10.) A sampling of Justin’s epitome of Trogus’s treatment of Jewish history (Justin, Epitome 36.2.1–36.3.9), however, suggests that at least one of these authors integrated by memory Jewish and anti-Jewish material fairly carelessly.
46. Fornara, Nature, 160–61; more generally, see 154–68. Livy probably works partly from memory and certainly does not copy Polybius slavishly (cf. here Mattila, “Question,” 214).
47. Atkinson, “Introduction,” xxix.
48. Atkinson, “Introduction,” xxxiii, rightly suspects them of being “more free composition than authentic transcripts.”
49. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 20.1.1–4.
50. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demosthenes 41 (LCL). On Thucydides and Polybius being stricter regarding speeches than was Herodotus, see Aune, Dictionary, 448.
51. Atkinson, “Introduction,” xxix, contrasting Arrian, Alexander 7.9–10, and Curtius Rufus 10.2.15–29.
52. Pliny, Letters 1.16.4.
53. Tacitus, Annals 15.63; see Talbert, Mediterranean Milieu, 210; Laistner, Historians, 128.
54. Marincola, “Speeches,” 120, citing, e.g., Polybius, Histories 18.11; Sallust, Catiline’s War 50.5; Livy, History 37.45.11; Arrian, Alexander 5.27.1; Tacitus, Histories 1.15–16; Agricola 29.4, and noting that emphasis on verbatim quotes were rare and dealt with short lines (e.g., Tacitus, Annals 14.59.4; 15.67.4).
55. With, e.g., Fornara, Nature, 142.
56. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demosthenes 47 (LCL 1:418–19); cf. Let. Aris. 322.
57. Maximus of Tyre, Philosophical Orations 22.5; Justin, Epitome pref.4; 2 Macc 2:25; cf. Tacitus’s apology in Annals 4.32–33; further discussion in Fornara, Nature, 120–33, esp. 121, 133–34, citing Cicero, Letters to Friends 5.12.4.
58. E.g., Tacitus, Annals 3.1; 4.62–63; 5.9; 16.30–32.
59. Velleius Paterculus, History 2.67.1.
60. Polybius, Histories 2.56.10. Of course, Polybius’s own speeches are not verbatim recollections.
61. Polybius, Histories 2.56.11. See Keener, Acts, 1:126; Becker, Birth, 66–67. Poetic treatments of historical events (e.g., Silius Italicus; Lucan) enjoyed more freedom of expression (cf. Pliny, Letters 8.4.1).
62. Lucian, How to Write History 9 (LCL 6:15); cf. Polybius, Histories 9.2.6.
63. Cf. Lucian, How to Write History 9, 16, 43.
64. E.g., Lucian, How to Write History 59.
65. See Byrskog, Story, 213; Rothschild, Rhetoric, 88–91; Nicolai, “Place,” 21.
66. Rothschild, Rhetoric, 81.
67. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.1.2–4; 1.4.2.
68. Rothschild, “Irony,” 291.
69. Cf. Bhatt’s complaint about those who exaggerate the difference between ancient literary histories and modern “scientific” histories (Bhatt, “Rhetoric,” 181–82).
70. Fornara, Nature, 72, 100.
71. Fornara, Nature, 104. If a history was too biased, it was probably the weakness of the particular historian (Fornara, Nature, 91).
72. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.154–57. He challenges a source’s bias in Antiquities 16.183–84.
73. Lucian, How to Write History 59 (LCL). The rhetorical historian Theopompus, by contrast, “impeached nearly everybody in a quarrelsome spirit.” Writers such as Pompeius Trogus, often apparently reliable, seem to adopt their sources’ encomiastic exaggeration at times (for one conspicuous example, see Justin, Epitome 12.9.7–8).
74. Lucian, How to Write History 7; cf. 11.
75. Lucian, How to Write History 39; cf. 41.
76. Emphasizing it, e.g., Laistner, Historians, 45–48, 55–56, 63; contrast Fornara, Nature, 72.
77. Brown, Historians, 93–94.
78. Brown, Historians, 97.
79. Laistner, Historians, 131–39.
80. Laistner, Historians, 132–34.
81. Bosworth, Arrian, 135, 153–56, on Tacitus and Arrian.
82. E.g., Laistner, Historians, 131.
83. Polybius, Histories 3.4.1 (LCL).
84. Polybius, Histories 10.21.8 (LCL). Historians often praised or presented views of both sides in a war, thereby amplifying pathos (e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities bk. 3; 9.39.1–6; Livy, History 21.1.3) and the credit due the victor.
85. For Josephus, see, e.g., Curran, “War”; for nineteenth-century historiography, see, e.g., Tomkins, Wilberforce, 15–17.
86. Cf. Licona, Differences, 78.
87. E.g., Hägg, Biography, 3. So also in historians, such as Thucydides; see Pelling, Texts, 77–81, esp. 77; cf. also, e.g., Justin, Epitome 6.1.1; 8.6.6; 35.2.3; 36.4.8; 38.9.10; Caesar’s Gallic War (Grillo, “Scribam”). A historian could, however, admit ignorance of motives (e.g., Tacitus, Annals 15.36).
88. Licona, Differences, 52, 83, 99, 109.
89. De Pourcq and Roskam, “Virtues,” 169.
90. Smith and Kostopoulos, “Biography,” 402–3, citing Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Letter to Gnaeus Pompeius 6.
91. Note Pelling, Texts, 77–81, esp. 77.
92. E.g., Nepos, On Great Generals 5 (Cimon), 3.1; 8 (Thrasybulus), 4.1–2; 12 (Chabrias), 3.3; 14 (Datames), 5.2; 15 (Epaminondas), 7.1; 18 (Eumenes), 7.2; 10.2; 23 (Hannibal), 1.2; Velleius Paterculus, History 2.47.2; Josephus, Life 204, 423, 425; Tacitus, Annals 16.18; Plutarch, Coriolanus 39.1; Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 1.21.515; Diogenes Laertius, Lives 5.76–77; Herodian, History 3.2.3. Pervo, Acts, 141n9, associates inference of motives too narrowly with popular and fictitious works.
93. Cornelius Nepos, On Great Generals 8 (Thrasybulus), 4.1–2; 12 (Chabrias), 3.3; Velleius Paterculus, History 2.40.4.
94. See, e.g., Rhetoric to Alexander 36, 1445a.12; Plutarch, How to Profit by One’s Enemies 10, Moralia 91E.
95. Arrian, Alexander 7.14.
96. I follow here my work in Acts, 1:148–65.
97. E.g., military history, women’s history, church history; cf. Greek historians’ comparable range of interest in Justin, Epitome pref.3.
