The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

[neilgodfrey]

I'm all over the place with this answer because the subject is so huge. [/color]

Just one instance will do. But I asked for that in another thread. No-one is unaware of the reasons underlying the thesis that disparate documents have been pieced together and redacted over time (it's called a documentary hypothesis -- some assign a shorter time to it than others and different starting points) -- but that's not the question. I don't know any hypothesis that does not acknowledge these many contradictions, duplications, etc -- and form genres.

Or if you'd rather, I can just pick one at random from your list....

The sense that Leviticus say, seems to be of "different" from its surroundings

Are you arguing that that difference can only be explained by a long period of literary evolution -- that either Leviticus or its surrounding material can only be explained if one posits a long period between the two, with someone at one point artlessly combining something out of place with a long-standing work?

Or if you think I have selected a weak example, what is your strongest?

I think it's a slam-dunk case that the Pentateuch is - one way or another - a massive collection of disparate material brought together by editors and redactors over a period of time (not all the redactional elements are similar in nature - some macro-scale amalgamations, some redactions to re-emphasis or modify the preceding version;

When you say "over a period of time" -- well, everything takes time. Are you insisting on a century at minimum? Decades? On what grounds?

[austendw]

The sense that Leviticus say, seems to be of "different" from its surroundings

...
Or if you think I have selected a weak example, what is your strongest?

My Leviticus comment definitely was a weak example, which I should have cut ... it was more a note to self that I'm happy to disown.

So, let's concentration on the multiple sets of laws:

• The Decalogue 1 (Ex 20)

• The Decalogue 2 (Deut 5)

• The Covenant Code (CC- Ex 21-23)

• The Holiness Code (HC - Lev 17-27)

• The Deuteronomic Code (D - Deut. 12-28)

• The so-called Ritual Decalogue (RD - Ex. 34)

• Refuge Laws (Numb 35)

The three large law corpora (CC, D & HC), crucially, have numerous overlaps - similar laws, sometimes expressed identically, sometimes with additional nuances, and sometimes with notable differences. Both the similarities and differences seem hard to explain in Gmirkin’s scenario. How would they have come about? Did, say, three different groups of scholars in Alexandria independently come up with different Codes: CC, HC and D? Hardly plausible, as they have too much in common to be independent. So why are there three parallel, related codes at all? Gmirkin’s scenario doesn’t offer a reason for either the similarities between codes or the differences between them, or the clear intertextual relationships. It’s even less easy to comprehend how the Jerusalem leadership (whoever they were) would authorize three brand-new rival law codes, which created contradictions which didn’t exist before, and include them all, without any serious attempt to reconcile them.

If the aim was to create a definitive law code, and if no law codes already existed, is it not likelier that, even if there were multiple scholars involved producing rival codes, they would make an effort to conflate them and avoid repetitions and inconsistencies? This wouldn’t have been a tall order, and Josephus shows us precisely how it could have been done. In Antiquities, he resolves the problem by systematising the laws: he conflates CC with D, placed where Deuteronomy appears in the Pentateuch; he removes references to religious festivals & sexual matters from this combined CC/D, and instead includes them with all the other cultic rules at Mt Sinai (P’s Tabernacle, priestly rules, festivals, sacrificial & dietary & sexual laws). The “Ritual Decalogue” - a sort of short compendium of key cultic laws found in other codes - is omitted entirely. In doing this, all of the repetitions and disagreements are eliminated, giving the laws a logic and consistency that would surely have pleased Plato. Josephus explained what he did explicitly:

“All is here written as he left it: we have added nothing for the sake of embellishment, nothing which has not been bequeathed by Moses. Our one innovation has been to classify the various subjects; for he left what he wrote in a scattered condition, just as he received each separate instruction from God.” (Antiquities 4.196 - Thackarey transl.)

Surely, if the Pentateuch was created from scratch, the sort of authorial collaboration that Gmirkin proposes for the Pentateuch itself could easily have achieved precisely this more "rational," uniform, and consistent law code. So why didn’t it?

