History and Agendas
History and Agendas
No close reader of the Gospels will deny that they communicate particular perspectives as well as information.106 Does their “slant” reduce the value of the information they convey? An ancient audience would expect perspectives and agendas whenever they encountered biographies and histories. While modern historians take such agendas into account when they read ancient biographers and historians, they do not for this reason treat them as novelists who simply fabricated stories to communicate their views.
Ancient historians could write from particular overt moral or religious perspectives.107 Indeed, it was an “interpretive superstructure”108 that distinguished history as a literary work from mere chronicles. Whatever the boundaries between history and novel, modern traditional boundaries between history and theology are far less applicable to ancient texts. If anything, the emphasis on providing moral models and lessons is even clearer in succinct biographies than in the larger histories. It is certainly clearer in both of them than in the vast majority of novels (the primary objective of which was usually entertainment).
We recognize today that no historians, including modern ones, are disinterested reporters; historians select the events that they will report based on what they find to be of greatest interest or of greatest relevance to their focus (which again relates to interest).109 (Interest shapes even journalists’ reports and the editing of these reports for popular consumption.) Ancient historians, however, had less pressure from strict peer review in the direction of objectivity or in the direction of consensus among historians than is usual today. No less than biblical historians, Hellenistic historians “selectively reported the past in order to accomplish larger goals.”110
While affirming the truth of their own perspectives, ancients also recognized the danger of biases (typically others’ biases) distorting the historical enterprise. Thus for example Josephus complains about contemporary historians who distorted Nero’s reign, either from favor because they benefited from it or from malice because they suffered under it.111 He complains that such historians failed to avoid bias even when reporting earlier eras, because they do not care about truth.112 Because his interest is in truth, he insists, he writes with greater accuracy.113
We may well dispute Josephus’ accuracy at points, but we should also take note of the ideal that he expects his audience to embrace: bias should be avoided. That Josephus could appeal to such an ideal, while straightforwardly writing with an explicit focus and from an explicit vantage point, should caution us not to confuse perspective-shaped historical writing with novels. Perspectives and interests are to be expected, but the prospect of critics could engender at least some sense of accountability to fairness regarding the substance of events, and set some limits on how much bias was acceptable in a public forum. 114 As is the case today, historians could fiercely debate conflicting views, but being able to marshall genuine information would strengthen one’s case.
Political and National Agendas
Historians often wrote to inculcate “good citizenship,”115 hence usually displayed, in varying measures, national or ethnic biases. Polybius, for example, exhibits a pro-Roman Tendenz.116 Thucydides, though a participant in the Peloponnesian War, proves surprisingly impartial; yet even he had his biases.117 Livy claimed that history teaches a nation’s greatness and what one may imitate. 118 One also thinks of Josephus’ apologetic attempt to whitewash his people from excess complicity in the revolt while simultaneously appealing to the dignity of his Roman readership.119
It is of course true that history is usually written by the victors,120 but even in ancient epic triumph121 or national loyalties did not always dictate bias. Historians often report sympathetically both sides of a conflict.122 Herodotus, one of the earliest historians, often regards Egyptians and others as superior to his fellow-Greeks123 and describes other peoples fairly objectively; he criticizes Greek failings, and praises both Spartan and Athenian virtues.124 Biographers, too, included both “flat” and “round” characters.125 Lucian criticizes historians who praise their own leaders, while slandering the other side, as engaging merely in panegyric.126 A historian who focuses on what is negative about a character can be accused of malice, unless this approach is necessary for the telling of the story.127
Yet political and ethnic agendas were not the only agendas in ancient historiography. Historians had moral and theological biases as well as political ones (political, moral and theological categories in fact sometimes overlapped). While we cannot draw a strict line between nationalistic and moralistic agendas (patriotism was generally viewed as a moral virtue itself), broader moral lessons sometimes even took precedence over nationalistic agendas. Despite Polybius’ pro-Roman Tendenz, for example, he notes that he often praises both Romans and Carthaginians, but only so he can set before statesmen proper models for conduct.128
Moral Agendas
Most ancient historians felt responsible to certain standards of historical accuracy (whether or not they achieved them), but also felt responsible to arrange their histories in such a manner as to provide moral lessons.
