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Claude Hermann Walter Johns

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Claude Hermann Walter Johns

Claude Hermann Walter Johns (20 February 1857 – 20 August 1920) was an English Assyriologist, historian, philologist, and biblical scholar. He was a Church of England priest from 1888 until his death.

Quotes

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  • The value to a great Empire, such as that of Assyria, or of Babylonia, of an accurate record of the available population, its resources and occupations, must always have been appreciated. We now know that from very early times (the third millenium B. C.) ample material existed for such a census. Estates were carefully surveyed and the areas of the fields estimated from actual measurements, correct to the last finger-breadth. The boundaries, names of neighbours, of roads, canals, streets, or public buildings, adjoining, were exactly stated. The class of land, corn-field, vineyard, orchard, or pasture, the names of the tenants or serfs and the average yield were set down. Boundary stones engraved with the minutest details of the adjoining estate, and often bearing a short abstract of its recent history, were erected. So many of these monuments have already found their way to European Museums that it is perhaps not too much to say that were an accurate survey now made of Babylonia, with a notice of the landmarks and boundary stones still in situ, and probably easily to be recovered, we should be able to map out every town and village, road and canal, and most of the fields in that ancient centre of the world's history.
    • "Preface". An Assyrian Doomsday Book, Or, Liber Censualis of the District Round Harran in the Seventh Century B.C.: Copied from the Cuneiform Tablets in the British Museum. Volumen 17 de Assyriologische Bibliothek. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs. 1901.  text at archive.org
  • Some of the greatest difficulties which beset the western mind in attempting to study the Bible are due to the fact that it is an eastern book. The biblical student has to learn to think orientally. Now a prolonged study of the Bible, especially if it is the only book much read, will produce an oriental cast of thought, as it did among our pious forefathers. For it is the unrivaled mediator between East and West. Yet such an unconscious orientalism is apt to be true to neither, because it recognizes neither, historically nor scientifically. The modern student will find it difficult to avoid misunderstanding unless he enters into the spirit of the East consciously and deliberately, sympathetically, but without losing his foothold on firm ground. To do this, he must familiarize himself with things oriental, ways of thought and speech, and the whole eastern man's outlook on life. To visit the Jews' quarter in a modern city is a revelation to many. ... To make even a short tourist's trip in Palestine will present us with a fifth gospel. ... The unchanging East has sent back many a traveler with a new Bible.
  • In Herodotus (I. 7) Ninus, the mythical founder of Nineveh, appears as the son of Bêlus, the mythical founder of Babylon. It is an interesting but not very profitable occupation to seek to interpret the statements of the Greek writers by comparison with the facts that may have suggested their stories. Their chief value is the eloquent testimony they bear to the lasting impression of greatness which Assyria left upon the imagination of the peoples of Asia Minor, from whom the Greeks drew their information.
    It is somewhat different with the statements of Berosus, who, though he wrote in Greek, was himself a Babylonian priest, and had access to ancient and authentic sources of history. Wherever his statements admit of verification they have been found to be reliable, subject to such modifications as are usually necessary in dealing with ancient historians. Unfortunately his writings are only known to us from the extracts which Eusebius and later writers made from more ancient authorities who had quoted from him.
  • The ancient authors, who founded the Science of History, whose names remain household words amongst us still, such as Herodotus or Xenophon, have transmitted to modern times some far-off echoes of the fame of Babylonia. Many scattered references in classical writers serve to show the impression that its wealth and power had made on the Greek imagination. Aeschylus and Aristophanes, Aristotle and others, will be recalled. After Alexander the Great had included it in his conquests, a closer acquaintance with its still marvellous remains and magnificent traditions enhanced its interest for many writers less generally known: Arrian, Ctesias, Pausanias may be named.
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