The Old Testament - A Hellenistic Book?

[Secret Alias]

Like not knowing what they are talking about has ever stopped anyone here before. You're too considerate. I don't think anyone is authoritative on these matters.

[austendw]

Thanks for saying that, Neil. I'm not a fan of the slanging match as I think it's so circular - everyone just goes round and round - and eventually very boring. Perhaps it's a question of which corporeal drug you prefer: arguers prefer the adrenaline of the fight, and the others get off on the blast of endorphins when an interesting new idea is exchanged, or some conceptual breakthrough is made. Small pleasures. My biggest rush probably comes when people who thought they disagreed violently discover that, for all the differences, they do share common ground, and they aren't so far apart after all. From there, things get interesting.

I'm thinking of the themes of migration, exile, conquest and settlement for one. Also the themes of a sole deity who allowed no room for any rivals. Also I'm thinking of the kinds of literature that involve extensive prose historical works with the kinds of characterizations and themes that are not found in Near Eastern pre-Hellenistic literature. There are probably others but those come to mind right now. I don't see the conditions in the pre-Hellenistic era for any of those types of works or themes in the literature. The Persian era around Jerusalem was pretty dead. Nothing much at all -- not much more than an abandoned village, if my recollection of the facts is correct.

I'm not sure we know all there is to know about Jerusalem. In the Persian period the "City of David", south of the Haram, was not heaving, that's for sure. But the temple area of Jerusalem remains archeological terra incognita; the Haram, built by Herod, totally obliterates our knowledge of what was was within and beneath it. I suspect that the Persian period temple and its periphery - a possible scribal school and personnel connected to it = were by no means as insignifacant as our the areas outside the Haram would lead us to believe. And the "Petition to Bagoas" from Elephantine does tell is that in 407BCE there was presumably some sort of elite there: Bagoas the governor, and "the high priest Yehohanan and his colleagues the priests in Jerusalem; and to Ostanes, the kinsman of Anani; and the nobles of Yehud." *

Then we have Elephantine -- it is impossible to imagine such communities being part of a wider Jehudian or even Samaritan community producing the sort of literature we find in the Pentateuch.

Now here we are in interesting but very contested territory. Let's not forget two things:

• the community at Elephatine was essentially a military garrison, not a centre of learning.

• I believe that all the letters connected with the community are in Aramaic. The Pentateuch was written in Hebrew.

For my sins, I still haven;t read Granerød's book about Elephantine, and must really get round to that. I think that what those letters tell us about the Pentateuch may not be cut-and-dried, and there is room in the evidence for a variety of explanations.

The literature of the Pentateuch, of the entire Primary History actually, is very similar to Greek writings with Greek themes.

Many of the similarities are, for me, not so similar that they have to have arrived in the Judean culture by active copying in the Hellenistic period. Pace Gmirkin and Wajdebaum, many of the similarities are shoehorn a broad variety of different relationships into a single model. Bruce Louden and Guy Darshan have written plausible and nuanced accounts of the complex relationship between Greek and Biblical literature and culture without limiting those cultural links to the simple "Hellenistic borrowing" model. In connection with this, here's an essay that made a lot of sense to me - Jonathan Ben-Dov's The Inadequacy of the term 'Influence' in biblical Studies. For a long while I have had a feeling of discomfort with what I felt were the heirarchical assumptions behind the Gmrikin/Wajdebaum approach (reminding me of a discussionsI read, a long time ago, about the problematic nature of the term "Romanization" and the model of mono-directional cultural mobility that it implies), and this essay sort of puts that discomfort into words.

The gradualist idea sounds plausible and I don't discount the possibility. But at the moment I don't see the evidence for it. Does not the Pentateuch kind of just appear all at once, complete more or less, from the get-go?

I'd say it may have become authoritative all at once, at a late date, but as for when it "appeared" we have no evidence either way. When biblical texts refer to the "Torah" it doesn't always follow that they are talking about the final edition Pentateuchal anthology; they are talking about something else, possibly one or other section of the legal material that now appears in that collection.

I am tossing back my thoughts in response to what you raise. Don't take these responses as outright dismissals of your points. What you say forces me to think and re-think about everything and much of how I respond is tentative -- on the fly as I type here.

