One must research ancient events, and ancient
events are very difficult to research. Not only have all eyewitnesses passed
from the scene centuries before, but the cultural assumptions of ancient people
have disappeared as well. Those cultural assumptions of ancient people have
disappeared as well. Those cultural assumptions are crucial, for they gave
meaning to everything an ancient person did or said. Think of all the routine
activities in your own life. Would you bother with most of them if you were suddenly
transported out of your culture and into a wholly different one, with alien
values and assumptions? Your deeds and words have meaning to you because they
are grounded in a particular social context; out of that context, they become
meaningless. It is this same subjective meaning that brings evidence from the
ancient past to life. If historians examine an artifact or document from
ancient times but do not know the cultural values that made the artifacts or
documents important, how can they evaluate its significance? Both artifact and
document were part of a network of interrelated activities and their associated
meanings. A modern historian must develop tools for recapturing as much of that
network as possible. (K.L. Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: An Introduction [The Biblical Seminar 83; London: Sheffield Academic Press,
2001], 41-42)
