Ilya N. Popov Essays on the Sacred Geography of Ancient Palestine: the City of Ioppa and the Legends of Perseus, Andromeda, and Jonah

Abstract

As a result of several centuries of intellectual «restoration» work, the myth turns into a historically proven and even a kind of museumified event. The myth is historicized. We see that over many centuries, a certain system of features is constructed for an initially fictitious or self-evident story that should testify to the truthfulness, historicity, cultural and religious importance of its plot. Thus, a tradition of memory of this story or event arises. In this case, the initial falsity or reality of the event is not very important. What is important is that the culture wants to present this event as genuine and historical. That is, truth and falsity, historicity and fiction in this case depend on the opinion of people, society, and tradition, which acquires a self-sufficient meaning. Society itself constructs its history, and chooses to remember it in the form that is convenient for itself. There is a competitive struggle between different traditions (in this case, between the Greco-Roman and Jewish). The Jews promote a certain set of criticisms of the Greco-Roman tradition, but their criticism of the «pagan» «mythological thinking» in favor of «Jewish» (monotheistic) piety in this case does not consist in the rejection of the myth or the struggle against it, but only in the creation of their own version of a similar myth. From this point of view, the monuments of the myths of Perseus, Andromeda and Jonah, which were shown to travellers in ancient Joppa, represent a typical model of the development of sacred geography. They are like many other monuments of Christian, Muslim and other religious traditions.

Keywords

Cultural Memory, Historicization of Myth, Greco-Roman, Jewish Myth-Making Traditions, Palestine, City of Joppa, Perseus, Andromeda, Jonah

For Citation

Popov Il'ya N. Essays on the Sacred Geography of Ancient Palestine: the City of Ioppa and the Legends of Perseus, Andromeda, and Jonah // The Historical Reporter. 2025. Vol. LIII. P. 118–145. DOI: 10.35549/HR.2025.2025.53.002

Il'ya N. Popov

C.Sc. (History), Senior Teacher at the Department of the Department of History of the Middle Ages of the Historical Faculty, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russian Federation.
e-mail: ill.popov@mail.ru
SPIN-код: 4548-1420
ORCID: 0009-0008-1430-1126
AuthorID: 947704

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