The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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neilgodfrey
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2023 10:11 am The Pentateuch upholds an unusually elaborate system of ritual observances for reconciliation with God. Sin offerings, trespass offerings etc. This is something which the Laws is very uneasy about. It opposes any suggestion that one can be in God's favour by rituals rather than moral behaviour.

Andrew Criddle
Again....

Yes, it looks as though the Pentateuch was incorporating local Canaanite-Transjordan-Nabatean/Judean/Samaritan rituals into the Pentateuch. Again -- the blend of cultures. But Plato certainly endorsed animal sacrifice. He even describes a covenant renewal ceremony (not in Laws but another work) where the leaders of Atlantis poor the blood of a bull over a covenant stone and promise to keep the covenant forever etc etc -- not unlike the Exodus covenant ceremony in some respects. But I don't know to what extent the Pentateuch speaks of rituals as a form of bribery of the divine.

But anyone reading the Pentateuch cannot fail to be impressed by the strongly moral message, the commands to be holy, the central command being to love God and then neighbour. Plato did endorse religious feasts on a regular basis and that's what the Pentateuch does, too.

Somewhere else I think Andrew said the Laws stressed rewards in the hereafter. Well, yes, Plato taught the immortal soul. But the Pentateuch rejected the idea of an immortal soul so it could hardly endorse a happy life in the Elysian fields. But there is no doubt that the Laws very much stressed happiness and fulfilment of life in the here and now -- just as did the Pentateuch.
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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The Origins of Judaism: Re-examining the Archaeological Evidence - Dr. Yonatan Adler
History Valley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp-io2R5kLE


48:00
https://youtu.be/Hp-io2R5kLE
When did Samaritans and Jews break up to two separate groups?
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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Leucius Charinus wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 4:40 am The Origins of Judaism: Re-examining the Archaeological Evidence - Dr. Yonatan Adler
History Valley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp-io2R5kLE


48:00
https://youtu.be/Hp-io2R5kLE
When did Samaritans and Jews break up to two separate groups?
I like interviews like these. Ask a professional scholar a question and he will respond not just with his own opinions but will set his views in the context of other views found among his peers, with attempts to help the listener understand what the issues are.

One work that Adler cites in his book is The Samaritans during the Hasmonean Period: The Affirmation of a Discrete Identity? by Bourgel -- available open access at https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/10/11/628

Bourgel's conclusion, which in some part answers the question "when did the Jews and Samaritans break up?":
The question of the Samaritans in the Hasmonean period is multifaceted and needs to be treated with different approaches. In the first place, the attitude of the Hasmoneans toward the Samaritans has turned out to be a more complicated issue than was initially assumed, and it may be reductive, if not erroneous, to simply see it as one of hatred and rejection. In my opinion, the Hasmonean rulers, as part of their general endeavor to religiously unite their new territorial acquisitions, sought to bring the Samaritans to recognize the Jerusalem temple as the only legitimate place of worship, and its priesthood as the only legitimate priesthood; while Jonathan used persuasion, John Hyrcanus, for his part, used coercion. However, their attempt eventually backfired and turned the Samaritans against them and the Jerusalem cult, the majority of the former remaining exclusively loyal to Mt. Gerizim. It should be added that the principles of this policy were abandoned a few decades later, when the Samaritans were expelled from the Jerusalem Temple in the days of the Roman procurator Coponius (6–9 CE; Ant 18:29–30120).
That the first attempt should be through persuasion fits with other evidence (e.g. Schorch's analysis of the origins of the so-called "Samaritan additions" to the Pentateuch demonstrating the strong likelihood that those "additions" were actually the results of harmonious cooperation between Judeans and Samaritans) that the Pentateuch was composed as a joint Samaritan and Judean effort.

Ιn the youtube interview, Adler notes that the Pentateuch's message is not "self-evident" but needs interpretation. It is too easy for us to read it through the eyes of later polemicists and misinterpret its original words -- which in turn mis-guides our entire view of its origins.

I cannot say much for certain, but at the moment I tend to wonder if Russell Gmirkin is way too conservative and dates the Pentateuch way too early. I wonder if a stronger evidence-based argument can be made for it being composed in the late third or even early second century CE.

