Re-drawing the Map? documents now available without either the benefit or the handicap created
by the existence of extensive narrative texts, such as the major Greek and
Roman historians, originally composed within the Graeco-Roman period,
but known to us (mainly) through medieval manuscripts. It would be absurd
to claim that we either could, or should, attempt to escape from the interpre-
tative framework offered by a Herodotus, a Thucydides, a Livy, or a Tacitus;
but even in these cases there cannot fail to be a constant tension between the
interpretations imposed by their narratives and the ever-growing mass of
detailed information deriving directly from the ancient world (sometimes in
the form of inscriptions which are sufficiently long and detailed to represent
interpretative narratives in their own right).
Canonical Texts and Historical Reconstruction
But it is not only in narrative history that the long-established dominance
of material known and used for centuries, because contained in medieval
manuscripts, and long since published in printed editions, may pose truly
profound problems in approaching the ancient world afresh now, in the light
of the mass of material now available. The question of how to write history
may be equally complex in those fields where there are long-established and
long-known ‘‘canonical’’ texts which are not in essence historical in char-
acter, but which set out norms in terms of which the historical evolution
which lies behind them can be interpreted. But should they be allowed to
set these norms? We will take as examples three groups of material where
we are confronted with the extra problem that they each also retain a rele-
vance for us which is not solely historical, but reflects their function in the
modern world: the three cases are Roman law, the Bible, and the standard
texts of Talmudic Judaism.
Each of these bodies of materialcanlegitimately be approached in a wholly
non-historical way. Wecanof course read them as vast and significant bodies
of text (which the overwhelming majority of readers, of the Bible at least,
will only ever approach in one translation or another), andcanignore the
questions of the context in which they were first generated, of the manu-
scripts in which they were copied, and of the nature of the printed editions of
the last five centuries, which for most readers will inevitably represent what
‘‘the Digest,’’ ‘‘the Bible,’’ or ‘‘the Talmud’’is. Taking the text as presented in
each case in modern printed editions, we can ask (for instance) what moral,
spiritual, or intellectual lessons it contains, what doctrines or principles it
puts forward, or whether it is internally consistent, or embodies contradic-
tions and ambiguities. And at least in the case of some of the works which