98. Schröter, Jesus to New Testament, 50, 116.
99. Schröter, Jesus to New Testament, 47; cf. 37–40.
100. See at length, e.g., Hemer, Acts, 79–85; Byrskog, Story, 256–65; Penner, Praise, 129, 179; Mason, Josephus and New Testament, 63; Grant, “Introduction,” 10, 13.
101. Byrskog, Story, 186–90.
102. See esp. Lyons, Autobiography, 29–32 (though he is not advising rejecting such texts’ historical value wholesale; 66). Cf. Rodríguez, “Jesus Tradition,” 195: an Evangelist could use “resources already latent within the tradition to bring the tradition to bear on a new situation in innovative ways.”
103. E.g., Polybius, Histories 1.1.2; Fornara, Nature, 113; see also Penner, “Discourse,” 73–77.
104. E.g., Polybius, Histories 36.9.1–17 (cf. Momigliano, Historiography, 71–73); Livy, History 1.pref.10.
105. Laistner, Historians, 6, 95; for discussion and nuancing, see Champion, “Aetolia,” esp. 357–62.
106. E.g., Justin, Epitome 5.1.10–11; 9.3.10 and throughout.
107. E.g., Mason, Josephus and New Testament, 60–71, 77–81; cf. 196–98.
108. See, e.g., Velleius Paterculus, History 2.80.3, on a putative event some sixty-six years earlier. The propaganda in 2.89.4–5 reflects the earliest sources (e.g., Res Gestae 6.35).
109. E.g., Velleius Paterculus, History 2.89.3.
110. See, e.g., Herodotus, Histories 2.4, 32, 50, 58, 77, 82 (and remarks in Meister, “Herodotus,” 268); Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities bk. 3; 9.39.1–6; Livy, History 21.1.3; Velleius Paterculus, History 2.18.1; cf. Marincola, “Speeches,” 119.
111. On whose biases, cf. Wade-Gery, “Thucydides,” 1519, adding, “Perhaps no good historian is impartial.” Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Letter to Gnaeus Pompeius 3, thinks Thucydides more biased (in his case, against Athens, which had exiled him) than Herodotus was; but Dionysius accuses him of focusing on Athens’ failings, not of inventing them.
112. Polybius, Histories 9.9.9–10.
113. Note, e.g., Josephus’s Jewish War; Manetho’s Aegyptiaca; Xenophon’s Anabasis; Athenian writers after the Peloponnesian War; cf. Pompeians in Melchior, “Pompey” (not all voices in the early empire were positive even about Augustus; see Davis, “Evaluations”).
114. For history “written by the winners” among Roman historians, see, e.g., Feldherr, “Translation,” 390.
115. E.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities bk. 3 (Albans); 9.39.1–6; Livy, History 21.1.3; Velleius Paterculus, History 2.18.1; cf. also the speeches noted in Marincola, “Speeches,” 119.
116. Lucian, How to Write History 7.
117. Meister, “Herodotus,” 268. This approach did not commend him to everyone (cf., e.g., Plutarch, Malice of Herodotus).
118. Burridge, Gospels, 177–79.
119. Plutarch, Malice of Herodotus 3, Moralia 855C.
120. Brown, Historians, 125.
121. Cf., e.g., Eshleman, “Sophists,” on biographies of sophists.
122. Burridge, Gospels, 147, 183; for apologetic autobiography, cf., e.g., Josephus, Life 336–67; 2 Cor 11:8–33; Gal 1:11–24; discussion in Lyons, Autobiography.
123. Sterling, Historiography, 103–310; see also Sterling, “Appropriation,” 234–38; Wandrey, “Literature,” 696; cf. Meiser, “Gattung.”
124. Hägg, Biography, 273.
125. See Fornara, Nature, 115–16; Lang, Kunst, 7–13, 97–167 (esp. note problem-solving strategies in Sallust and Tacitus, 108–37). For moralizing elements in ancient historiography, Marguerat, Histoire, 28–29, cites examples from Dionysius, Livy, Sallust, and Plutarch. See, e.g., Livy’s use of the legendary Romulus as an example (Stem, “Lessons”).
126. See extended treatment in Keener, Acts, 1:152–53.
127. They were rare in novels except those modeled on historical figures; for those, see Karla, “Life of Aesop,” 58–59; Chance, “Fiction,” 138–39; Beck, “Demonax,” 81.
128. Pelling, Texts, 100.
129. Cf., e.g., Chaplin, “Conversations”; Bosworth, Arrian, 155; McInerney, “Arrian and Romance”; Galinsky, “Introduction,” 4, 21; Gowing, “Memory,” 43–48, esp. 46–47 (on Livy, History pref.9–10, and Tacitus, Agricola 46.3–4); Becker, Birth, 23. Note Kelhoffer, “Maccabees at Prayer,” on application-driven differences between 1 and 2 Maccabees.
130. E.g., Herodotus, Histories 1.1.pref.; Polybius, Histories 7.12; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 10.3.1; 11.11.2, 6; 11.38.6; 15.1.1; 17.38.4; Justin, Epitome pref.4. History also records what is unusual; see, e.g., Thucydides, History 1.23.1–3; Polybius, Histories 1.1; 1.37; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 11.11.2; 11.59.1; 11.61.7; 12.38.1; cf. 11.89.8; 12.17.3.
131. Judge, First Christians, 249; see also 250–51.
132. Rüpke, “Knowledge,” 93–94, here esp. 94.
133. Polybius, Histories 1.1.1 (LCL).
134. Polybius, Histories 1.1; 1.35.
135. Polybius, Histories 1.57.
136. Polybius, Histories 1.35.1–10.
137. Fornara, Nature, 113, noting (115–16) that Romans emphasized this benefit even more.
138. Moore, “Introduction,” xiii; Hadas, “Introduction,” xvii–xix (noting the popular model of Livy); Laistner, Historians, 113–14 (citing Annals 2.65.1; 4.33.2), 123, 131–39 (criticizing his tendentiousness); Williams, “Germanicus” (addressing Tacitus’s perspective in one work).
139. Tacitus, Agricola 1.
140. Tacitus, Annals 3.65.
141. Tacitus, Annals 4.33. In other cases, the ways he reports the accounts reveal his opinions as well as explicit asides would have (e.g., Annals 5.1–2; 14.39).
