Interpreting Ancient Israelite History, Prophecy, and Law. John H. Hayes
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in his ecclesiastical and secular histories of England, demonstrated how such antiquarian material could be used to reconstruct a realistic view of the past. No parallel to such antiquarianism exists before the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the latter was to lack both the passion and purpose of the former.
At least two major theologians and canonists of the twelfth century worked with a concept of development and change in history.64 These were Hugh of St. Victor (about 1096—1141), and Otto of Freising (about 1115–58). Hugh was not strictly a historian, although he wrote a chronicle of world history for use as a student’s handbook in which he stressed the importance of time, place, people, and events for the understanding of history. In his theological works, a dynamic view of history pervades his discussions. His arguments rest on the presupposition that humandkind moved in history from the primitive and simple to the more sophisticated and developed. He sought to outline the various stages, for example, in the history of the sacrament of penance showing that its final form was the product of the needs of the early church. Thus doctrine goes through developmental stages and the needs of human institutions play a role. In his description of the world ages, Hugh’s thought has a certain evolutionary ring. The first age of man, from the fall to Abraham, was “the age of natural law when men groped around for remedies for their ills by the light of reason and experience.” Primitive humandkind developed various sacraments, sacrifices, and offerings to present to their gods. The second age, which began embryonically with Abraham and fully with Moses, was “the age of written law when God intervened actively in human history” and provided humanity with the means of education and sacramental union. In the third age, which began with Christ, grace replaced law and the inspirations of the spirit supplanted the commandments.65 In these ages, humans cooperated with God in a forward movement towards higher forms of human existence. Hugh, in his writings on the liberal arts, argued again for stages in human development from the primitive to the advanced. He declared: “Men wrote and talked before there was grammar; they distinguished truth from falsehood before there was dialectic; they had laws before there was rhetoric; they had numbers before there was arithmetic; they sang before there was music; they measured fields before there was geometry; they observed the stars and seasons before there was astronomy.”66
In technology, it was the operation of human reason that functioned to meet the needs of humans. Physical necessity prompted humanity towards achievement. “There arose the theoretical sciences to illuminate ignorance, ethics to strengthen virtue, and the mechanical arts to temper man’s infirmity.”67 Hugh’s sense of historical development in all categories of life presented a rather optimistic view of the historical process, a view in which novelty was not only accepted but also declared good.
Otto, the bishop of Freising in Bavaria and a member of the imperial family, produced a universal history from creation to his own day relying on the schemes of six ages and four world monarchies. The work is basically Orosian in orientation. In a number of ways, Otto differed from or extended the thought of Augustine and Orosius. He identified the city of God with the church and in Henry IV’s submission to Pope Gregory VII at Canossa in 1077 he saw the triumph of the ‘heavenly’ over the ‘earthly’ city. Although Otto shared the Orosian view of the decline of human rule, he was nonetheless able to affirm, especially in his work on Frederick I, that history was not a tragedy and that empire could be an instrument of peace. Otto gave detailed treatment to the so-called ‘transfer thesis,’ the idea that civilization and empire moved from East to West. The idea was implicit already in Eusebius and perhaps already used at the Frankish court before Otto. He, however, worked out analogies between the ancient empires and those in Europe. The empire of his day was understood as the continuation of the fourth empire—the Roman—which had simply moved westward. Otto applied the transfer theory not only to political power but to religion and education as well: “Note well that all human power and knowledge began in the East and end in the West, so that in this way the variability and weaknesses of all things may be made clear.”68
The Middle Ages witnessed the blossoming of what might be called ‘prophetic’ or ‘apocalyptic’ historiography. The six-age scheme and the four monarchies theory of world history were, of course, derived from biblical texts that were either taken as prefigurations or as predictions. Biblical commentators had solved to their own and their contemporaries’ satisfaction most of the assumed predictions in the biblical texts. Numerous attempts were made, however, to define more closely some of the loose ends, especially the interpretation of Daniel 7, Revelation 6, and the appearance of the antichrist. The general ambiguity of apocalyptic texts tends to allow for their constant reinterpretation by those disposed to see themselves living in the last days and to see their enemies as the antichrists. The ambiguity of the biblical texts had even been heightened in some cases by patristic exegesis. Jerome, for example, had suggested that the ten horns in Daniel 7 might refer to the ten kings who would be the instruments of the Roman empire’s destruction and would be followed by the antichrist. If the Bible were the inspired truth, then these prophecies must have some concrete historical referent, or so reasoned medieval lovers of prophecy.
In addition to biblical prophecies, various other elements contributed to medieval prophetical historiographic interests: numerous Sibylline documents, developing astrological investigations stimulated by Islamic science and the introduction of the astrolabe and the improved ability to calculate astronomical phenomena, and the prophecies of such figures as Merlin and Hildegard of Bingen.69 The most famous apocalyptic historian of the time was Joachim of Fiore (about 1132–1202), whose fame and thought endured long after his passing. Joachim advanced a trinitarian conception of history. The time of ancient Israel and Judah was the age of God the Father, the second age of God the Son began with Jesus, and the age of the Holy Spirit was soon to dawn. The world of the new age was to be the time of the monks and was to be inaugurated by the appearance of a new Elijah and twelve holy men. (Many saw in the mendicant friars of the following decades a fulfilment of his prophecies.) The antichrist was to appear for the first time before the dawn of the final age and the reign of the Spirit. Needless to say, many were later seen as the embodiment of the antichrist; the most frequent candidate being the Muslims, a view already expounded by ninth-century Spanish theologians. The views of Joachimism and prophetic historiography scarcely advanced the cause of Israelite and Judean historiography. They did, however, tend to dispose people towards the future and hope and for several generations occupied the thoughts of many, not the least of whom was Sir Isaac Newton.
Before leaving this section, a few comments should be made about Jewish historiography in the Middle Ages. The surprising factor is that nothing comparable to Christian and Muslim historiography existed in Judaism during this period.70 The primary concerns of medieval Judaism centered upon either halakhic or philosophical-ethical matters. When they appear, historical matters in the Talmud are anecdotal. When the Jewish authorities “discussed the past, particular incidents, rather than its totality, caught their attention.”71 It is possible to take the various writings of a Jewish scholar like Maimonides (1135–1204) and distill from these his comments on and interpretations of various historical events reported in the Bible.72 These are basically retelling, with commentary, of the biblical narratives supplemented by haggadah and chronological notations. From these it is possible to reconstruct Maimonides’s historical worldview, but this is hardly historiography.
One special work deserves mention. This is the Hebrew writing called Josippon, so named because of its association with Josephus. Written in southern Italy in the mid-tenth century, Josippon begins with the table of nations in Genesis 10, contains a discussion of the founding of Rome, and provides a history of the Jews, primarily of the second temple period down to the fall of Masada. The unknown author made use of the Latin version of most of the books in Josephus’s Antiquities and a Latin adaptation of Josephus’s War. The book was widely used in the Middle Ages, was even translated into Arabic in the eleventh, and apparently was supplemented in the twelfth century.73
From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment
The foundations of modern historiography were laid in the Renaissance, which began in Italy in the fourteenth century and spread northward. The militant humanism of this period certainly had its roots in medievalism, in spite of its scorn for the Middle Ages; but its intellectual and technological accomplishments were revolutionary both in themselves and in their implications. One of the products of the Renaissance