ABSTRACT
The depiction in antiquity of a territory with precise borders was by no means unique to ancient Israel. The kinds of peculiarities or complications posed by the history of ancient Israel to understanding the development of the nation of ancient Israel are often found in the history of other nations in antiquity. Has the lack of even a superficial familiarity with the Bible among historians today contributed to their reluctance to consider that nations may have existed in antiquity? The very existence of these histories is significant for considering the possibility of an Armenian nation in antiquity, for they indicate that an image of Armenia had become a conceptual focus of attention, obviously so for those who wrote them but surely not confined to those authors. The historian must also keep in mind that these large cities in antiquity such as Babylon exerted a cultural, economic, and legal influence on other villages, towns, and cities.