Well, we can all do with having our thoughts challenged. When I was at university, a long time ago in a galaxy far away, my favorite learning environment was the seminar - not the lecture, not the tutorial - but some ten or so people sitting round a table, batting ideas to and fro ... and seeing where things led to - going somewhere and not being sure where you might end up (ie: the book-worm's version of the exploration of mysterious lands). For me that's so much more satisfying than adopting one position and sticking to it as if your life depended on it.

* Of course, Jerusalem is not actually mentioned by name in the letter, but where else could these big-wigs have been?

[andrewcriddle]

......................................

* Of course, Jerusalem is not actually mentioned by name in the letter, but where else could these big-wigs have been?

IIUC the letter reads

the high priest Yehohanan and his colleagues the priests in Jerusalem; and to Ostanes, the kinsman of Anani; and the nobles of Yehud.

which does seem to be an explicit mention.

Andrew Criddle

[austendw]

......................................

* Of course, Jerusalem is not actually mentioned by name in the letter, but where else could these big-wigs have been?

IIUC the letter reads

the high priest Yehohanan and his colleagues the priests in Jerusalem; and to Ostanes, the kinsman of Anani; and the nobles of Yehud.

which does seem to be an explicit mention.

Andrew Criddle

Yep... I somehow missed that obvious reference

In retrospect I think I really meant it in respect of the other elites: Ostanes and the "nobles of Yehud" aren't linked to Jerusalem as such, and might have been somewhere else - though I'm not sure where, exactly.

[Secret Alias]

You're good. There's a lot to absorb. The purloin letter is a classic for a reason.

[neilgodfrey]

I'm not sure we know all there is to know about Jerusalem. In the Persian period the "City of David", south of the Haram, was not heaving, that's for sure. But the temple area of Jerusalem remains archeological terra incognita; the Haram, built by Herod, totally obliterates our knowledge of what was was within and beneath it. I suspect that the Persian period temple and its periphery - a possible scribal school and personnel connected to it = were by no means as insignifacant as our the areas outside the Haram would lead us to believe. And the "Petition to Bagoas" from Elephantine does tell is that in 407BCE there was presumably some sort of elite there: Bagoas the governor, and "the high priest Yehohanan and his colleagues the priests in Jerusalem; and to Ostanes, the kinsman of Anani; and the nobles of Yehud." *

We have to build on what we do know now, of course -- and it goes without saying that if and when we learn new things our understanding will change.

But if the Pentateuch existed in the Persian period it would have been among a restricted, select group of scribes without any relevance to the wider material culture as evidenced by archaeology and other records independently dated to that the time. It would have been a writing wrapped up in themes that were alien to the rest of the culture, as evidenced in the archaeological records, including Elephantine.

The only reason, it has been said, that the Documentary Hypothesis ever gained traction in the first place was because Elephantine was discovered too late to have made inroads into the relevant scholarly fields and communication venues.

It is built on the same methodological flaw as is study of gospel origins: the presumption that the narrative contains some historical core. That is, as Philip Davies pointed out, circularity.

But an idea can become so entrenched that not even Philip Davies could bring himself to place it later than the Persian period. We had to wait for Lemche to come out and say what no-one had dared till then to say.

[austendw]

We have to build on what we do know now, of course -- and it goes without saying that if and when we learn new things our understanding will change.

Well, yes and no. When we build on what we know, we have to (dialectically, as it were) be aware of what we don't know and factor that into the assurance or lack of it with which we make a proposition or speculation. Otherwise we are really trying to build a too complete picture on the base of partial evidence that we took to be all the evidence. I'll give you an egregious example of not acknowledging what we don't know. In his essay Can the Documentary Hypothesis be Rehabilitated? A New Model of the Collaborative Composition of the Pentateuch Russell Gmirkin says:

There is no compelling evidence for associating P with Jerusalem’s priesthood, and the criticism of the Aaronid line of priests suggests an association with the Samaritans associated with the temple at Mount Gerizim. Thousands of bones recovered from archaeological excavations on Mount Gerizim included sheep, goats, cattle and doves, consistent with sacrificial regulations in P.[97] Samaritan beliefs in the tabernacle as the only legitimate sanctuary may also point to the Samaritan background of P.[98]

Since Gmirkin is here actively arguing that P is from Samaria and not from Jerusalem, the appeal to the archarological excavations on Mount Gerizim is wholly inappropriate, since one could only gather anything from those finds if one were to compare them to equivalent finds from Jerusalem, which, of course, we don't have.

