The Old Testament - A Hellenistic Book?

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
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neilgodfrey
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The Old Testament - A Hellenistic Book?

Post by neilgodfrey »

Because I have the deepest respect for ABuddhist's curiosity, questioning, patience and equanimity in the face of arm-chair critics, anti-intellectuals and insulters, and believing his appearance here is an indication that there are probably other readers with the same genuine interest but who choose not to comment, I thought it would be of interest to those readers to quote some of the background to what has led to the "revisionist" school that the Hebrew Bible had its origins in the Hellenistic era.

Before Russell Gmirkin there was Niels Peter Lemche. RG wrote of NPL's contribution:

Niels Peter Lemche inaugurated the modern study of the Pentateuch as a Hellenistic Era composition in his influential 1993 article, noting that external evidence for the biblical text in the form of preserved manuscript fragments or references in extra-biblical texts of known date appear only in the third century bce and later.In light of this, Lemche questioned whether common assumptions regarding the antiquity of the biblical text were correct and proposed that the Hebrew Bible might conceivably have been composed as late as the Hellenistic Era, after the conquests of Alexander the Great and the penetration of Greek culture into the east, when empirical evidence for biblical writings first appears.

A key contribution of Lemche 1993 was the deconstruction of historical criticism, by which biblical critics sought to date the Pentateuch and other texts by means of inner-biblical literary criticism. Lemche pointed out that this process was dependent on a credulous reading of biblical historiographical texts of unknown date or historical value, including the stories of the introduction or discovery of new Pentateuchal legal content under Josiah (1 Kings 22-23) and Ezra (Nehemiah 8-10). While earlier biblical critics had accepted these stories as written close in time to the purported events they recounted and substantially conveying historical fact, Lemche pointed out that biblical historiographies were of highly uncertain date and contained prominent theological content that undermined their value as historical sources. Consequently they were of no direct bearing to the dating of Pentateuchal writings to which they alluded. The major substantial contribution of the Copenhagen school of biblical criticism has been the deconstruction of historical criticism’s methodologically unsound approach to dating biblical texts, with its overreliance on an uncritical reading of the biblical historiographical narratives (Davies 1992; Thompson 1994, 1999; Lemche 1998, 2008). A major theme of the Copenhagen school is that historical facts regarding ancient Israel should be secured by demonstrably contemporary archaeological, inscriptional and epigraphical evidence rather than externally uncorroborated biblical accounts.

The second major contribution of Lemche 1993 was laying the groundwork for a new theoretical framework for biblical criticism.[ Lemche observed that biblical criticism had a historical tendency to date texts as early as possible, taking into account anachronisms, dating all but a few biblical texts to Iron II, Babylonian and Persian Era dates. But Lemche pointed out that the first extra-biblical evidence for biblical writings of any sort were the fragments of biblical texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, for the most part dating to the second century bce or later. Nor did the LXX translation of the early Hellenistic Era significantly impact that observation, since “there is really no reason to believe that the Hebrew versions must perforce have been much older than their translations into Greek” (Lemche 1993: 189). There was thus no real evidentiary basis for assuming that the biblical writings predated the Hellenistic Era as commonly assumed by Lemche’s contemporaries. A reappraisal of the cumulative extra-biblical evidence thus led to the conclusion that a Hellenistic Era date for biblical writings could not be excluded on objective grounds. The removal of the assumed pre-Hellenistic context for the production of biblical literature changed the basic paradigm of biblical criticism. For comparative studies, this meant broadening the chronological horizons to include both Ancient Near Eastern and Hellenistic literature for potentially relevant comparanda. For source criticism, this meant including not only Ancient Near Eastern literature but other literature known in the east during the Hellenistic Era, including Greek literature known to the Jews and later Hellenistic texts. This broader approach to comparative and source critical studies is what is here termed the Hellenistic research paradigm, in contrast to the pre-Hellenistic research paradigm that excluded Hellenistic Era materials from consideration.

