Is this difference in the way historians read Herodotus Histories and Israel’s Primary History justified?
Mandell and Freedman, as seen in the Preface notes (previous post) disagree with this reading of Herodotus. They place Herodotus’ Histories in the same theological genre as Primary History, and suggest that true history can be gleaned from both works, but that the amount of true history underlying both is really comparable, given that both are essentially theological narratives. Two different disciplines (biblical and classical), from 2 different vantage points, examine these text. “Frequently, scholars reach outside their own discipline to find external validation for or simply information about some precept. Hence, some may bring to their investigation a bias about the temporal and contextual priority of either Herodotus’ History or Old Testament that comes notable when one of the two workws is used more to validate than to explicate the other. But when explication rather than validation is sought, and when prejudice is based on fact rather than on wish fulfilment or ideology, judgme
