Quotes About History

Two statements about the nature of the gospels are crucial for grasping the historical task: (1) They are a developing tradition. (2) They are a mixture of history remembered and history metaphorized.

The recognition that the Bible contains both history and metaphor has an immediate implication: the ancient communities that produced the Bible often metaphorized their history. Indeed, this is the way they invested their stories with meaning. But we, especially in the modern period, have often historicized their metaphors.

But then something went terribly, terribly wrong. Athens had invented a democracy, but learned that you could have a democracy or an empire, but not both at the same time for long. Rome was now about to relearn that lesson. It had invented a republic, but was now to learn that you could have a republic or an empire, but not both at the same time for long.

The foundation of this way of seeing the Bible begins with the conviction that it is not the inerrant and infallible revelation of God, but the product of our religious ancestors in two ancient communities. The Old Testament comes to us from our ancestors in biblical Israel. The New Testament comes to us from our ancestors in early Christian communities. As such, the Bible is a human product: it tells us how our religious ancestors saw things, not how God sees things.

spoke of the coming of the kingdom of God, he meant that "the end" was at hand. In the near future, God would dramatically intervene in the world, bring ordinary history to a close, and establish the everlasting kingdom. Scholarly opinion about this has changed in the last twenty years or so. Along with probably a majority of contemporary scholars, both Tom and I (for somewhat different reasons) reject this understanding.51

What, then, did Jesus mean by his kingdom announcement? Let me anticipate my conclusion. Jesus was telling his contemporaries that the kingdom was indeed breaking into history, but that it did not look like what they had expected.

Jesus was telling his contemporaries that the kingdom was indeed breaking into history, but that it did not look like what they had expected.

The slave ships are ghost ships still sailing around the edges of our modern consciousness. Their legacy in the present is discrimination, deep poverty, structural inequality, and premature death.

The closer the collapse of the Empire, the crazier its laws are.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

For walk where we will, we tread upon some story.

El pasado es también el presente y el futuro. La nación que olvida está pérdida.

Finally, an orator must have a keen mind capable of remembering a vast array of relevant precedents and examples from history, along with a thorough knowledge of the law and civil statutes.

for in history there is nothing more pleasing than clear and brilliant brevity.

In the end, we'll all become stories.

As they say, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our day.

The past is so much safer, because whatever's in it has already happened. It can't be changed; so, in a way, there's nothing to dread.

Children were vehicles for passing things along. These things could be kingdoms, rich wedding gifts, stories, grudges, blood feuds. Through children, alliances were forged; through children, wrongs were avenged. To have a child was to set loose a force in the world.

I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again.

As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter...

Everything is post these days, as if we're all just a footnote to something earlier that was real enough to have a name of its own.

Stick a shovel into the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light. Good for trade, we thrive on bones; without them there'd be no stories.