Free Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus (Hinges of History) by Thomas Cahill Page A
Authors: Thomas Cahill
Review
, in both of which well-regarded scholars are invited to write for the common reader about current breakthroughs and controversies.
I NTRODUCTION
In confirming my presentation of the outlook from the Janiculum, I found helpful Christopher Hibbert’s
Rome: The Biography of a City
(London and New York, 1985);
The Blue Guide to Rome
(London and New York, 1994); the Lazio volume (Venice, 1997) of the
Jewish Itinerary
series; and Ruth Liliana Geller’s
Roma Ebraica
(Rome, 1984). Giacomo Debenedetti’s small but unforgettable book about the Nazi roundup of the Jews of Rome,
16 ottobre 1943
(Palermo, 1993), is not available in an English translation, so far as I know. Livy’s history of ancient Rome,
Ab Urbe Condita Libri
—from which I took the description of the Celtic invaders—is available in many editions.
The title of this book is a phrase from the beautiful blessing ofJacob on his son Joseph, found in Genesis 49:26. The phrase is translated in differentways—from “the utmost bounds of the eternal hills” (Jewish Publications Society) to “the delights of the everlasting hills” (E. A. Speiser). My translation is taken from the Latin ofJerome’s Vulgate, which served for more than a thousand years in the West the same purpose that the Greek Septuagint served first in the Jewish diaspora, then in the Eastern church—as universal Bible. Jerome did not have at his disposal the Masoretic Hebrew text that has since become standard, but different versions of the Hebrew and Septuagint, which he used for comparison and correction. He translated the phrase:
“desiderium collium eternorum.”
Correct or incorrect, it is for me an image of the desire beyond articulation, the desire deeper than all (conscious) desiring.
I: G REEKS , J EWS , AND R OMANS
The “Axial Age,” or
Achsenzeit
, is a term invented by the postwar German historianKarl Jaspers in his
Vom Ursprung und Zeit der Geschichte
(1949), in which he proposes his theory, since then widely accepted, of an age of extraordinary worldwide creativity with the fifth century B.C. as its white-hot center.
There is no one to whom I owe more in this chapter than the great Italian Jewish scholar Arnaldo Momigliano, who knew more than anyone about just about everything—certainly about everything in antiquity. Two of his books proved especially enlightening:
Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization
(Cambridge, 1971) and
Pagine ebraiche
(Torino, 1987), published in English translation as
Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism
(Chicago, 1994).
For the Greek and Roman figures, I relied principally on Plutarch’s
Parallel Lives
for Alexander, Pompey, and Caesar and on Tacitus’s
Annals
and Suetonius’s
Lives of the Twelve Caesars
for Augustus. These are available in many editions. Also helpful was a fine comprehensive study on “currents of culture and belief” by James D. Newsome,
Greeks, Romans, Jews
(Philadelphia, 1992).
The outstanding contemporary interpreter of Jewish apocalyptic literature is John J. Collins. I consulted his
Between Athens and Jerusalem
(New York, 1983),
The Apocalyptic Imagination
(New York, 1984), and especially
The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature
(New York, 1995).
The translation of the Sibylline Oracles is by Collins. The quotations from Isaiah are taken from the King James Version (KJV): these prophecies wouldhave sounded ancient and venerable to the ears of Jesus’s contemporaries, just as the KJV sounds to us. The quotations from First and Second Maccabees are taken from the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB), as is the long quotation from the Book of Wisdom (though revised by me). The translation from the Latin of Virgil’s “Fourth Eclogue” is mine.
A caution is in order concerning my choice of biblical texts to illustrate the convictions of the Jews of Jesus’s time in regard to both the possibility of an afterlife and the expectation of a messiah. My quotation fromJob
, in both of which well-regarded scholars are invited to write for the common reader about current breakthroughs and controversies.
I NTRODUCTION
In confirming my presentation of the outlook from the Janiculum, I found helpful Christopher Hibbert’s
Rome: The Biography of a City
(London and New York, 1985);
The Blue Guide to Rome
(London and New York, 1994); the Lazio volume (Venice, 1997) of the
Jewish Itinerary
series; and Ruth Liliana Geller’s
Roma Ebraica
(Rome, 1984). Giacomo Debenedetti’s small but unforgettable book about the Nazi roundup of the Jews of Rome,
16 ottobre 1943
(Palermo, 1993), is not available in an English translation, so far as I know. Livy’s history of ancient Rome,
Ab Urbe Condita Libri
—from which I took the description of the Celtic invaders—is available in many editions.
The title of this book is a phrase from the beautiful blessing ofJacob on his son Joseph, found in Genesis 49:26. The phrase is translated in differentways—from “the utmost bounds of the eternal hills” (Jewish Publications Society) to “the delights of the everlasting hills” (E. A. Speiser). My translation is taken from the Latin ofJerome’s Vulgate, which served for more than a thousand years in the West the same purpose that the Greek Septuagint served first in the Jewish diaspora, then in the Eastern church—as universal Bible. Jerome did not have at his disposal the Masoretic Hebrew text that has since become standard, but different versions of the Hebrew and Septuagint, which he used for comparison and correction. He translated the phrase:
“desiderium collium eternorum.”
Correct or incorrect, it is for me an image of the desire beyond articulation, the desire deeper than all (conscious) desiring.
I: G REEKS , J EWS , AND R OMANS
The “Axial Age,” or
Achsenzeit
, is a term invented by the postwar German historianKarl Jaspers in his
Vom Ursprung und Zeit der Geschichte
(1949), in which he proposes his theory, since then widely accepted, of an age of extraordinary worldwide creativity with the fifth century B.C. as its white-hot center.
There is no one to whom I owe more in this chapter than the great Italian Jewish scholar Arnaldo Momigliano, who knew more than anyone about just about everything—certainly about everything in antiquity. Two of his books proved especially enlightening:
Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization
(Cambridge, 1971) and
Pagine ebraiche
(Torino, 1987), published in English translation as
Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism
(Chicago, 1994).
For the Greek and Roman figures, I relied principally on Plutarch’s
Parallel Lives
for Alexander, Pompey, and Caesar and on Tacitus’s
Annals
and Suetonius’s
Lives of the Twelve Caesars
for Augustus. These are available in many editions. Also helpful was a fine comprehensive study on “currents of culture and belief” by James D. Newsome,
Greeks, Romans, Jews
(Philadelphia, 1992).
The outstanding contemporary interpreter of Jewish apocalyptic literature is John J. Collins. I consulted his
Between Athens and Jerusalem
(New York, 1983),
The Apocalyptic Imagination
(New York, 1984), and especially
The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature
(New York, 1995).
The translation of the Sibylline Oracles is by Collins. The quotations from Isaiah are taken from the King James Version (KJV): these prophecies wouldhave sounded ancient and venerable to the ears of Jesus’s contemporaries, just as the KJV sounds to us. The quotations from First and Second Maccabees are taken from the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB), as is the long quotation from the Book of Wisdom (though revised by me). The translation from the Latin of Virgil’s “Fourth Eclogue” is mine.
A caution is in order concerning my choice of biblical texts to illustrate the convictions of the Jews of Jesus’s time in regard to both the possibility of an afterlife and the expectation of a messiah. My quotation fromJob