The Old Testament - A Hellenistic Book?

[austendw]

what is the basis for our description of the Pentateuch "fractured, stratified, structurally complicated"

OK, well, let's start with this - Three large corpuses of law - (this is encouraging me to upload my mini-essay on this subject)

The Covenant Code (CC- Ex 20:24-23:19);
The Holiness Code (HC -Lev 17-27);
The Deuteronomic Code (D - Deut. 12-28);

All of these are self-contained law codes which, 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, which proposes that all except a few ANE laws, are derived directly from Plato (et al.), newly discovered/researched by Judean and Samaritan (?) scholars, in the Alexandria Library. The important thing is that they are all related to each other, but different. Much modern scholarship has simply tried to look at the relationship between them, the overlaps as well as the differences, the evident attempt of one to revise another, the different spin one gives to the other.... so there has to be some sort of a diachronic element here... the generally agreed schema is that CC is the oldest (it tends to be the most basic), D revises it in a number of ways, and HC revises both (I think...) within a priestly milieu. Exodus 20:24 is not Deuteronomic so often taken to be pre-Deuteronomic since D effectively attacks it/aims to override it.

If Deuteronomy is Hellenistic, and according to Josephus was the "constitution" (it includes the "law of the king") why do neither the High Priest or the so-called 70-man "Senate" (a particularly inappopriate latin name) - the most important man and (according to Gmirkin at list) the main legislative institution of the Hellenisitc Jewish state, appear in it? They don't. Not even hinted at. The "Senate" is hinted at, maybe, in disparate narratives, but is never "instituted" formally as such, and the High Priest only appears (once or twice by name) in solely Priestly material and has a mostly cultic, but "apolitical" role. Doesn't resemble the Hellenisitc head of state at all.

Narratives: when you look at the episode in Numbers 16:1-35, the chief villain appears to be Korah, who appears nowhere in the Deuteronomy account. Even though there have been many differently fine-tuned versions over the years, biblical scholars agree broadly that in Numbers a priestly/ post-Priestly Holiness narrative (or narratives) featuring rebellious Korah and 250 men with their censers, has been combined with the story of rebellious Dathan & Abiram swallowed by the ground. And it’s also surely clear that the writer Deuteronomy 11:6 (this passage, not necessarily the entire book) knew only the latter narrative, before its amalgamation with the priestly story – establishing a relative diachronic sequence: (a) Dathan & Abiram story; (b) Deut 11:6 referring to it almost verbatim; (c) the addition of the priestly story giving rise to something like the story as it now appears in Numbers 16.

I think it's a slight oversimplification to describe Gmirkin's thesis as a "linear, binary narrative" --- he does speak of conflicting interests involved in the creation of the Pentateuch.

But those conflicting interests (which he just alludes to rather than actually invesitigates) are all working together in some sort of Ptolemiac/Judean state sponsered "collaboration", no? And they are all scholars in Alexandria together, there for the same reason, at the same time, with the same end in mind, combing the same texts from Plato, Manetho, Berossus etc to create (more or less ex nihilo, as most of the myths, laws, and narratives are derived from Greek models, evidently) The Law of Moses. I'm not sure how the conflict/collaboration is really supposed to work. How does it explain (a) the creation in the three overlapping-and-related-but-different law codes and, if that can be answered (b) why didn't supervising editor make some effort to combine them?

Actually, I will finish that mini-essay ASAP and upload it a bit later.

Sorry... this is very hurredly scrawled.

[neilgodfrey]

. . . and the High Priest only appears (once or twice by name) in solely Priestly material and has a mostly cultic, but "apolitical" role. Doesn't resemble the Hellenisitc head of state at all.

Yes, but is not the Pentateuch a cooperative effort of "Judea/Jehud" and the Samarians? (That's not only Gmirkin's idea.) It was not produced by a single political or even religious state.

. . . – establishing a relative diachronic sequence: (a) Dathan & Abiram story; (b) Deut 11:6 referring to it almost verbatim; (c) the addition of the priestly story giving rise to something like the story as it now appears in Numbers 16.

And many such like. Maybe there were some changes over generations, or maybe the dialogic engagement was happening within a matter of weeks. But whether the Persian era is the starting point, my main difficulty there is not seeing the ideological conditions necessary for such literature as likely given the material evidence of the Persian era.