An egregious example of building on what we don't know is from Gmirkin's 2020 essay “‘Solomon’ (Shalmaneser III) and the Emergence of Judah as an Independent Kingdom.” in Biblical Narratives, Archaeology and Historicity: Essays In Honour of Thomas L. Thompson) which I only know through the four-part Vridar discussion of it (starting here) in Vridar. This is regarding the very same area that I was talking about, previously, the area of the Haram in Jerusalem. Despite the fact that no meaningful archaeology has been done in this area, G proposed that:

The monumental architecture attributed to Solomon in this later literary strata appears to reflect actual constructions under King Ahab of Bit Omri, building projects which included ...the temple of Yahweh and other impressive buildings at Jerusalem, which was arguably ruled from Samaria in earlier times. ((Gmirkin, 86)

and

Archaeological evidence pointing to correlations between the temple building account and temple architecture of the tenth to eighth centuries BCE in the southern Levant fully supports the construction of Jerusalem’s temple by Ahab rather than a construction by a local king of Judah (much less Solomon). (Gmirkin, 86)

and

It is likely that Jerusalem’s temple and the governor’s house that later served as palace were indeed ninth-century BCE constructions, as broadly confirmed by archaeological evidence, but are best attributed to Ahab, Jerusalem’s ruler at that time. (Gmirkin, 88)

Where Gmirkin got the notion that Ahab of Bit Omri (Samaria) ruled Jerusalem is anyone's guess. (I think I know, actually, but if I'm right, the argument is too flimsy/absurd to be remotely credible.) But the assertion that the original temple platform of Jerusalem (described nowhere but in 1 Kings cccc) was constructed in a single building phase in the 8th Century, roughly at the same time and to the same design as the one in Samaria, is - given that there is no archaeological evidence whatoever that any such platform existed in Jerusalem at that time, that there was a Samarian governor there, or that the one in Samaria had an analogous temple on it - a pretty shameless overinterpretation of the meagre evidence there is regarding the Iron Age temple at Jerusalem.

I have indulged in those two flagrant examples of "whataboutism" to show that when scholars criticise others for "subjective" or "non-scientific" or "non-evidence based" arguments (as Gmirkin is wont to do), they'd better be sure that they themselves don't commit those very same sins.

But if the Pentateuch existed in the Persian period it would have been among a restricted, select group of scribes without any relevance to the wider material culture as evidenced by archaeology and other records independently dated to that the time.

Well, to a great degree that's correct, this material was ineed a restricted scribal operation - scribal literature, of interest to scribes - that didn't have authoritative value and therefore was not relevant to the lives of a lot of other people. However, the "Persian Period" theory does not argue that the Pentateuch was complete in 411BCE (the date of the mis-named "Passover Letter"). The Persian Period Theory (which ended eighty years later in 323 BCE) was the period during which Pentateuchal materials were written, gathered, supplemented, edited, redacted... re-redacted - during which time the variety of different angles and ideologies expressed were of course not authoritative and couldn't therefore be consistutive of a homogenous all-encompassing "Judaism" that everyone adhered to. The Pentateuch wasn't completed until the end of that period or sometime during the Hellenistic period. Before then, it was a variety of competing, semi-sectarian schools of scribal thought and ideologies. Not so different in a way from Gmirkin's notion of differing social groups, but retaining a diachronic element - not by giving absolute dates to defined "documents" as in the old DH - but by using literary criticism to establish the diachronic development of the texts within those semi-sectarian scribal schools, and the relative chronology of their redactional amalgamation into what finally became the Pentateuch as we now know it. Which is something very different from the DH. An outline of the "new scholarship" can be found in the introduction to "Social Groups Beind the Pentateuch", a collection of pertinent essays dated to 2021.

It would have been a writing wrapped up in themes that were alien to the rest of the culture, as evidenced in the archaeological records, including Elephantine.

Well again, I don't believe that Elephantine letters tell us as much as some people believe, but also that they tells us more than others realise. For a start, given that the Geb garrison were Aramaic speakers and the place was a garrison, there is no reason to think that they were scholars of Hebrew. So what they knew of what was being written and discussed in Jerusalem is unlikely to have been great. It seems to me that, when we examine the extant portions of the mis-named Passover Letter (in which the Passover itself is not found at all) we see that the instructions the garrison received were certainly not in accord with the very earliest expressions of the Festival (Hag) of Unleavened Bread (Ex: ), nor in accord with the very final expressions of the all but complete melding of the once separate Passover ritual and the Festival of Unleavened Bread (Exodus 12:8-20). Though an interpretation of an only partially-preserved letter is alway a bit of a risky undertaking, it seems to me that the instructions for the treatment of leaven are similar (but not identical) to that last passage, but the start date of the festival agrees with the somewhat earlier Leviticus 23:6-8, before the eating of unleavened bread was associated with the Passover ritual itself.

