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This introductory chapter begins with the story behind the delayed publication of the collection of essays presented in this volume. An overview of the essays is then given. It is argued that if the ultimate aim of the essays is to school the political intelligence of their readers, their method is scholarship of a detailed and rigorous kind. They are largely exercises in ‘source criticism’ (Quellenkritik) in its twin branches: study of the ancient evidence with a view to establishing who said what, and on what authority; and criticism of the data thus secured in the light of the observable political behaviour of human actors.

Gellius often discusses questions of etymology, sometimes following other writers' work, sometimes apparently offering suggestions of his own. This chapter employs source-criticism to isolate etymologies that seem to be his own (while acknowledging the possibility that they may not be), compares them with the findings of modern linguistics, and relates them to the etymological principles current amongst ancient grammarians, in particular borrowing from Greek, suffixation, composition out of two words, or use by antiphrasis to mean the opposite of the expected sense. He makes intelligent and informed use of these principles, proving himself an expert in the ars grammatica. Most of his derivations by suffixation or composition are correct, as are most derivations from Greek if the category is extended to include the common Indo-European descent of which antiquity had no notion.

This chapter presents a source-critical analysis of the scholia (explanatory notes) found in the medieval manuscripts of Demosthenes. These scholia are based on remnants of commentaries composed in late antiquity. It is shown that the scholia have been transmitted in three main strands of tradition. A lightly redacted version of Menander’s commentary is the sole source of one strand. In the other two strands, material derived from Menander has been combined with material from other commentators: one of these commentators was probably Zosimus (fifth century AD), the other is unidentified. Some material, which is identified as Menander’s, is attributed to Ulpian in manuscript superscriptions. The identity of this Ulpian and the nature of his contribution to the formation of the scholia is unknown.

This chapter introduces some of the traditional methodological and historiographical challenges to the social and cultural history of Late Antique and early Islamic Syria. It proposes a new approach to literary and source criticism that focuses on narrative as a lens for the interpretation of culture in the Classical Islamic world. It also situates Damascus in its late antique and early Byzantine milieu, providing an interdisciplinary perspective on the transition to Islam in the medieval Mediterranean. The chapter introduces the case studies that form the remainder of the book, and explains the rationale for the approach taken to pair a theoretical approach with individual case studies of the literature, cult practice, and sacred geography of Damascus.

Why did E. A. Freeman’s The Methods of Historical Study (1886) meet with mostly negative responses from late 19th-century American and Continental European historians? This essay argues that while Freeman adopted the language of ‘historical methods’ that was becoming customary in the 1880s, he did not understand the term to refer to techniques of source criticism, as many of his contemporaries did, but to a comparative method firmly rooted in Thomas Arnold’s unity of history doctrine. Confusingly, then, Freeman’s method promoted a philosophy of history of the kind that, by the 1880s, was increasingly rejected in the name of historical method. It is not without irony, therefore, that The Methods of Historical Study was sometimes mistaken for a methodology manual like Ernst Bernheim’s Lehrbuch der historischen Methode (1889) and as such found wanting by historians interested in the newest techniques of source criticism.

This chapter reviews the efforts that have been made to catch the authentic voice of the two men. As for Muhammad, it is generally conceded that, whatever their origin and however edited, it is his words that lie before us in the Quran. Jesus,’ on the other hand, have now to be extracted from the Gospels. But early on, perhaps before the Gospels, Jesus’ sayings were, like Muhammad’s, collected in the sayings source now called “Q.” To what end? The Quran reveals Muhammad as a mantic poet, a singer of new tales, but Q seems to shows us a Jesus who is (merely?) an itinerant rural preacher.

The Introduction explores the social and economic structures of ancient Near Eastern societies identifying a divide between the dominant tribute imposing class and the dominated tribute bearing class. Building upon the work of Norman Gottwald, the Introduction stakes the claim the Pentateuch represents a blueprint for an egalitarian order. Terms such as “egalitarian” and “social stratification” are defined. The Introduction explains that the current study is one of “biblical religion” as opposed to “Israelite religion” and examines the difference between them. The Introduction clarifies why this study engages the final, received form of the Pentateuch, rather than analyzing it within the classical source‐criticism. At the same time, it is argued that we may locate the final form of the text against our broad knowledge and understanding of the world of the ancient Near East. The Introduction concludes by briefly sketching the contents of each of the chapters, and indicating where the new contributions to scholarship in each.

