StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 6:00 am
Russell Gmirkin wrote, in part above, referring to me, SG:
"I don't believe you have read (much less grasp) my position and arguments on the JEDPH Pentateuchal sources as inferred under traditional biblical source criticism, but to be fair your statements in this thread aren't too egregiously wrong."
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I, SG, have read the 2006 Berossus book, and considerable other writings by RG.
You, RG, are free to state that you are incredulous that I can read, or can grasp, or can have reasons to disagree with your proposal. But that is a weak and not-plausible defense, plus ad hominem.
My Brandeis and Duke education, my teaching at six universities, and my peer-reviewed publications, and posts here might suggest to some folks that I can read.
Without repeating everything I wrote:
The RG proposal, as far as I have read it, has not been plausibly demonstrated.
The Torah composition over considerable time--in other words not all "contemporary" (to use your term)--is more plausible, given history of Hebrew writing and given evidence of the Torah texts among Dead Sea Scrolls. Not just in my opinion. An example I linked to early on is Konrad Schmid's October presentation in Zurich.
The RG proposal underappreciated the abilities of ancient Hebrew authors.
Great! I'm happy to hear how well-read you are and what an expert you are on my research. However, your claims to have read "considerable other writings" I have authored is incredibly low on specifics. Would you please itemize which of the following texts you have read since that one time you read a book of mine in 2006?
Gmirkin, Russell E., Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch. Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 433. Copenhagen International Series 15. New York: T & T Clark, 2006.
—“Greek Evidence for the Hebrew Bible.” Pages 56-88 in Thomas L. Thompson and Philippe Wajdenbaum (eds.), The Bible and Hellenism: Greek Influence on Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Durham, UK: Acumen Publishing, 2014.
—“Greek Genres and the Hebrew Bible.” Pages 91-102 in Ingrid Hjelm and Thomas L. Thompson (eds.), Biblical Interpretation Beyond Historicity. Changing Perspectives in Old Testament Studies 7. London: Routledge, 2016.
—Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible. New York–London: Routledge, 2017.
—“‘Solomon’ (Shalmaneser III) and the Emergence of Judah as an Independent Kingdom.” Łukasz Niesiołowski-Spanò and Emanuel Pfoh (eds.), Biblical Narratives, Archaeology and Historicity: Essays in Honour of Thomas L. Thompson (Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies series; London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2020), 76-90.
—“Jeremiah, Plato and Socrates: Greek Antecedents to the Book of Jeremiah” in Jim West and Niels Peter Lemche (eds.), Jeremiah in History and Tradition (Copenhagen International Seminar; London: Routledge, 2020), 21-48.
—“Can the Documentary Hypothesis be Rehabilitated? A New Model of the Collaborative Composition of the Pentateuch”. Journal of Higher Criticism 15/3 (fall 2020): 4-48.
—Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts: Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in the Primordial History. New York: Routledge, 2022.
—“The Manasseh and Josiah Redactions of 2 Kings 21-25,” Journal of Higher Criticism 17/1 (winter 2022): 4-48.
—“The Historical Context of the LXX and its Hebrew Vorlage” in Johann Cook and Gideon R. Kotzé (eds.), The Septuagint South of Alexandria: Essays on the Greek Translations and Other Ancient Versions by the Association for the Study of the Septuagint in South Africa (LXXSA) (Leiden: Brill, 2022).
Since you are also apparently an expert on Konrad Schmid, you must surely aware that in his occasional discussion of the Hellenistic Era creation of the Hebrew Bible, as recently as last year, he doesn't cite any literature on the subject since LEMCHE 1993!
Schmid, Konrad, How to Identify a Persian Period Text in the Pentateuch, in: R. J. Bautch / M. Lackowski (Hgg.), On Dating Biblical Texts to the Persian Period, FAT II/101, Tübingen 2019, 101–118
—How to Identify a Ptolemaic Period Text in the Hebrew Bible, in: Sylvie Honigman et al. (Hgg.), Times of Transition. Judea in the Early Hellenistic Period, Mosaics 1, University Park 2021, 281–292.
I am a fan of Konrad Schmid, but he is utterly oblivious to any twenty-first century developments on the Hellenistic Era creation of the Hebrew Bible, and my books in particular. The idea that you can cite Schmid, who had never read any of my books, in order to refute my research, is absurd in the extreme.
Please note, I have not read his 2022 Zurich presentation "The Composition of the Pentateuch as a Historical and a Hermeneutical Problem," which as near as I can determine is nowhere in print, but from the abstract appears to be the usual obsolete twentieth-century Schmid material and of no relevance to the current discussion.