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

[Secret Alias]

1. The Greeks hated the Jews
2. The Greeks would have used any means to destroy the credibility of the Jewish religion (like a few modern atheists)
3. If Alexandrian Greeks knew that the Pentateuch was cobbled together from visits by Jews to their library we surely would have heard about it
4. It is impossible that Alexandrian Greeks didn't know about Jewish visits to the Library of Alexandria to cobble together the Pentateuch.
5. Celsus attacks Christianity for plagiarism from Greek sources presumably made familiar to Christians by visits to the library
6. Celsus had good sources. If Celsus could have said the Jews were also plagiarists he would have said so.

[Leucius Charinus]

1. The Greeks hated the Jews

So what?

2. The Greeks would have used any means to destroy the credibility of the Jewish religion (like a few modern atheists)

You mean the polytheist YHWH cults?

3. If Alexandrian Greeks knew that the Pentateuch was cobbled together from visits by Jews to their library we surely would have heard about it

Via FOI requests?

4. It is impossible that Alexandrian Greeks didn't know about Jewish visits to the Library of Alexandria to cobble together the Pentateuch.

So how omniscient were Alexandrian Greeks?

5. Celsus attacks Christianity for plagiarism from Greek sources presumably made familiar to Christians by visits to the library
6. Celsus had good sources. If Celsus could have said the Jews were also plagiarists he would have said so.

That's complete hearsay from an epoch 500 years after the proposed action. Momigliano goes so far as to say "it is indeed impossible to be certain that Celsus is fairly represented by the texts Origen quotes to refute him."

[Russell Gmirkin]

1. The Greeks hated the Jews
2. The Greeks would have used any means to destroy the credibility of the Jewish religion (like a few modern atheists)
3. If Alexandrian Greeks knew that the Pentateuch was cobbled together from visits by Jews to their library we surely would have heard about it
4. It is impossible that Alexandrian Greeks didn't know about Jewish visits to the Library of Alexandria to cobble together the Pentateuch.
5. Celsus attacks Christianity for plagiarism from Greek sources presumably made familiar to Christians by visits to the library
6. Celsus had good sources. If Celsus could have said the Jews were also plagiarists he would have said so.

I don't think you should project your own simple-minded anti-Semitism on the Greeks. Hecataeus of Abdera, for instance, wrote an entirely positive account of Jewish origins in ca. 320-315 BCE. Other early Greek writers characterized the Jews as a race of wise philosophers, like the gymnosophists of India. Alexandria had a thriving Jewish quarter. The Ptolemies posted Jews in many of their fortresses. The Seleucid Antiochus the Great did likewise, and made generous concessions to the Jews of Jerusalem in light of their religious practices. etc. etc.

[StephenGoranson]

RE Gmirkin wrote above, in part:
"I don't think you [Secret Alias] should project your own simple-minded anti-Semitism on the Greeks...."
If I may, for now, put aside the range of Greek views, I suggest that it may well be unfair to ascribe to him anti-Semitism.
OED defines anti-Semitism as:
"Prejudice, hostility, or discrimination towards Jewish people on religious, cultural, or ethnic grounds."

[Secret Alias]

He's just countering my observation that the only reason this theory finds followers is that they want to limit the authority of the Pentateuch. There's no other reason for thinking this given the problems with regards to the Samaritans and the Qumran community using the Pentateuch as the basis to their religious practices. I think he and Neil equate my interest in the Samaritans and support for their legitimacy as tantamount to "hating Jews and Judaism" which is their prerogative. Other Jews such as myself have shown an interest in the Samaritan for what it tells us about Hebrew, Aramaic not to mention religious plurality in antiquity. But since I assume that the appeal of Gmirkin's theory is its undermining of the authority of Pentateuch I'm fair game. .

I still say Greeks in Alexandria were by and large anti-Semitic or against the Jewish population in their city by the Common Era. I've used to have a copy of Musurillo's Acts of the Pagan Martyrs and feel that it was representative of the Greek population of the time. Celsus is at the other end of the chronology. I stand by my assertion that if there was any inkling that the Jews used the Greek philosophers to build their pseudepigrapha a pagan writer somewhere would have gotten a hold of it and mentioned it in writing and given the anti-Jewish sentiment of early Christian writers a Church Father somewhere would at least have mentioned the accusation in relation to Marcion or some other related subject. But anything is possible I guess. But when you factor the dissimilarity between the Pentateuch and Plato there's really very little to work with. But the dream never dies, just the dreamer.

