Plato and the Creation of a Classical Historian

[Leucius Charinus]

Two synagogues on the same street is unlikely.

A Christian "house church" is defined as a house containing a "religious room" which can be identified as Christian. It follows that a Jewish "house church" can be defined as a house containing a "religious room" which can be identified as Jewish. My claim is not that this structure was a Jewish synagogue but that it was a Jewish house church.

Again, Michael Avi-Yonah did not doubt that the DE graffiti scratched in plaster were Christian.

By reading the Preliminary Report, Michael Avi-Yonah catalogued the discovery by Clark Hopkins. Whether Avi-Yonah believed the graffiti were Christian or not is immaterial. His task was to add the discovery to his collection. He didn't need to comment that these two graffiti were "individual freaks" because they had no overbar. But he did.

That LC will here "allocate" a percentage of probability has, imo, no value.

IMO to assert that one is absolutely 100% certain that DP24 is a 3rd century artefact is entirely unrealistic. Salting is not the only possibility. The manuscript could have been introduced to the city in the 4th century when Julian's army passed by the city (twice). Or it could have been introduced in a subsequent century in antiquity. Archeological evidence indicates Dura was not deserted entirely. The 90% probability has value as a concessional statement of certainty. (IMO)

[StephenGoranson]

The Dura Europos Christian building had more than one room for religion--not only the room with a--non-Jewish--baptistery.
Perhaps you are confusing this with the third-century Legio Christian room.

Julian's army passing by could have stopped off to bury a Christian manuscript???

[austendw]

In any case, there seems no doubt that the Hebrew is a loan-word from the Greek, being the name of a particular, single edged sword. But before Gmirkinites (you should pardon the neologism) get too excited about this, a quick google shows that the makhaira was an extremely popular weapon used by the Etruscans in the West, the Greeks, and to the East, the Achaemenid Persians.[...] As examples are depicted on vases from as early as the 5th Century BCE and appear in Greek literature even earlier, there is no reason to insist that a Biblical writer could only have become aware of the machaira in the 3rd Century BCE via Hellenistic literature.

I have some more on this issue - and very interesting it is too. I decided to have a look at what the formidable old scholar S R Driver had to say about this verse in his 1904 commentary on the Book of Genesis and found, much to my surprise:

their daggers (?). The word occurs only here; and its real meaning (even if it be correctly read) is very uncertain. The rend. sword (Rashi, al.) rests ultimately upon the resemblance to μάχαιρα (according to an old, - and of course fanciful, - Jewish saying that Jacob 'cursed
his sons' sword in Greek'); but that a Greek word should have found its way into Heb. in the 11th cent. B.C. is in the last degree improbable, though, as this rend. suits the context, some moderns have sought to place it upon a defensible basis by deriving mᵊkhērah from kur, to
dig (as though properly a digging or piercing instrument).

John Gill (1624-1679) in his commentary said:

Some think the word here used is the Greek word for a sword; and the Jews say that Jacob cursed the swords of Simeon and Levi in the Greek tongue; and others say it is Persic, being used by Xenophon for Persian swords; but neither of them seems probable (my emphasis)

Daniel Whedon (1808-1885) also said:

But the rendering swords, (perhaps from כור , to pierce, or penetrate,) seems most in harmony with the context, and is adopted by many of the best interpreters . According to Rashi, the Greek word μάχαιρα, sword, was derived from this. According to Gesenius, Rabbi Eliezer says: “Jacob cursed their swords in the Greek tongue.”

What's extraordinary about this is that Rabbis already recognised that the word in the MT was derived from the Greek. Driver was a stalwart of the old Documentary Hypothesis and attributed this passage to "J" the Yahwist, dated to 11th cent, B.C. so he naturally thought the Rabbinical comment was "fanciful". But when one abandons that old chronology, the Greek origin of the word becomes the only really sensible option - though I repeat, it was in use and available to the biblical writers from the 5th century BCE.

So that's a high five to R. Eliezer (8th-9th Century CE) (Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 38.3)

[Secret Alias]

There seems to be a school of thought that thinks the knife is Persian.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Th ... frontcover

Also there seems to be some ambiguity about what the terminology actually meant. The LXX use the words μάχαιρα, ξίφος and ῥομφαία (LXX, Lev 26:7, 8, Josh 11:11, 12 and Ezek 6:11, 12) to translate the Hebrew word chereḇ, a straight short sword (De Vaux, 1965: 241). The meaning might have been generic (despite Xenophon's assumptions) = μάχαιρα, "large knife." The same word can have different shades of meaning in different dialects.