Respectable members of ancient society in general reflected similar concerns in a variety of genres; for example, in letters about honorable people, writers could praise past figures’ virtues as models inviting imitation.129 The emphasis on imitating ancestral wisdom and learning from both positive and negative historical examples pervaded rhetoric from classical Athens through the late empire.130 Orators could employ earlier biographies (such as Plutarch’s Lives) this way.131
These objectives were clear in histories and biographies themselves. Contrary to what some modern interpreters suppose, moral agendas characterized ancient historiography and biography far more often than they characterized novels. The moral agenda constituted a paramount one for historians; one taught history not simply to memorize the past but to draw lessons from it.132 Thus some historians felt that historians should choose a noble subject, so their work would contribute to good moral character as well as providing information. 133 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.”134
Likewise, Tacitus, one of our most reliable historical sources for the early empire, emphasizes that the biographic study of history promotes virtue.135 Often lamenting the decline of traditional Roman values, he was (like his contemporaries) “a moralist, who regards it as his duty to hold vice up to scorn and to praise virtue.”136 Lucian, a stickler for historical accuracy, as we have noted, allows for history’s edifying value, i.e., moral lessons, provided they flow from truth.137
Valerius Maximus was not the most careful historian, but his perspective on the utility of historical examples is representative: It is helpful to know history “so that a backward look . . . may yield some profit to modern manners.”138 Historians and biographers 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. 139 Jewish historiography was certainly no less interpretive.140
The Value of Moral Examples
What such historians often meant by the instructive value of history was the positive and negative moral examples of other persons’ behavior. Whereas one’s own life was too brief to use one’s own experience to guard against all faults, the collective memory of humanity offered greater wisdom. Historians generally believed that if one understood why events happened,141 not merely historians but also statesmen142 and orators143 (both of which some of them were) could use these events as precedents.144 When the pre-Christian rhetorical historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus lists purposes for writing history, its value as a model inviting honorable behavior is a significant one.145
Jewish people understood the Bible’s narratives as providing moral lessons in the same manner: the writers recorded examples of virtue and vice for their successors to emulate or avoid.146 They could likewise employ postbiblical models as examples of virtues.147 Because Josephus repeats so much of the biblical narrative in the Antiquities, one can observe the way he adapts biblical characters to accentuate their value as positive (Lot;148 Isaac;149 Joseph;150 Moses; 151 Ruth and Boaz;152 Samuel;153 Hezekiah;154 Jehoshaphat;155 Josiah;156 Daniel;157 Nehemiah),158 negative (Jeroboam;159 Ahab)160 or intermediate moral models.161 Such observations are relevant for understanding the Gospels as biographies applying their narratives.
The Role of Praise and Blame
Historians narrated accounts with a view to praise or blame.162 Some historians might criticize other historians for getting the mixture wrong, but no one doubted that history provided moral lessons. Thus Polybius, who insists on the appropriate distribution of praise and blame,163 criticizes some historians for praising Philip, noting that his actions warrant censure.164 Polybius emphasizes that he himself does not praise or blame prominent people in his prefaces, but always while recounting their (praiseworthy or reproachable) behavior; that, he averred, was the appropriate place to express one’s views.165 Nor was Polybius alone in viewing praise and blame as important elements in selecting moral examples. History-writing preserves for immortality the fame of those who deserve it, Pliny opined, hence offers incentive for noble deeds.166
Historians’ interest in these matters reflected the broader value assigned to imitating moral examples in antiquity. Thus rhetoricians invited hearers to learn from both positive and negative examples in history.167 Histories that focused on individuals often tended to be “encomiastic,” magnifying heroes.168
When reading ancient biographers and historians, modern historians can take into account their propensity to praise or blame, but we do not for such reasons discount the value of their evidence, as if they were novels. Most ancient biographers, for example, felt free to record negative as well as positive features of their protagonists, when appropriate.169 Thus while Suetonius’ Vespasian is mostly adulatory (a striking contrast to his biographies of Caligula, Nero or Domitian), he reports his love of money.170 He reports Nero’s good deeds first “to separate them from his shameful and criminal deeds, of which I shall proceed now to give an account.”171 Suetonius did not indiscriminately praise all, but assigned praise and blame on what he viewed as the preponderance of positive and negative actions — that is, based on an interpretation of, rather than free creation of, information.
Ancients were well aware that their affection or respect for a person could bias their judgments, but also recognized that such affection could be based on sound evaluations.172 Certainly bias would influence presentation while praising an emperor’s virtues, even if one avoided telling any untruths.173 More common would be a case like Tacitus, a sober historian, who composes an encomiastic biography of his father-in-law Agricola. This example, however, involves perspective and interest rather than deliberate distortion. Tacitus’ Agricola may praise his father-in-law, but it expresses no less historical interest than his Annals or Histories. Josephus’ autobiography may include apologetic — but so do his less biographic, more strictly historical works.