142. E.g., Lucian, How to Write History 59.
143. E.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.2.1.
144. Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings 2.pref. (LCL); see further Rüpke, “Knowledge,” 89.
145. Becker, Birth, 126, citing Velleius Paterculus, History 2.126.2–4.
146. Maximus of Tyre, Philosophical Orations 22.5 (trans. Trapp).
147. E.g., Polybius, Histories 1.35.1–10; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 31.10.2; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 7.65.2; Justin, Epitome 3.2.6; 12.3.12; 12.4.1; Velleius Paterculus, History 2.75.2; Cornelius Nepos, On Great Generals 16 (Pelopidas), 3.1; Tacitus, Annals 16.15; Arrian, Alexander 4.10.8; Dio Cassius, Roman History 1.5.4; characterizing asides throughout Velleius Paterculus (e.g., History 2.41.1–2; 2.66.3–5; 2.72.1–2; 2.91.2–3; 2.98.2–3). For narrative asides in histories and biographies, see Sheeley, Asides, 56–93; for Herodotus’s judgments (e.g., Histories 1.34; 2.123.3; 4.205; 9.120), see Dewald, “Construction,” 95; for Xenophon’s, see Dewald, “Construction,” 98; for Tacitus’s, see Laistner, Historians, 139 (unhappily).
148. See, e.g., von Dobbeler, “Geschichte”; van der Kooij, “Death of Josiah”; Reinmuth, “Investitur”; Bergren, “Nehemiah”; Borgen, “Reviewing”; Derrenbacker, Practices, 93.
149. Pliny, Letters 5.8.1–2.
150. See, e.g., Trompf, Historiography, 51; cf. Plümacher, Geschichte, 15–32; Plümacher, “Cicero und Lukas,” 772–73.
151. Polybius, Histories 8.8.3–6, 8–9.
152. Polybius, Histories 3.4.1; 8.8.7. See also e.g., Dio Cassius, Roman History 1.1.1–2; Pliny, Letters 5.8.9–11; Lucian, How to Write History 8–9, 39–40; comments about Suetonius in Rolfe, “Introduction,” xix.
153. Polybius, Histories 10.26.9.
154. Lucian, How to Write History 9.
155. Lysias, Orations 2.61, §196; Aeschines, Embassy 75–76. Thus some objected to (Dio Chrysostom, Orations 7.119; Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 4.2) or even censored (Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings 2.6.7b) immoral mimes that could teach wrong values by imitation; in fact, most mimes were vulgar (Friedländer, Life, 2:92).
156. See, e.g., Polybius, Histories 2.56.13; 3.32.2. Ancient historians did not, as some contend, ignore lines of cause and effect (Rajak, Josephus, 102).
157. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 5.56.1; Polybius, Histories 3.31.11–13.
158. See, e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 6.80.1; Rhetoric to Alexander 8.1429a.21–1430a.13; Cicero, On Defense of Sestius 48.102; cf. also Kennedy, “Survey,” 21.
159. On such historical “paradigms,” see also Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 37.4.1; Herodian, History 3.13.3; on both past and present paradigms, cf. Velleius Paterculus, History 2.92.5.
160. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.6.3–5; cf. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 15.1.1; 37.4.1. Cf. Roman exempla in Petitfils, “Tale,” 154–58; Gunderson, “Augustus.”
161. Philo, Abraham 4; Josephus, Against Apion 2.204; 1 Cor 10:11. On Abraham as exemplum in Philo and Josephus, cf. Reed, “Construction” (contrasting Testament of Abraham).
162. E.g., 4 Macc 1:7–8.
163. See extended documentation in Keener, Acts, 1:154–55, esp. nn. 50–63.
164. E.g., Polybius, Histories 2.56.13; 3.6.1–3.7.3; 3.31.11–13; 3.32.2. For many events, multiple complementary causes are possible (Pelling, Texts, 88).
165. Cf. causation by Fortune or deities in Nicolaus, Augustus 23 (FGrH 130); Tacitus in Annals 3.18; Hadas, “Introduction,” xvi; Fortune in Polybius in Walbank, “Fortune”; see also Becker, Birth, 128, citing Polybius, Histories 1.4; Tacitus, Annals 6.22.1.
166. See, e.g., Justin, Epitome 24.3.10; Appian, Roman History 7.8.53; esp. Squires, Plan; Squires, “Plan”; Shauf, Divine. Of course, they did so less than priests and prophets; cf. Balentine, “Future,” 146–51.
167. E.g., the interpretation of a head found beneath Rome (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 4.59.2; 4.61.2; Plutarch, Camillus 31.4; Dio Cassius, frag., in Zonaras, Extracts of History 7.11).
168. E.g., Apollodorus, Epitome 5.10; Ps.-Callisthenes, Alexander Romance 1.30, 33; Xenophon, Ephesiaca 1.6–7; Apollonius King of Tyre 48; Bonz, Past as Legacy, 192; in historiography, e.g., Justin, Epitome 6.2.4–5; 7.1.7–8; 7.6.1–2; 12.2.3; 20.3.2–3; Velleius Paterculus, History 2.24.3; 2.57.2; Suetonius, Julius 81; Squires, Plan, 121–29; Walbank, “Fortune,” 350–54.
169. Xenophon, Anabasis 5.2.24.
170. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 8.56.1.
171. E.g., Polybius, Histories 31.9.1–4; 32.15.14; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 14.63.1; 14.69.4; 14.76.3; 16.58.6; 27.4.3; Cornelius Nepos, On Great Generals 17 (Agesilaus), 4.8; Justin, Epitome 2.12.8–10; 24.6.4–5, 8–16; 28.3.5–8; Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings 1.1.18–21; 1.1.ext.3 (posthumously); 1.1ext.5; Livy, History 42.28.12; Pliny, Natural History 33.24.83; Appian, Roman History 3.12.1–2; Babrius, Fables 78; Phaedrus, Fables 4.11.1–13; Lucian, Zeus Rants 24, 32; Pausanias, Description of Greece 3.23.5; 9.33.6; 9.39.12; Quintilian, Declamations 323 intro; Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters 12.523ab; cf. Cicero, Against Verres 2.5.72.184–89; 2 Macc 3:25–26; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 12.358–59.
172. Frei, “Apologetics,” 56, notes that this view was also influential in eighteenth-century England.
173. Squires, “Plan,” 38; Squires, Plan, 15–17, 38–46; Balch, “Genre,” 10–11; Marguerat, Histoire, 36–37; cf. Downing, “Theism”; Downing, “Common Ground”; sometimes Polybius (Walbank, “Fortune”); pace Pervo, Profit, 83, 123, 129. Hellenistic historiographers of Rome did seem less emphatic about the divine plan for Rome’s destiny (e.g., Justin, Epitome 43.2.5) than were some Romans (Pelling, “Historians of Rome,” 257–58).