A side issue raised by the emergence of the Hellenistic research paradigm that caused controversy at the time was the relative weight to be assigned to the terminus a quo and terminus ad quern, the earliest and latest possible dates, in seeking out the likeliest date of composition for a biblical text. According to Lemche (1993), although a biblical text might draw on earlier sources (cf. Lemche 2011), the proper starting point for assigning a date to a biblical text was its latest possible date, when there was definite knowledge that the text in question existed, rather than seeking hypothetical contexts in biblical times, under a Solomon, a Josiah, or an Ezra, when our only source of information is that of biblical historiography. This approach led to the labeling of the Copenhagen school of biblical criticism as “Minimalist,” in contrast to the “Maximalist” approach that routinely assigned biblical texts significantly earlier dates. The relative merits of the arguments of the Minimalist versus Maximalist debate need not concern us here, since the methodology adopted in the present study gives preferential weight to neither the earliest nor latest possible date, collecting comparative and source critical evidence across the whole allowable date range before drawing inferences.

Gmirkin, Russell E. Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts: Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in the Primordial History. Abingdon, Oxon New York, NY: Routledge, 2022. p. 14ff

Here is an excerpt from that 1993 article by Lemche that Gmirkin is discussing above:

The following points may speak in favour of a Hellenistic date of the Old Testament:

1. It is a fact that the history of Israel as told by the Old Testament has little if anything to do with the real historical developments in Palestine until at least the later part of the Hebrew monarchy. It cannot be excluded (and there is, as a matter of fact, no reason to exclude) that we here and there may possess genuine historical recollections, but it should at the same time be argued that from a historian’s point of view we have to consider the historical literature in the Old Testament a poor source of historical information.

2. An extensive part of this literature should be considered the creation of the Jewish Diaspora, first and foremost the patriarchal narratives, the story in Exodus about the Israelites in Egypt and their escape from Egypt, but also the conquest narratives in Joshua. All of these aim at one and the same issue, at the more or less utopian idea that a major Jewish kingdom—even empire—should be (re-)established in Palestine, an idea that emerged in spite of the fact that it had no background in an ancient Israelite empire.

3. The writers who invented the ‘history of Israel’ seem to have modeled their history on a Greek pattern. The first in modern times to stress this point is presumably John Van Seters, although his reference to Hecataeus of Miletus may seem gratuitous, as we no longer possess Hecataeus’s history, except in the form of rather diminutive fragments. It would be preferable to propose the history of Herodotus as the earliest point of comparison and to indicate that there are a number of similarities between the histories of Herodotus and the Old Testament. Both histories have as their beginning a perspective that encompasses the world as such, and this perspective narrows down to single nations only at a later point, respectively the Greek and the Hebrew. I should like to stress this point without ignoring the many significant differences between Herodotus’ history and the Old Testament historical literature. It is only my intention to indicate that the biblical historians display a knowledge of the Greek tradition, and that this could hardly have been the case before Greek historians were to become known and read in the Near East.

4. The Persian period does not seem to meet the requirements of being the time when the historical books of the Old Testament were written down. First of all it would have to be proved that Greek authors were known and extensively read in the Persian empire, and I very much doubt that this was the case. Furthermore, we have to look for a suitable place where the biblical historical narratives may have been written down.

From Niels Peter Lemche's thirty year old article, Lemche, Niels. “The Old Testament ‐a Hellenistic Book?∗.” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 7 (January 1, 1993): 163–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/09018329308585016. pp 188f

And, of course, we have other studies, most recently that of Adler, demonstrating the archaeological evidence that underscores the view that our earliest evidence for anything like a religion of the Bible is no earlier than the Hellenistic period.
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Irish1975
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Re: The Old Testament - A Hellenistic Book?

Post by Irish1975 »

Two thumbs up for Russell and Neil. Please keep it coming.

This material is new to me. I just received Gmirkin’s Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible (2017). (The recent book on Timaeus and the creation was too pricey.) But I have been rereading the Timaeus recently in my Loeb edition.
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Re: The Old Testament - A Hellenistic Book?

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If only the most interesting claimant for truth won out. Like it was a talent pageant.
austendw
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Re: The Old Testament - A Hellenistic Book?

Post by austendw »

