Книги Маргалит Финкельберг: рецензии и обзоры

Margalit Finkelberg: Greeks and Pre-Greeks. Aegean Prehistory and Greek Heroic Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Rezensiert von: Jan Paul Crielaard Department of Mediterranean Archaeology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam

The Mycenaean civilization of the Late Bronze Age represents the first Hochkultur in the Aegean for which we have historical documentation. At the same time, it is sometimes regarded as a Heroic Age - a dim era, glimpses of which can be found in later Greek myth. This makes the second millennium a sort of dark age, in which the foundations of Classical Greek civilization were laid but that above all is a period that accommodates various peculiarities of Greek mythology, such as matriarchy, human sacrifice, and dynastic rule by eastern kings and princesses. According to this view, the second millennium is both the founding era and the antithesis of the Classical period.

Margalit Finkelberg's book stands in the latter tradition. Starting from the position that the oral heroic tradition preserves a memory of momentous historic events, her aim is to show that "historical myth" - as she labels it - can be utilized as a source for studying the pre-Hellenic or Aegean substratum of the Bronze Age. She considers this substratum to be represented in such local dynasties as the Inachids or Pelopids, which have a place in the Hellenic genealogy but are not descendants of Hellen. In linguistic terms, they were speakers of languages to which the pre-Greek suffixes -ss- and -nth-/-nd- belonged. The spread of these suffixes over western Asia, Greece and Crete suggests that this pre-Greek language was part of a wider group of Anatolian languages that Finkelberg feels safe to identify as Indo-European - more specifically Luwian, which in her view is also the language of Linear A. In this manner the pre-Hellenic civilization maintained ethnic, linguistic and cultural interconnections with the civilizations of western Asia Minor and even the eastern Mediterranean, "for the simple reason that the Anatolians of Asia [...] cannot be taken separately from the great civilizations of the Near East" (6).

Matrifocality is another aspect of affiliation with western Asiatic, Indo-European culture. Finkelberg detects a pattern in a number of myths in which the royal throne passes not from father to son but from father to son-in-law (see e.g. Pelops). Kingship by marriage means that dynastic succession took place through the female line, as it is the queen who is succeeded by her daughter. Finkelberg also finds evidence of this in the Old Hittite period. At the same time, there are traces in Greek myth of a system of patrilinear descent. Finkelberg seeks the explanation for this in a practice of rotational succession between two or three patrilinear clans of neighbouring kingdoms that had alternating access to the throne through marriage to a local line of queens. The queen presumably was the priestess of the mother goddess of the land. The exogamous marriages of the exiled hero-becoming-king that we witness in myth probably testify to the cultural assimilation of outsiders into the domestic group, with women playing a crucial role as the consolidators of traditions and the indigenous identity. The author concludes that in the course of the second millennium, ethnic and cultural fusion took place between the pre-Greek population and Greek-speaking groups that were infiltrating from the north, resulting in a population of mixed descent ruled by a multi-ethnic aristocracy.

Finkelberg turns to dialect geography to show that there was indeed no break in linguistic or cultural continuity. Re-examining linguistic interrelations between the historical Greek dialects, she argues that until the collapse of the Mycenaean palace civilization there had been a dialect continuum in most of the Greek territory which must have developed without disruption, probably since the arrival of Greek-speaking tribes at the end of the third millennium. Mapping the respective positions of dialects within the dialect continuum, she suggests a revised scheme for the original geography of Greek settlement. In Finkelberg's reconstruction, during the Bronze Age Cretan and Pamphylian, for instance, were spoken in Magnesia and south-east Thessaly.

The real break coincides with the collapse of Mycenaean palatial society. In the Catalogue of Women, the Race of Heroes is destroyed by Zeus, who wants to put an end to unions between gods and mortals. According to Finkelberg, this is a reflection of the abolition of the Bronze Age practice of female exogamy and the institution of kingship by marriage. Patrilinear succession became the norm, due to the influx of fresh, Greek-speaking nomadic groups (e.g. the Dorians) and the rise of the city-state. With this the role of the queen-priestess was eroded and Bronze Age fertility goddesses such as Hera had to yield their prominent position in the pantheon to Zeus. Pre-Greek elements are hardly visible in the Homeric epics. Finkelberg suggests that they were deliberately suppressed in order to create a foundation myth that would enhance the consolidation of Bronze Age 'indigenes' and Iron Age newcomers under the collective name of Hellenes, and a common identity based on the idea of a shared past.

