“For a lot of the final two thousand years, the Bible has been nearly the one historical past ebook utilized in Western civilization,” writes Isaac Asimov in his Information to the Bible. “Even in the present day, it stays the most well-liked, and its view of historic historical past remains to be extra broadly and generally recognized than is that of every other.” In consequence, “tens of millions of individuals in the present day know of Nebuchadnezzar, and have by no means heard of Pericles, just because Nebuchadnezzar is talked about prominently within the Bible and Pericles is rarely talked about in any respect.” That very same disproportionate recognition is accorded to “minor Egyptian pharaohs” like Shishak and Necho, “individuals whose very existence is uncertain” like Nimrod and the Queen of Sheba, and “small cities in Canaan, corresponding to Shechem and Bethel.”
Asimov notes that “solely that’s recognized about such locations as occurs to be talked about within the Bible. Ecbatana, the capital of the Median Empire, is remembered in reference to the story of Tobit, however its earlier and later historical past are dim certainly to most individuals, who is perhaps stunned to know that it nonetheless exists in the present day as a big provincial capital within the trendy nation of Iran.” Within the video from Hochelaga above, we be taught that Iran, then referred to as Persia, is widely known within the Bible “for ending the Jewish exile and returning Israel to its homeland. The Guide of Usaiah provides a particular shout-out to its King, Cyrus the Nice: he’s given the title ‘anointed one,’ or ‘messiah.’”
Although “Persia has performed an enormous function within the historical past of the area, and at a time was one of many largest empires of its day,” it’s simply one of many surprisingly many lands to obtain Biblical acknowledgement. As Hochelaga creator Tommy Trelawny makes clear, “when the Bible was written, the international locations as we all know them in the present day didn’t even exist.” However although the idea of the fashionable nation-state hadn’t but come into being, the locations that may give rise to a good few of the nation-states within the twenty-first century actually had: “shout-out to Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Persia, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, and Spain, that also exist in the present day, or not less than go by the names that seem within the Bible.”
Chances are you’ll discover, Trelawny provides, that “many of those unique lands are talked about within the story of King Solomon’s temple, and the way valuable uncooked supplies have been imported from faraway locations, from the strongest Lebanese cedars to the best Indian ivories.” It hardly issues “whether or not King Solomon was even actual; we all know these geographical areas exist in the present day, and that Biblical writers appeared to know of them as effectively.” As depicted within the Bible or different sources, the traditional world can appear scarcely recognizable to us. But when we make the mandatory changes to our perspective, we are able to see a means of globalization not dissimilar to what we see in our personal societies — whose fascination with distant lands and costly luxuries appears hardly to have diminished over the millennia.
Associated content material:
Christianity By Its Scriptures: A Free Course from Harvard College
Introduction to the Outdated Testomony: A Free Yale Course
Introduction to New Testomony Historical past and Literature: A Free Yale Course
Historical Israel: A Free Course from NYU
Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and tradition. His initiatives embrace the Substack publication Books on Cities, the ebook The Stateless Metropolis: a Stroll by means of Twenty first-Century Los Angeles and the video collection The Metropolis in Cinema. Observe him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Fb.
