Berossus and Genesis

[neilgodfrey]

Maybe it's my dog desperately trying to make friends in near subzero weather but it is silly to suggest the Pentateuch was created a generation from the time our earliest fragments can be dated.

okay -- you are masculine enough to say what you think (except when Russell Gmirkin is here) and like to insult others -- and Russell when his back is turned. I have asked you to respond to actual arguments relating to tohu and bohu and you won't -- instead complaining about work pressure or your mother or your dog. Much easier to just dish out insults in ignorance of what the other side is arguing. Would you dish out the insults to Lemche and other scholars if they were here to express their arguments for themselves? Or are you only brave enough to be "a man" in front of lay persons? You are an abusive, bullying, bigotted, ignorant coward, here only to troll.

[Secret Alias]

Ummm. There was a pattern in my last posts my mother-in-law, etc. They were reflective of real life incidents. There was nothing 'masculine' or 'feminine' about them other than my mother-in-law likely being dead by tomorrow morning.

Again I state the Pentateuch was an instruction manual for how to put together an Israelite sacrificial religion. The people who wrote the instruction manual also did the 'set up' and carried out the rituals. The author(s) didn't spend scroll after scroll writing out animals to be sacrificed for no purpose. Gmirkin is wrong about Jerusalem as the original locale. We know that because the document is Gerizim-centric. I would have it that the priests who worked the altar also wrote the Pentateuch. The writing is an instruction manual. What supposedly existed in the time of Moses is 'instructing' us to help build the sacred vessels, the tabernacle etc. The place was Gerizim not Jerusalem as Gmirkin suggests. But what I am arguing is that the Genesis material was unimportant to everyday religionists. Beyond the fact that I don't think Berossos was the source I know that the purpose of Pentateuch was to establish the liturgical 'running' of the religion. The same individuals who wrote the text carried out the functioning of the altar. We place too much emphasis on this as a literary text in the pure sense. It was an instruction manual with some 'interesting stories' in Genesis.

And this is the thing that thou shall make/do (תַּעֲשֶׂ֥ה) to them to hallow them, to minister unto Me in the priest's office: take one young bullock and two rams without blemish. (Exodus 29.1)

The book is being introduced to establish a covenant at Gerizim. I don't think the scenario where a joint delegation of Jewish and Samaritan scholars being dispatched to Alexandria at the invitation of Ptolemy II Philadelphus to investigate Greek literature makes any sense. The principal concern of this 'new' religion is ritual purity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumah_and_taharah This was learned by the Jews from Greek sources? Which ones?

[neilgodfrey]

Ummm. There was a pattern in my last posts my mother-in-law, etc. They were reflective of real life incidents. There was nothing 'masculine' or 'feminine' about them other than my mother-in-law likely being dead by tomorrow morning.

Again I state the Pentateuch was an instruction manual for how to put together an Israelite sacrificial religion. The people who wrote the instruction manual also did the 'set up' and carried out the rituals. The author(s) didn't spend scroll after scroll writing out animals to be sacrificed for no purpose. Gmirkin is wrong about Jerusalem as the original locale. We know that because the document is Gerizim-centric. I would have it that the priests who worked the altar also wrote the Pentateuch. The writing is an instruction manual. What supposedly existed in the time of Moses is 'instructing' us to help build the sacred vessels, the tabernacle etc. The place was Gerizim not Jerusalem as Gmirkin suggests. But what I am arguing is that the Genesis material was unimportant to everyday religionists. Beyond the fact that I don't think Berossos was the source I know that the purpose of Pentateuch was to establish the liturgical 'running' of the religion. The same individuals who wrote the text carried out the functioning of the altar. We place too much emphasis on this as a literary text in the pure sense. It was an instruction manual with some 'interesting stories' in Genesis.

fuck off huller. you're an intolerant bigot incapable of a reasonable discussion on this matter.

[Secret Alias]

I'm an intolerant bigot? How so? Most people that know me think I am kind, generous and sensitive. My mother-in-law really is in the hospital. I repeat the question from before:

The book is being introduced to establish a covenant at Gerizim. I don't think the scenario where a joint delegation of Jewish and Samaritan scholars being dispatched to Alexandria at the invitation of Ptolemy II Philadelphus to investigate Greek literature makes any sense. The principal concern of this 'new' religion is ritual purity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumah_and_taharah This was learned by the Jews from Greek sources? Which ones?

Please answer.

[Secret Alias]

My best friend in the scholarly world Rory Boid and Benyamim Tsedaka a Samaritan were my instructors on these principles of purity. Rory wrote:

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... N_HALACHAH

I see nothing whatsoever that is Greek in almost any of this. Why would someone have to visit the library of Alexandria to come up with a non-Hellenistic cultus?

[neilgodfrey]

I'm an intolerant bigot? How so? Most people that know me think I am kind, generous and sensitive. My mother-in-law really is in the hospital. I repeat the question from before:

The book is being introduced to establish a covenant at Gerizim. I don't think the scenario where a joint delegation of Jewish and Samaritan scholars being dispatched to Alexandria at the invitation of Ptolemy II Philadelphus to investigate Greek literature makes any sense. The principal concern of this 'new' religion is ritual purity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumah_and_taharah This was learned by the Jews from Greek sources? Which ones?