The only reason, it has been said, that the Documentary Hypothesis ever gained traction in the first place was because Elephantine was discovered too late to have made inroads into the relevant scholarly fields and communication venues.

I haven't finished my response to one of Gmirkin's recent posts, but the unending recollections of the Documentary Hypothesis feels in 2023 like a time warp, when one takes into account European Scholarship of the last 20 years. I think that the simplification of the scholarly landscape by presenting it as a binary opposition between the Documentary Hypothesis and his own New Scholarship, thereby ignoring the scholars who do not occupy one or other of those positions extreme positions, is terribly unhelpful. In much of Europe (and elsewhere) the Documentary Hypothesis has been dead and buried for over a decade and referring to it increasingly seems like a very stale straw-man argument. Worse still, presenting the scholars who do subscribed to the Persian Era theory as if they were just the tail-end of those old fuddy-duddy reactionaries (subjective, crypto-religious) is both factually wrong, but sustains a simplistic (but unfortunately tribally appealing) ideological gulf between Us and Them sadly counter-productive - and discourages avenues for research rather than enables them.

It is built on the same methodological flaw as is study of gospel origins: the presumption that the narrative contains some historical core. That is, as Philip Davies pointed out, circularity.
But an idea can become so entrenched that not even Philip Davies could bring himself to place it later than the Persian period. We had to wait for Lemche to come out and say what no-one had dared till then to say.

I think you are mistaken to dis Davies in this way. As far as I remember, he was not so rash as to jettison all diachronic analysis of biblical texts. Unlike Lemche who penned these words:

The conclusion that historical-critical scholarship is based on a false methodology and leads to false conclusions simply means that we can disregard 200 years of bible scholarship and commit it to the dustbin. It is hardly worth the paper on which it is printed. (N.P. Lemche, “On the Problems of Reconstructing Pre-Hellenistic Israelite (Palestinian) History”, Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 3 (2000) 1–12).

Junking 200 years of scholarship because you believe the scholars came at the problem from the wrong angle is not only pretty arrogant, but an expression what I can't help but think of as a sort of scholarly Stalinism. This has encouraged scholarship in which serious examination of the language, form and context of biblical writings, is rarely employed to any significant degree, which I think is regressive and really a bit sad.

(Forgive the hyperbole, but this is the internet, after all... though I've edited it to tone it down a smidgin.)

[John2]

Austen's like having a new Ben.

[neilgodfrey]

Junking 200 years of scholarship because you believe the scholars came at the problem from the wrong angle is not only pretty arrogant, but an expression what I can't help but think of as a sort of scholarly Stalinism. This has encouraged scholarship in which serious examination of the language, form and context of biblical writings, is rarely employed to any significant degree, which I think is regressive and really a bit sad.

(Forgive the hyperbole, but this is the internet, after all... though I've edited it to tone it down a smidgin.)

I'll try to make time to respond to the earlier parts of your post over coming days, but let me respond to this passage right now.

"Junking" is, as you concede, a pejorative way to describe what happens. The criticisms of the Documentary Hypothesis over the past decades have not been "junking" it but have engaged seriously with it, addressing its inconsistencies and logical flaws. That is not arrogance but a normal and healthy process of scholarly engagement, of course.

If there is any "Stalinism" to be seen I suggest it comes from those who have been most hostile to what they call "minimalism" -- we have seen language and ad hominem from the defenders of the conventional wisdom reminiscent of some of the less pleasant posts that have appeared on this forum in response to Russell Gmirkin (though Gmirkin is not a "minimalist".) The aim has been to shut down discussion, debate, even to discourage others from reading certain works or at least conditioning them to read with hostile intent (Lemche).

Further, demonstrating that an entire approach is based on circular reasoning does indeed invalidate that entire approach. It is not arrogance but, arguably, courage that is required to expose that flaw, or naivety -- like the child who called out that the emperor is naked.

[StephenGoranson]

neilgodfrey wrote, above, in part:
"....Gmirkin is not a "minimalist"...."
Is that true?