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

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Secret Alias
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by Secret Alias »

But nor is there definitive evidence that the Torah predates 273 BCE
What kind of evidence would be "definitive"? If you mean C14 evidence our earliest copies of Plato are from the 3rd century CE.
Secret Alias
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by Secret Alias »

I think there is this childishness among people who frequent these forums. It's the "you can't prove me wrong so I am not wrong" attitude. No you can't prove that the Pentateuch was written before 270 BCE. But there are Hebrew fragments from close to this period at Qumran. Is the best answer to the reality that (a) you have Greek speaking Jews translating the Pentateuch at Alexandria and (b) sectarians using Hebrew fragments at Qumran around this time the Gmirkin hypothesis? Would you come up with this explanation NATURALLY if you started out trying to explain these phenomena? No you wouldn't. You'd expect that a Hebrew text was created in the Levant and translated at Alexandria. It's childishness which exploits the fact that manuscripts don't survive that long in natural conditions and the LXX as well every other ancient writing from the 5th century doesn't survive.
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by Leucius Charinus »

It's childishness which exploits the fact that manuscripts don't survive that long in natural conditions and the LXX as well every other ancient writing from the 5th century doesn't survive.
Exploitation is not by childishness but by logic. The manuscripts may have existed and not survived OR they may in fact have never existed prior to the time period in question. We just don't know at the moment do we. The river card has not been revealed and may never be revealed. History is not like a game of poker. But go ahead and bluff anyway. I'll call.
StephenGoranson
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by StephenGoranson »

Call the bluff? Which posters have what they claim is a "new paradigm" (some of which may contradict one another) with which they hope to brazen it out?
ABuddhist
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by ABuddhist »

StephenGoranson wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 3:26 pm Some parts of TaNaK were probably Greek-influenced, as I have written before. But the subject here is Torah.
Are you unwilling to concede that the Torah was influenced in any way by the Greeks? Because Gmirkin has listed many similarities.
Secret Alias
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by Secret Alias »

The Torah was not influenced by Greek. No evidence of the Greek language influencing the Hebrew text.
Pythagoras and Plato were said to have been influenced by Egyptian thought. So too Israelite thought. https://projectaugustine.com/biblical-s ... psalm-104/
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by Leucius Charinus »

Pythagoras and Plato were said to have been influenced by Egyptian thought. So too Israelite thought.
https://projectaugustine.com/biblical-s ... psalm-104/
Historians do not dispute the claim that the Greek intellectual traditions - for example medicine, astronomy, logic, geometry and mathematics - were influenced by Egyptian thought.

The real question here being contended is whether Hebrew thought
a) was influenced directly from Egyptian thought at that time, or
b) was (later) influenced indirectly by Hellenistic thought.

Emperor Julian wrote:... as regards the constitution of the state and the fashion of the law-courts, the administration of cities and the excellence of the laws, progress in learning and the cultivation of the liberal arts, were not all these things in a miserable and barbarous state among the Hebrews?

And yet the wretched Eusebius will have it that poems in hexameters are to be found even among them, and sets up a claim that the study of logic exists among the Hebrews, since he has heard among the Hellenes the word they use for logic.
This question is thus a question about chronology of influence.
What does the chronological evidence have to say?
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andrewcriddle
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by andrewcriddle »

ABuddhist wrote: Fri Mar 31, 2023 9:25 am
StephenGoranson wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 3:26 pm Some parts of TaNaK were probably Greek-influenced, as I have written before. But the subject here is Torah.
Are you unwilling to concede that the Torah was influenced in any way by the Greeks? Because Gmirkin has listed many similarities.
There clearly are parallels between Greek sources and the Pentateuch.

It is much less clear how far they involve knowledge of Greek texts by the authors of the Pentateuch. As distinct from the use of common sources or the fact that both are products of ancient Eastern Mediterranean societies with social structures which were in many ways similar to each other and were very different to modern Western societies.

Andrew Criddle
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by austendw »

andrewcriddle wrote: Sat Apr 01, 2023 3:55 am There clearly are parallels between Greek sources and the Pentateuch.

It is much less clear how far they involve knowledge of Greek texts by the authors of the Pentateuch. As distinct from the use of common sources or the fact that both are products of ancient Eastern Mediterranean societies with social structures which were in many ways similar to each other and were very different to modern Western societies.

Andrew Criddle
My thoughts exactly. Here are a handful of interesting essays by Guy Darshan, who specialised in this area:

The Biblical Account of the Post-Diluvian Generation (Gen. 9:20-10:32) in the Light of Greek Genealogical Literature (2013)

The Origins of the Foundation Stories Genre in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Eastern Mediterranean (2014)

The Casuistic Priestly Law in Ancient Mediterranean Context: The History of the Genre and its Sitz im Leben (2018)

Ruaḥ ’Elohim in Genesis 1:2 in Light of Phoenician Cosmogonies: A Tradition’s History (2019)

The Casuistic Law in Leviticus, the New Marmarini Inscription, and the Eloulaia and Nisanaia Festivals (2022)

I find Darshan's notions of cultural diffusion between "Eastern Mediterranean societies with social structures ... in many ways similar to each other", as you express it, far more compelling, more normal in cultural and sociological terms, than Gmirkin's story of the fashioning of the Pentateuch - with its very unique plot-line. I particularly appreciate Darshan's discussion of the Phoenician Cosmogonies, relating biblical cosmogongy to the that of its neighbours, and emphasising its indigenous Levantine roots. This serves as a corrective to Gmirkin's picture, in which the Bible is a kind of literary epiphyte (or worse), hanging between Greek literature in the west and (to a far lesser degree) Mesopotamian literature in the east, but not meaningfully rooted in its own cultural soil.

Gmirkin's understanding of the ancient world, on the contrary, seems to view Eastern Mediterranean cultural "consanguinity" as outlandishly implausible. His approach to the material actually presupposes a sort of cultural chasm between Greece and the Levant (East is East, and West is West?), which could only be bridged by scholars having direct access to Greek literature within a constrained (Hellenistic) time frame.
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by neilgodfrey »

austendw wrote: Fri May 05, 2023 1:04 am Gmirkin's understanding of the ancient world, on the contrary, seems to view Eastern Mediterranean cultural "consanguinity" as outlandishly implausible. His approach to the material actually presupposes a sort of cultural chasm between Greece and the Levant (East is East, and West is West?), which could only be bridged by scholars having direct access to Greek literature within a constrained (Hellenistic) time frame.
Gmirkin does actually acknowledge Eastern Mediterranean influence in the Pentateuch and discusses specifics. So I don't know the basis of the assertion that he "seems to view [it] as outlandishly implausible".

His approach certainly does not presuppose a "sort of cultural chasm" -- he takes the literature of both the East and West and submits it all to comparison with the Pentateuch, addressing arguments that have focused on one set of comparisons to the exclusion of others.
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