Finley, Moses I.

Moses I. Finley, originally Finkelstein (1912–1986) was an American-born British academic. He moved to England in 1955, where he developed as a classical scholar and eventually became master of Darwin College, Cambridge. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1979.

In common with a number of archaeologists and historians at the time, Finley maintained that none of the events in Homer’s works are historical, particularly in his book, The World of Odysseus ^[1139] and  was highly critical of Michael Wood’s In Search of the Trojan War  ^[1141] when it first appeared in 1984, four years before modern archaeology was undertaken at the Hissarlik site.^(a) 

Finley’s sceptical views went beyond the Trojan War and extended to Plato’s Atlantis. In 1969, a number of books and papers were published giving added impetus to the Minoan Hypothesis. Finley attacked James W. Mavor‘s Voyage to Atlantis ^[265] in The New York Review of Books ^(b). This evoked a response^(c) from Mavor not long afterwards.

In December 1969, Finley wrote a combined critical review of both Atlantis ^[263] by Galanopoulos & Bacon as well as J. V. Luce‘s Lost Atlantis(U.S)(The End of Atlantis,U.K.) ^[120] for the same publication^(d), to which Galanopoulos also responded^(e).

^(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Homeric_epics

^(b) Wayback Machine (archive.org)

^(c) https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/12/04/back-to-atlantis-again/

^(d) Back to Atlantis | by M.I. Finley | The New York Review of Books (archive.org)

^(e) The End of Atlantis | by A.G. Galanopoulos | The New York Review of Books (archive.org)