Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts [Gmirkin]

[ABuddhist]

Russell Gmirkin trashed some scholars by guilt by association [with imo respectable schools]. Nevermind institutions with Worldwide Armstrong unfortunate events.

1. In the past, you have been kind enough both to cite Gmirkin's exact words and, in response to requests for citations, to provide citations so that other people can assess your claims. Would you kindly do so in this context?

2. People are prone to varying sorts of intemperate insults, but such insults, even when unjustified, do not detract from the ideas which the people assert, which should be assessed on their own merits. Consider, after all, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, who insulted the physicians who denied that his hygienic reforms were necessary. But Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis's insults did not detract from his correct conclusions. For this reason, even if Gmirkin has truly trashed scholars, that does not mean that his ideas are false.

3. Just about every scholar dealing with religious history and affairs can be linked to some bizarre religious scandal if one look hard enough. I mean, Roman Catholicism (which supports many scholars of Judaism and Christianity) has its pedophilia scandal, the Dalai Lama (who supports in various ways Buddhist scholars) had unsavoury connections with Shōkō Asahara and his cult {see for further details "Knave or Fool? The Dalai Lama and Shōkō Asahara Affair Revisited", by Rob Hogendoorn at https://openbuddhism.org/knave-or-fool- ... revisited/ }, and, according to your vague words, Gmirkin may have some association with Armstrongism and the Worldwide Church of God. But none of these associations need undermine undermine the scholarship, which can be of the highest quality - although I am cautious about publications from overtly religious institutions.

[neilgodfrey]

Russell Gmirkin trashed some scholars by guilt by association [with imo respectable schools]. Nevermind institutions with Worldwide Armstrong unfortunate events.
One of my questions--you need not answer to me, of course--is whether your Plato view was, in past, mediated by Phineas Quimby.

Stephen, please cut the silliness and dis-representation and attempts to distract from the point being asked and just give us all a straight answer:

What are the sources and/or examples for your claim that the Greek translators of the Pentateuch had systematic difficulties with the Hebrew?

People can publish almost anything they want. But being blind to counter-evidence does not help conduce to good history.
As some say: welcome to your own opinions, but not to your own facts.

An academic librarian would know that Routledge will not publish "anything people want". But you seem determined to hide from us the evidence you claim you have that debunks a key piece of Gmirkin's theory. Or is the evidence a secret fact you alone are entitled to know?

[neilgodfrey]

Admittedly, I do not at the moment have it at hand, but my readings of Prof. Tov lead me to assume that in this 16-page article he did not intend to cover all Hebrew to Greek text issues.

In addition to the chapter cited, you should also read two chapters earlier in the same volume, "THE IMPACT OF THE SEPTUAGINT TRANSLATION OF THE TORAH ON THE TRANSLATION OF THE OTHER BOOKS". The Greek translation of the Pentateuch, we learn there from Tov, was used as the touchstone of interpretation, the authority that was used to guide and inform translators of the other "biblical" books.

[Russell Gmirkin]

involves a misunderstanding of what was referred to as the Septuagint, probably on your part.

To clarify your theory. do you think that this involved a misinterpretation in which the Septuagint was assumed to be the Pentateuch, or another misunderstanding?
[/quote]

We can easily clear up this up if you would care to cite simply your authority, if it exists, on the alleged difficulties of the translators of the Pentateuch (or perhaps Septuagint) with Hebrew. If you are reluctant to do so, that's fine, and let's end the discussion on that note.

I've never heard of Phineas Quimby. If you would care to check out the author's indexes in Gmirkin 2017, 2022, you will find a relatively complete list of my secondary sources on Plato.

[Russell Gmirkin]

Gmirkin may have some association with Armstrongism and the Worldwide Church of God. But none of these associations need undermine undermine the scholarship, which can be of the highest quality - although I am cautious about publications from overtly religious institutions.

I am quite open about my past membership in the Worldwide Church of God as a teen and my attendance of Ambassador College (Pasadena) in I think 1972-1974, when it comes up, which is rarely. I mention it in the author's web site RussellGmirkin.com, as follows: "For reasons now mysterious even to me, I elected to enroll in Ambassador College, a small bible college with a beautiful campus in Pasadena, CA, where I could pursue my interests in ancient history, archaeology and biblical literature, They encouraged intense daily study of scripture, which was their first mistake. I had an unfortunate habit of asking awkward questions and pursuing independent lines of research. Combined with my penchant for setting off black powder rockets with my friends, sword-fighting on rooftops, and carbonating swimming pools with CO2 tanks, the administration and I mutually agreed that I was not a good match."

Actually, a surprising number of very reputable scholars (with no religious connections to AC or the WCG) came out of that church and/or college, perhaps because they emphasized a strong familiarity in OT and NT. I had no contacts with the Worldwide Church of God or any other religious group since 1974 or so, and only got drawn into biblical criticism by way of Greek literature after noticing the striking parallels between Berossus's Babyloniaca of ca. 280 BCE (which I was reading in connection with another research project) and Genesis 1-11, which on deeper inquiry was inexplicable on any other theory besides a late dating of Genesis. And so I returned, with great reluctance, to biblical studies around the year 2000. "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in." But for the record there was and is no connection between my research on Greek sources in the Pentateuch and the WCG, which I had left in my rearview mirror decades before. For whatever reason, I find some people outside academia still occasionally bring it up, though.