Together, the basic ideas of Finkelberg's argument make it clear that this book contains a strong plea to return to a number of traditional standpoints. It departs from the view that the ancient Greeks' Age of Heroes equals our Bronze Age, and that careful analysis of later myths can reveal facts about this historical period. It is an era determined by migrations of culturally and ethnically homogeneous population groups (107, 144); language is considered to overlap with ethnicity, and is thus an index of migrations and tribal relations (109). Where there is doubt, archaeology can help to evaluate the reliability of the tradition. Certainly, the argument is presented with vigour and contains much food for thought. For instance, the idea of matrilinear succession explains remarkably well the constitutional crisis in Ithaca at the beginning of the Odyssey (69-71). On the other hand, archaeologists may be a little uneasy to find themselves projected back into the 1950s with references to V. Desborough's identifying the coming of the Dorians in the archaeological record (145), or LH IIIC pottery being linked to Hesiod's end of the Race of Heroes (150), nostos stories, and large-scale migrations of Achaeans to the eastern Mediterranean (152-3).

Whether or not one is convinced by this book's general thesis is to a large extent dependent on whether one accepts the author's use of myth as a historical source (9-11, for methodological discussion). For Finkelberg, myths have not only a kernel of historical truth, but also a direct relationship with specific historical events (167-8), and the author is prepared to take the information quite literally, for example in the case of colonial foundation stories (102-6, 152) or traditions about the coming of the Dorians (145-8). However, even if one accepts that myths are history, not literature, and that the stuff of which they are made are facts, not fiction, one may wonder why Greek myth "invariably lead us to the Mycenaean civilisation" (11-2), and not to, for example, the Middle Bronze Age or Early Iron Age. Also, if one accepts that myth contains "a residue of its past meaning" (11), one has to face the probability that this information has reached us through a series of filters of successive generations; a great problem is that we are not in a position to know what 'historical' information has been discarded along the way. More sceptical scholars would point out that mythical stories show alternative mythical variants and were constantly being revised. This certainly also relates to local and pan-Hellenic genealogies that until the mid sixth century were still highly dynamic. Another problem is that traditions were frequently invented, especially in the context of ethnogenesis - a mechanism that H.-J. Gehrke has called geglaubte or intentionale Geschichte. Finkelberg reckons with the possibility that the past was updated in order to shape a collective memory (170-6), but the implicit assumption seems to be that this created an anachronistic veneer under which a genuine Bronze Age tradition can be discovered. In itself this may be possible, but given the reputation of myth, this should be tested, using all possible external evidence. For instance, Linear B documents or important funerary complexes such as the Mycenaean shaft graves can provide interesting test cases for theories about matrilinear succession and the hereditary social position of women in their role as queen-priestess.

Margalit Finkelberg. The Birth of Literary Fiction in Ancient Greece. Oxford, 1998.

The purpose of this study is to find out how and why the "poetics of fiction" arose, its sources, and the materials from which it was created. A series of cultural choices made in archaic and classical Greece produced a clash between the traditional "poetics of truth", which derived poetry from divine inspiration and in the last analysis did not construe the poem as a work of art at all, and the new "poetics of fiction", which derived poetry from art. The eventual succession of the latter, culminating with the Poetics of Aristotle, amounted to an aesthetic revolution because, as a result of it, literary fiction, which since then has become a necessary framework for both the theory and practice of literature in Western tradition, was for the first time separated from non-fiction and given a status of its own. -- Reviews

"[A]n important and often engaging study." -- Religious Studies Review

"[T]here is much here to interest and challenge. Finkelberg is a clear and energetic advocate of her views, and a superb logician....[a] sober and thoroughly respectable account." -- Classical World

"Scholars of philosophy and literature will be most attracted to this volume's sustained and disciplined argument, one that relies on terminology developed in the first chapters and becomes increasingly more refined as the book progresses...approach[es] weighty theoretical questions in a readable and organized way." -- The Classical Outlook

Homer, the Bible, and Beyond: Literary and Religious Canons in the Ancient World (Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture, 2) (Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture, 2) by Margalit Finkelberg and Gedaliahu A. G. Stroumsa

Reviewed by Pieter W. van der Horst, Utrecht University (PvdHorst@theo.uu.nl)

In this volume, an international team of experts discusses the processes of canon-formation in a wide range of societies of the ancient world, addressing such issues as canon and the articulation of identity, the hermeneutical attitude toward canonical texts, textual fixity and openness, oral and written canons, methods of transmission, and more. In an introductory essay, the editors put the contributions into a wider perspective, with special reference to the modern debate on the so-called 'Western canon' (Harold Bloom). Canon-formation is about 'foundational texts' (exemplified in the book's title by Homer and the Bible), which, "in that they embody the essentials of a given community's collective self-consciousness, are the indispensable factor by means of which its ethnic, cultural, or religious identity is articulated" (5).