This chapter discusses more technical but fundamental issues regarding the composition of the apodictic laws. It argues that the apodictic laws are not later additions to the text but part of the basic composition of the Covenant Code. It explores the question of whether the laws and clauses in which second person plural forms are found are an addition to the text. It gives evidence that they may be original and were generated by the use of sources or by other contextual concerns. It also argues that, for the most part, various motive or explanatory clauses are original to the apodictic laws. Finally, the chapter argues that the Covenant Code was probably written in connection with a version of the narrative of the book of Exodus and discusses the Covenant Code's compositional and chronological relationship to the book of Deuteronomy.

This is the classic chapter of ‘source criticism’: it describes in detail the principal data sources and the extensive efforts made to make their data as accurate, consistent, and complete as possible. It discusses the limitations of the data and explains the focus on ‘snapshots’ of the data in the years of the agricultural censuses of Germany (1882, 1895, and 1907) as well as the choice of 100 hectares as the lower bound for inclusion of a property into the analysis. It also includes extensive discussion of important data problems and what could be done about them: (1) inconsistency in recording names of owners; (2) changes in Kreis boundaries within provinces, especially West Prussia in 1887; (3) missing, incomplete, combined, or inconsistent data for individual properties; and (4) incomplete coverage of the Principality of Pless and of the ownership of forest land by the Prussian state.

This chapter outlines a methodology for the interpretation of historical sources, helping to realize their full potential for the study of organization, while overcoming their challenges in terms of distortions created by time, changes in context, and selective production or preservation. Drawing on social scientific methods as well as the practice and reflections of historians, the chapter describes analytical and interpretive process based on three basic elements, illustrating them with exemplars from management research: source criticism to identify possible biases and judge the extent to which a source can be trusted to address the research question; triangulation with additional sources to confirm or question an interpretation and strengthen the overall findings; hermeneutics to relate sources to their original contexts and make their interpretation by a researcher today more robust. The chapter contributes to the creation of a language for describing the use of historical sources in management research.

Gellius's manner of presentation varies from chapter: sometimes, for example, the information is presented directly in his own voice, sometimes as a report of authoritative statements oral or written, and frequently enlivened by dialogue, which often features a would-be expert put to shame by a real one, on occasion Gellius himself. Although these vignettes open a window onto Antonine intellectual life, in some instances the spoken word can be proved a literary figment; nevertheless, there is no reason to suppose that it is never a factual record. Likewise, although nineenth-century source-criticism demonstrated that not all Gellius's citations came to him directly from the authors cited, many of its results were speculative and rested on unwarrantable assumptions.

Genesis 6–9 is widely considered a prime example of the success of source criticism as a method of identifying distinct pre-existent sources within a composite text, well suited to teaching this method to undergraduates. The very specific meaning of the term ‘Pentateuchal criticism’, as compared with that of other books, reveals the excessive dominance of source criticism in scholarship of the Pentateuch. The implication is that what is not source-critical in this field is not criticism, which is evidently absurd when stated explicitly. This chapter, therefore, highlights a number of problems with the standard distinction of the flood narrative into ‘J’ and ‘P’ sources. Resistance from various quarters to source critical analysis of this narrative and of the whole Pentateuch has made it increasingly problematic, though as yet there has not appeared a clear alternative model to challenge the reigning paradigm. It is proposed that a reconsideration of the role of the redactor/author of the Flood narrative as it presently stands in Genesis will reveal more consistency than is often allowed, the two examples offered here relating to the numbers of animals in the ark and the chronology of the Flood. The historical imbalance in scholarship in favour of source criticism may well be partly to blame for the inappropriately poor quality of exegesis of the Pentateuch when compared with the rest of the Hebrew Bible. Hence the introduction of new interests to scholarship of the Pentateuch in the last four decades may turn out to have been truly revolutionary.

