In modern parlance, the term “history” is used in two main senses: the past and (written) depictions of the past, often called “historiography.” These two senses live in an uncomfortable tension because the past is a set of events that transpired once and can never be recaptured exactly. Instead, various efforts can be made to capture these events in some form – most often through a writing system that can tell certain aspects of what really happened. Societies desire to recapture the past at particular points in time for particular reasons.

The introductions to the two great Greek histories that are often thought of as the beginning of history in the fifth century BCE, The Histories by Herodotus and The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, offer explicit reasons for trying to recapture the past. Herodotus opens his work

Thucydides opens

No comparable introduction is found in any text from the ancient Near Eastern world. In contrast to these two works, ancient Near Eastern accounts are typically anonymous, do not have introductions, and do not offer explicit reasons why they have been written.

This may suggest that it is best to avoid the term “history” for the Bible and, perhaps, the pre-Hellenistic ancient world. Many surveys of history writing do in fact exclude the Bible, beginning with the classical world.