In relation to the different codes, there is still much scholarly discussion as to whether D was meant to supplant the CC, or to supplement it; whether the HC was similarly intended to displace or refine D (assuming that’s the correct order). The implication of the former is that that the various codes were not originally meant to appear together in the same literary work and were only brought together by a later editor/editors determined not to intervene too much (which is compatible with the “Neo-Documentary Theory”). The alternative is that each set of laws was added to the existing laws/narrative, for the specific purpose of refining and revising those earlier versions while not eliminating previous versions (compatible with “Supplementary Theories”). In either case, it seems pretty clear to me that only a diachronic approach explains the subtly nuanced literary relationships between them all. That doesn’t answer the question of what the motive and aims of the people responsible for amalgamating and developing all this material was - but I think it pretty much demands that any answer must take into account that there was earlier pre-existing material that editors did not have free reign to junk, and that the text grew over a period of time. This explains the Pentateuch as we find it (and, moreover, the variations in the LXX, Samaritan Pentateuch & DDS) more plausibly than Gmirkin’s theory of synchronic “semi-collaboration”.

This is not to mention the festival laws, which (though Gmirkin presumably does not consider them as connected to Plato) show persistent signs of diachronic development and successive intertextual amendment. This can best be seen in the relationship between Passover and the Festival of Unleavened bread, which were originally separate. The various different places where these two are discussed (Ex 12-13; Ex 23:14-17; Ex 34:18-25; Lev 23; Numb 28-29; Deut 16:1-18) show clear signs of diachronic development. One can see clear development in the amalgamation of Passover/Unleavened Bread both within sections (eg sequential supplementations of base texts in Ex 12 & Deut 16 where the process of conflation can be seen "in action", as it were) and by comparing texts (say Ex 23:14 & Num 28:17).*

I do want to be clear... I am not insisting that there need be many hundreds of years between these laws. But I am certainly insisting that there can't be as few as the five or six years that Gmirkin allows (though he never actually says this explicitly **). The point, really the only point, that I am making in all of this is that Gmirkin's theory of the composition of these laws doesn't account for either the similarities between the laws, the differences between the laws, and the relationships between the laws.

Gmirkin doesn't much investigate any of this. Indeed in the Plato book, when discussing the likeness or lack of likeness to Greek laws, just dips into the laws (is this what is known as "quote-mining"?) and discusses them in relation to the Greek laws, but not to each other - more or less ignoring the fact that they do come from separate law codes and the relationships between the sets of laws aren't straightforward. I think that this results in some flawed understanding of the Biblical laws - in particular his representation of the biblical laws on murder & unintentional killing, where he makes a big claim that close examination of the biblical texts proves to be quite incorrect. But before I present that in full, I need to renew my Perlego subscription to ensure I quote Gmirkin precisely.

* What was or wasn't actually being practiced in this regard - in terms either of cultic activity in temple/sanctuaries, or the practices of the general populace - isn't the issue here. We are simply discussing the fact that texts show variation, contradiction, clear supplemental development etc, and do not comprise anything like a consistent, coherent corpus of festival regulations, as one would surely expect of Gmirkin's theory of prescriptive legislation commited to writing within such a narrow time frame.

** Gmirkin dates the Hebrew edition of the Pentateuch to 273-272 BCE. As he argues that it has to have been later than Ariston's exploration of the Arabian coast which he dates to 278 to 276 BCE, (Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus, p. 161) the maximum period of compostion was composed was five-six years. He dates the LXX translation to no later than 269 BCE.

[StephenGoranson]

May I ask, neilgodfrey, whether you now defend the Hellenistic origin of the Hebrew Bible but not the c. 273-272 in Alexandria Torah composition proposal, given your so far non response to the post here:
viewtopic.php?p=154905#p154905
?