174. Squires, Plan, 18–20, 46–51; Derrenbacker, Practices, 93.
175. Squires, Plan, 20–36, 52–77; Brawley, Centering, 86–106; Marguerat, Histoire, 59–61.
176. Some argue that the Christian theology of history provided the first serious philosophy of (and teleology for) historiography (Nicolai, “Place,” 17–18).
177. E.g., Philo, Creation 1–2.
178. Some question the religious propagandistic function even of Apuleius, noting his satirical emphasis (Hofmann, “Novels: Latin,” 844; Murgatroyd, “Ending”; Libby, “Moons”). I am not denying religious content in such novels; that was part of the cultural landscape, and sometimes also necessary for the climactic deus ex machina.
179. Metzger, “Considerations,” 15, 19–20; cf. Martin, “Mithraism”; Blomberg, “Mithras,” 79.
180. See, e.g., Ytterbrink, Gospel, 89.
181. See Lee, “Source Criticism,” 209–10, contrasting the primarily virtuous and primarily drunken portraits of Alexander.
182. Postmodern historians rightly note that while historians may correctly include facts, their selection and framing of material reflect particular perspectives. For one discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of postmodern historiography, favoring critical realism in approaching the Gospels, see Licona, Resurrection, 71–89. Before the postmodern turn, Caird already distinguished between events’ actuality and their significance, noting that “no historical statement is purely referential” (Caird, Language, 201–2).
183. Dunn, Acts, xvi.
184. Dunn, Remembered, 185.
185. Laistner, Historians, 95. For varied applications of Francis Asbury (some quite one-sided), see Wigger, Saint, 405–18.
186. See Tomkins, Wilberforce, 15–16, on editorial shaping, and 16–17, on the genuineness of included recollections.
187. Marshall, Historian, 47, critiquing Perrin for his outdated understanding of historiography. Judge, “Sources,” 280–81, even challenges the disengaged, depersonalizing preference of much modern (as opposed to ancient) historiography as unrealistic.
188. See my complaint in “Did Not Know.”
189. 4 Maccabees blends stories from 2 Maccabees with moral instruction.
190. Vermes, Jesus and Judaism, 19–20; cf. Levinskaya, Setting, 2; Hemer, Acts, 79–90.
191. As with Josephus; see Sterling, Historiography, 103–310.
192. E.g., Berossus (cf. Kuhrt, “Mesopotamia,” 62–63; Dillery, “Historians,” 222–25) and Manetho (Dillery, “Historians,” 225–28); see further Sterling, “Historians,” 502.
193. Sterling, Historiography, 103–36 (though cf. Dillery, “Historians,” 228–30).
194. Sterling, Historiography, 137–225; see also Sterling, “Appropriation,” 234–38; Harrington, “Bible,” 245; Wandrey, “Literature,” 696.
195. See Meiser, “Gattung.” Its discourses help support this conclusion.
196. Sterling, Historiography, 226–310. More generally, others also emphasize Josephus’s apologetic objectives (e.g., Feldman, “Apologist”; in defending himself, Vogel, “Vita”; Lamour, “Organisation”).
197. See, e.g., Kelley, “Perspective.”
198. See Hata, “Moses.”
199. See, e.g., Mosley, “Reporting,” 26; Fornara, Nature, 61; Hemer, Acts, 63–70; Byrskog, Story, 179–84; see, e.g., Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.156–57; cf. Life 336–39. On how history was written, see also Keener, John, 17–25; Keener, Acts, 1:116–65, much of which I have also incorporated into the larger discussion here.
200. See Byrskog, Story, 213, 223; esp. Rothschild, Rhetoric, throughout.
201. Laistner, Historians, 121; Mosley, “Reporting,” 20–22; Pelling, “Historiography,” 716; Hadas, “Introduction,” xviii.
202. Mosley, “Reporting,” 12–14, 16; for Greek historians in general, see 11–18.
203. Laistner, Historians, 36–38. Historians drew on earlier historians critically, but usually with the expectation that they reported historical facts, this being their understanding of their genre (Lendon, “Historians,” 54).
204. E.g., Josephus, Against Apion 1.26; Jewish Antiquities 20.156–57; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Thucydides 8.
205. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 8.56.
206. Josephus, Life 336–39; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 21.17.1; Lucian, How to Write History 24–25; see esp. discussion of Polybius below. Those who claimed the superiority of their own works, however, could risk the charge of impudence from detractors (Josephus, Life 359); the charge of falsehood served polemical agendas well.
207. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.37.4, 6.
208. So Plutarch, Malice of Herodotus 3–7, Moralia 855C–856B (though see rightly here Penner, Praise, 169); cf. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Letter to Gnaeus Pompeius 3, on Thucydides’s grudge against Athens.
209. Polybius, Histories 34.4.2–3. Saïd, “Myth,” 85, notes Polybius’s refusal to recount myth (see, e.g., Polybius, Histories 2.16.13–15; 4.40.2; 9.2.1; 12.24.5), though he reports critically some local legends connected with myth (4.43.6) and accepts some historical basis behind legends (34.2.4, 9–11). For further discussion of Polybius’s high ideal standards, see Keener, Acts, 1:124–26.
210. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Thucydides 55; cf. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 8.56; 20.156–57.
211. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Thucydides 19 (LCL 1:512–13); see Thucydides, History 1.1.1–2; 1.21.2; 1.23.1–2. For some other cases of hyperbole in historical writing, see Thucydides 8.96.1 (cf. 2.94.1); Polybius, Histories 1.4.5; Tacitus, Histories 1.2.
212. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Thucydides 8 (LCL 1:478–79); this is an ideal, not the writer’s exceptionless practice.
213. Tacitus, Annals 4.11.
214. Lucian’s proto–science fiction/fantasy True Story remains humorous today, but everyone would have recognized it as parody on works more fantastic than the Gospels or the mainstream biographies addressed here (cf. discussion in Keener, Acts, 1:76–77); cf. discussion in Tamiolaki, “Satire.” Lucian plays even with the pseudonyms of those he critiques (such as Ctesias), if he does not invent them entirely; cf. Ní-Mheallaigh, Fiction, 150n27. But while Ctesias seems fanciful about India and Assyria, some of even his ingenuity might come from Persian tales, and Ephorus may have more substance than one would gather from Polybius (Schepens, “History,” 50–51).
