Plato and the Creation of a Classical Historian

[Secret Alias]

The evidence Gmirkin appealed to and my rejection of that argument.

SP: "Shehmoon and Libee are brothers, they finished the evil of their tools."

https://books.google.com/books?id=-wn8A ... on&f=false

LXX "Symeon and Levi, brethren, accomplished the injustice of their cutting off."

Συμεων καὶ Λευι ἀδελφοί συνετέλεσαν ἀδικίαν ἐξ αἱρέσεως αὐτῶν

Since neither the SP nor the LXX have "sword" = no evidence for the borrowing of a Greek word in your ur-Torah

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In this discussion

posting.php?mode=quote&f=6&p=146518

[Secret Alias]

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.

[Secret Alias]

I welcome any evidence of Greek influence on the surviving Hebrew text which has parallels in the LXX. Up until now no evidence for such an influence has been demonstrated and the lack of evidence comes up in criticism of Gmirkin's theory.

[ABuddhist]

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.

Why does that prove that Gmirkin was wrong? Evidence, which you have been unwilling to read or consider, is that the relationship between the various version of the Pentateuch is incredibly complicated, with the LXX being a translation not of the MT but of a different Hebrew text which no longer survives in fullness.

Accordingly, if I understand the matter correctly, the MT, the LXX, and the Samaritan Pentateuch are all evidence from which we can reconstruct what the Pentateuch's original Hebrew text was. The fact that the MT had a word influenced by Greek within it, in this situation, is evidence that the Hebrew of the original Pentateuch was influenced in its language by Greek. The fact that the other 2 lineages derived from the orginal Hebrew text avoided this word may mean that the original Hebrew text lacked the Greek word, or it may mean that the other 2 lineages merely changed their text about this word for various reasons.

[ABuddhist]

I welcome any evidence of Greek influence on the surviving Hebrew text which has parallels in the LXX.

Many thanks for clarifying what you mean.

[Leucius Charinus]

It's mountainman without the smoking gun of Dura Europa.

It's Yale and the smoking Christian (Trade Mark) runes without overbars. For 35 years until the final report, they were "individual freaks". The chronology of DP24 is a poker game.

The Runes of Christ at Dura Europos
https://www.academia.edu/38115589/The_R ... ra_Europos

[austendw]

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.

[StephenGoranson]

LC/mt./Pete B/Pete T/ again mentioned, in this thread and elsewhere, "individual freaks" in Avi-Yonah's text on two Christian inscriptions at Dura Europos, without mentioning that Avi-Yonah accepted that they were indeed Christian inscriptions that dated before 256. Avi-Yonah also wrote extensively about the DE synagogue, which he also accepted as pre-256. And the DE Christian manuscript is one of many DE mss, known from before 256.

Here's another usage by Avi-Yonah of the word "freaks":
"...sometimes the artist allows his fancy to run free, producing freaks like the blue and orange tiger."
This, in a description of a mosaic, page 18, QDAP, vol. 5, 1936.
Avi-Yonah, then, remarked that this mosaic portion looked unusual, but indeed, as such, did exist.

I note this, not because it will stop LC from writing "individual freaks" piecemeal as if that helps his Constantine fixation, but so others may recognize the feint.

[Leucius Charinus]

LC/mt./Pete B/Pete T/ again mentioned, in this thread and elsewhere, "individual freaks" in Avi-Yonah's text on two Christian inscriptions at Dura Europos, without mentioning that Avi-Yonah accepted that they were indeed Christian inscriptions that dated before 256.

Avi-Yonah listed the inscriptions in his collection and pointed to Clark Hopkins preliminary report all about the Christian chapel and the Christian inscriptions. He referred to them as "individual freaks" because the inscriptions contained no supra-linear line and as such were not your usual trade mark "Christian" abbreviation / rune / "nomina sacra". Without the overbar these inscriptions can be interpreted as profane abbreviations.

Avi-Yonah also wrote extensively about the DE synagogue, which he also accepted as pre-256.

Yes it was discovered in November of the same year as the "chapel" and it completely reversed the paradigm of scholarship that the Jewish people did not make artistic representations of their religion. When Clark Hopkins saw the mural of David and Goliath he was operating under that wrong assumption that it just could not have been Jewish. Therefore Hopkins reasoned it must have been Christian. He saw the abbreviation inscribed about the mural of David and Goliath and although it had no overbars interpreted it as being a Trade Mark Christian rune (nomina sacra).

My point is that the abbreviations have a profane explanation and that the "chapel" is in likelihood a Jewish chapel or "house church". And not a Christian one.

And the DE Christian manuscript is one of many DE mss, known from before 256.

Assuming it was not introduced to the site at Dura any time between the mid 3rd century and the date DP24 was "discovered" in a workman's basket by Hopkin's wife in 1931. In case you missed it Stephen I am happy to allocate 90% probability to being 3rd century and a 10% probability that it is 4th century or later.

[StephenGoranson]

As far as I know there is no reason to suspect that the Dura Europos Christian manuscript was salted. And I am personally aware from dirt archaeology experience of a case when a local volunteer digger probably salted a (polished) coin, which he then "found."
Again, Michael Avi-Yonah did not doubt that the DE graffiti scratched in plaster were Christian.
Two synagogues on the same street is unlikely.
That LC will here "allocate" a percentage of probability has, imo, no value.