In his contribution on Mesopotamian canons, Veldhuis describes the Old Babylonian canon around 1800 BCE, in which the Sumerian heritage is recreated and used as inspiration for new compositions, and the Neo-Assyrian canon around 700 BCE, where libraries have become repositories of reliable knowledge and textuality is reflected upon. The problem with this paper is that the author writes for specialists in Assyriology so that much is far too technical for the average classicist.

In his essay "How the Biblical Canon Began," Stephen Chapman first sketches the standard critical theory regarding the canonization of the Old Testament which conceived of three discrete acts of canonization, one for each of the three subcollections of the canon (Torah, Prophets, Writings). He next describes how this conception has increasingly come under fire and why there is presently a terminological impasse as far as the term 'canon' (and 'scripture') is involved; the broad definition uses the criterion of religious authority of written documents, the more narrow one speaks of canon only in terms of a 'closed' list of sacred books. Chapman himself defines canon as "an intertextual collection of scriptures" with a history in which the broad and the narrow definition are only stages in an evolving process. "The editors in the late stages of the formation of the biblical books registered their assumptions that these books belong together. ... Later canonical decisions were for the most part confirmatory in nature, usually securing de jure approval for writings that already possessed de facto authority." (39-40). The article concludes with a number of important methodological considerations.

"On Written Lies" is the title of a paper in which C. Grottanelli tries to solve the baffling riddle of a text in the book of the prophet Jeremiah (8:8-9) that seems to condemn Torah scribes as liars. After a survey of previous exegetes including their hidden agenda's G. proposes his own solution in what is, again, a rather too technical article for a non-specialist.

In his contribution "Scripture and Exegesis in Zoroastrianism," Shaul Shaked briefly but clearly sketches the great problems of dating Zoroaster's life and the obscure early history of the sacred Zoroastrian scriptures. He emphasizes that in their case canonization certainly preceded the process of a written redaction, but at the same time the written redaction did not stop the process of canonization for "Zoroastrian traditions indicate that at certain times the scope of the sacred canon of scriptures underwent considerable expansions, and that, at other periods, it suffered from a substantial shrinking or diminution" (67).

"Homer As a Foundational Text" is the contribution by Margalit Finkelberg, in which she argues that "the Iliad and the Odyssey were intended to supersede the other traditional epics from the very beginning" (75). By incorporating many narrative elements from the Cypria, Aithiopis, Iliou Persis etc., the Iliad and the Odyssey "function as symbolic compendia of the entire history of the Trojan War and the Returns.... By the very fact of reinterpreting the other versions of the Trojan saga, Homer signalizes their subordinate status as regards his own poems and privileges the version that he offers" (78). His claim became universally accepted because his updating of the past was purposefully and inseparably linked up with the large-scale Panhellenic Renaissance of the 8th cent. BCE. Both expressed "the same tendency towards establishing a continuity between prehistoric and historic Greece that became dominant at that period" (82). For that reason, epic traditions that offered alternative versions of the end of Mycenaean Greece had to be marginalized. "As a result, like the Bible and some other ancient corpora, Homer's became a manifold text, which carried within itself both the original message and its re-interpretation in the vein of later values" (90). That is why Homer's text became 'foundational,' the 'Bible of the Greeks.' F. devotes the final pages of her fine essay to the effects Homer's sacrosanct status had upon the history of interpretation of his poems from the 6th cent. BCE up to the late Byzantine era.

In "Two Points About Rhapsodes," Hayden Pelliccia argues convincingly that there are strong reasons to believe that 6th and 5th cent. BCE Athens (or Greece) "was a society that had an experience and expectation of the verbatim repetition of precisely fixed poetic texts" (102). Applied to Homer, this implies that "while there is no direct evidence that supports the theory of a fluid, evolving, and creative rhapsodic tradition in the late 6th and early 5th centuries, what evidence there actually is implies a fixed text" (115), which was memorized by rhapsodes (contra Rosalind Thomas, Gregory Nagy et al.). This is an extremely rich and instructive article, that has, however, only an indirect bearing on matters of canonization.

More pertinent to that topic is Hubert Cancik's "Standardization and Ranking of Texts in Greek and Roman Institutions." The question he wants to answer is, "What was the impulse that drove the Greeks to become a canon-making species?" (117; think of the canons of the best 10 orators, 9 lyric poets, 5 [or 3] tragedians etc.). It is the circumstances at the great festivals (such as the Panathenaia) with their contests, both rhapsodic and dramatic, that helped to develop criteria for ranking. In addition to that, the great theatre reform by Lycurgus in Athens ca. 330 BCE implied a lot of standardization and 'canonization,' which went hand in hand here (plays being acted in accordance with the text of the copies in the Athenian archives). And the kritai of the festivals played, of course, a central role in the ranking process. In Rome, it was the private school setting that led to a similar kind of canon formation with, of course, Cicero and Virgil in the Latin leading positions.