215. Thucydides (a careful historian by our standards) remained a primary model (see Marincola, “Speeches,” 123–27; Croke, “Historiography,” 567–68; for rhetorical reasons, cf. Kennedy, “Source Criticism,” 145–46).
216. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.3.3 (LCL 1:15, 17).
217. Aristotle, Poetics 9.2, 1451b; cf. Thucydides, History 1.21.1; Pliny, Letters 9.33.1; Lucian, How to Write History 8, 22; Menander Rhetor, Epideictic Treatises 1.1.333.31–1.1.334.5; Becker, Birth, 91 (cf. 121); Adams, Genre, 47; even Isocrates, Euagoras 10, 21, 36, in Ytterbrink, Gospel, 76. For history recounted in epic poetic form, as in Ennius’s Annales, see Cicero, On the Laws 1.2.5 (Galinsky, “Introduction,” 5). Herodotus does evoke some “epic conventions from Homer” (Knoppers, “Problem,” 17, following Bratt, “Monarchs”); Homer offered the dominant narrative model of his era.
218. Aristotle, Poetics 9.3, 1451b. See also Momigliano, Development, 66, citing Poetics 9, 23. Historical discourse differed from others (e.g., forensic rhetoric or philosophy; see, e.g., [Philostratus] Epistles of Apollonius 19).
219. Laistner, Historians, 33–35, citing Cicero, Letters to Friends 5.12; Letters to Atticus 2.1.2; Fornara, Nature, 138–39, citing Cicero, On the Orator 2.15.62–63. When Cicero requests a eulogy of himself, he recognizes that this does not follow the historiographic convention of impartiality.
220. Most epic poetry and tragedy addressed the distant mythological or legendary past.
221. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 2.4.2, in Collins, Mark, 35.
222. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 12.4.1 in Becker, Birth, 62.
223. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 10.1.34 in Becker, Birth, 62.
224. Lucian, How to Write History 8 (trans. LCL 6:13).
225. Lucian, How to Write History 7.
226. Lucian, How to Write History 9.
227. E.g., Lucian, How to Write History 24–25.
228. Lucian, How to Write History 39.
229. Lucian, How to Write History 40 (LCL 6:55).
230. Lucian, How to Write History 62.
231. Pliny, Letters 8.4.1. For the emphasis on facts in ancient historiography, see also Byrskog, Story, 179–84.
232. Pliny, Letters 7.17.3. Accuracy was praiseworthy (5.5.3; 5.8.5; cf. 9.19.5).
233. Rightly, Eve, Behind Gospels, 141.
234. See, e.g., Almagor, “Narratives,” 70, citing Plutarch, Artaxerxes 1.4; 6.9; 19.2–6 on his sources.
235. See esp. Grant, Historians; Schröter, Jesus to New Testament, 56–60, citing Ricoeur to qualify Johannes Fried (treated on 53–55).
236. Eve, Behind Gospels, 142.
237. Thucydides, History 1.20.3; Arrian, Indica 7.1.
238. E.g., Dio Cassius, Roman History 1.1.1–2; Herodian, History 1.1.1–2.
239. Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 55–56 (cf. also 60), quoted also in Derrenbacker, Practices, 93. Occasionally Josephus seems to have had access to archives, though many were destroyed (Jewish War 2.427; Yamauchi, “Archives,” 80).
240. Penner, Praise, 136–37, notes that while everyone acknowledges 1 Maccabees as history, the measure of history and fiction in 2 Maccabees is debated. (By contrast, 3 Maccabees is universally agreed to be a novel; see, e.g., Johnson, “Fictions”; Hacham, “Polemic”; Mélèze-Modrzejewski, “Loi.”)
241. See Reynolds, “Difference.” Some scholars view it as refuting 1 Macc; it might, however, simply offer a Diaspora perspective on the same period (see Simkovich, “Influence”). Some scholars today reject even much of 1 Maccabees as fiction, but sometimes by unnecessarily treating religious narrative and historical information as incompatible.
242. See Hilbert, “Enemies”; arguments for exaggerations by the epitomizer in 2 Maccabees in Morrison, “Composition.”
243. Cf. Rappaport, “Heliodoros,” finding a core but also changes in 2 Macc 3.
244. Gera, “Olympiodoros”; cf. Jones, “Inscription”; Shanks, “Inscription.”
245. I take material here from Keener, Acts, 1:183–88.
246. Meister, “Historiography: Greece,” 421.
247. Fornara, Nature, 47. See also Aune, Environment, 81–82, noting the interviewing of eyewitnesses (Polybius, Histories 4.2.2); other sources, when traveling to the scenes in question (Herodotus, Histories 2.52; Polybius, Histories 3.48.12; 4.38.11; 10.11.4) and reading accounts of eyewitnesses (Polybius, Histories 28.4.8; 38.4.8). The practice weighs more than the terminology; Schepens, “History,” 39–40, notes this concept of historia (see also 47), but on 41–42 notes modern disagreements about it.
248. Aune, Environment, 81, citing Herodotus, Histories 2.52; Polybius, Histories 3.48.12; 4.38.11; 10.11.4; see also Plutarch, Demosthenes 2.1–2; Appian, Roman History pref.12. Even for the distant past, ancients sometimes found local oral sources that purported to have survived over the centuries (e.g., Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.23.2), though their reliability is much more in question (Pretzler, “Pausanias and Tradition”); for tenacious preservation of local traditions, Aune, “Prolegomena,” 93, cites, e.g., Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.26.6; 8.29.1; 8.38.2; 8.42.1–2.
249. Herodotus, Histories 1.1.
250. Thucydides, History 1.22.2; 5.26. Fornara, Nature, 47–48; Schepens, “History,” 47–48.
251. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.4.4–5.
252. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.4.1 (though for Mesopotamia, see Oldfather, “Introduction to Diodorus,” xiii).
253. Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.23.606. On other occasions his research came up empty, but he incidentally confirms that he had done some (2.5.576).
254. Polybius, Histories 12.4c.3 (LCL 4:316–17). Polybius’s emphasis on investigation appears throughout 12.4c.1–5.
255. Polybius, Histories 12.4c.4–5.
256. Cf. Polybius, Histories 12.25e.7; 12.25i.2.
257. Polybius, Histories 12.9.2; 12.25e.1. He thinks Timaeus mistaken, even when he did travel and consult witnesses (Histories 12.4d.1–2). This was also the research standard for forensic rhetoric, at least in principle (e.g., Lysias, Orations 23.2–8, §§166–67).
