When Did History Become History?

When Did History Become History? · Is Genesis Literal History or Something Else?

I propose, that at the most basic level, and some beyond that even, it always was. Fabio Paolo Barbieri, on quora, started a discussion by thinking otherwise.

Q

Does the Catholic church believe that great flood and Noah's ark were real?
https://www.quora.com/Does-the-Catholic-church-believe-that-great-flood-and-Noahs-ark-were-real/answer/Fabio-Paolo-Barbieri-1

Answer requested by

Dan Parker

Fabio Paolo Barbieri

Catholic layman

3 years ago

Real as in “If I kick you very hard in the backside, you will yell and fall over”? No. Pope Pius XII said clearly that the early stories of the Bible were intended to teach metaphysical truths in terms suited for unsophisticated, early men. The Church has NEVER taken the early books of the Bible as sources of historical and scientific truth; for instance, it rejected very early any attempt to base the understanding of physics and geography on the Bible (Cosmas Indikopleustes, in the sixth century, tried to set up a Genesis-based geography, and his effort was rejected), instead accepting the results of Greek mathematics and astronomy. As a result, all Christians from the sixth century knew that the world was round, and that it was minuscule as compared with the size of the heavens. The attempt to turn the Bible into a source of factual truth is a modern disease, going back to the 1890s and to a set of books called Fundaments (hence “fundamentalism).

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Apr 11 2022

Cosmas tried to substitute Genesis for Geography.

The Church has very certainly used Genesis for history.

As you may know, even if you are a layman, St. Augustine is a highly respected Church Father.

Chapter 27.— Of the Ark and the Deluge, and that We Cannot Agree with Those Who Receive the Bare History, But Reject the Allegorical Interpretation, Nor with Those Who Maintain the Figurative and Not the Historical Meaning.

Which comes in Book 15 of City of God, to which I link here:

City of God, Book XV (St. Augustine)
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120115.htm

Prior chapters in the same book, as you scroll down to 27, will clearly indicate to you that chapter 27 is not alone in considering Genesis as history. Including chapters 1 - 11.

Fabio Paolo Barbieri

15.VII.2022

To answer this kind of bitty intervention I should start a discussion about what was understood as history in antiquity, and why it was an entirely different thing from what it was from the seventeenth on. And I rather think I would be wasting my time. To sum up, NO writer of history before the late fifteen hundreds had any belief that they were stating solid fact. They regarded themselves as rhetors, literary artists, rather than scholars. As Seneca said in the Apocolocynthosis, who asks for an assay from a historian? Augustine said quite clearly that what matters was not whether creation was 6000 years ago, or 60000, or 600000, or getting to “numbers that have no name”, but that there was such a thing, creation out of nothing. As for the use of biblical stories as history, Paul had this to say about Scripture: “All scripture is inspired by God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” In other words, it matters not because of its presumable factual content, but because of its certain moral and philosophical significance. Augustine never intended, like Leopold von Ranke, only to show what actually happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen ist)".

A

Hans-Georg Lundahl

15.VII.2022

“what was understood as history in antiquity, and why it was an entirely different thing from what it was from the seventeenth on.”

I don’t think this is the case.

Sure, in antiquity, exact words and scenes could be made up, but that’s the limit. You couldn’t make up a thing like Punic Wars and call that history.

Some would be inclined to reply that St. Augustine had referred to the Eneid. Yes, the point is, the Eneid was seen (by Pagan and Christian alike) as docufiction.

“To sum up, NO writer of history before the late fifteen hundreds had any belief that they were stating solid fact. They regarded themselves as rhetors, literary artists, rather than scholars.”

You are forgetting that a rhetor, apart from being a literary artists, is also a counsellor to the public - comparable to a politician and a lawyer (these men were rhetors too) - and these were supposed to state fact.

“As Seneca said in the Apocolocynthosis, who asks for an assay from a historian?”

It’s a comedy or a comic epyllion. As he lampooned the precisely scholarly (and meticulously so) historian and antiquarian Clo- Clo- Clo- Claudius it would be a normal way of dismissing his victim.

But yes, he was involved in rhetoric exercises like “write the speeches where Priam is counselled to accept / not to accept Helen of Sparta as refugee” … these were more typical of schools of rhetoric, and became so more when rhetoric tended to lose its practical importance in politics (due to the Empire) than of historians that are preserved.

“Augustine said quite clearly that what matters was not whether creation was 6000 years ago, or 60000, or 600000, or getting to “numbers that have no name”, but that there was such a thing, creation out of nothing.”

It is possible, when he was discussing creation as creation.

When he was discussing Genesis 5 and 11 in De Civitate Dei, he was very differently inclined, much more involved in strict literalism.

“In other words, it matters not because of its presumable factual content,”

You are forgetting the first word St. Paul used is “doctrine” = “factual content” if you know your ancient classics as much as you started out to pretend!

What exactly is your grounding in Classic letters? Mine is exams worth two years of Latin, two and a half terms of Greek (not meaning Modern or Byzantine). Plus some reading on the side.

“BA in Social Anthropology & Religious Studies (college major), School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London (SOAS)Graduated 1990”

You forgot to mention your credentials in Latin and Greek, didn’t you? Is either of them at least a college minor?