Adler says it's "possible" that the work was sitting on a shelf unread for decades or centuries, or read only by a tiny handful of people. But I think a moment's reflection leads us to insist that the first option is not at all "possible". It would be like a copy of "Streetcar Named Desire" sitting in a medieval monastery since the middle ages. Sometimes the literary nature of a work testifies to whether it is possible that it comes from this or that era.
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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neilgodfrey wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 1:40 pm

I like interviews like these. Ask a professional scholar a question and he will respond not just with his own opinions but will set his views in the context of other views found among his peers, with attempts to help the listener understand what the issues are.

One work that Adler cites in his book is The Samaritans during the Hasmonean Period: The Affirmation of a Discrete Identity? by Bourgel -- available open access at https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/10/11/628

Bourgel's conclusion, which in some part answers the question "when did the Jews and Samaritans break up?":
The question of the Samaritans in the Hasmonean period is multifaceted and needs to be treated with different approaches. In the first place, the attitude of the Hasmoneans toward the Samaritans has turned out to be a more complicated issue than was initially assumed, and it may be reductive, if not erroneous, to simply see it as one of hatred and rejection. In my opinion, the Hasmonean rulers, as part of their general endeavor to religiously unite their new territorial acquisitions, sought to bring the Samaritans to recognize the Jerusalem temple as the only legitimate place of worship, and its priesthood as the only legitimate priesthood; while Jonathan used persuasion, John Hyrcanus, for his part, used coercion. However, their attempt eventually backfired and turned the Samaritans against them and the Jerusalem cult, the majority of the former remaining exclusively loyal to Mt. Gerizim. It should be added that the principles of this policy were abandoned a few decades later, when the Samaritans were expelled from the Jerusalem Temple in the days of the Roman procurator Coponius (6–9 CE; Ant 18:29–30120).
That the first attempt should be through persuasion fits with other evidence (e.g. Schorch's analysis of the origins of the so-called "Samaritan additions" to the Pentateuch demonstrating the strong likelihood that those "additions" were actually the results of harmonious cooperation between Judeans and Samaritans) that the Pentateuch was composed as a joint Samaritan and Judean effort.

Ιn the youtube interview, Adler notes that the Pentateuch's message is not "self-evident" but needs interpretation. It is too easy for us to read it through the eyes of later polemicists and misinterpret its original words -- which in turn mis-guides our entire view of its origins.

I cannot say much for certain, but at the moment I tend to wonder if Russell Gmirkin is way too conservative and dates the Pentateuch way too early. I wonder if a stronger evidence-based argument can be made for it being composed in the late third or even early second century CE.

Adler says it's "possible" that the work was sitting on a shelf unread for decades or centuries, or read only by a tiny handful of people. But I think a moment's reflection leads us to insist that the first option is not at all "possible". It would be like a copy of "Streetcar Named Desire" sitting in a medieval monastery since the middle ages. Sometimes the literary nature of a work testifies to whether it is possible that it comes from this or that era.
The time of the split between Jews and Samaritans may be partly a matter of definition. It was probably a process rather than a sudden event.
One piece of evidence for pre-Hasmonean hostility between Jews and Samaritans is Ecclesiasticus (Ben Sirach) chapter 50
Two nations my soul detests,
and the third is not even a people:
Those who live in Seir, and the Philistines,
and the foolish people that live in Shechem.
it is generally (though not universally) accepted that the dwellers in Shechem are the Samaritans.

FWIW Ben Sirach, normally dated c 180 BCE appears to know most of the Hebrew Bible.