If I may juxtapose two texts:

1) In this thread, discussing Gmirkin, Wed May 03, 2023 8:51 pm, neilgodfrey wrote, in part:

"But the question of whether the OT is a Hellenistic work is decided on other grounds. The relative roles of the Samaritans and Judeans, of the library at Alexandria or some other centres, whether pre-Hasmonean or post Hasmonean .... these questions are essentially fine-tuning the thesis. The core argument rests on:...." [then 4 items are detailed, none of them involving Alexandria]

I, SG, take this as a view by NG that Alexandria is not central to the Gmirkin proposal, but rather a matter of "fine-tuning."

2) RE Gmirkin in his 2022 Timaeus book, for example (there are other examples available), on page 23 wrote:

"....An important side consequence of this research is to demonstrate the basic robustness of the model argued in Gmirkin 2006, 2017 in which the Pentateuch was created by a multiplicity of authors present in
Alexandria ca. 270 BCE....."

In this case--and many others--the Alexandria Library component of the proposal is in RE Gmirkin's view central and essential.

[neilgodfrey]

If the aim was to create a definitive law code, and if no law codes already existed, is it not likelier that, even if there were multiple scholars involved producing rival codes, they would make an effort to conflate them and avoid repetitions and inconsistencies?

Let's leave Gmirkin aside. I am trying to understand your argument. That's where all my questions were directed.

You have two "ifs" in there. On what grounds do you introduce those? What is your argument?

And keep in mind -- my question is most interested in understanding your claim for a long time span required to create the basic text of the Pentateuch. Did you say what time span you are imagining? Decades? Centuries? Years? Months?

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ETA

We are all aware of the different law codes in the Pentateuch. What surprises me is that any critic of the Hellenistic thesis for the Pentateuch would assume that Lemche, Gmirkin and anyone else who advances it must be unaware of the basic contents of the Pentateuch. That's why I am trying to understand where you are coming from -- what is your view that makes any other interpretation unfathomable. You insist it is not the DH.

[neilgodfrey]

Yes they do, because the pre-Hellenistic cultural koine is misunderstood if you think of it in linear fashion in terms of items of a copy of Hesiod carried in a soldier's backpack or a legal tract carried by traders in the hold of the ship, like an amphora of oil . One needs to think of it as a sort of cultural mycelium... and complex interaction, and complex relationships at many levels - both vertical and horizontal (ie chronologically vertical and geographically horizontal). It is in the nature of this cultural consanguinity to be more a "background" an environment rather than a "foregrounded" figure upon it (to go all Gestalt all of a sudden) so it's workings are not obvious... the results of it are evident, however. A propos of which, did you manage to read any of Guy Darshan's essays? Or Jonathan Ben-Dov's one on "Influence"? If so, any comments about them?

Okay, sorry, but I find the very abstract terms difficult to imagine in real life historical instances. Can you give some specific examples that demonstrate in real events and moments how traders transfer the culture of elites from one place to another quite different place. If you could refer to other historians that would be okay, too, if they justify your proposition.

Did you respond to this query earlier? I may have missed it.

[neilgodfrey]

May I ask, neilgodfrey, whether you now defend the Hellenistic origin of the Hebrew Bible but not the c. 273-272 in Alexandria Torah composition proposal, given your so far non response to the post here:
viewtopic.php?p=154905#p154905
?

If I may juxtapose two texts:

1) In this thread, discussing Gmirkin, Wed May 03, 2023 8:51 pm, neilgodfrey wrote, in part:

"But the question of whether the OT is a Hellenistic work is decided on other grounds. The relative roles of the Samaritans and Judeans, of the library at Alexandria or some other centres, whether pre-Hasmonean or post Hasmonean .... these questions are essentially fine-tuning the thesis. The core argument rests on:...." [then 4 items are detailed, none of them involving Alexandria]

I, SG, take this as a view by NG that Alexandria is not central to the Gmirkin proposal, but rather a matter of "fine-tuning."

2) RE Gmirkin in his 2022 Timaeus book, for example (there are other examples available), on page 23 wrote:

"....An important side consequence of this research is to demonstrate the basic robustness of the model argued in Gmirkin 2006, 2017 in which the Pentateuch was created by a multiplicity of authors present in
Alexandria ca. 270 BCE....."

