James Brown

This will likely be just a newbie's question, but the threads of "How to date the writing of book X" makes me wonder, why didn't ancient authors ever identify when they wrote their books? Surely not all of them were trying to mask when the books were written. Was this just a professional blind spot? Is this phenomenon wide-spread, or is it limited to just Christian works?

It seems so much discussion would end if authors would have identified who was writing and when. Wouldn't their own difficulties in identifying these facts in their own readings prompt them to insert them in their writings?

semiopen

This also occurs in Jewish works.

I'm not aware of any religious text that isn't pseudepigraphical in some way.

Pseudepigraph

Certainly a useful term to understand.

Fundamentalists will often interpret these to actually be written by the author, for example Isaiah was probably written by multiple guys, and more likely than not, none named Isaiah.

A famous Jewish example is the Zohar, which was apparently written in 13th century Spain, but is allegedly written by Rabbi Shimon ben Zacchai in 2nd century Palestine.

Zohar

Wiki seems to think this is still disputed.

Dating itself is not so simple. I don't think Jewish calendar years existed until several hundred years into the CE. Sometimes things like eclipses can be used to date things, but I don't think there is a single eclipse mentioned in the bible. Otherwise two separate accounts of the same event can sometimes be used to synch the bible with reality. An example here might be the fall of Israel to Assyria.

aa5874

There seems to have been some kind of Jewish calender since BCE or before the Septuagint was compiled. The books of the Law contain days, months and years.
Genesis 7:11 - Leviticus 23:5 -

Roger Pearse

These are not daft questions; I'm not sure that I know all the answers. But I would say at once that they apply equally to all ancient texts, pagan or Christian. Here is some stuff off the top of my head, and we might discuss specifics further.

I'm not certain that no ancient authors indicate the date of composition -- or rather, completion -- in their works. I've not seen any, that I can recall, but chronicles, for instance, by their very nature usually (but not always) tend to end in a manner that indicates "this is now." Thus we might look at the end of Jerome's version of Eusebius' Chronicle:

But in general, authors knew when they were writing. Do modern authors generally say when they are writing? They do not, do they?

Likewise few modern authors place their own names in the body of their text, and the same was true for ancient authors. But it is not always true. Of the 31 works by Tertullian, two contain his name at the end:

De Baptismo: "So now, you have sought, and have found: you have
knocked, and it has been opened to you. This only I pray, that
as you ask you also have in mind Tertullian, a sinner."

In another (can't recall which) he names himself as "Septimius Tertullian."

His full name, Quintus Septimius Tertullianus Florens, is preserved in no ancient source and is found only in the incipits ("here begins x by y") or explicits ("here finishes x by y") in medieval handwritten copies of his works. At the end of most of these copies of his Apologeticum, for instance, you see his name given as "Quintus Tertullianus" (e.g. the Balliol ms. here).

Now it is fairly obvious that it is helpful to have the name of the author on a work, and likewise the title. But it seems equally obvious to us that words should have spaces between them, and sentences should be punctuated, and in ancient times these things were not done. It is therefore very risky for us to make arguments based on what seems natural to us, after 20 centuries of progress in the art of book construction.

In the era of the roll, the roll was rolled around a piece of wood with a boss protruding at each end. The name and title were generally written on a slip which was hung on one of the bosses. The scope to lose this information was therefore considerable.

In parchment books, the system of incipit and explicit was used, and carried on through the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages and into the first printed books or incunabula. Title pages were not invented until late in the 1400's by someone in Germany. Here is the opening page of the pre-1494 printed text of Tertullian's Apologeticum, for instance.

However this left many ways in which a text might lose its author and title. The books of this period were really loose-leaf. The bindings could be removed, and often were, and the contents split up, left unbound, or combined with other such books. In the process the leaves at the start and end were liable to be lost.

In medieval times books were part of the endowment of a monastery, and might be pawned. Consequently inventories would be drawn up. But these often contain books listed only vaguely as "de fide" (=on faith), meaning "something Christian in here". In the Cologne catalogue of 833 AD (itself lost in the last century) there is the following entry:

This is a collection of works by Tertullian, in fact, but the author we do not know is the comment of the Dark Ages monk. This was, in truth, a fabulously rare book; the abbot of Corbie around the same time had the only other known copy of "De pudicitia" and quotes from it, proud of owning so rare a work. (Neither manuscript survived later than 1600, and no manuscript copy of "De ieiuniis" survives today).

The other thing that we need to remember, as I always say, is that 99% of ancient literature is lost. Just because WE do not know the author or date of composition does not mean that both were not well-known in antiquity. It only means that in the total destruction of Roman society, the information we want did not reach us.

I hope that is helpful. In such questions we must always seek concrete examples, I think. Woolly generalisations help no-one.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

James Brown

Great post, Roger! Thanks. I suppose that my questions could be construed as naiive, akin to asking why no one thought to wash their hands before eating. Oh well.

semiopen

The "first month" in Leviticus and "second month" in Genesis suggests that months did not have names at the point this was written.

There was also the concept of years, "six hundredth year of Noah's life." The bible does not say that this was the 1500th year (or whatever) from creation.

The Hebrew month names are evidently Babylonian, and the system of years from creation is not seen in the bible at all, this is Talmudic, definitely CE.

I think it was common in Talmudic times to measure years by the reign of the King (eg. fifth year of the reign of King soandso); so far as I know, even this crude system is not used in the bible, although I would accept examples refuting this with my usual good grace and would even appreciate it.

The Hebrew calendar was not very good for measuring months. There are seven leap months added during a 19 year period. This was not working reliably until Talmudic times.

2 Chronicles 31:1-2
2 Chronicles 31:3
Doh!

Roger Pearse

Thank you for a most interesting question! I will probably consider it further. It would be most interesting to hear of texts which include a statement of their date of composition, so I might throw this one out into a couple of lists and see what comes out.

I don't see that these questions are naive. Most people simply don't know about this stuff; it's specialised even for scholars. But I think stuff on the ancient book is interesting for itself.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

GakuseiDon

There was a definite writing style in ancient times, which may be difficult for us to understand. It's not surprising really -- each culture have their own ways of doing things.

Here is a modern review of Plutarch's writing (my bolding, italics in original):
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2004/2004-04-32.html
I think there are parallels here with what we see in early Christian writings. There was no deliberate intention of avoiding dates, etc, but it was to "aim for an immemorial rather than a time-specific feel". The Gospels are a very good example of this -- you get no real feel for how time is passing.

semiopen

Hate to be a woolly generalist here but...

Why did the books of the hebrew bible not use dates, what were they aiming for? "An I have no idea what a date is feel."

Joan of Bark

Can anyone recommend a scholarly website that gives us a history of 'writings', from ancient times until Gutenberg?