258. Polybius, Histories 3.33.17–18 (citing here a bronze tablet of Hannibal).
259. Consulting distant records would be even more difficult (cf. Ben Zeev, “Capitol”).
260. Fornara, Nature, 56. Second-century sources (Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 11.17; 13.20.1; Fronto, To Marcus Caesar 4.5) might suggest that in libraries slaves brought books to the scholars (Houston, “Library”). Apart from Athens (Aulus Gellius, 7.17.1–2), Rome, (later) Ephesus, and (earlier) Alexandria (e.g., Aulus Gellius 7.17.3), however, the majority of libraries were private ones (Aune, Dictionary, 273–75).
261. So Cary and Haarhoff, Life, 263. They sometimes focused more on “trends” than details (Fornara, Nature, 88–89). But even among Romans, dishonesty “was a gross evasion of the rules of historical responsibility” (Fornara, Nature, 135; cf. also Laistner, Historians, 16).
262. See fuller discussion in Keener, Acts, 1:123–26; cf. Thucydides, History 1.20.3; Arrian, Indica 7.1; Lucian, How to Write History 10; many sources in Becker, Birth, 117. For ancient striving for honor, see, e.g., Williams, Shame; Barton, Honor (esp. 29–130); Barton, “Moment”; Jewett, “Shame,” 551–57; in Jewish contexts, see deSilva, “Honor”; deSilva, “Wisdom.”
263. Velleius Paterculus, History 2.53.4.
264. Dio Cassius, Roman History 1.1.1–2; Herodian, History 1.1.1–2.
265. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.37.4, 6; Tacitus, Agricola 10.
266. E.g., Josephus, Jewish War 1.7.
267. Polybius, Histories 2.56.7, 10; 15.34.1. Polybius himself reports graphic bloodshed (15.33), but he claims that he avoids amplifying it (15.34). Contrast the criticism of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Thucydides 15, that Thucydides sometimes fails to evoke the full horror of war.
268. Polybius, Histories 3.38.3.
269. Polybius, Histories 2.56.1–3. Penner, Praise, 153–55, rightly challenges Polybius’s ethnic plausibility criterion.
270. Polybius, Histories 12.3.1–12.15.12.
271. Polybius impugns Timaeus’s motives (Histories 12.7.6), critiques his biases (12.7.1; 12.15.12), and justifies Polybius’s own harshness (12.4a.1). See further Penner, Praise, 118; Fornara, Nature, 48; Schepens, “History,” 51–54; Vattuone, “Historiography,” 196–99; cf. Marincola, “Speeches,” 124–26; Brown, Historians, 151, 164.
272. Polybius, Histories 12.3.1–2.
273. Polybius, Histories 12.4c.2–5.
274. Polybius, Histories 12.4d.1–2.
275. Polybius, Histories 12.9.1–12.11.7.
276. Polybius, Histories 12.11.7–8. For Timaeus’s own invective against his predecessors, see Marincola, Authority, 228–29.
277. Polybius, Histories 12.12.1–3.
278. Tacitus, Histories 1.1; cf. similarly Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.154, criticizing some of his contemporaries.
279. See Penner, Praise, 145, 157, and esp. 118; see my comments in Acts, 1:124n69.
280. See Marincola, “Speeches,” 123–27; Croke, “Historiography,” 567–68; Lucian, How to Write History 2, 18–19, 39, 42 (also noting Herodotus and Xenophon, 2, 18, 23, 39).
281. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, in bks. 17–19 (Kennedy, “Source Criticism,” 145–46), though he esp. imitates the rhetorical historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (145, noting twenty books in each; Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 47). For Herodotean echoes in Arrian, see in Bosworth, “Pursuit,” 447.
282. See, e.g., Penner, “Discourse,” 72–73; Penner, Praise, 175 (cf. 6).
283. For the right balance, see, e.g., Rothschild, Rhetoric, throughout; Tucker, Knowledge, 254–62; Dewald, “Construction,” 90–91, 101; Porciani, “Enigma,” 333.
284. E.g., Aristotle, Poetics 9.2–3, 1451b; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.1.2–4; 1.4.2; Thucydides 8; Pliny, Letters. 7.17.3; 8.4.1; 9.33.1; Tacitus, Annals 4.11; Lucian, How to Write History 12, 24–25; Josephus, Against Apion 1.26. Pliny the Younger knew both Suetonius and Tacitus and even tried to stage a guest appearance in the latter’s history (Letters 7.33).
285. Polybius, Histories 12.25d.1 (though documents [as in Rhodes, “Documents,” 64–65] mattered less than visiting locations and reviewing historical context; 12.25e.1, 25i.2).
286. See, e.g., Évrard, “Polybe.”
287. At least insofar as we may infer from the number of copies preserved in Egypt; see Stephens, “Who Read Novels?,” 411, 415–16. Josephus was sufficiently familiar with Thucydides to imitate him in Jewish Antiquities bks. 17–19 (Kennedy, “Source Criticism,” 145–46). For Thucydides, see Lucian, How to Write History 2, 18–19, 39, 42; for Herodotus, see Lucian, How to Write History 2, 18, 42; for Xenophon, see Lucian, How to Write History 2, 23, 39.
288. See, e.g., Cueva, “Longus.”
289. Dio Chrysostom, Orations 18.10.
290. Josephus, Against Apion 1.18.
291. On his method, see, e.g., Meister, “Herodotus,” 267 (cf. 2.28.1; 4.76.6; 8.65.6; 125.6); West, “Rhampsinitos,” 327; Brown, Historians, 40.
292. See Cicero, On the Laws 1.1.5; Meister, “Herodotus,” 269. Some compare Herodotus with the Pentateuch (Van Seters, “Primeval Histories”; cf. Van Seters, Search), despite considerable differences (Blenkinsopp, Pentateuch, 39–42).
293. Rainey, “Herodotus’ Description.” Archaeology has often surprisingly confirmed Herodotus’s claims regarding Scythians and Persians (Yamauchi, Persia, 77–78, 96, 100, 141, 153, 160–61, 190).
294. Herodotus generally does not evaluate his sources, but neither does he invent them; see Meister, “Herodotus,” 267–68; cf. Rhodes, “Documents,” 57–58. For the interpretive level of Herodotus’s discourse, see Darbo-Peschanski, “Origin,” 30 (contrasting Thucydides, History 32); but for his anchoring in data as accurately as possible, see Schepens, “History,” 42; for his pursuit of the most original sources, see Schepens, “History,” 43–47; on his many oral sources, cf. Aune, “Prolegomena,” 77–78.