neilgodfrey wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 3:10 pm 4. The Persian period does not seem to meet the requirements of being the time when the historical books of the Old Testament were written down. First of all it would have to be proved that Greek authors were known and extensively read in the Persian empire, and I very much doubt that this was the case.
But the point about having to prove that "Greek authors were known and extensively read in the Persian empire" is entirely dependent on the plausibility of Gmirkin's argument that the Biblical texts really did come directly from Greek texts (Plato's Laws, Timaeus, Manetho, Berossus etc), as discovered by Judean scholars in the Alexandria Library. But I don't think Gmirkin's argument has been successful - either the narrative of the text's creation or the more detailed (but rarely detailed enough) arguments on specific parallels between Greek and Biblical texts. And for this reason, I prefer the notion that the similarities and parallels with Greek literature which Gmirkin and many others before him have studied - along with differences from Greek thought - can and should be explained by a more diffuse, complex, relationship with Greek culture (developing over time) as part of an Eastern Mediterranean / Levantine commonwealth. That for me, explains the Pentateuch as we have it - in its fractured, stratified, structurally complicated state - far more plausibly than the simple, linear, binary narrative of Judean writers borrowing directly from Greek writers within a very narrow time frame.
neilgodfrey wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 3:10 pmFurthermore, we have to look for a suitable place where the biblical historical narratives may have been written down.
I'm not sure what this means. What are the criteria for "a suitable place"?
neilgodfrey wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 3:10 pmAnd, of course, we have other studies, most recently that of Adler, demonstrating the archaeological evidence that underscores the view that our earliest evidence for anything like a religion of the Bible is no earlier than the Hellenistic period.
Which, just for the avoidance of doubt, does not lead Yonatan Adler himself to propose a Hellenistic composition date for biblical law corpora. I understand from a review article that Adler’s own view is that “before the Hellenistic period biblical law was perceived as descriptive and iconic, rather than prescriptive and to be obeyed by individuals” though, not having read his book, I don't know how much more detail he gives to that. Anyhow, I think that this scenario gives a plausible time-frame for the Pentateuch to become authoritative in Judea as an established text with some sort of a pedigree, rather than a brand new one, hot off the scribal desk, during the 3rd-2nd centuries BCE.
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Re: The Old Testament - A Hellenistic Book?

Post by austendw »

neilgodfrey wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 3:10 pm 2. An extensive part of this literature should be considered the creation of the Jewish Diaspora, first and foremost the patriarchal narratives, the story in Exodus about the Israelites in Egypt and their escape from Egypt, but also the conquest narratives in Joshua. All of these aim at one and the same issue, at the more or less utopian idea that a major Jewish kingdom—even empire—should be (re-)established in Palestine, an idea that emerged in spite of the fact that it had no background in an ancient Israelite empire.
This is only a subjective speculation on the motives of the writers, and a debatable one. It is certainly not an archaeological, or literary-critical, or evidence-based, or scientific argument - and I'm not sure it can ever be anything other than a subjective speculation - despite being, and perhaps especially when, formulated as an apodeictic pronouncement.

It is arguable that it is no more apt to speculate on the motive of the biblical writers as it would be for me to speculate on your motive for speculating on the motives of the biblical writers, which I don't think would be apt at all. Of course, scholars do it all the time. However.... (Da capo)
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Re: The Old Testament - A Hellenistic Book?

Post by mlinssen »

Irish1975 wrote: Thu Apr 06, 2023 2:09 pm Two thumbs up for Russell and Neil. Please keep it coming.

This material is new to me. I just received Gmirkin’s Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible (2017). (The recent book on Timaeus and the creation was too pricey.) But I have been rereading the Timaeus recently in my Loeb edition.
It is a very compelling read, you'll like it
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Re: The Old Testament - A Hellenistic Book?

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austendw wrote: Sat Apr 08, 2023 7:15 am Which, just for the avoidance of doubt, does not lead Yonatan Adler himself to propose a Hellenistic composition date for biblical law corpora. I understand from a review article that Adler’s own view is that “before the Hellenistic period biblical law was perceived as descriptive and iconic, rather than prescriptive and to be obeyed by individuals” though, not having read his book, I don't know how much more detail he gives to that. Anyhow, I think that this scenario gives a plausible time-frame for the Pentateuch to become authoritative in Judea as an established text with some sort of a pedigree, rather than a brand new one, hot off the scribal desk, during the 3rd-2nd centuries BCE.
Hilarious how you lend support to your own arguments

I've read Adler, it is a pretty solid read and can be compared to Gmirkin's Plato/Hebrew bible

1st BCE is where the evidence is at, 3rd-2nd BCE is basically uncovered territory in that regard.
Your scenario here, that doesn't get any detail in the book (for obvious reasons), is non existent
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Re: The Old Testament - A Hellenistic Book?

