Ancient Historiography, Biblical Stories and Hellenism

EMANUEL PFOH

The Bible and Hellenism: Greek Influence on Jewish and Early Christian Literature

Acumen Publishing

Lugar: Durham; Año: 2014; p. 19 - 35

This paper addresses questions related to the historical and cultural contexts into which literary influence and dependence of biblical stories may have taken place. First, a historical and cultural epistemology is employed, when interpreting the biblical narrative, in order to understand how biblical stories depict realities, past and present, in ancient and modern interpretive contexts. Second, attempting to set a historical context for the literary production of biblical stories logically provides possible intentions and causes for their existence. Third, the question of influence and dependence is related in this discussion to a broader cultural background, from the Mesopotamian to the Greco-Roman worlds, during the second half of the first millennium BCE; in our case with a special emphasis on the spread of Hellenism in the Levant.