[StephenGoranson]

Concerning the part of this thread specifically about Alexandria, it may be worth quoting parts of an open-access article* (please do go there for the full context, which also includes some praise of other aspects) addressing the Gmirkin Alexandria Torah-writing proposal:

"...Yet, I have problems with some of his [Gmirkin's] interpretations. One of my main criticisms concerns his view on the coming to be of the Hebrew Bible. He speculates that it was created in the Alexandrian library by the 70 persons mentioned in the Aristeas Letter (Wright 2015:1). This seems speculation to me. There is no historical reference to such a happening...."

"....Another problematic aspect of Gmirkin’s approach is the role he ascribes to the Alexandrian library. He inferred that the Hebrew Pentateuch was written ca. 270 BCE (Gmirkin 2006:249), drawing on a variety of sources written in Greek and housed in the great library of Alexandria. This in turn led to the conclusion that the authors of the Pentateuch were the same group of 70 aristocratic, Greek-educated Jewish scholars that ancient tradition credited with having translated the Pentateuch into Greek at Alexandria at almost exactly (?) the same time (ca. 273–269 BCE) (Gmirkin 2006:249). The problem with this inference is that we have no primary evidence that this was indeed the case...."

*
Platonism and the Bible(s)
By: Cook, Johann. Source: HTS Theological Studies, 78 no 1 2022, p 1-4. Publication Type: Article
Subjects: Gmirkin, Russell E , 1954-; Bible . Old Testament--Greek influence; Bible . Old Testament . Greek --Versions--Septuagint; Bible . Old Testament--Translating; Bible . Genesis--Criticism, interpretation; Bible . Exodus--Criticism, interpretation; Judaism and philosophy -- Greek philosophy; Platonism; Judaism, Hellenistic
full text:
https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/articl ... 7432/22081
(this article was also previously linked on this forum)

[Secret Alias]

I don't what we are being asked to with this theory. Do Neil and Russell think it is "appropriate" for scholarship as a whole to "acknowledge" that the Hebrew Pentateuch was developed from Greek sources as a "fact"? Are we meant to rewrite history? Are we meant to have our textbooks "accept" that the Pentateuch was literally manufactured from Greek learning? There are obvious reasons not to buy into these propositions (the absence of Hebrew borrowing from Greek for instance). But are the proponents of this theory really asking for historians to accept as fact the things Gmirkin writes about or are they meant to advance research or for discussion boards? I am not understanding what Neil and Russell think is the appropriate degree of certainty that we should have about all of this.

[ABuddhist]

But are the proponents of this theory really asking for historians to accept as fact the things Gmirkin writes about or are they meant to advance research or for discussion boards? I am not understanding what Neil and Russell think is the appropriate degree of certainty that we should have about all of this.

Scxholars generally intend for people to accepot as true what they suggest, and they welcome the prospect that their proposals will advance research and lead to new discussions.

[ABuddhist]

But when you factor the dissimilarity between the Pentateuch and Plato there's really very little to work with.

But why do you think that they are dissimilar? Consider the following sources disagreeing with you:

Has anyone in the history of the study of the Bible before Gmirkin ever noticed how "Platonic" the Pentateuch is? I ask this as someone who doesn't know the answer. They've always studied Plato. Christians started studying the Bible since the second century. Many since Justin did the two together. I don't remember coming across a lot of people who said the Hebrew of Genesis or Exodus or Joshua seems to echo Plato. Christians liked Philo's take on the Pentateuch and generally considered him to be inspired. Most early Christians though Moses wrote the Pentateuch. I'd love to learn of eighteenth and nineteenth and twentieth century scholarship before Gmirkin who noticed borrowings of the Hebrew authors from the Pentateuch.

Jewish and Christian claims for the priority of Moses and biblical literature are discussed in Arthur J. Droge, Homer or Moses?: Early Christian Interpretations of the History of Culture (Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie 26; Tübingen: Mohr, 1989). Such claims were made by the Jewish writers Eupolemus, Aristobulus, Philo and Josephus; the Church Fathers Justin Martyr, Tatian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius and Augustine; and “pagan” authors such as Numenius of Apamea. Parallels with Plato’s Laws were laid out in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospels 12.4-5, 36-42, 47.