Andrew Criddle
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 9:07 am
neilgodfrey wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 1:40 pm
One work that Adler cites in his book is The Samaritans during the Hasmonean Period: The Affirmation of a Discrete Identity? by Bourgel -- available open access at https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/10/11/628
The time of the split between Jews and Samaritans may be partly a matter of definition. It was probably a process rather than a sudden event.
One piece of evidence for pre-Hasmonean hostility between Jews and Samaritans is Ecclesiasticus (Ben Sirach) chapter 50
Two nations my soul detests,
and the third is not even a people:
Those who live in Seir, and the Philistines,
and the foolish people that live in Shechem.
it is generally (though not universally) accepted that the dwellers in Shechem are the Samaritans.
I invite you to read the open access article I linked to and referred to explicitly as a contribution to the discussion of the split between the Judeans and Samaritans. Bourgel is aware of the evidence that has been advanced in favour of the traditional viewpoints, including the Sirach 50:25-26, and discusses it in some depth, in the 22 page article. On page 4:
Many have assumed that the “foolish people ( גוי נבל )”, against who Ben Sira voiced his hatred, are to be identified with the Samaritans. 23 This stance derives from the above-mentioned statement of Josephus that Shechem was the city of the Samaritans at the time of Alexander the Great (Ant 11:340) and from an analogy with Gen 34:7 where Shechem, Dinah’s rapist, is reported to have committed a “ נבלה (an outrageous thing)” against Israel. Although this interpretation is not entirely without credibility, one should bear in mind with Peter Van der Horst and Reinhard Pummer that not every mention of Shechem in ancient literature is necessarily related to the Samaritans. In fact, it could also be that Sir 50:25–26 refers to the “non-Samaritan inhabitants of Shechem,” 24 for instance the “Sidonians in Shechem (τῶν ἐν Σικίμοις Σιδωνίων)” mentioned by Josephus in several passages (Ant 11:340–347; 12:257–264). 25 In this respect, the existence of inscriptions from Mt. Gerizim bearing Greek and Arabic names may be evidence that other population groups lived in the area. 26 Likewise, not every use of the word נבל has necessarily to do with the Shechemites; it suffices to quote in this regard Sir 49:5 where the Babylonians are called a "foolish foreign nation (גוי נבל נכרי) ."27 Furthermore, Pummer has rightly stressed that the city at the top of Mt. Gerizim, rather than Schechem, was the metropolis of the Samaritans in the Hellenistic period. 28 Therefore, caution should be applied in too readily considering Sir 50:25–26 a polemic against the Samaritans.


23 See among others (Purvis 1965; Skehan and DiLella 1987, p. 558; Kartveit 2009a, pp. 140-48; Marttila 2012, pp. 206-15).
24 (Van der Horst 2003, p. 32; Pummer 2009, p. 12; 2016, pp. 47-50).
25 (Pummer 2016, p. 86). On the "Sidonians in Shechem," see below.
26 (Dusek 2012, p. 104).
27 See (Bourgel 2017, p. 386).
28 (Pummer 2009, p. 12).

FWIW Ben Sirach, normally dated c 180 BCE appears to know most of the Hebrew Bible.

Andrew Criddle
I am quite open to Ben Sirach being dated ca 180 BCE. Clearly the Pentateuch existed before it was being imposed on various peoples by the Hasmoneans.
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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P.S. -- the same article by Bourgel also suggests the likelihood indicated by some of the evidence that the split between Judeans and Samaritans was piece by piece, groups by groups, rather than necessarily being totally black and white -- as you also propose, Andrew.
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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neilgodfrey wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 2:33 pm
<SNIP>
andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 9:07 am
FWIW Ben Sirach, normally dated c 180 BCE appears to know most of the Hebrew Bible.

Andrew Criddle
I am quite open to Ben Sirach being dated ca 180 BCE. Clearly the Pentateuch existed before it was being imposed on various peoples by the Hasmoneans.
Part of my point here is that Ben Sira seems to already recognise a Biblical canon of Law and Prophets as in later Judaism. This diverges from the Samaritans who seem never to have accepted this sort of extended canon.

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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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Dating the origins of Judaism may depend largely on how one defines "Judaism."
Here is one (extreme?) example, and not the only one:
Rosemary R. Ruether, "Judaism and Christianity: Two Fourth-Century Religions,"
Sciences Religieuses/Studies in Religion 2 (1972) 1-16.
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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andrewcriddle wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 6:14 am
Part of my point here is that Ben Sira seems to already recognise a Biblical canon of Law and Prophets as in later Judaism. This diverges from the Samaritans who seem never to have accepted this sort of extended canon.

Andrew Criddle
Yeh, that's a good point. But what I have to set it against is the evidence that Samaritans and Judeans worked together as equals in composing the Pentateuch (I attempted to draw attention to just one of the more recent arguments in another thread -- but the evidence is abundant in other ways, too, as Gmirkin himself points out in his earlier book, Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible.)

