Evidence for the Pentateuch being a Persian era work?

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
Russell Gmirkin
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Re: Evidence for the Pentateuch being a Persian era work?

Post by Russell Gmirkin »

StephenGoranson wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 1:43 pm The Copper Scroll is from Qumran Cave 3 not Cave 11.
*If* the Torah books were first written in Alexandria in the 270s by the same people who translated it into Greek, as REG claimed, might some expect some Greek loan words?
You're right, Cave 3, the next one past Cave 11.

Again, the Dead Sea Scrolls lack Greek loan words. But various scholars have found Greek loan words in the Pentateuch. I think Nodet mentioned one or two in his review of my first book, and I see other occasional mentions here and there.

According to the literary program laid out in Plato's Laws, as detailed in my 2017 book, it was very important for the legislators to create the illusion that the new laws and traditions they were promulgating were both ancient and divine. I would think that avoiding Greek loan words would help promote that illusion of antiquity. So likewise the use of the paleo-Hebrew script as seen in Torah texts (and, as I recall, Job) at Qumran. Both of these literary strategies were seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as the archaicizing use of Classical Biblical Hebrew in some sectarian texts (unless, as is quite possible, CBH persisted in some Jewish circles synchronic with LBH into the second century BCE or later).
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Evidence for the Pentateuch being a Persian era work?

Post by neilgodfrey »

Russell Gmirkin wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 1:18 pm Persian loan words are mainly found in the late texts Song of Songs and Qohelet (Ecclesiastes).

A good article by Ian Young, the celebrated Australian linguist of the Hebrew Bible, incidentally deals with the issue of Persian loan words:

https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/yount357913

One particular quotation stands out:

On the one hand, it is generally considered, as Mats Eskhult has recently put it, that "Persian loanwords...almost unequivocally point to the Persian era" (c. 500–300 BCE). . . . .
Appreciate the link. It has led me to other works, in particular the original chapter by Eskhult. On SA's and my question of whether the use of Persian loan words in biblical texts can of themselves stand as evidence that the texts were written in Persian times, the following by Eskhult is interesting:
A look at the evidence as embodied in what are certainly late compositions makes it easier to comprehend how and why loanwords are used. In the case of Esther [Eskhult dates Esther to the Persian era], the flavour of the Persian era is strongly felt in the foreign words of Persian origin, or otherwise late words of Akkadian origin: . . . .

It might be remarked that these words are all employed in order to give a cultural flavour to the presentation. . . .

(pp 12f of "The Importance of Loan Words" in Young's Biblical Hebrew)
Eskhult dates Esther to the Persian era but at the same time identifies a literary function of the Persian loan words (I have underlined and bolded it) that could equally well be relevant if the work was written in a later era. And as Eskhult (like you) points out:
Persian loanwords abound in the incontestably late prose writings—plus occasional occurrences in Qoheleth and Canticles. (p. 23)
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Evidence for the Pentateuch being a Persian era work?

Post by neilgodfrey »

Okay. If we accept Mats Eskhult's unequivocal statement that there are no Persian loanwords in the Pentateuch, then the previous discussion of what they can tell us as evidence is pointless. Unless you disagree? I am happy to discuss and not just fall back on throwing assertions and counter assertions at each other.

If you agree, let's move on to the next item of evidence cited for the Pentateuch being known in the Persian era:


Secret Alias wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:16 am
4. Josephus's citation of a presumably Jewish source that Jews and Samaritans practiced levitical laws (calculation of Sabbatical years)

I have been using the word "evidence" to refer to a particular kind of evidence. (See * below.)

If someone tells me that a particular site near where I live was the scene of a slaughter of aborigines 150 years ago, I will be interested. But is that person's claim actual "evidence" that there was a massacre at that place?

Before I repeat the claim as if it were a fact, I would be smart to check if it is true. I will ask the person to tell me how they know. If they reply that they heard it from a friend years ago, that doesn't give me much to go on. How do I know if their friend knew it for a fact or was repeating a rumour or was mistaken for some reason?

The most sure way to know if it is true is to check newspapers from the time or a local museum to see if there is any evidence from the time that confirms it happened. In other words, I want contemporary sources. Eyewitnesses or at least reliable reports from what eyewitnesses have passed on.

Hearsay reports are not necessarily evidence. They are, as a rule, invitations to do some research to find if there is direct evidence.

If Josephus was relying on what his sources had claimed happened in an earlier time, how can we know if his sources were reliable? If we see that his source claimed that Alexander was shown the book of Daniel and read the prophecy that he, Alexander, was to overthrow the Persian empire, we must conclude that Josephus's source was reporting a myth about Alexander. It was not reliable history. (Maybe the original mythmaker believed it "must have been true" and the fraud was entirely pious. I am not suggesting people were maliciously lying for evil intent.)

Is Josephus's claim that Alexander was shown in Daniel evidence that Alexander knew the book of Daniel? Is Josephus evidence that the book of Daniel was known in Persian times? Clearly it is not.

What Josephus is evidence for is what he himself, and his contemporaries, believed about Alexander. It cannot be evidence for Alexander's actions -- unless what it says can be verified by independent sources.

Ancient historians deplored voids in their knowledge of the past and they tended to fill them up with fabrications and myths. Often those myths were especially created for some political reason: to establish the rights or privileges of some ethnic group, for example. Or to demonstrate "proof" of the antiquity and authority of a custom or institution. The story about Alexander being shown the book of Daniel was a myth intended to demonstrate the superior status of the Jews over Alexander -- it was the Jewish god who was controlling and guiding the life of Alexander.

There exists no evidence to inform us whether Josephus's other claim about Alexander (his respect for their custom of sabbatical years) is true, either. Josephus is making a claim that emerged, as far as we can tell, after Alexander himself. We have nothing to tie Josephus's claim, nor that of his source, to the time of Alexander.

Both the story about Alexander and the book of Daniel and the one about Alexander and the sabbatical year only appear in the records after the time of Alexander. They do not cite sources contemporary with Alexander that we can attempt to check.

They are reports, hearsay, myths, stories, but they are not evidence for what Alexander actually did.



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The word "evidence" comes with different shades of meaning for different people and different contexts. There is direct evidence, indirect evidence, circumstantial evidence, hearsay evidence. Up to now I have been using the word "evidence" to mean "direct evidence" -- that is, evidence that "speaks for itself": e.g. a coin with the image of a king on it is evidently minted at the time of that king; a letter or inscription that claims to be dated by the year of a monarch is evidently written at the time of that monarch. (All things being equal, of course.)
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