Early higher criticism often noted parallels with Plato's Laws. See Hugo Grotius, De Veritate Religionis Christianae (Paris: Jean Le Maire, 1629); Theophilus Gale, The Court of the Gentiles, or a Discourse Touching the Original of Human Literature (4 vols.; London: Thomas Cockeril, 1669-1677); John Spencer, De Legibus Hebraeorum, Ritualibus et earum Rationibus libri tres (Cambridge: Richard Chiswell, 1685); Archbishop John Potter, Archaeologia Graeca, or the Antiquities of Greece (2 vols.; London: Abel Swall, 1697-98); Hugo Grotius and Jean Le Clerc, The Truth of the Christian Religion in Six Books: Corrected, and Illustrated with Notes by Mr. Le Clerc (London: James and John Knapton, 1709); Enoch Cobb Wines, Commentaries on the Laws of the Ancient Hebrews: With an Introductory Essay on Civil Society and Government (New York: G.P. Putnam and Co., 1853); J. Benjamin Marsden, The Influence of the Mosaic Code upon Subsequent Legislation (London: Hamilton, Adams and Company, 1862).

More recently, see Otto Kaiser, “Das Deuteronomium und Platons Nomoi: Einladung zu einem Vergleich”, in H. Spieckermann and R.G. Kratz (eds.) Liebe und Gebot: Studien zum Deuteronomium. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 190 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 60-79; Anselm C. Hagedorn, Between Moses and Plato: Individual and Society in Deuteronomy and Ancient Greek Law (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004); Łukasz Niesiołowski-Spanò, “Primeval History in the Persian Period?” SJOT 21 (2007), 106-26; Philippe Wajdenbaum, Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2011). Evangeline Dafni has also wrote extensively on Platonic parallels.

I've probably missed a few. I left out many authors who have noted parallels with Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, etc.

[Russell Gmirkin]

Concerning the part of this thread specifically about Alexandria, it may be worth quoting parts of an open-access article* (please do go there for the full context, which also includes some praise of other aspects) addressing the Gmirkin Alexandria Torah-writing proposal:

"...Yet, I have problems with some of his [Gmirkin's] interpretations. One of my main criticisms concerns his view on the coming to be of the Hebrew Bible. He speculates that it was created in the Alexandrian library by the 70 persons mentioned in the Aristeas Letter (Wright 2015:1). This seems speculation to me. There is no historical reference to such a happening...."

"....Another problematic aspect of Gmirkin’s approach is the role he ascribes to the Alexandrian library. He inferred that the Hebrew Pentateuch was written ca. 270 BCE (Gmirkin 2006:249), drawing on a variety of sources written in Greek and housed in the great library of Alexandria. This in turn led to the conclusion that the authors of the Pentateuch were the same group of 70 aristocratic, Greek-educated Jewish scholars that ancient tradition credited with having translated the Pentateuch into Greek at Alexandria at almost exactly (?) the same time (ca. 273–269 BCE) (Gmirkin 2006:249). The problem with this inference is that we have no primary evidence that this was indeed the case...."

*
Platonism and the Bible(s)
By: Cook, Johann. Source: HTS Theological Studies, 78 no 1 2022, p 1-4. Publication Type: Article
Subjects: Gmirkin, Russell E , 1954-; Bible . Old Testament--Greek influence; Bible . Old Testament . Greek --Versions--Septuagint; Bible . Old Testament--Translating; Bible . Genesis--Criticism, interpretation; Bible . Exodus--Criticism, interpretation; Judaism and philosophy -- Greek philosophy; Platonism; Judaism, Hellenistic
full text:
https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/articl ... 7432/22081
(this article was also previously linked on this forum)

Professor Johann Cook, a fine academic with whom I am on very friendly terms, has unintentionally misunderstood my model on two separate points. One thing he questions on historical grounds in the 2022 review cited above is the idea that the translation was made by a body of 70 Jewish scholars as described in the Letter of Aristeas. I have made it clear in my various writings that I do not view the tradition found in the Letter of Aristeas as historical or accurate or to be literally relied upon, so this is simply a point he has misunderstood. (The other point has to do with the date of the Jewish-Samaritan schism in Cook 2023--again, an honest mistake.)

Professor Cook nevertheless considers my ideas to be of sufficient significance that he solicited an article for presentation in the virtual conference on the Septuagint on September 5-6, 2020 hosted by Stellenbosch University of South Africa. It just recently came out in hardback.

Russell E. Gmirkin, “The Historical Context of the LXX and its Hebrew Vorlage” in Johann Cook and Gideon R. Kotzé (eds.), The Septuagint South of Alexandria: Essays on the Greek Translations and Other Ancient Versions by the Association for the Study of the Septuagint in South Africa (LXXSA) (Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 193; Leiden: Brill, 2022).