Secret Alias wrote: ↑Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:16 am
My point has been that there is no evidence for the Pentateuch having been known in the Persian era.
Well. You see. There you go again. There is evidence. I've brought it up during the course of the discussion. Not the same thing as saying PERSUASIVE evidence (where 'persuasive' is ultimately a subjective determination). The evidence is:
1. Persian words translated into Hebrew
2. Persian words translated into the Greek translation
3. Persian concepts like pardes, dat
That piece of evidence does not tell us when a particular Hebrew text was written. It only tells us that a handful of Persian words found their way into Hebrew and that at some time those Hebrew speakers used those words in their writings. It does not prove that the writings were composed in the Persian era. I use words today that are from Roman imperial days, and from Norman times, even some Persian and Iranian words. It does not mean I am writing under Roman, Norman or Persian rule.
4. Josephus's citation of a presumably Jewish source that Jews and Samaritans practiced levitical laws (calculation of Sabbatical years)
Have you read any of the works you cited earlier or any of my responses to that point? You have not addressed them but only return to repeating your original point as if nothing those articles I said or anything I have proposed needs any engagement at all. No historian would accept Josephus as a source for practices in Persian times unless his information was independently supported. The best Josephus can do for us is inform us what people in his own day believed, and perhaps what was written in a source a century or two earlier. And we have seen the evidence that what Josephus said about the sabbatical years at the time of Alexander -- I take it you read the articles you cited and works I referenced earlier so you know I am not "making this up" -- has no historical basis.
Josephus also said Alexander read the book of Daniel and the prophecy he was to destroy the Persian empire. We have as much evidence for that being a historical fact as we do for what Josephus says about the sabbatical years in connection with Alexander.
5. the consequences of Samaritan primacy argument (which we are discussing here) namely
(i) a Samaritan text defining Jewish religious life could only have or more likely have been written in an age where northern Israelite culture was at its zenith
Can you please address my earlier specific response to that point. That is not evidence. You are proposing a theory to explain something for which we have no evidence.
Simply ignoring what others say about your assertions and repeating your assertions is not getting you or anyone very far.
(ii) the amount of time necessary for the Qumran fragment to have been produced in a specifically Jewish and specifically isolated setting like Qumran given (a) Joshua being written after Deuteronomy and Deuteronomy after an original Tetrateuch and this Hexateuch to have originated in Samaria and then brought to 'Judaism' and then Qumran specifically c. 250 BCE.
Simply repeating the assumptions underlying the Documentary Hypothesis is not evidence. Nor is repeating conclusions that are based on the DH setting out any evidence. That is all argument based on a hypothesis that is being challenged by the hard data of the archaeological evidence.
Whether you are persuaded by these arguments they constitute arguments and evidence (where in the case of 5ii a chronological reconstruction is evidentiary).
No. They are not evidence at all. They are conclusions and rationales for a belief that a certain event happened at a certain time. They are not evidence for that event. We can interpret texts as if they were written over years or we can interpret them as if they were written within a short time span. The interpretation that is to be preferred is the one that coheres best with the independent, the external evidence.
The evidence is that we have archaeological finds, letters, inscriptions, from Persian times that demonstrate a form of Yahweh worship that has virtually nothing in common with anything we read about in the "Mosaic" or "biblical" religion. Then in the Hellenistic era we have a totally different archaeological find -- Qumran. Something happened and it was not a gradual evolution over many centuries. I am not saying it happened in a single day or year or even decade. But the evidence points to a relatively rapid change or religious revolution -- and even the Bible at places speaks of relatively sudden religious revolutions.