[ABuddhist]

involves a misunderstanding of what was referred to as the Septuagint, probably on your part.

To clarify your theory. do you think that this involved a misinterpretation in which the Septuagint was assumed to be the Pentateuch, or another misunderstanding?

We can easily clear up this up if you would care to cite simply your authority, if it exists, on the alleged difficulties of the translators of the Pentateuch (or perhaps Septuagint) with Hebrew. If you are reluctant to do so, that's fine, and let's end the discussion on that note.
[/quote]

With all due respect, although I was the person asking for clarification, I was not the person talking about difficulties in translating the Pentateuch; that person was StephenGoranson.

[Russell Gmirkin]

With all due respect, although I was the person asking for clarification, I was not the person talking about difficulties in translating the Pentateuch; that person was StephenGoranson.

My mistake, sorry.

[StephenGoranson]

1) To try to clarify the silver amulet disagreement.
IIUC, REG considers the silver amulets--which are reliably dated to circa 600 BCE--to attest to an oral source. Not written. Compare Numbers and Deuteronomy. Some others disagree.

2) Emanuel Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research, Third edition, Eisenbrauns, 2015, page 85, on Deut 26:12:
"The rendering of the LXX is based on a wrong grammatical combination of two words...."

[ABuddhist]

1) To try to clarify the silver amulet disagreement.
IIUC, REG considers the silver amulets--which are reliably dated to circa 600 BCE--to attest to an oral source. Not written. Compare Numbers and Deuteronomy. Some others disagree.

2) Emanuel Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research, Third edition, Eisenbrauns, 2015, page 85, on Deut 26:12:
"The rendering of the LXX is based on a wrong grammatical combination of two words...."

1. With all due respect, your summary of the disagreement about the silver amulets elides that Gmirkin is not alone in believing that the amulets attest to an oral source.

(1) The Ketef Hinnom silver amulets with verbal parallels to Num 6:24-26 are extensively discussed, with bibliography, in Berossus and Genesis, 27-28. It is agreed by Gabriel Barkay (2004), who discovered the amulets (nice guy—met him in Jerusalem in 1997 when he led an archaeological tour of the City of David for a group of us Dead Sea Scrolls scholars), Ada Yardeni (1991), Levine (1993) and others that the amulets reflect an oral priestly formula and are of no evidentiary value in dating the Pentateuch/Numbers as a written text.

(1-a) I don’t know which one of the four authors of Barkay, Lundberg, Vaugh and Zuckerman 2004 wrote the following in the Conclusions section, which seems to have tendentious theological overtones consistent with the Fuller Theological Seminary (Lundberg), USC School of Religion (Zuckerman) or the [Lutheran] Gustav Adolphus College (Vaugn): “We can thus reassert the conclusion reached by most scholars that the inscriptions found on these plaques preserve the earliest known citations of biblical texts. The new readings outlined in this article show that these plaques not only contain biblical quotations, but they also provide us with the earliest examples of confessional statements concerning Yahweh.”

(1-b) This was certainly NOT Gabriel Barkay (contra Goranson), given that the very next paragraph [which Neil Godfrey also quotes] essentially reverses this unwarranted conclusion, citing Barkay’s earlier publication notes: “As has already been noted (Barkay 1992: 176-81; Yardeni 1991: 181-85), the presence of the Priestly Blessing in this late preexilic context does not in and of itself prove that the biblical context in which the blessing appears in the MT had already been consolidated. However, this does point to the preexilic presence of formulations also found in the canonical text, particularly when the confessional statements concerning Yahweh in Ketef Hinnom I are taken into account.” This reiterates Barkay's and Yardeni’s reasonable position in other articles that the oral priestly formula is pre-exilic, but not necessarily part of the written biblical text known from later times.

Furthermore, your summary of the disagreement about the silver amulets elides that you, through selectively quoting Gmirkin's words, were originally claiming that Gmirkin was claiming that the silver amulets did not include written texts at all. If you want me to quote your words for you in this thread, then I can do so.

2. The single example which you quote of inaccuracies in translating the Pentateuch into Greek is fewer that the two example which Gmirkin has cited - and Gmirkin has admitted that 2 errors (arising from scribal errors and poor co-ordination between translator/reader and scribe) are not inconsistent with his hypothesis. I dare to say that a total of three minor errors, presumably arising from scribal errors and poor co-ordination between translator/reader and scribe, would also not be fatal to his theory. Scribal errors remain easy to make even in one's native language - I made a very embarrassing one today in English (writing "not" for "now"). How much more difficult in the past and with a language into which one is translating?

[Russell Gmirkin]

I don't think I need to continue in this thread any more. Lots of bright minds contributing to the discussion. Thanks to those who have expressed interest in my latest book, which contains lots of groundbreaking new research. The use of Timaeus throughout Genesis 1-3, in both Hebrew and (as is common knowledge) LXX is an important new result, as well as the distinction between the creator Elohim of Genesis 1 and the terrestrial deity Yahweh of Genesis 2-3. I have placed chapter summaries in my author's website for those who are interested.

http://russellgmirkin.com/plato-and-timaeus