Comparing Ancient Historiographies: The Yehudite Book of Chronicles, Herodotus and Babylonian Chronicles

Programme

This workshop aims to advance the comparative exploration of three corpora of ancient historiography, 1-2 Chronicles, Babylonian Chronicles, and Herodotus, and to this end will pay significant attention to the following matters: the underlying assumptions, basic world- shaping conceptualizations on which these works were grounded; the generative grammars at work in these historiographical texts; the interrelation between genre, social location, and historical contingency. Whereas biblical scholarship is first and foremost bent on comparing ancient Israelite historiography with Greek historiography, this workshop aims to highlight the need to bring into the comparative project near eastern historiographical traditions, and in particular the Babylonian chronicles, and to explore the potential implications and outcomes of doing so. This workshop is proposed with a view to exploring the viability and interest in the topic.

Keywords: 
Ancient Historiography, Comparative Historiography, Babylonian Chronicles, Herodotus, 1-2 Chronicles

Chairs

Wuppertal 2021 Call for Papers

This unit is not accepting any new proposals for the 2021 conference

This workshop advances the comparative exploration of three corpora of ancient historiography, and pays attention to the following matters: the underlying assumptions, basic world-shaping conceptualizations on which these works were grounded; the generative grammars at work in these historiographical texts; and the interrelation between genre, social location, and historical contingency. Several papers will be invited to open a conversation on these matters, but suitable submissions will also be considered.