Then there is the evidence that the book of Joshua is also Samaritan-friendly. Couple this with the argument that the final chapters of the book of Numbers were redacted to accommodate a removal of the book of Joshua from a hitherto Hextateuch and a whole host of questions arise. What we don't know far outweighs what we do, to parrot the old truism. So it is not without reason to think that Samaritans and Judeans did see eye-to-eye even beyond the Pentateuch for a time.

The case for the Samaritan-Judean split has been presented that it was gradual, piecemeal, faction by faction, as has been mentioned already.

Other little factors that mess with clear and obvious arguments are the notion of canon, and then, especially, the evidence for redactions of the Hebrew text in the early "rabbinic" era post 70 CE.
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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StephenGoranson wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 7:18 am Dating the origins of Judaism may depend largely on how one defines "Judaism."
Here is one (extreme?) example, and not the only one:
Rosemary R. Ruether, "Judaism and Christianity: Two Fourth-Century Religions,"
Sciences Religieuses/Studies in Religion 2 (1972) 1-16.
I think we'll find that Ruether's point about "classical" or "rabbinic" Judaism as we understand it being a fourth-century CE religion is widespread today. I seem to see it repeated and/or taken for granted very often in more recent works by Jewish scholars on the history of Judaism.

Meanwhile, Adler is clear by what he means by the term as he uses it in his study (pp 3-5):
Key Definitions

Judaism

Having described the subject of this study, I now turn to the question of what term might best be used when referring to this “thing.” I have decided here on the term “Judaism,” in line with both modern uses of this term in twenty-first-century English and the etymological origins of this term in ancient Greek.

Among the definitions of“Judaism” in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, one finds: “conformity to Jewish rites, ceremonies and practices . . . the total complex of cultural, social and religious beliefs and practices of the Jews.” It seems to me that something very much akin to these defini­tions is what many if not most English speakers today have in mind when they use the term “Judaism.” I should add that no matter what contem­porary Jewish denomination (if any) is involved, modern-day observance of “Jewish rites, ceremonies and practices” remains deeply indebted to the Torah as its source of inspiration, if not formal authority. A modern-day Jew who on the first night of Passover sits down to a seder, eats matzah and bitter herbs, and drinks four cups of wine is by our definition engaged in “Judaism” whether he or she identifies as Haredi, Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist—or none of the above.

The etymological root of the English “Judaism” is undoubtedly the an­cient Greek “Ioudaϊsmόs,” although there is some question as to precisely what the term would have meant in antiquity. The word first appears in a handful of texts penned by ancient Judeans (2 Maccabees, Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, 4 Maccabees, and two third-century-CE inscriptions), and then more frequently in the writings of late antique Christian authors. “IoudaϊsmOs” represents in nominal form the ongoing action of the verb “loudaizö,” probably as it was used in the intransitive sense of “to act like the Judeans.” “Ioudaϊsmós,” then, would mean something like “acting in the manner of the Judeans.” From the contexts in which it is used, the term “IoudaϊsmOs” likely denotes not just any Judaic behavior but specifically con­ duct that is in accordance with the laws of the Torah.

Throughout the present study, I will be using the term “Judaism” in line with the modern English usage cited above, and in close agreement with my understanding of the ancient Greek “Ioudaϊsmós.” For the purposes of this book, “Judaism” will serve as the technical term for what I have de­scribed here: the Jewish way of life characterized by conformity to the rules and regulations of the Torah. In regarding Judaism as the ways of the Jews as governed by Torah, the implication is that the term refers to a manner of living characterizing the Jews as a people. In speaking of Judaism, then, it is not individual practitioners of Torah that will interest us here, but rather Jewish society at large.

It should be stressed that our focus here is on the Jewish way of life centered on practices rather than beliefs. The reason for this focus is quite simple: practices are far more visible than beliefs, especially when study­ ing a sizable group of people. When it comes to such a mercurial category of experience as “belief,” any generalizations we moderns might choose to make about what a large segment of the population in the ancient past might have believed about a certain matter begins to border on the meaningless. From the etic perspective, from the outside looking in, we can view and describe patterns of behaviors practiced by a large group of indi­viduals far more readily than we can discern the abstract beliefs shared by such a collective.
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