The concern in this chapter is with those truths, of a particular sort and degree, about which biblical criticism in its various aspects has something to say. The particular focus is on the question of contingent historical truth, and in this regard biblical criticism is starkly conscious of the distance that has to be travelled before ultimate historical issues can properly be addressed. The chapter considers first the degree of uncertainty even within the two traditional bases of criticism—textual criticism and translation—before turning to the so‐called ‘higher critical’ methods of source, form, and redaction criticism. Although each is recognized to provide significant truth about the Bible, they also constitute barriers to accessing the actual events and oracles in which the authoritative truth of scripture is traditionally thought to reside. However, for those critics who still consider historical truth a quest worthy of their efforts, this chapter then offers encouragement by consideration of two often neglected factors in scholarship—the moral integrity of the mediators of the biblical record, and the idea that known historical effects demand the hypothesis of sufficient historical cause. Throughout this chapter the Resurrection narratives in the Gospels are discussed by way of example, and it is suggested that the position of ‘programmatic scepticism’ adopted by some biblical critics is in fact perverse and uncritical. The question of historical truth remains foundational to the task of biblical criticism, however arduous the task may be to answer it.

Articulating a thoughtful methodology is desideratum, for today’s analyses of Israelite religion (indeed, of the academic study of religion in general) are dramatically different than those of past generations. This chapter articulates the academic disciplines required for the task at hand: textual studies (including epigraphy, linguistics and comparative Semitics), archaeology, art history, the philosophy of religion, and various social-scientific approaches (e.g. socio-linguistics, gender, ethnicity, ritual performance, spatial theory). The categories of “religion” and “Israelite” are probed. Particular attention is then devoted to the nature of our source material including (a) textual sources (e.g. epigraphy, onomastica, the Hebrew Bible) and source-criticism of the Hebrew Bible; (b) the nature of the archaeological record, and (c) the use of comparative ancient Near Eastern materials.

This chapter examines nineteenth-century developmental theories that explain the origin of the Jews, including the Documentary Hypothesis formulated by biblical scholar Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918). It considers Wellhausen's use of source criticism to demonstrate the developmental process that transformed the Israelites into the Jews, resulting in a kind of evolutionary account of Jewish origins that spanned several hundred years. It also situates Wellhausen's theory within later developmental theories, such as Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, to better understand what exactly he was arguing about the origin of the Jews. Finally, it discusses Wellhausen's claim that Judaism began in the postexilic/Persian period.

The division of the Genesis flood account is one of the most celebrated achievements of modern biblical criticism. This chapter takes a critical look at the source-critical paradigm and examines its hermeneutics. Historical-critical scholarship applies a series of double standards that all work in concert to support the source-critical aims and results. Moreover, it consistently suppresses evidence adduced from cognate materials—particularly from the Mesopotamian version of the flood story contained in Tablet XI of the Giglamesh epic—that threatens its validity by simply ignoring it, or otherwise negating the validity of that evidence through unwarranted means. Attention is given to the chiastic structure of the account, and to the parallel structure of the six days of creation and the drying of the earth after the flood. All in all, eight methodological flaws are detected in the source-critical approach to the story.

This chapter describes the main features of the content and structure of the Persica works as gathered in this study, and outlines Plutarch's method of employing these sources. Some of the features which can be attributed to the lost works used by Plutarch and to their authors were probably those that the biographer presumed to be common knowledge and regarded as information shared by his intended readers. The outcome of this study shatters the image of Plutarch as an author who largely copied his sources or echoed royal propaganda reflected in the Greek texts he used. In fact, some of the 'fragments' commonly regarded as such by scholars are not really fragments of the Persica works but rather sections which Plutarch composed himself, using several works while twisting them around, omitting and adding details. Drawing together the main strands of the book, this chapter presents a general argument concerning the manner Plutarch preserved ancient authors. Reiterating the aforementioned discussions on Plutarch's handling of the Persica works, the chapter suggests an outline of his work method in composing a Life by using the Artaxerxes as an example.

This chapter engages the common scholarly claim that most or all of the non-priestly promise texts are secondary insertions into the Pentateuch. It critiques both the traditional source-critical analyses and the contemporary non-documentary approaches, focusing particularly on the a priori assumptions and methodological difficulties inherent in each. It is demonstrated that neither the traditional documentary nor the contemporary non-documentary approaches to the promises is convincing.