Post by austendw »

mlinssen wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 9:42 pm
austendw wrote: Sat Apr 08, 2023 7:15 am Which, just for the avoidance of doubt, does not lead Yonatan Adler himself to propose a Hellenistic composition date for biblical law corpora. I understand from a review article that Adler’s own view is that “before the Hellenistic period biblical law was perceived as descriptive and iconic, rather than prescriptive and to be obeyed by individuals” though, not having read his book, I don't know how much more detail he gives to that. Anyhow, I think that this scenario gives a plausible time-frame for the Pentateuch to become authoritative in Judea as an established text with some sort of a pedigree, rather than a brand new one, hot off the scribal desk, during the 3rd-2nd centuries BCE.
Hilarious how you lend support to your own arguments

I've read Adler, it is a pretty solid read and can be compared to Gmirkin's Plato/Hebrew bible

1st BCE is where the evidence is at, 3rd-2nd BCE is basically uncovered territory in that regard.
Your scenario here, that doesn't get any detail in the book (for obvious reasons), is non existent
I'm not really sure I should be replying to you at all, because I think your last post was unnecessarily snarky and supercilious (though of course I know that this what internet discussion boards are for, primarily.) However, it's worth giving civil discussion a shot so I'll reply anyway.

In the passage which you commented on, I didn't make any arguments at all. I simply made comments, aiming to clarify what I'm pretty sure is Adler's position, which I've gathered from a couple of his other essays which, I'm guessing, you may not have read. (Some of them can be found here.) I reiterate that I haven't yet bought Adler's book, so haven't scrutinised it in detail, but from what I've read of it on Neil Godfrey's website, and from reviews etc, as well as what he has written in those other essays, his discussions of the archaeological evidence and its bearing upon the practice of Pentateuchal (and other [1]) laws appear to be very sound indeed.

But there are indications that he doesn't conclude that the laws of the pentateuch were written when Gmirkin does - though if he has said anything more specifically, I'd be glad to hear it (and when I get to buy his book I'll find out for myself). In his essay When Did Jews Start Observing Torah? Adler proposes as one option that:
[...] Ptolemy II Philadelphus (r. 284–246 B.C.E.), is known to have instituted significant legal reforms around the year 275 B.C.E. Separate courts were established for different ethnic groups, with certain courts set up to hear cases of Greek-speaking parties and others for native Egyptians—each according to their own laws.23

The Judeans living under Ptolemaic rule would also have required a set of laws under which they were to be governed. It may have been precisely these reforms that played a significant role in re-characterizing the Pentateuch as the normatively binding, prescriptive law of the Judeans.24 If this is correct, we may speculate that widespread Torah observance might have been born out of the Ptolemaic court reforms of the early third century.

23 Hans Julius Wolff, “Law in Ptolemaic Egypt,” in Essays in Honor of C. Bradford Welles (New Haven: American Society of Papyrologists, 1966), 67–77.
24 The idea was first suggested by Michael LeFebvre in: Collections, Codes, and Torah: The Re-characterization of Israel’s Written Law (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 146–182.
I have highlighted above that Adler talks of "re-characterizing the Pentateuch," which carries the assumption that the Pentateuch previously had a different character, changing from "iconic" to "authoritative", which I believe is a comment that Adler repeats almost verbatim in the book itself. As far as I can tell Adler nowhere discusses precisely when he believes it was written, as being outside his archaeological purview, so I have no idea whether he thinks it was in the Hellenistic period (c330-170 BCE), the Persian period (c 540-c330 BCE), or even much earlier, but he seems to indicate pretty clearly that the Pentateuch, as originally written, was not authoritative, and only became authoritative law at a later date. So while his archaeological conclusions are certainly compatible with Gmirkin's views, they are also compatible with other views, one or other of which may actually be closer to his own view.

As to Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible, which I have read, I agree that it makes a "pretty solid read" as well. However, I also think that close scrutiny of the fine detail of Gmirkin's book reveals and has convinced me that:

(1) His arguments are peppered with numerous misinterpretations and overinterpretations and that his main thesis - that the Pentateuchal laws are directly derived from Plato's Laws - is therefore mistaken.[2]

(2) There are a number of general methodological problems that I think contribute to this:
  • not addressing the issue of how to distinguish a direct literary borrowing from more general parallels that could be explained in a different way;
  • discussing laws (which he summarised from Greek & Biblical sources) under subject headings of his own choosing, and thereby ignoring the original literary context of those laws;
  • not materially distinguishing between law codes and narrative passages -two different genres that may have different legal value;
  • often shifting imperceptibly from a discussion of Plato's laws to a discussion of Greek laws in general, which confuses the specific argument;
  • not paying much/any attention to the differences between Plato and the Pentateuch, or diminishing the significance of those differences; [3]
  • ignoring scholarly discussions that might compromise his idiosyncratic interpretation of specific biblical laws or concepts
(3) I don't think his highly speculative but very specific narrative of the composition of the Pentateuch (dated precisely to 273/272 BCE in his first book), or his reconstruction of its writers' motivations, provide plausible explanations of the Pentateuchal laws as they appear in the Pentateuch, or their place within the narrative context - though they may seem to do so when they are decontextualised.


