Five Important Ancient Texts

Kevin Scull asks the question: What are 5 personally significant ancient/primary texts? His ‘rules’ are these:

1.) List the 5 primary sources that have most affected your scholarship, thoughts about antiquity, and/or understanding of the NT/OT.

2.) Books from the Bible are off limits unless you really want to list one, I certainly will not chastise you for it.

3.) Finally, choose individual works if you can.  This will be more interesting than listing the entire corpus of Cicero as one of your choices.

The following list is mine alone and has been formative in my own thought.

1. Philo – I love how Philo thinks and his passion for Scripture and for the moral growth of his readers.  Both Henry Chadwick and G. Sterling have made pleas for a renewed interest in Philo in the study of Christian origins.  A special development has been the popularity of the periodical Studia Philonica.  As for particular texts, Special Laws and On the Sacrifices of Cain and Abel worth reading.

2. Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs – we have, in the T12, a rich testament-text that places hortatory teachings into the mouths of the great twelve sons of Jacob.  Of these 12, I like the Testament of Levi for its apocalyptic tone and because I am interested in cultic material (i.e. the priesthood of Levi).

3. Anabasis – Xenophon’s great work about a mercenary army’s struggle to survive is legendary.  I remember translating parts of Anabasis in my freshman year of college, though I was so busy trying to parse and offer a wooden translation that I was not thinking about the art of the text.  Now that I am embarking on a new project studying the ethos of ancient warfare, I have a chance to give Xenophon the attention he deserves.  His historical work and discussion of the details of army life (the day-to-day snapshots) are priceless; it is all the more helpful that he is such an articulate writer.

4. The Community Rule aka 1QS (the Dead Sea Scrolls).  This is a fascinating look at how a group of devout Jews formed a separated community which attempted to preserve the sanctity of God’s people.  That they saw themselves as a special eschatological new-temple community (see McKelvey) is confirmed by 1QS 8.4, ‘It shall be an Everlasting Plantation, a House of Holiness for Israel, an Assembly of Supreme Holiness for Aaron’.  There is some very interesting stuff here.

5. Plutarch: Parallel Lives – this very interesting work tries to compare Greek and Roman magnates in pairs.  Plutarch is accused of stretching the truth to make the comparisons fit, but it still makes for a good read.

Incidentally, when  I was working for Hendrickson Publishers, Craig Evans came out with his Ancient Texts for New Testament Studies – a guide to the primary ancient texts that illuminate the context and background of the NT.  This is a must-have for all students of the New Testament.  What I find to be priceless is the indices supplied by Evans which include his own personal list of every allusion or parallel he found between a NT text and an ancient (usually Jewish) text.  This includes NT allusion to the OT, but also much more.  I refer to this book very regularly.