This chapter turns to Herodotus’ unique narratorial reticence in making firm truth claims. "What is said" and "what seems" are found with much greater frequency than "what is true." Juxtaposing the Histories with contemporary discussions on epistemology will demonstrate the extent to which truth was problematized as a standard of inquiry in the fifth century. The narrator’s response to this is to use truth as an elusive criterion in order to highlight the difficulty of meeting its conditions. The final portion of this chapter looks to the frequency of "veridical" εἰμί in the Histories and points to its status as a criterion of accuracy in Presocratic epistemology. It argues for its incorporation in historical narrative as a distinctive marker of epistemic certainty.

These conclusions to the entire book begin by comparing ancient Near Eastern war memorials preserved in the archeological record, on the one hand, to biblical war commemoration that has been transmitted for millennia, on the other. Where one was carved in stone and displayed in competing palaces, the other was conducted in the framework of a single, yet composite, narrative (a “movable monument”). In contrast to what we encounter in ancient Egypt and Western Asia, the societies of the East Aegean produced forms of war commemoration that are much more similar to the biblical writings. After presenting a selection of this evidence from ancient Greece, the chapter examines some of factors that help explain the commonalities between “Athens and Jerusalem.” It then turns back to Wellhausen and reflects on the larger implications of the book for political theology.