295. See fully Meister, “Herodotus,” 268–69.
296. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.1.2–4; 1.4.2.
297. Derrenbacker, Practices, 52; Becker, Birth, 92.
298. Derrenbacker, Practices, 44–46; on 44, note esp. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Letter to Gnaeus Pompeius 6.
299. See, e.g., Muntz, “Sources”; Muntz, “Diodorus Siculus”; Martin, “Tacitus,” 1470; Rondholz, “Rubicon”; in ancient biography, Buszard, “Parallel.”
300. Christian, “Themistocles.”
301. Cf., e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.6.1, 3; in the rabbis, see, e.g., Keener, John, 189–90. The vast majority of ancient histories (on which extant ancient historians could have also depended) have since perished (cf. Laistner, Historians, 5–6; Brown, Historians, 107).
302. Laistner, Historians, 51, 86; cf. Derrenbacker, Practices, 53.
303. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.1.1; 1.6.1; Arrian, Alexander 6.2.4; Plutarch, Alexander 30.7; 31.2–3; 38.4; cf. further Keener, John, 22–23; Marguerat, Histoire, 30. Cf. Cook, “Use,” for a suggested stylistic source indicator in Plutarch; for Plutarch’s range of sources, see Rhodes, “Documents,” 65–66. For biblical and early Jewish source citations, cf., e.g., Num 21:14; Josh 10:13; 2 Sam 1:18; 1 Kgs 14:19, 29; 15:7, 23, 31; 1 Chr 27:24; 29:29; 2 Chr 16:11; 20:34; 24:27; 2 Macc 2:24–25; one discussion in Holland, “Written.”
304. Dio Cassius, Roman History 1.1.1–2.
305. E.g., 1 Esdras blends Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah with some midrash (if the latter designation is not too anachronistic). Josephus does not state most of his extrabiblical sources (Nicolaus of Damascus being an important exception). Even Livy can mention that there are many sources while citing only one (History 42.11.1).
306. Even most elite authors do not always cite their sources; see Laistner, Historians, 51, 86.
307. Schmidt, “Stellung”; Kümmel, Introduction, 37; see discussion in, e.g., Keener, Matthew, 17. “High” literature influenced “low” literature, creating an overlap of style (Burridge, Gospels, 11, 143; Aune, Environment, 12, 63; Downing, “Literature”).
308. Luke’s may be higher than Mark’s, but the dedicatee’s status need not imply that of the ideal audience (Keener, Acts, 1:656–57).
309. See, e.g., Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings 5.7.ext.1; 6.8.3; Tacitus, Annals 2.73, 88; 4.57; 13.20; Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.4.570; note further examples above. Livy cites many sources (Laistner, Historians, 84) and cites a major source, Quadrigarius, esp. where his account varies from Livy’s (Forsythe, “Quadrigarius,” 391), hence may follow him at other times without citing him.
310. See Hemer, Acts, 65; cf. Laistner, Historians, 120, 127.
311. One could establish one’s point better by naming various earlier sources supporting it (e.g., Suetonius, Julius 9.3).
312. Note fewer citations in, e.g., Tacitus, Agricola.
313. Marincola, Authority, 262. Judith Odor drew this reference to my attention.
314. E.g., Velleius Paterculus, History 2.48.5.
315. This section is borrowed and adapted from Keener, Acts, 1:170–73.
316. Cf. the many contemporary histories of Nero noted in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.154; the forty-four volumes of Pompeius Trogus extant only in epitomized form (see Justin, Epitome pref.4). Cf. 700 volumes of Chrysippus (Suetonius, Life of Aulus Persius Flaccus 7).
317. Pliny, Natural History pref.18.
318. Pliny, Natural History pref.17.
319. Cf. Knoppers, “Problem,” 27–30; the discussion of literary, often playful, intertextuality in Bing and Höschele, “Introduction,” xxvi–xxxiv. Novels might also play on historical works; cf. Trzaskoma, “Echoes”; Trzaskoma, “Miletus.”
320. Tacitus, Annals 15.63. For Tacitus using sources (and using them fairly critically), see Laistner, Historians, 121; for historians’ use of documents (legal documents, inscriptions, and the like), see Rhodes, “Documents” (though they did not always cite them; Laistner, Historians, 51).
321. E.g., Tacitus, Annals 4.34–35.
322. Tacitus, Annals 4.53. Cf. also oral sources in Syme, “Tacitus.”
323. Adapted from Keener, Acts, 1:122–24.
324. Pliny, Letters 9.33.1.
325. E.g., Suetonius, Vespasian 1.4. Herodian, History 1.1.3 claims, probably with exaggeration, that he never depended on unconfirmed information (he did not strive for chronological precision; see Whittaker, “Introduction,” xxxix–xl).
326. Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.5.576.
327. E.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.87.4; 3.35.1–4; 8.79.1; Livy, History 9.44.6; 23.19.17; 25.17.1–6; Nicolaus, Augustus 19, 21 (FGrH 130); Appian, Roman History 11.9.56; 12.1.1; Plutarch, Alexander 31.3; 38.4; Demosthenes 5.5; 29.4–30.4; Themistocles 25.1–2; 27.1; 32.3–4; Apollodorus, Library 1.4.3; 1.5.2; 1.9.15, 19; 2.3.1; 2.5.11; Ovid, Fasti 6.1–2, 97–100; Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.4.570; Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.5.5; 2.26.3–7; Arrian, Alexander 4.9.2–3; 4.14.1–4; 5.3.1; 5.14.4; 7.14.2; 7.27.1–3; Herodian, History 7.9.4, 9; Cornelius Nepos, On Great Generals 7 (Alcibiades), 11.1; 9 (Conon), 5.4; y. Soṭah 9:13, §2; see further E. T. Sage and A. C. Schlesinger in Livy, History (LCL 12:320n2).
328. Arrian, Alexander 1.pref.1–2.
329. Arrian, Alexander 3.3.6.
330. Thereby implying for the majority position far more than the five sources he has named. On the multiplicity of first-generation Alexander accounts, now lost, see Zambrini, “Historians.”
331. Plutarch, Alexander 46.1–2.
332. E.g., Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings 1.8.7. Some cases of supposed credulity fail to recognize that historians sometimes simply recounted sources without intending to approve them (Schepens, “History,” 46).