Notes:
1. The mivka (ritual purification pool) and the notion that stone vessels were impervious to ritual impurity don't appear in the Pentateuch at all, which raises the interesting question of how the written law was developed to involve these practices. Also of interest to me is how the apparently metaphorical(?) exhortations of Deuteronomy 6:7-9, 11:18-20 came to be taken literally, giving rise to mezuza and tefillin (phylacteries).

2. I often wonder how often people who read Gmirkin's books actually do check all his references, read them in their context, and "test" his results to see if they can "duplicate" them (to use a scientific metaphor). On his Vridar website, Neil Godfrey has dedicated numerous posts to Gmirkin's three books on Menetho & Berossus, Plato's Laws & Plato's Timaeus, but has largely paraphrased, tabulated and/or epitomised Gmirkin's work without showing apparently subjecting any of Gmirkin's arguments to scrutiny at a level that I think these days would be described as "granular".

3. Again, I confess that haven't read Gmirkin's most recent book Plato's Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts and can only rely on what one may call the Vridar Epitome, but I'm not sure that Gmirkin addresses an important absence in Genesis. One of the most influential concepts, discussed in one form or other by earlier Greek philosophers from the mid 5th century BCE, and expressed very clearly by Plato in Timaeus (in c 350 BCE), was the notion of the four elements that we are all familiar with. Yet the concept is not only absent from Genesis 1 (a supposedly "scientific" narrative borrowed directly from Timaeus), but doesn't appear in the whole Hebrew Bible. That absence is not a minor issue for a theory which argues that the Pentateuch was written some 80+ years after Timaeus.


(Edited ever so slightly)
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Re: The Old Testament - A Hellenistic Book?

Post by mlinssen »

That's a lot of homework! Thanks

Since the late nineteenth century, we have experienced an explosion of archaeological and epigraphic discoveries that have consequentially led to the exponential expansion of our knowledge about the practical observance of Torah among ordinary Judeans in antiquity. This new body of material evidence allows us today to turn our attention to social history, and specifically to the question of when rank-and-file Judeans first began to observe the rules and regulations of the Torah on a wide-scale basis. The present study seeks to do just that; it aims to mine this treasure trove of new data, and concurrently to reexamine the long-available historical resources in order to assess the origins of what we might call “Judaism.”

That's the tenet and intro of Adler, the word Pentateuch occurs 445 times in his book. I've just clicked around a bit, but I think that it doesn't matter to Adler as he primarily moves around 1st BCE / CE, and even if Gmirkin would be spot on such wouldn't make a difference for his outcome

On the subject of verification, Gmirkin doesn't get treated any differently than any other author, I think. My experience tells me that footnote surfing can be fun and usually leads to partially disappointing outcomes

In related news: I assert that the LXX didn't get created until 3rd CE, which also doesn't suffer from any finding by Gmirkin - although the adage of "the later the better" for the first Hebrew text certainly is valid
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Re: The Old Testament - A Hellenistic Book?

Post by neilgodfrey »

austendw wrote: Sat Apr 08, 2023 7:15 amAnd for this reason, I prefer the notion that the similarities and parallels with Greek literature which Gmirkin and many others before him have studied - along with differences from Greek thought - can and should be explained by a more diffuse, complex, relationship with Greek culture (developing over time) as part of an Eastern Mediterranean / Levantine commonwealth. That for me, explains the Pentateuch as we have it - in its fractured, stratified, structurally complicated state - far more plausibly than the simple, linear, binary narrative of Judean writers borrowing directly from Greek writers within a very narrow time frame.
Is not this the nub of the question? -- what is the basis for our description of the Pentateuch "fractured, stratified, structurally complicated" and what are the range of explanations for the evidence underlying that description? This, of course, means a second look at the "recent" (last 10-20 years!) criticisms of the Documentary Hypothesis.

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.
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