A people without state or church institutions produced no historical writing.

Evidence

From the end of the ancient Jewish state until the impact of the Renaissance on Italian and French Jews, there is an almost total lack of historical writing, even a rejection of history. Thus Maimonides, a man of wide-ranging intellectual pursuits, condemns the preoccupation with the events of the past as of no value and of no interest. “[These books] neither possess wisdom nor yield profit for the body, but are merely a waste of time.” This lack of interest in history among Jews of that period and of that background is the more remarkable if we reflect that some of them were living among peoples with a very strong interest in history, like the Romans or the Arabs, and were in other respects profoundly influenced by the cultures in which they lived. Historians, in those days, were employed by the state or the church. Since the Jews had neither, they had no history. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1806

Categorization

• QUESTION: Is it really the absence of state/church patronage that explains the gap, or a deeper aversion? The claim feels too neat — Maimonides gives a philosophical rejection, not just lack of employment.
• XREF: Connects to the broader theme in this book about how institutional sponsorship shapes what intellectual work gets done and preserved.