Please answer.

No. I am not here just to play your games. I asked you to respond to a specific argument and you only went to google to see what titles of books you could find instead. When you demonstrate that you are capable of engaging with the specific argument I first asked you to respond to then I might --- but I doubt it, given your track record here -- think you really are sincerely capable of and interested in a genuine discussion of the arguments themselves.

[neilgodfrey]

My best friend in the scholarly world Rory Boid and Benyamim Tsedaka a Samaritan were my instructors on these principles of purity. Rory wrote:

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... N_HALACHAH

I see nothing whatsoever that is Greek in almost any of this. Why would someone have to visit the library of Alexandria to come up with a non-Hellenistic cultus?

You don't even know what it is you are arguing against. You jump to conclusions about what you think others must be saying or motivated by. You read all sorts of nonsense of your own fabrication into every comment that is made that you don't understand or that is new to you. You think you don't have to read an argument to know how to engage with it. That's the definition of a closed-minded, ignorant bigot.

[rgprice]

Can we get this back on track. I think Andrew has raised some reasonable objections.

Berosus on the Flood is available here.
The various ancient flood narratives are compared here
There seem to be several parallels between the Ancient Babylonian accounts and Genesis which are not listed in Berosus. (One problem is that our account of Berosus is a precis. It is possible but IMO unlikely that there would be many more parallels between Berosus and Genesis here if we had the full text of Berosus.)

Andrew Criddle

This indicates that the parallels between Genesis 1-11 and what we have of Berossus are not a slam dunk. In fact, there are some places where the parallels are stronger between Genesis and other sources. Gmirkin does address this in his book, but its not entirely satisfying.

The main points laid out in favor of a dependency on Berossus are:

1) "Of all Mesopotamian literature, the account in Berossus's Babyloniaca stands
alone as certainly combining the creation of the world, the creation of humans,
and the flood that ended the primordial age."

2) "Of all the examples Clifford listed of Mesopotamian creation-flood stories
going back to the primordial period, Berossus had the greatest similarity to
Genesis. He began with an account of the origins of the physical universe and of
humanity. He mentioned the origin of the arts of civilization and listed ten rulers
of the pre-deluge world, ending with the hero of the flood that destroyed
humankind. His account of the flood closely resembled that of Genesis."

3) "The structural parallels between Berossus and Gen 1-11 are so remarkable as
to preclude independence of the two accounts. Nor is there any evidence that the
biblical model influenced Berossus."

4) "In several cases, Berossus provides
better parallels than the older cuneiform sources323 (notably the primordial chaos
consisting of water and darkness, and the ten antediluvian kings). In other examples,
only Berossus provides a convincing parallel (Nimrod modeled on a Babylonian
version of Gilgamesh, the Tower of Babel as a story derived from The
Poem ofErra). In every case it has been shown that Berossus could have been
the immediate source for the Mesopotamian influences reflected in Genesis."

5) "The economy of this model is striking. Instead of a multiplicity of ancient
Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform sources of different ages influencing Genesis
by a hypothetical mechanism of oral tradition, one need only discover the
mechanism by which a single copy of Berossus's Babyloniaca reached Jewish
hands."

6) "A translation of the
Mesopotamian myths and traditions behind Genesis from their original cuneiform
sources into Hebrew in the second millennium BCE is entirely hypothetical
into Greek by Berossus entirely certain."

7) "Extra-biblical evidence indicates that both Samaritans and Jews
knew Berossus by about 250 BCE. There is thus no question of Jewish
knowledge of Berossus's book shortly after its publication—and through the
Babyloniaca, knowledge of the entire corpus of Mesopotamian sources that
influenced Genesis."

8) "By contrast, the hypothesized transmission of Babylonian materials to the
west ca. 1400 BCE entails numerous difficulties. Under this hypothesis, the
Sumerian and Babylonian primordial myths are pictured as circulating throughout
the Middle East at an early date, taking unique form in each country and
language. ... The circumstances and date of the
transmission of Babylonian myths to Judea, their assimilation into Jewish oral
tradition- and-their ultimate recording in the book of Genesis-are all matters of
speculation."

9) "The conventional model requires a whole series of essentially unprovable
propositions: that the ancient South Syrians were independently exposed to
Enuma Elish, The Gilgamesh Epic and perhaps Sumerian lists of rulers before
the flood; that these Sumerian and Akkadian myths were incorporated in minute
detail into Jewish oral tradition and passed down for from anywhere between
500 years (J) to nearly a thousand years (P); and that the essential cosmological
details of these Babylonian myths, such as the order of events of creation and
many specific details of the flood narrative, were preserved intact through this
lengthy process despite a complete change in the cast of gods and human heroes."

10) "Even under the hypothesis that Sumerian and Babylonian-Akkadian traditions
entered South Syria in the 1400s BCE, the adoption of these ancient Mesopotamian
traditions by the Canaanites also remains a matter of speculation and has
not been confirmed by surviving Canaanite or Phoenician materials."