μάχεσθαι (mákhesthai) "to fight". It derives from the Proto-Indo-European *magh- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstr ... meg%CA%B0- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%98 As "power" it appears in Old Persian as magus or Mazdaean priest https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%90%8 ... ld_Persian

[Secret Alias]

And then there is the second question. If the Greek and Hebrew texts of the Pentateuch were really written by the same people why do differences emerge in Genesis 49:5-7 where, allegedly the library visitors wrote one thing in the MT but not the Samaritan and the LXX. Even if the terminology is "Greek" (not sure it is) the usage has to be consistently spread through out the "parallel exemplars (Greek and Hebrew)." If it is alleged to be present in the akeda why not 49:5-7? I think it is just a word for "sword" or "implement of war" in some related Indo-Iranian language (Anatolian?). Who knows. Words just get passed along into general usage in a common region. Like the Egyptian alphabet was distributed to Corinth by means of an intermediary Phoenicia. Doesn't mean the Corinthians learned the alphabet from hieroglyphs.

[austendw]

And then there is the second question. If the Greek and Hebrew texts of the Pentateuch were really written by the same people why do differences emerge in Genesis 49:5-7 where, allegedly the library visitors wrote one thing in the MT but not the Samaritan and the LXX. Even if the terminology is "Greek" (not sure it is) the usage has to be consistently spread through out the "parallel exemplars (Greek and Hebrew)." If it is alleged to be present in the akeda why not 49:5-7? I think it is just a word for "sword" or "implement of war" in some related Indo-Iranian language (Anatolian?). Who knows. Words just get passed along into general usage in a common region. Like the Egyptian alphabet was distributed to Corinth by means of an intermediary Phoenicia. Doesn't mean the Corinthians learned the alphabet from hieroglyphs.

in Genesis 22 (Akeda) the word for the knife in Hebrew is ma'ăkeleth - translated in LXX as mákhaira
In Genesis 49 the Hebrew for the weapon in both MT and Samaritan is mᵊḵērâ - clearly related somehow to the Greek word - but in this instance (for who knows what reason) the LXX is a compelete mess.

In the end, in matters of etymology and word usage, precision is not possible. Whatever its origins, I think we can say that the presence of Hebrew mᵊḵērâ in Genesis 49 certainly can't have a terminus post quem as late as the 3rd century but is unlikely to date from a period prior to the 6th century BCE.

[Leucius Charinus]

The Dura Europos Christian building had more than one room for religion--not only the room with a--non-Jewish--baptistery.

From the final report:

p.126

​
"The number of abecedaria found in the Christian building​
is larger than any other structure in the city." [3]​
​
[3] p.90. Welles counts 6 .... 1.3.4.5.8.11 14 should be added as a 7th.​

Was the building originally a school?

Alternatively sending a cataphractarius and/or a charging clibanarius (both depicted in the building) out of the secondary gate may have been a tactic of the Romans when the situation warranted it. Did the building (positioned adjacent to the secondary gate) station Roman/Jewish military personnel? The mural of David about to decapitate Goliath may be relevant.

Perhaps you are confusing this with the third-century Legio Christian room.

The century of the "Chapel of the Centurion" is debated.

Julian's army passing by could have stopped off to bury a Christian manuscript???

Ammianus says that they were hunting deer in the streets of Dura. The city was not deserted after the mid 3rd century. Maxwell Smart's "Cone of Silence" did not descend over the city after the 3rd century. There are many other possibilities listed by which a fundamentalist 100% certainty should be questioned.

[Leucius Charinus]

But before Gmirkinites (you should pardon the neologism) get too excited about this ...

If I were to identify as a Gmirkinite do you identify as a Wellhausenite ? (pardon the neologism) What other hypothetical solutionites occupy the theory space and how are they represented in it by volume (of scholars)?

[andrewcriddle]

Gmirkin (in typical fashion) found a word in the MT that he says was influenced by Greek. But the word appears in neither the Samaritan Pentateuch or the LXX. In short a fail.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the word does show up in the Samaritan version.

Here's the Masoretic: כְּלֵי חָמָס, מְכֵרֹתֵיהֶם
KJV translates this as: "weapons of violence their kinship" but "kinship" here is very off and the RSV, NIV render it, correctly as "weapons of violence are their swords"

Here's the Samaritan: כלו חמס מכרתיהם
Tsedaka translates this as "they finished the evil of their tools". (He emphasises "they finished" because that's the expression that differs from the Masoretic version)

So, the textual difference is that for the MT's כְּלֵי, meaning "instrument", the Samaritan gives כלו, meaning "they finished" - a confusion that is all too obvious (and common) as the Hebrew yod and waw are so similar in handwritten script.