. . . . But those conflicting interests (which he just alludes to rather than actually invesitigates) are all working together in some sort of Ptolemiac/Judean state sponsered "collaboration", no? And they are all scholars in Alexandria together, there for the same reason, at the same time, with the same end in mind, combing the same texts from Plato, Manetho, Berossus etc to create (more or less ex nihilo, as most of the myths, laws, and narratives are derived from Greek models, evidently) The Law of Moses. I'm not sure how the conflict/collaboration is really supposed to work. How does it explain (a) the creation in the three overlapping-and-related-but-different law codes and, if that can be answered (b) why didn't supervising editor make some effort to combine them?

Do we know what "the end in mind" was? There are some major questions left unresolved in the Pentateuch. So evidently the "end" was not to produce a definitive document that was a "complete" constitution for either group, Josephus's later claim notwithstanding.

(fwiw, I try to keep the Alexandrian provenance out of the questions of literary influence and chronology. I see that side of Gmirkin's argument as pointing to one explanation for his primary thesis but it's not the primary thesis itself.)

[neilgodfrey]

Actually, I will finish that mini-essay ASAP and upload it a bit later.

Sorry... this is very hurredly scrawled.

If you want me to respond to it you might like to let me know about it in some other venue. I am finding this forum a horrible, toxic, sickening place. I have more positive things to do and places to be.

[austendw]

Yes, but is not the Pentateuch a cooperative effort of "Judea/Jehud" and the Samarians? (That's not only Gmirkin's idea.) It was not produced by a single political or even religious state.

That's a good point. The involvement of the Samaritans is crucial, but a very thorny problem when it comes to understanding how it might have worked... especially given the implications of the Deuteronomic stipulations (increasingly believed to have Samaritan origins - see Stefan Schorch's work etc). Hard to see how both Jerusalem and Gerizim scholars would have dealt with that. Perhaps the collaboration broke down acrimoniously, at that very juncture... resulting in both sides producing two separate editions - the Judean & Samaritan (the former switching Mts Ebal & Gerizim in Deuteronomy 27 & the latter adding Gerizim to the end of the 10 Commandments). What's clear is that while some of the LXX readings favour non-contentious proto-Samaritan and proto-Masoretic readings fairly evenly I think, the LXX has none of the emphatically polemical Samaritan plusses. I need to look into that a bit more. In any case the Alexandrian narrative that Gmirkin proposed in the Manetho/Berossus book doesn't really address that.

And many such like. Maybe there were some changes over generations, or maybe the dialogic engagement was happening within a matter of weeks. But whether the Persian era is the starting point, my main difficulty there is not seeing the ideological conditions necessary for such literature as likely given the material evidence of the Persian era.

I'm afraid I don't buy this "matter of weeks" notion. There are cases where scribes (including the DSS scribes - it was an ongoing biblical and post-biblical process) found a festival law in one place, found a similar but different law in another place, and then tried to reduce the contradiction by adding a verse from one to the other. This implies that the initial texts - both of them - had enough weight, or "received value", that couldn't be resolved by using the Judean equivalent of a blue pencil. If the discrepancy was regarding something someone else wrote a couple of weeks ago, would there have been such literary conservatism? I doubt it. And the supplements are added to supplements are added to supplements. It was an ongoing processes.

But whether the Persian era is the starting point, my main difficulty there is not seeing the ideological conditions necessary for such literature as likely given the material evidence of the Persian era.

Can you expand on that? (and apologies if you've done that on this board a hundred times before). I'm not sure that scribal activity leaves much material evidence, but what do you meaning by "ideological conditions necessary for such literature"? What were the conditions and what do you think was absent?

Let me make it clear where I stand. I am not saying that the Pentateuch was completed and authoritative in the Persian period. Clearly it absolutely wasn't. This was the period of gradual literary development. My view is that during this time the process began: scribal activity in which mythology, stories, cultic rules, laws (some of them "minority views" "elite only ideas" "scribal juridical exercises" etc, "tips on a better diet" even) subsequently, were gradually collected and combined, to become a 5-book collection; which was translated into Greek in the 3rd Century (probably); and which was ultimately adopted as the authoritative "ethnos-defining" law at a later (Hasmonean) period. This sounds to me so much more likely than the Platonic "Cultural Revolution" model that Gmirkin proposes, and which I can't meaningfully situate in any political or sociological circumstance of the Hellenistic period. Actually I think that this "gradualist" model sits pretty well with the evidence of the badly misnamed "Passover" Letter of Elephantine, which I will have to think about in more detail. (I think I'll be describing myself as a "Gradualist" from now on, should anyone care to ask...)