Rome, in a wide sense, is also the focus of Amiel Vardi in "Canons of Literary Texts at Rome." He first discusses in general ancient lists of authors (whether selective or not), then lists of authors serving as recommended reading lists in manuals (esp. rhetorical ones, closely connected with the theory of mimesis), and concludes that "What was originally an enumeration of the best representative writers within a specific genre in a given literary corpus, came to be considered a list of archetypal examples which every future author in that genre had to follow, and against which all future works of the type would be evaluated" (138). Such lists often tended to become "a body of texts every educated person should be familiar with," i.e., a canon in the modern sense. The larger numbers of papyri found of such authors reflect this development. A helpful chart of the various canons found in ancient authors concludes the article.

Stroumsa's paper, "Early Christianity - A Religion of the Book?", deals with various aspects of orality and literacy in early Christianity and comes to the conclusion that books do not seem to have played a major role in the early Christian mind, a conclusion that seems to be contradicted by the revolutionary success of the codex in early Christianity stressed by Stroumsa himself (although he calls that the 'religion of the paperback'). The discourse of this paper is rather theoretical and not always easy to follow. The reference to B. Lang's publication discussed on p. 165 is missing (or it dropped out); it is: "Buchreligion," in the Handbuch religionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe, vol. 2 (Stuttgart 1990), 143-165.

In his "The Canon of the New Testament in Antiquity," Christoph Markschies argues for replacing the traditional picture of a great crisis in second century Christianity as the impetus for canon formation with the model of a laboratory: A number of different thinkers tried to solve the same theological problems on different levels with often the same tools; so different kinds of canons developed. This is a somewhat rambling piece.

Robert Lamberton writes about "The Neoplatonists and Their Books." In this eminently readable contribution, L. usefully stresses the fundamental difference between religious canons (in the monotheistic religions of the Book) and the aesthetic canons of Graeco-Roman antiquity and argues that in view of the absence of religious canons it is all the more paradoxical that in Late Antiquity some non-philosophical works gained precisely that status among the Neoplatonists. Of course Plato's dialogues formed the core of their library, but gradually one finds also books of 'alien wisdom' on their shelves (L. calls it the 'orientalism' of the Platonic 'underground'), most prominent among them the Oracula Chaldaica. In the last two centuries of the history of polytheist Platonism, the philosophers discovered more and more 'parallels' between the ontology they developed out of Plato and the ontological systems they discovered in these theurgical documents, which they regarded as having divine origin. Of all the books in the world Proclus wanted to preserve only the Chaldaean Oracles and the Timaeus.

I will summarize the final four contributions more briefly. In "Canonizing Law in Late Antiquity: Legal Constructs of Judaism in the Theodosian Code," Hagith Sivan argues that one of the purposes and consequences of the canonization of past and current legal decisions by Theodosius II was the construction of Judaism as deeply alien to Roman = Christian traditions.

D. Stern discusses "Canonization in Rabbinic Judaism." He shows, among other things, that the process of canonization of rabbinic literature took place through many of the same principles that midrash [= rabbinic Bible exegesis] uses to explain Scripture. In this way "Oral Torah acquires the 'canonical' state of being treated as Torah through being studied and interpreted via the same techniques and hermeneutical methods as are applied in midrashic literature to the Written Torah" (250). This is an excellent article, and his comparison of Homer and the Bible as prime examples of canonization is very useful (although I disagree with Stern's statement about "the relatively insignificant influence of Homer upon later Greek poetry and literature," 240).

Moshe Halbertal discusses aspects of the opposition between oral tradition and literary canon in 13th-14th century Kabbalah in his "From Oral Tradition to Literary Canon"; and in an "Afterword" Andrew Plaks reviews the various contributions to the volume from the outside perspective of Chinese textual tradition. I quote from this article the following statement, since it encapsulates exactly my main point of criticism of this otherwise valuable work: "The editors of this volume make an attempt to downplay the distinction between canonic texts attributed to divine revelation and those ascribed to more secular forms of inspiration, and they try to paper over the gap between these two opposing concepts by falling back upon the very vague expression 'foundational texts,' indicating not much more than that these books are all of great cultural significance" (268). Lamberton had in fact already made the same point. I wish this book in the hands of many readers.

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