Why Greek Histories Disagree

In my work on our Antiquities, most excellent Epaphroditus, I think I have made it plain enough to those who read it that our Jewish people is of very great antiquity and had its own distinct origin from the first, and how it came to inhabit the land we hold now. That history covers five thousand years; I wrote it in Greek from our sacred books. But I see that a good many people pay attention to the slanders spread about us by some who bear us ill will, and do not believe what I have written about our antiquity. They take it as proof that our people is of recent date that the famous Greek historians have not thought it worth even a mention. So I have thought it my duty to write briefly on all these points: to convict those who revile us of malice and deliberate falsehood, to correct the ignorance of others, and to teach all who wish to know the truth about how ancient we are. As witnesses for what I say I will use those whom the Greeks themselves judge the most trustworthy on all matters of antiquity, and I will show that those who have written slanderously and falsely about us are refuted by their own words. I will also try to give the reasons why not many Greeks have mentioned our nation in their histories; and at the same time I will bring to light those who did not pass over our history, for the sake of those who do not know them or pretend not to know them. [a]

In the first place, I cannot help being astonished at those who think that on the most ancient matters we must attend to the Greeks alone and learn the truth from them only, and must not believe ourselves or the rest of mankind. I see that the very reverse is the case, if we are not to follow empty opinions but to take what is right from the facts themselves. Among the Greeks one will find everything new, born, so to speak, yesterday or the day before: I mean the founding of their cities, the invention of their arts, and the writing down of their laws. Almost the newest thing of all among them is the care for writing history. The Egyptians, on the other hand, and the Chaldeans and the Phoenicians (for I leave ourselves out of the count for now), have, as the Greeks themselves admit, the most ancient and most lasting tradition of memory. All of them live in lands that are least exposed to destruction from the elements, and they have taken great care that nothing done among them should be forgotten, but that it should always be consecrated in public records by their wisest men. The region of Greece, however, has been overtaken by countless disasters that blotted out the memory of what had happened. Always starting their way of life over again, each people thought that everything began with themselves. It was late, too, and with difficulty, that they learned the nature of letters. Those who would make their use of writing most ancient boast that they learned it from the Phoenicians and Cadmus. Yet no one can show a single record preserved from that time, either in their temples or on their public monuments. Indeed, even about those who went to the Trojan War so many years later there has been great doubt and inquiry whether they used letters at all, and the view that prevails, and is nearer the truth, is that they knew nothing of writing as it is used now. In short, no writing is found among the Greeks that they agree is older than the poetry of Homer, and he was plainly later than the Trojan War. They say that even he did not leave his poems in writing, but that they were remembered as separate songs and put together later, and that this is why there are so many inconsistencies in them. As for those among them who undertook to write histories, such as Cadmus of Miletus and Acusilaus of Argos, and any others said to have come after him, they lived only a little before the Persian expedition against Greece. Again, those who first philosophized among the Greeks about things in the heavens and things divine, such as Pherecydes of Syros, Pythagoras and Thales, were, as everyone agrees, pupils of the Egyptians and the Chaldeans, and wrote little. These are the writings the Greeks consider the oldest of all, and they can hardly believe that even these were written by those men. [c]

How, then, can it be anything but absurd for the Greeks to be so puffed up, as if they alone knew antiquity and had handed down the truth about it accurately? Who could not easily learn from their own writers that they wrote with no firm knowledge, each guessing at the facts as he saw fit? For the most part they refute one another in their books, and they do not hesitate to give the most contradictory accounts of the same things. I would be wasting my time teaching people who know it better than I do how much Hellanicus disagrees with Acusilaus about the genealogies, how often Acusilaus corrects Hesiod, how Ephorus shows Hellanicus to be lying in most of his history, Timaeus does the same to Ephorus, the writers after him to Timaeus, and all of them to Herodotus. Nor did Timaeus see fit to agree with Antiochus and Philistus or with Callias about Sicilian history; nor have the writers of the Atthides followed one another about the affairs of Attica, nor the historians of Argos about the affairs of the Argives. And what need is there to speak of single cities and smaller matters, when even about the Persian expedition and what was done in it the most esteemed writers have disagreed? Even Thucydides is accused by some of writing falsehoods, though he is thought to have written the most exact history of his own time. [e]

Many other causes of such disagreement might perhaps be found by anyone who cares to look for them; but I give the greatest weight to the two I am about to name, and I will speak first of the one that seems to me the more decisive. From the beginning the Greeks took no trouble to keep public records of what was done from time to time, and this above all gave those who later wished to write about ancient times both the occasion for error and the freedom to lie. For not only among the other Greeks were records neglected; even among the Athenians, who say they were born from their own soil and who give themselves to learning, nothing of the kind is found. They say that the oldest of their public writings are the laws on murder that Draco wrote for them, and he was a man who lived only a little before the tyranny of Pisistratus. As for the Arcadians, who boast of their antiquity, what need is there to speak of them? They were taught letters even later than this, and with difficulty. [g]

So, since no record had been laid down beforehand that could both teach those who wished to learn and refute those who told lies, there arose great disagreement among the writers. But a second cause must be added to this one. Those who rushed into writing did not care about the truth, though that is always the promise most ready to hand; they were displaying their power with words. In whatever style they thought they could outshine the rest, to that they turned. Some took to telling myths; some, to win favor, praised cities or kings; others went in for finding fault with deeds or with those who had recorded them, thinking to make a name that way. In short, they keep doing what is most contrary of all to history. For the proof of true history is that all who speak and write about the same things say the same; but these men thought that if they wrote differently about them, they would themselves appear the most truthful of all. We must therefore yield to the Greek writers in words and in skill with them; but not in the true history of antiquity, and least of all in the history that belongs to each people’s own land. [h]

That among the Egyptians and the Babylonians the care of the records has been entrusted from the remotest times to the priests, who devoted their learning to it, and among the Babylonians to the Chaldeans; and that the Phoenicians, more than any of the peoples who mixed with the Greeks, used letters both for the business of daily life and for handing down the record of public events, I think I may pass over, since everyone agrees to it. But that our forefathers took the same care over their records (for I will not say they took even more than the others I have named), and committed the task to the high priests and the prophets, and that these records have been kept with great accuracy down to our own times, and, if I may speak boldly, will continue to be kept, I will try to show briefly. [i]

From the beginning our forefathers not only set the best men, those devoted to the service of God, over this task, but also took care that the line of the priests should remain unmixed and pure. A man who shares in the priesthood must father his children by a woman of his own nation, and must not look to money or any other distinctions. He must examine her family, taking her descent from the ancient records and producing many witnesses. We do this not only in Judea itself, but wherever there is a community of our people, there too the priests keep strict account of their marriages: I mean those in Egypt and Babylon, and wherever else in the world any of the priestly families are scattered. They send to Jerusalem a written record of the bride’s name with her father’s, and those of her ancestors further back, and the names of the witnesses. If war breaks out, as it often has already, when Antiochus Epiphanes invaded our country, and Pompey the Great, and Quintilius Varus, and most of all in the wars of our own times, the priests who survive draw up new records from the old writings and examine the women who are left; for they do not accept those who have been captives, suspecting that they have often had relations with foreigners. But the strongest proof of our accuracy is this: our high priests for the last two thousand years are named in our records, son after father. And anyone who breaks any of these rules is forbidden to stand at the altars or to take part in any other holy rite. It is natural, then, or rather necessary, that our records should agree. Not everyone is free to write them, and there is no disagreement in what has been written. Only the prophets wrote them: the earliest and most ancient things they learned by the inspiration that comes from God, and the events of their own times they wrote down clearly as they happened. [j]