Was answered twice

C and D

C

Fabio Paolo Barbieri

15.VII.2022

I am a published historian. Access to a monograph that touches Virgil: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/215502298_Gods_of_the_West_I_Indiges It’s actually quite old and needs revision, but it’s short (60,000 words or so), free, and gives you an idea of my knowledge of Latin and some related subjects.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

17.VII.2022

Now your profile states “Historian” and it didn’t before.

As to your monograph while it is free for those who have a researchgate account, I don’t have it, and I can’t read it.

Apart from the fact that this could be for the reason stated a bluff, if this is so, why did you not answer my distinction in response to Leopold von Ranke quote?

And as you state “historian” in the context, the title is “Gods of the West” and the issue could have been conducted mostly from your collage major’s perspective.

D

Fabio Paolo Barbieri

15.VII.2022

As for my Latin:

A monument I built hardier than bronze,
placed on a kingly seat above the pyramids,
that not devouring fire, arrogant winds
shall ever destroy, nor yet the uncounted
sequence of years, and the flight of time.
I shall not wholly die; a mighty part of me
shall avoid Hell, and memory increase
from age to age, so long as the holy hill
is watchèd by Pontiffs and silent virgins.
They shall recount that, where fierce Aufidus
Rages, and where Daunus, poor in waters, had the rule
Of rural nations, I, from humble estate,
First took Aeolian verse to the Italians.
Be proud of the deserts of your great art,
And grant my head the Delphian laurels, Melpomene.

I had to rewrite this from memory, because I could not find my old translation. If you read the monograph, you will find that all the Virgilian passages have my own translations. You are welcome to judge my Latin from that, rather than from pieces of paper. I also earned a part of my living, until recently, as a translator to and from Latin.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

17.VII.2022

OK, I will believe you you know Latin, but doing two years of Latin at a Swedish university involves more than just learning the language and some of the literature.

It involves learning some of the cultural history of the epochs involved (meaning both antiquity and middle ages with some early modern times added to it in my case).

A certain Quintilian defined - I will leave that out - as “vir bonus dicendi peritus” - now, what did he so define, and is that compatible with your assessment of historians in these pre-Ranke days?

Besides, given the dishonest take you gave on the subject matter, what stops you from having taken a translation into English (they do exist) and changing a few words, of Horace’s monumentum exegi aere perennius?

Fabio Paolo Barbieri

18.VII.2022

After that insult (and the lies involved), the only thing I can say is that you give Sweden a bad name. Blocked.

Fabio Paolo Barbieri

18.VII.2022

The person who tried to talk me down also insinuated that this translation from the third book of Horace’s Odes has been ripped off from someone else. YOU ARE ALL CHALLENGED TO LOOK FOR ANYTHING SIMILAR ANYWHERE IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. It is my own work resulting from my Latin skills. End of story.

Since I was blocked

I cannot answer. But I can give you a translation to English that is available on the web, here:

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/ode-330.html

It is not highly similar. This translation is namely (unlike Fabio's) metric in English.

The google hit that I thought was one translation was actually just a fragment.

I have built a monument more lasting than bronze,
higher than the Pyramids’ regal structures,
that no consuming rain, nor wild north wind
can destroy…

A monument more lasting than bronze
March 8, 2016 | By Sarah Powell
https://collation.folger.edu/2016/03/more-lasting-than-bronze/

Here the first line has only "more lasting" instead of "hardier" ... but I did not even look at the second line, so I spoke in somewhat excessive haste, but what is that to his haste, when he blocked me so I could not excuse myself after finding out my error?

And was it haste or tactic that prevailed on him not to answer that "orator" = Gk "rhetor" is what Quintilian called a "vir bonus dicendi peritus"?

Because that definition excludes his assessment of "historians are rhetors" as meaning "historians make things up for ornation" ... they had some liberties with detail, they were not supposed to give all the versions, they could give a wiki of the versions they knew or give the main versions or give the version they liked best, like historians now, and they could, unlike historians now, fill in the blanks artistically. But they could not make up the whole story.

A "good man" even if "experienced in expressing himself" would not make up whole stories and then call it the truth, unless doing so in genres where this was sought, which was not the case with the ancient epic or tragedy (but by contrast the ancient idyll and comedy and novel, yes, it existed), and which was also not the case with prose histories.

Apart from the block being hasty and perhaps tactic, it is, along with the pronunciation of "shame on" a kind of cancel culture.

Doesn't show him as having the ancient or medieval take of debaters, either in Socratic dialogues or in Scholastic dsputationes.

B

Hans-Georg Lundahl

15.VII.2022

// Augustine never intended, like Leopold von Ranke, only to show what actually happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen ist)". //

Very banale when it comes to “only” and also very banale when it comes to “wie eigentlich” - minute details of fact.

St. Augustine differed from modern historians both by thinking the parts of history he spoke of had a very specific meaning, and by not wanting to know how a Roman helmet in the mid Republic differed from a Roman helmet in his own time. You know the kind of attitude that made Shakespear play historical plays (antiquity, early middle ages, hundred years’s war) in 16th C. costume, because minute details of the actual past didn’t matter.

But this only goes so far as it does. It doesn’t mean Shakespear didn’t think Lewis of Guyenne was a French Prince or did about the things he shows him as doing in Henry V, and it doesn’t mean that St Augustine didn’t think Aenaeas came from burning Troy.