Flavius Josephus, Against Apion (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Joseph. Ap.]. | ||
<<Joseph. Ap. 1.1 | Joseph. Ap. 1.15 (Greek) | >>Joseph. Ap. 1.30 |
And now, in the first place, I cannot but greatly wonder at those
men, who suppose that we must attend to none but Grecians, when we are
inquiring about the most ancient facts, and must inform ourselves of their
truth from them only, while we must not believe ourselves nor other men;
for I am convinced that the very reverse is the truth of the case. I mean
this, - if we will not be led by vain opinions, but will make inquiry after
truth from facts themselves; for they will find that almost all which concerns
the Greeks happened not long ago; nay, one may say, is of yesterday only.
I speak of the building of their cities, the inventions of their arts,
and the description of their laws; and as for their care about the writing
down of their histories, it is very near the last thing they set about.
However, they acknowledge themselves so far, that they were the Egyptians,
the Chaldeans, and the Phoenicians (for I will not now reckon ourselves
among them) that have preserved the memorials of the most ancient and most
lasting traditions of mankind; for almost all these nations inhabit such
countries as are least subject to destruction from the world about them;
and these also have taken especial care to have nothing omitted of what
was [remarkably] done among them; but their history was esteemed sacred,
and put into public tables, as written by men of the greatest wisdom they
had among them. But as for the place where the Grecians inhabit, ten thousand
destructions have overtaken it, and blotted out the memory of former actions;
so that they were ever beginning a new way of living, and supposed that
every one of them was the origin of their new state. It was also late,
and with difficulty, that they came to know the letters they now use; for
those who would advance their use of these letters to the greatest antiquity
pretend that they learned them from the Phoenicians and from Cadmus; yet
is nobody able to demonstrate that they have any writing preserved from
that time, neither in their temples, nor in any other public monuments.
This appears, because the time when those lived who went to the Trojan
war, so many years afterward, is in great doubt, and great inquiry is made,
whether the Greeks used their letters at that time; and the most prevailing
opinion, and that nearest the truth, is, that their present way of using
those letters was unknown at that time. However, there is not any writing
which the Greeks agree to he genuine among them ancienter than Homer's
Poems, who must plainly he confessed later than the siege of
How can it then be other than an absurd thing, for the Greeks to be so proud, and to vaunt themselves to be the only people that are acquainted with antiquity, and that have delivered the true accounts of those early times after an accurate manner? Nay, who is there that cannot easily gather from the Greek writers themselves, that they knew but little on any good foundation when they set to write, but rather wrote their histories from their own conjectures? Accordingly, they confute one another in their own books to purpose, and are not ashamed. to give us the most contradictory accounts of the same things; and I should spend my time to little purpose, if I should pretend to teach the Greeks that which they know better than I already, what a great disagreement there is between Hellanicus and Acusilaus about their genealogies; in how many eases Acusilaus corrects Hesiod: or after what manner Ephorus demonstrates Hellanicus to have told lies in the greatest part of his history; as does Timeus in like manner as to Ephorus, and the succeeding writers do to Timeus, and all the later writers do to Herodotus note nor could Timeus agree with Antiochus and Philistius, or with Callias, about the Sicilian History, no more than do the several writers of the Athide follow one another about the Athenian affairs; nor do the historians the like, that wrote the Argolics, about the affairs of the Argives. And now what need I say any more about particular cities and smaller places, while in the most approved writers of the expedition of the Persians, and of the actions which were therein performed, there are so great differences? Nay, Thucydides himself is accused of some as writing what is false, although he seems to have given us the exactest history of the affairs of his own time. note
1.19As for the occasions of so great disagreement of theirs, there may
be assigned many that are very probable, if any have a mind to make an
inquiry about them; but I ascribe these contradictions chiefly to two causes,
which I will now mention, and still think what I shall mention in the first
place to be the principal of all. For if we remember that in the beginning
the Greeks had taken no care to have public records of their several transactions
preserved, this must for certain have afforded those that would afterward
write about those ancient transactions the opportunity of making mistakes,
and the power of making lies also; for this original recording of such
ancient transactions hath not only been neglected by the other states of
Flavius Josephus, Against Apion (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Joseph. Ap.]. | ||
<<Joseph. Ap. 1.1 | Joseph. Ap. 1.15 (Greek) | >>Joseph. Ap. 1.30 |