Do we know what "the end in mind" was? There are some major questions left unresolved in the Pentateuch. So evidently the "end" was not to produce a definitive document that was a "complete" constitution for either group, Josephus's later claim notwithstanding.

I don't actually believe we do know what the end in mind was at all. But I think Gmirkin thinks he does.

(fwiw, I try to keep the Alexandrian provenance out of the questions of literary influence and chronology. I see that side of Gmirkin's argument as pointing to one explanation for his primary thesis but it's not the primary thesis itself.)

Well it's the primary thesis of the Manetho/Berossus book, surely. I am entirely resistant to Gmirkin's thesis (or Wajdenbaum's), which I think shoehorns lots of different complicated material into the single, simple "Directly-borrowed-from-Greece" model. And that's why so many of his "parallels with Greek literature" arguments remain, for me, just that - parallels - some closer, some farther, some not really parallels at all - but probably none of them counting as demonstrable cases of direct borrowing from Plato (or others), which is Gmirkin's scholarly USP (unique selling point, for the avoidance of doubt). More details will be forthcoming, when I can get my proverbial s--- together.

[austendw]

If you want me to respond to it you might like to let me know about it in some other venue. I am finding this forum a horrible, toxic, sickening place. I have more positive things to do and places to be.

Oh, I've just seen this after responding to your other post. Yes, I have found it pretty toxic and bad tempered here. But I don't know where else to go where one can discuss these issues civilly without a THEM vs US acromony.

[ABuddhist]

I am entirely resistant to Gmirkin's thesis (or Wajdenbaum's), which I think shoehorns lots of different complicated material into the single, simple "Directly-borrowed-from-Greece" model.

With all due respect, unless I misunderstand their arguments, you are oversimplifying their arguments; Gmirkin is certainly willing to admit that the Pentateuch contains Mesopotamian traditions and the Canaanite god YHWH.

[Russell Gmirkin]

Hi Austen.

It is always possible to read the same facts and draw different conclusions, but it’s good to see someone like yourself (both here and in comments on Vridar) who takes the time to read and consider others’ research before criticizing them—a bit of a rarity on this forum.

Sorry that I am unable to respond in any detail, since I have other pressing projects. Let me just refer you to:

Gmirkin, Russell, “Can the Documentary Hypothesis be Rehabilitated? A New Model of the Collaborative Composition of the Pentateuch”. Journal of Higher Criticism 15/3 (fall 2020): 4-48.

https://www.academia.edu/45052192/Can_t ... Pentateuch

In that article (which is available on Academia.org) I discuss the competing social and literary agendas of the various authorial groups who contributed to the Pentateuch. Of special interest, I view the Priestly source as likely of Samaritan origin, while the Holiness Code is arguably of Jerusalemite origin (based on comparisons with Ezekiel, where the ties to Jerusalem are explicit).

In that article I also discuss the arbitrary subjective assumptions and lack of evidence for the diachronic (what you call “gradualist”) approach of the Documentary Hypothesis (and its spin-offs), as well as indicators that these JEDP sources were actually approximately contemporary and interacting among themselves. One also sees this in the intertwining of Kings and Jeremiah, which both draw on each other as sources. These are documents produced in some of the same contemporary social circles rather than successive redactions stretching out over centuries of time, as some find subjectively plausible but which lacks any actual supporting evidence.

In my book on Plato’s Timaeus I also note the rejection of many aspects of the Platonic philosophical themes found in Genesis by the monolatrous authors of Exodus–Joshua. There was a common literary project but evidence for competing authorial interests and agendas.

I probably won’t return here to read your responses, due to other projects. Plus it seems whenever I post here the trolls swoop in, which discourages me from even checking in on this discussion group, despite there being a few good minds who occasionally post. Anyway, hope you find the above interesting and an adequate substitute for more detailed comments than I can provide at present.

Cheers.

[StephenGoranson]

I have read
Gmirkin, Russell, “Can the Documentary Hypothesis be Rehabilitated? A New Model of the Collaborative Composition of the Pentateuch”. Journal of Higher Criticism 15/3 (fall 2020): 4-48.
yet my comments were dismissed.

[Secret Alias]

What was it Jesus said. "If you believe you will see."

[ABuddhist]

What was it Jesus said. "If you believe you will see."

But if you refuse to consider evidence which the other side cites and condemn the other side's practise of citing evidence, you will never risk being persuaded either.