2.2 The Old Testament: An Axial History
Last modified 05/26/2008
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There is something entirely magnificent, yet odd, about the history
recorded in the Old Testament. Taken for so many centuries, millennia, in a
strictly religious way as a document about theistic historicism, modern
archaeological and historiographical research has nibbled away at its claims to
represent a factual account of the histories of Israel/Judah. All in all,
however, a real historical era does show itself behind the now embroidered
account. How odd that is, a chronicle of a relatively insignificant cultural
region on the frontiers of more developed zones of civilization. Despite this
transparency rendered by the discoveries of archaeology (or, often more
accurately, the failure to discover the basis for its incidents), we can
suddenly see something remarkable:
As a function of periodization alone, the Old Testament, or at least its core account in the rough interval of its codification, falls within the scope of the Axial interval, and can be seen as part of the Axial phenomenon. We need to be careful here since this immediately raises the bar on our interpretative assumptions about what is driving history, or the sub-history of the eonic effect, including our Axial transition. And yet, in broad strokes our analysis suggests the resolution of the riddle, if we are careful to distinguish between the different parts of the Old Testament's purported history. In fact, the whole document falls into place at once, very roughly speaking, if we follow what it clearly shows us, several different chronicles packaged together as one. We can see that the core Old Testament, which straddles the Axial interval, although not properly historical in a scientific sense, nonetheless has a more grounded basis in history than the sagas attached to it in the myths of Genesis, Abraham, and the Exodus. What it indirectly points to is the emergence of a Canaanite culture and the state formations in that context seen in the incidents of Israel/Judah in the three centuries prior to the Exile. We see that the Old Testament is really a chronicle of the Axial Age, even as it is a history of the emergence of a history taking shape as a body of literature. |
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