I don't know if it is my mother-in-law being on life support but I don't get the underlying argument here. On the one hand you have tohu tiamat, bohu behemot. This relationship seems to be on solid foundation. What it 'is' in the end is debatable. But there is a relationship. On the other hand, we have a document WHICH IS NOT PURPORTED to be written by Moses. A narrative which describes not only the circumstances behind the giving of the Law but the future turning away from this mythical cult described in the pages. The eschatology is interesting behind it necessarily assumes that the desert tabernacle in some form 'resurfaced' in the good days which followed the 'bad days' described in the eschatological section. In other words, the 'bad days' are 'bad days' because the unnamed author knows of both 'good days' before the 'bad days' and after i.e. in the time he was writing. The Samaritans speak of good days as fanuta and rehuta (pronounced 'roota').
Bear with me. My mother in law's oxygen levels have apparently gone up from 50 to 94.
Is there any evidence of a tabernacle ever being established in Egypt? No. There is Josephus's claims of a Oniad temple at Heliopolis/Leontopolis. But there is no clear evidence for this nor a claim of animal sacrifices proscribed in the Law. Similarly there were those like the Dositheans who wanted to maintain a flimsy tabernacle at Gerizim. But anyone who is claiming that the Pentateuch was written in Egypt in the Greek period would necessarily also have to assume that the animal sacrifices proscribed in the Pentateuch were carried out in Egypt. Where did this take place? If you believe what Josephus writes the animal sacrifices must have occurred at the Leontopolis temple. However there is a problem here. The Leontopolis temple wasn't established until after the earliest fragments of the Pentateuch in Judea.
The account of Josephus in The Jewish War,[4] refers to the Onias who built the Temple at Leontopolis as "the son of Simon", implying that it was Onias III, and not his son, who fled to Egypt and built the Temple. This account, however, is contradicted by the story that Onias III was murdered in Antioch in 171 BCE.[5] Josephus' account in the Antiquities is, therefore, more probable, namely, that the builder of the temple was a son of the murdered Onias III, and that, a mere youth at the time of his father's death, he had fled to the court of Alexandria in consequence of the Syrian persecutions, perhaps because he thought that salvation would come to his people from Egypt.[6] Ptolemy VI was King of Egypt at that time. He probably had not yet given up his claims to Coele-Syria and Judea, and gladly gave refuge to such a prominent personage of the neighboring country. Onias now requested the king and his sister-wife, Cleopatra, to allow him to build a sanctuary in Egypt similar to the one at Jerusalem, where he would employ Levites and priests of his own clan;[7] and he referred to the prediction of the prophet Isaiah[8] that a Jewish temple would be erected in Egypt.[9]
According to Josephus, the temple of Leontopolis existed for 343 years,[10] though the general opinion is that this number must be changed to 243. He relates that the Roman emperor Vespasian feared that through this temple Egypt might become a new center for Jewish rebellion and therefore ordered the governor of Egypt, Lupus, to demolish it.[11] Lupus died in the process of carrying out the order; and the task of stripping the temple of its treasures, barring access to it, and removing all traces of divine worship at the site was completed by his successor, Paulinus,[12] which dates the event to c. March-August 73.[13] According to E. Mary Smallwood, Lupus is last attested in office by dated Egyptian documents in March 73, whilst Paulinus is first attested before the end of August 73 ("Josephus: The Jewish War", p. 460, note 58; ISBN 0-14-044420-3).
War i. 1, § 1; vii. 10, § 2.
II Maccabees iv. 33.
Ant. xii. 5, § 1; ib. 9, § 7.
Ant. xiii. 3, § 1.
Isaiah xix. 19.
Ant. xiii. 3, § 1.
Wars of the Jews vii. 10, § 4
Wars of the Jews vii. 10, § 2
Wars of the Jews vii. 10, § 4
The point here is that those who propose this Hellenistic Pentateuch theory have to explain how sacrifices were carried out AND WHERE THEY WERE CARRIED OUT if - as they claim - the text was written in the third century BCE. I don't think this has been considered before.
The Pentateuch isn't just a literary work. It is very much a detailed proscription of 'how to carry out' an animal sacrifice cult. The place proscribed in the work itself, the place the author(s) have in mind is clearly Gerizim. What is/are the arguments in favor of an Egyptian cultic center?