In this case--and many others--the Alexandria Library component of the proposal is in RE Gmirkin's view central and essential.

I defend any argument that I think is being misrepresented or misunderstood -- even a creationist argument or even the Documentary Hypothesis as per Wellhausen. Don't you do the same? In the interests of intellectual honesty and understanding?

I have a different perspective from Russell Gmirkin that goes back to our different approaches to historical methods. I find myself in sync with the methods of the so-called "minimalists" and hence have a different view of how to interpret certain evidence from the way RG does -- (RG is simply not a "minimalist" and does not deploy the methods of "minimalists", at least not as I understand them.)

I think RG's Alexandria proposal has a lot going for it. But it is not the only explanation on the table. I am still exploring the various options.

------
ETA: I understand from mere recent experience that the concept of being fair to unpopular arguments is beyond the comprehension of several persons here.

[StephenGoranson]

Thanks, Neil G., for writing that you have some differences from RE Gmirkin's approach, which I quoted from his 2022 book. (What about it, in your opinion "has a lot going for it"?)
If I may note, the Hebrew Bible--and also portions of it, such as Torah--is, in some sense, a "document," or, maybe better, a collection of (variously edited and copied) documents
Any proposed, lower case, "documentary hypothesis" could be one of many views that encompass how it ("it" being either Torah or TaNaK) was created.
PS, if I understand correctly, you were offended that I posted about a tentative proposal that Paul and Apollonius of Tyana might be identical. Because this possibility was quite publically mooted online, I thought it might be appropriate to link it in this forum, before I even got around to comment on its relative likelihood.

[Peter Kirby]

Not "fair to unpopular arguments"? Everything about that characterization is off. The response to Doudna's paper was fair, nobody cared that the idea was merely "unpopular," and, as was pointed out at length, "arguments" had not actually been made for Doudna's idea. After I had already posted an entirely fair argument against the idea, which at no point referred to its status as "unpopular" or not, it was said about Doudna's paper: "It is not presented as a detailed argument to make the case." It is impossible to be unfair to an argument when there isn't one, and a fair response can certainly be a negative one.

[neilgodfrey]

Not "fair to unpopular arguments"? Everything about that characterization is off. The response to Doudna's paper was fair, nobody cared that the idea was merely "unpopular," and, as was pointed out at length, "arguments" had not actually been made for Doudna's idea. After I had already posted an entirely fair argument against the idea, which at no point referred to its status as "unpopular" or not, it was said about Doudna's paper: "It is not presented as a detailed argument to make the case." It is impossible to be unfair to an argument when there isn't one, and a fair response can certainly be a negative one.

The point I had in mind was that my attempt to point out the facts of Doudna's presentation -- to be fair to his presentation -- prompted at least one person to express the view that I was motivated by a particular liking for the idea :-/ ; comparable to another person here who has more than once equated my views in alignment with Pete "mountainman" because I spoke up for his right to express his views without personal insult .

[neilgodfrey]

Thanks, Neil G., for writing that you have some differences from RE Gmirkin's approach, which I quoted from his 2022 book. (What about it, in your opinion "has a lot going for it"?)

I have expressed "a lot" of that on my many blog reviews.

What I find of significance in Russell Gmirkin's analysis is that he has opened up a whole new way of looking at the data to be explained. As Lemche had pointed out -- (though you have compared the reading of Lemche's words to "drinking the kool-aid"), -- the Pentateuch had only been seriously compared with other literature from the "Near East" (I hate that term and use it under protest) and Greek associations were rarely considered in any major depth, certainly nothing comparable to Canaanite, Egyptian, Assyrian etc lit.

Gmirkin does not just compare the data with Greek sources but also with Mesopotamian etc sources and allows the reader to compare and assess. I found myself in addition being led to all sorts of deeper studies on both sides of the analysis from his abundant citations.

But you didn't answer my question. Do you also ever defend ideas you don't agree with against misunderstanding and misrepresentation?