333. See, e.g., Meister, “Historiography: Greece,” 421.
334. See, e.g., Polybius, Histories 2.56.1–3.
335. Plutarch, Aristides 19.5–6, challenging Herodotus, Histories 9.85.
336. As noted above, Thucydides, History 1.10.1–2, evaluating the Iliad.
337. Polybius, Histories 3.32.4.
338. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 9.22.1–5.
339. Polybius, Histories 3.8.1–11; 3.20.1–5; 3.32.5. Polybius insisted on providing the longest-range historical context possible, both early (3.6.1–3.7.3, e.g., 3.6.10) and subsequent (9.2.5).
340. Plutarch, Themistocles 27.1, though admitting uncertainty; cf. Thucydides, History 1.3.2–3; Tacitus, Dialogue on Oratory 16.
341. Polybius, Histories 3.33.18; Plutarch, Alexander 46.2; Demosthenes 5.5; Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.1.562–63.
342. Arrian, Alexander 7.14.4–6; Dio Cassius, Roman History 62.11.3–4; cf. Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters 5.215–16, 219ab. The same criterion could apply, however, in fictitious composition or historical reconstruction based on plausibility (cf. Aristotle, Poetics 15.4–5, 1454a; Theon, Progymnasmata 1.46–52; 2.79–81; 8.2–3), whereas real persons do not always sound consistent (cf. Allison, Constructing Jesus, 91–92, 103–4).
343. Polybius, Histories 2.56.1–3, esp. 3.
344. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 19.68, 106–7; Lucian, How to Write History 25; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 10.12.8–10; cf. cautions in Sallust, Catiline’s War 3.2; Plutarch, Camillus 6.4; Arrian, Alexander 5.2.7; cf. Derrenbacker, Practices, 75.
345. Thucydides, History 1.10.1–2; Plutarch, Themistocles 25.1–2; Suetonius, Nero 6; Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.3.3; Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 1.21.516; cf. Alfred, “Valuation,” 101. Thus Tacitus recounts the views of the majority and most reliable historians but then mentions another view (Annals 4.10), which he goes on to refute logically (4.11), despite its utility for his perspective.
346. Christian, “Themistocles,” 139, noting that Nepos regularly “ignores” Herodotus’s “bias against Thucydides.”
347. Thucydides, History 1.3.3; Plutarch, Alexander 20.4–5; Velleius Paterculus, History 1.3.2–3; cf. Theopompus in Rhodes, “Documents,” 62; Plutarch, Alcibiades 32.2–3, in Alfred, “Valuation,” 91; Suetonius, Caligula 19.3, in Alfred, “Valuation,” 96; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Dinarchus 11; Tacitus, Annals 4.43.
348. Alfred, “Valuation,” 96, on Suetonius, Vespasian 16.3.
349. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lysias 11; cf. Demosthenes 57. For critically evaluating authorship claims, see also Suetonius, Caesar 55–56.
350. See, e.g., Isaeus, Cleonymus 12.36; 22.37; Demosthenes, False Embassy 120; Against Pantaenetus 23; Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.15.17, 1376a; Rhetoric to Alexander 7, 1428a.19–23; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 11.34.1–6; Hermogenes, Invention 3.5.142; see further discussion in Keener, Acts, 4:3393–95, 3503–4.
351. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 4.6.1. Cf. also Tacitus, Annals 15.53; 16.6; Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.31.7; Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 8, Moralia 353F; and Theon’s reasons for thinking the account of Medea murdering her children implausible (Progymnasmata 5.487–501; cf. 3.241–76, 4.112–16, 126–34).
352. Arrian, Alexander 6.28.2; cf. Arrian, Indica 15.7. Arrian does exhibit pro-Alexander bias (Bosworth, “Pursuit,” 447; Baynham, “Quintus Curtius,” 428), though it can be overstated (Bosworth, “Pursuit,” 452–53).
353. E.g., Livy, History 4.29.5–6; 23.47.8; cf. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 19.61, 108; Meister, “Herodotus,” 268, on Herodotus, Histories 7.152; (more skeptically) Lucian, How to Write History 60.
354. See again Alfred, “Valuation.” In historiography, cf., e.g., Polybius, Histories 3.9.1–5: Fabius may be right sometimes, but one must always critically evaluate his claims.
355. Alfred, “Valuation.”
356. Thucydides, History 1.22.2–3. Thucydides, however, usually omits interpretations divergent from his own (Brown, Historians, 49).
357. Laistner, Historians, 85–87, citing, e.g., Livy, History 8.40.4; 37.48.7.
358. See Fornara, Nature, 116–19. Even when he is uncritical, he is sometimes our best—because our only available—source (Foster, “Introduction,” xxxi), a virtue of necessity also attending some other historical narratives (e.g., Develin, “Introduction,” 1).
359. Bosworth, Arrian, 38–39.
360. Bosworth, Arrian, 91–92.
361. E.g., Plutarch, Alcibiades 3.1; Alfred, “Valuation,” 96, citing Suetonius, Vitellius 1.1.
362. E.g., Diogenes Laertius, Lives 1.23: “But according to others”; 6.1.13; 8.2.67–72; Velleius Paterculus, History 2.4.6; 2.27.5; 2.48.4; Plutarch, Lycurgus 1.1; Tacitus, Annals 2.67; 3.16, 18; 4.10; 14.51 (though happy to report negative views of Nero), 58–59; 15.38, 54; 16.3, 6 (though expressing his view); Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 1.21.516; 2.5.576; y. Soṭah 9:13, §2.
363. E.g., Sallust, Jugurthine War 67.3; Tacitus, Annals 4.57. Although Tacitus knew Agricola, he admits when he cannot verify some information (Alfred, “Valuation,” 85, citing Agricola 40); so Suetonius in Galba 3.1 (Alfred, “Valuation,” 98). Quintilian, Orator’s Education 2.4.19 (LCL), recognizes Livy’s uncertainty about “what actually occurred.”
364. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 19.60–61, 108.
365. Livy, History 3.8.10. For historical sources’ exaggerated numbers or discussion of them, see further, e.g., Xenophon, Hiero 2.16; Thucydides, History 5.68.2; Polybius, Histories 12.17.1–12.22.7; Tacitus, Histories 3.61; Lucian, How to Write History 20; Keener, Acts, 1:995–96.
366. See Meister, “Herodotus,” 268; Fowler, “History,” 201–2; cf. Schepens, “History,” 46; Rhodes, “Documents,” 56 (citing 3.115.2; 3.123.1; 4.195.2; 7.152.3).
367. Lucian, How to Write History 60.
368. Alfred, “Valuation,” 77.