11) "Conversely, the
Mesopotamian legends of Gen 1-11 do not appear elsewhere in the Hebrew
Bible as one would expect if these traditions reflected ancient Jewish oral
tradition. Rather, the impact of Mesopotamian myth on the Hebrew Bible was
precisely restricted to Gen 1-11, where their influence was pervasive. This
striking fact is best explained by Gen 1-11 having been a late addition."

Personally, I find this last point most impactful.

I think AC has provided some counter to point 4 above. And certainly our extant knowledge of Berossus does not entirely account for all of the parallels between Genesis and Mesopotamian material.

It seems like Neil is now also introducing scholarship which argues against Mesopotamian influences on Genesis 1-11. This would also counter Gmirkin's case. I'm not sure I buy such arguments (or that I necessarily fully understand them at the moment).

As far as I have been able to determine, there really is no evidence for the transmission of Mesopotamian stories in Hebrew speaking culture. The sole example of this is just Genesis 1-11 itself. There is no archeological or documentary evidence showing knowledge of these stories in Hebrew cultures prior to the translation of the LXX.

So the case for earlier transmission is entirely speculative with no evidence at all to support it. Can anyone dispute this, with evidence.

[Secret Alias]

You don't even know what it is you are arguing against. You jump to conclusions about what you think others must be saying or motivated by

You just don't want to go where I am going. As I have said many times my original degree from York University in Canada was psychology. I am acutely aware of the fact that the way we perceive reality is based on US, the things WE WANT TO RAISE TO THE FORE. So it is that we see that there are these 'myths' in Genesis (or 'in the beginning'). Because we treat texts as chiefly literary compositions AND GENESIS IS BY FAR THE MOST INTERESTING PART OF THE PENTATEUCH we focus our energies on these myths. Philo does too because his audience were Greeks. But the reality was that the Pentateuch was an instruction manual for how to build an Israelite covenant.

In other words, what follows Genesis is the important stuff. Genesis was just 'stupid stuff' which had little value to the religion outside common myths.

So my point is the idea that delegates from one Hellenistic regime would have little reason to 'crossover' to another Hellenistic regime and 'study' Greek myths. They could have and undoubtedly did just grab oral legends and stories the culture as a whole came into contact with during their existence. There is and was no reason to focus on the material in Genesis as having any significance to the real purpose of the Pentateuch - that is to establish the working cultus of Israel.

To show you I have no 'political agenda' in this discussion I will bring up Secret Mark (which both SG and Andrew don't accept as anything other than a modern creation). I've always said that the reason why this document is not accepted is because we are trained as moderns to read the gospel as a mere 'literary text' - the story of Jesus. But Secret Mark is clearly being explained by Clement as a literary text that is the foundation of the liturgy of the Alexandrian Church. We don't like to think of literary documents in this way. It goes against our inherited sensibilities.

My point again with respect to the Pentateuch is that it is silly to suggest that 'Samaritans' and 'Jews' would have gone together to Alexandria to research 'myth material' essentially when the myths of Genesis are almost irrelevant to the actual purpose of the text -i.e. to establish a living cultus of Israel centered around animal sacrifice.

1. 'Samaritan's and 'Jews' could have existed or are unlikely to have existed in the way we know them without the Torah. The Torah is about Gerizim. Before the Torah there were just Israelites or Hebrews who had a predisposition of some sort for Gerizim. If the Torah was only created in the third century there can't be a 'mixed' delegation of people devoted to a document (the Samaritans) which didn't exist
2. the cultus of Israel (i.e. animal sacrifices) is unlikely to have existed without written guidance i.e. a Torah.
3. perhaps there was some sort of sacrificial religion IN THE PAST at Gerizim or in some nominal form at Gerizim but the Torah would need to be introduced at a time where a 'restart' makes sense. I am not sure that exists in the third century CE.
4. it seems unlikely to me that the Hellenistic regime which controlled Gerizim would simply have allowed a cultus imported from another Hellenistic regime to take hold in their territory.

Have to take my son to school. Bye.

[Secret Alias]

My son's school is close to my house. I have a lazy son.

Anyway I have do work today. But my point is that only when you hang out with Samaritans (not even Jews any more because their religion is one or two steps further removed from the temple religion, they don't even have priests) you get a picture or a sense of the original Second Commonwealth religion. It's centrally focused on ritual purity, sacrifice, reading the portions etc. The Genesis myths are just stupid things that amount to window dressing.

We as scholars of literature treat the Pentateuch as a text. But it was an instruction manual. What we do is akin to taking an IKEA instruction manual and purely treating it as a text without realizing that it's actual function, the thing it was created for, was a practical 'thing.' And that 'thing' - in the case of the Pentateuch - is the running of the Israelite cultus.

The people that wrote the Pentateuch could have gotten their inspiration for the myths from Genesis from any source. If Berossos lived and published his work and made it freely accessible to the people that lived around Gerizim it could have been Berossos that was the source for Genesis. But as I noted Genesis wasn't important enough for the people who wrote the Pentateuch to take a trip to a foreign principality to develop the introductory material to the real purpose the real function of the text which has no relation to Greek things, Greek ideas, Greek concerns.

Besides they would also need a time machine.