However the word we are discussing is מְכֵרֹתֵיהֶם (mᵊḵêrōṯêhem) - from מְכֵרָה (mᵊḵērâ) - and it is exactly the same in both versions. Because it is a hapax legomenon, the translators clearly had problems with it - kinship, swords, tools.

However the LXX, renders this clause as: συνετέλεσαν ἀδικίαν ἐξ αἱρέσεως αὐτῶν.

The first word συνετέλεσαν agrees with the Samaritan כלו, and means "finished, completed" or some such. However, when we get to the disputed word, LXX gives "ἐξ αἱρέσεως". The NETS translation renders this as "they perpetrated injustice by their choice / course of action." The Latin Vulgate somewhat follows this reading with: Consummaverunt iniquitatem adinventionis suae/propositi sui" - which translates as "They completed the iniquity of their invention/purpose". Possibly, the LXX originally read "συνετέλεσαν ἀδικίαν ἐξαἱρέσεως αὐτῶν."

What is vexing about all this is that in Genesis 22:6,10 (the near-sacrifice of Isaac) Abraham's knife is, in Hebrew, מַאֲכֶלֶת (ma'ăkeleth) - which all English translations give as "knife", and LXX, just to be perverse, has no problem translating (along with two other instances) as μάχαιρα (mákhaira). Barring the different stress (on the first syllable rather than the second), the Greek word μάχαιρα (mákhaira) is all but identical to the Hebrew מְכֵרָה (mᵊḵērâ). So it's a bit of a mystery why in Genesis 49:5 the LXX didn't opt for the similar sounding word in a context where it would have been quite comprehensible. It's true that in some circumstances μάχαιρα meant some sort of knife, which is how it appears in Homer. Aristophanes uses it in exactly the same sacrificial context as Genesis 22, but the word was also frequently used to mean a type of sword, so it surely would have been plausible in Genesis 49. I guess the answer is that the LXX's Hebrew vorlage must've been corrupt and it's meaning had become garbled. Someone somewhere may have an idea what Hebrew similar to מְכֵרָה could have given rise to the Greek ἐξαἱρέσεως... but I don't.

In any case, there seems no doubt that the Hebrew is a loan-word from the Greek, being the name of a particular, single edged sword. But before Gmirkinites (you should pardon the neologism) get too excited about this, a quick google shows that the makhaira was an extremely popular weapon used by the Etruscans in the West, the Greeks, and to the East, the Achaemenid Persians. Here's an essay about A One-Edged Curved Sword from Seyitömer Höyük which discusses this weapon in detail. As examples are depicted on vases from as early as the 5th Century BCE and appear in Greek literature even earlier, there is no reason to insist that a Biblical writer could only have become aware of the machaira in the 3rd Century BCE via Hellenistic literature. It is entirely feasible that the word entered their vocabulary at any time from the 5th Century onwards (just as people might now talk of an Uzi without knowing anything at all about the origins of the weapon or the word).

Here's an essay that discusses the variants for Genesis 49:5-7.

Another possible understanding of this hapax legomenon is that it is a cognate of the Ethiopic mkr advise counsel see for example Barr and Semitic Philology
If this is correct there would be a parallelism of sorts with the next verse.

Let me not enter their council,
let me not join their assembly,
for they have killed men in their anger
and hamstrung oxen as they pleased.

The main argument against this is that it is a root otherwise found only in Southern Semitic (Ethiopian Arabic).

Our choice is probably between a passage in post-exilic Hebrew with a Greek loan-word or a passage in pre-exilic Hebrew using an archaic and otherwise unexampled root.

Andrew Criddle

[austendw]

But before Gmirkinites (you should pardon the neologism) get too excited about this ...

If I were to identify as a Gmirkinite do you identify as a Wellhausenite ? (pardon the neologism) What other hypothetical solutionites occupy the theory space and how are they represented in it by volume (of scholars)?

Certainly not a Wellhausenite or even a Wellhausenist, heav'n forfend. I don't subscribe absolutely (so not an Absolutist) to any chronological scheme (so not a Schemer either), or any particular scholarly denomination. I have however been flirting (so possibly a Flirt) with Redaction Criticism, without adhering absolutely (see above) to their tenets. In my bones, I suspect that I'm non-binary, theoretically speaking, but at a push would identify as a Diachronist.

Last month I have been mostly reading: Reinhard G Kratz, Jaeyoung Jeon, Guy Darshan, David Frankel, David M Carr, Shimon Gesundheit, Simeon Chavel, Thomas Ryan, Stefan Schorch, Jonathan Ben-Dov & (yesterday) John S Bergsma.