Is exclusive Yahwehism even plausible prior to the Hasmonaeans?

[rgprice]

All valid points Neil, but I'm talking about the writing of the scriptures. Yes, it is true that many Jews found ways to live as a Jew is a tolerable way. But that has never come from adhering to the principles of the Torah, rather from finding ways to minimize aspects of the Torah.

But whoever wrote the Torah was laying out a religion of intolerance and conquest. That later Jews found ways to ignore parts of what the Torah says doesn't really have anything to do with it.

The question is, under what circumstances would one write a work like the Torah?

I hate to use this example and it is not meant to be in poor taste, its just an obvious example. Mein Kompf isn't a work that would have just been written "at any time". it speaks to a particular set of conditions. My argument is that the Pentateuch also speaks to a particular set of conditions, and those conditions are not the conditions of living under Persian rule.

Again, not to be crass, but I see the Pentateuch as a work like Mein Kompf, the Communist Manifesto, A People's History, Atlas Shrugged, Animal Farm, etc. It is an ideologically motivated work and it has an agenda.

I would argue that one should be able to locate roughly when each of these works were written, even if one had no knowledge of when the books were actually published.

[Russell Gmirkin]

The War Scroll and other such materials from Qumran are clearly derived from the ideas of the Pentateuch, they aren't the products of people trying to "twist" Judaism into something that it was not in order to deal with real-world conflicts. Instead, the Qumraric writings foment conflict where it did not need to exist.

For the record, the War Scroll is best dated to the second century BCE and has nothing to do with later Roman conflicts. The "Kittim of Ashur" / "king of the north" in 1QM 1 are clearly the Seleucids, not Romans, and the "Kittim of Egypt" the Ptolemies. In two articles from the 1990s I argued that the weaponry, formations and tactics of the War Scroll reflect Roman practices of the pre-Marius army of the second century BCE, and that the War Scroll makes such specific historical allusions in column 1 as to insure its date ca. 163 BCE. It appears to have been the official war manual of the Maccabean army and drew on contemporary Roman Tactica or military manuals.

Gmirkin, Russell E., “The War Scroll and Roman Weaponry Reconsidered,” DSD 3 (1996) 89-129.
—“Historical Allusions in the War Scroll,” DSD 5 (1998) 172-214

Discussion of my research on the War Scroll took up about a third of Duhaime's later book. He (and many others) went along with a second century BCE dating (contrary to Yadin and other early scrolls scholars), although for reasons he doesn't actually state he preferred a date a decade or two after the Maccabean revolt.

Duhaime, Jean, The War Texts: 1QM and Related Manuscripts. London-New York: T&T Clark, 2004.

[rgprice]

For the record, the War Scroll is best dated to the second century BCE and has nothing to do with later Roman conflicts. The "Kittim of Ashur" / "king of the north" in 1QM 1 are clearly the Seleucids, not Romans, and the "Kittim of Egypt" the Ptolemies. In two articles from the 1990s I argued that the weaponry, formations and tactics of the War Scroll reflect Roman practices of the pre-Marius army of the second century BCE, and that the War Scroll makes such specific historical allusions in column 1 as to insure its date ca. 163 BCE. It appears to have been the official war manual of the Maccabean army and drew on contemporary Roman Tactica or military manuals.

Gmirkin, Russell E., “The War Scroll and Roman Weaponry Reconsidered,” DSD 3 (1996) 89-129.
—“Historical Allusions in the War Scroll,” DSD 5 (1998) 172-214

Discussion of my research on the War Scroll took up about a third of Duhaime's later book. He (and many others) went along with a second century BCE dating (contrary to Yadin and other early scrolls scholars), although for reasons he doesn't actually state he preferred a date a decade or two after the Maccabean revolt.

Duhaime, Jean, The War Texts: 1QM and Related Manuscripts. London-New York: T&T Clark, 2004.

Interesting. If, on your theory, the War Scroll does pre-date the Maccabean revolt, it would certainly show this type of interpretation of the scriptures to be present at that time. It also forces the existence of many Jewish scriptures by that time, making for a fairly narrow period between your dating of the authorship of the Deuteronomistic materials and the creation of the War Scroll, which builds on many scriptures (or so it seems).

I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of dating the War Scroll to that period. It seems to require quite an explosion of scriptures and faith in a very short period of time. But maybe our concepts of these timelines is a bit skewed. When looking at more recent examples, I guess we could take something like Marxism as an example, or even "Trumpism". From the time of Karl Marx to the Russian Revolution was roughly what, 50 years?

Now the question is, how much Communist literature was produced in the 50 years prior to the Russian Revolution and how much after? Can we identify works from prior to the Revolution and after? These are of course known answers. How do Jewish works fit into such a model?

I think the Russian Revolution has certain parallels with the Maccabean Revolt that make the Russian revolution a useful model. We know of course that after the Revolution masses of propaganda were produced aimed both internally and externally. We can with some ease identify pre-revolutionary works and post-revolutions ones, both by Russians and non-Russians.

[neilgodfrey]

All valid points Neil, but I'm talking about the writing of the scriptures. Yes, it is true that many Jews found ways to live as a Jew is a tolerable way. But that has never come from adhering to the principles of the Torah, rather from finding ways to minimize aspects of the Torah.

But whoever wrote the Torah was laying out a religion of intolerance and conquest. That later Jews found ways to ignore parts of what the Torah says doesn't really have anything to do with it.

The question is, under what circumstances would one write a work like the Torah?

I hate to use this example and it is not meant to be in poor taste, its just an obvious example. Mein Kompf isn't a work that would have just been written "at any time". it speaks to a particular set of conditions. My argument is that the Pentateuch also speaks to a particular set of conditions, and those conditions are not the conditions of living under Persian rule.

Again, not to be crass, but I see the Pentateuch as a work like Mein Kompf, the Communist Manifesto, A People's History, Atlas Shrugged, Animal Farm, etc. It is an ideologically motivated work and it has an agenda.

I would argue that one should be able to locate roughly when each of these works were written, even if one had no knowledge of when the books were actually published.

Are not the commands to undertake the genocide of the Canaanites set in the historical past? Is not the Torah and Joshua about past conquests, both successful and only partial, incomplete? DId not Joshua resign himself to the necessity of having to live with the remaining Gibeonites?

As for the circumstances under which one would write a work like that --- imagine people who identified with some kind of restored Israel living alongside others who they deemed outsiders. The Hexateuch explains why they have to live with the riff-raff. They damage was done when those who had been ordered to do the killing didn't finish the job.

That later Jews found ways to ignore parts of what the Torah says doesn't really have anything to do with it.

Which parts in particular -- chapter and verse -- do you have in mind?