Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts [Gmirkin]

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
StephenGoranson
Posts: 2308
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 2:10 am

Re: Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts [Gmirkin]

Post by StephenGoranson »

I was asked for an example. I gave an example.
(but REG, who asked for it, left, unacknowledged?)
Last edited by StephenGoranson on Thu Aug 18, 2022 2:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
ABuddhist
Posts: 1016
Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:36 am

Re: Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts [Gmirkin]

Post by ABuddhist »

StephenGoranson wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 10:33 am I was asked for an example. I gave an example.
A single example of a translation's error, however, can reveal much more systemic problems in terms of the translator or scribe's understanding of the original language than what you or Gmirkin have given. For example, the scribe into Chinese from Sanskrit of the Vairocanābhisaṃbodhi Sūtra [Taishō Tripiṭaka 18:848], as noted by the translator of the Vairocanābhisaṃbodhi Sūtra into English from Chinese Rolf W. Giebel (in "The Vairocanābhisaṃbodhi Sūtra", Numata Center for Buddhist Research and Translation, 2005 on page 279), apparently confused the Sanskrit word bala ("strength") with the Sanskrit word bāla ("male child") in a passage which is an extended analogy about a seed in which the Sanskrit word bala ("strength") makes more sense.
ABuddhist
Posts: 1016
Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:36 am

Re: Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts [Gmirkin]

Post by ABuddhist »

StephenGoranson wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 10:33 am (but REG, who asked for it, left, unacknowledged?)
He is no more obliged to acknowledge that you provided an example than you are obliged to acknowledge where, within this thread, you have been shown to misrepresent his views, ask leading questions and make assumptions about his lack of competence (which I have addressed and you have not acknowledged), or respond to people who complain when you accuse them of being rude.

I am polite enough to thank people for responding to my requests, assume good faith from all posters not karavan here, and sometimes defend posters from the accusations which other posters give against them, but then as a Buddhist I am not typical of the posters here.
Russell Gmirkin
Posts: 212
Joined: Sat Sep 17, 2016 11:53 am

Re: Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts [Gmirkin]

Post by Russell Gmirkin »

StephenGoranson wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 10:33 am I was asked for an example. I gave an example.
(but REG, who asked for it, left, unacknowledged?)
"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

Let’s just start with the obvious point that in Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research, Tov never claimed that the LXX translators of the Pentateuch in general had difficulty understanding the Hebrew. That’s not even an issue he addressed in this book, whose focus is the retroversion of the LXX, that is, how to reconstruct the original underlying Hebrew Vorlage or LXX source text. I thus find it hard to believe you had this book in mind when you made your original claims.

But let’s look at your example on page 85, where "in the third year, the year of the tithe" is rendered "...the second tithe". After quoting the Hebrew MT (with vowel points), the LXX translation, and the retroverted proto-LXX Hebrew Vorlage (with vowel points), Tov says:

"The rendering of the LXX is based on a wrong grammatical combination of two words. The retroversion itself is well-founded. The translator must have known the concept of a 'second tithe', known from rabbinic literature to the tithe of Deuteronomy, while this term is not used in scripture. However, the ungrammatical retroversion is probably based on the combination of two words that were understood wrongly."

So, basically, the LXX drew on the EXACT same Hebrew as we possess in MT, and is a well-founded translation in terms of contemporary Jewish practices [Jews gave an 10% to the Levites in the 3rd and 6th years], though Tov says the translators did not correctly understand the underlying Hebrew.

So if this was a reasonable, valid translation of the familiar MT Hebrew, what is Tov's beef here? Tov explains that the translation of "second tithe" was based on a different reading of the VOWEL POINTS of the first word in the phrase. VOWEL POINTS that were not present in the Hebrew text of the Second Temple period, VOWEL POINTS only introduced into the MT sometime between 600 and 1000 CE. So the LXX translators got the VOWEL POINTS wrong in one isolated instance--in Tov's opinion, which might not even be correct here--and suddenly the translators had difficulty understanding Hebrew?! (And for all we know, the LXX translators got the vowel points right. Or are the rabbis of ca. 600-1000 CE an unassailable authority for what was the correct vowel points in the minds of the authors of a millennium before?)

So given a Hebrew text without vowel points (a challenge every reader of an Israeli newspaper faces every day), the LXX translators in one instance chose vowel points Tov disagreed with. That's your argument?

Please don't bother providing another example for me to dissect, because this sort of thing is not the best use of my time. Thanks.
Last edited by Russell Gmirkin on Thu Aug 18, 2022 9:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
ABuddhist
Posts: 1016
Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:36 am

Re: Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts [Gmirkin]

Post by ABuddhist »

Russell Gmirkin wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 4:50 pm Or are the rabbis of ca. 600-1000 BCE an unassailable authority for what was the correct vowel points in the minds of the authors of a millennium before?)
Surely you mean CE, right? I would hate for your opponents to interpret this scribal error as evidence that you do not understand Hebrew History.
Russell Gmirkin
Posts: 212
Joined: Sat Sep 17, 2016 11:53 am

Re: Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts [Gmirkin]

Post by Russell Gmirkin »

ABuddhist wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 6:19 pm
Russell Gmirkin wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 4:50 pm Or are the rabbis of ca. 600-1000 BCE an unassailable authority for what was the correct vowel points in the minds of the authors of a millennium before?)
Surely you mean CE, right? I would hate for your opponents to interpret this scribal error as evidence that you do not understand Hebrew History.
Thanks, corrected.
StephenGoranson
Posts: 2308
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 2:10 am

Re: Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts [Gmirkin]

Post by StephenGoranson »

"There Was Never One Version of the Bible"
by Prof. Carol A. Newsom
recently posted at:
https://www.thetorah.com/article/there- ... -the-bible

If Prof. Newsom is correct, then that is yet another reason that Mr. Gmirkin's proposal that one original version (of the Torah portion) was written at one time c. 273-272 is mistaken.

PS
On Wed Aug 17, 2022 9:35 pm Mr. Gmirkin implied that I was "outside academia."
But I do have another academic article forthcoming in the (academic) press.
It is not on the subject of this thread--thankfully.
ABuddhist
Posts: 1016
Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:36 am

Re: Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts [Gmirkin]

Post by ABuddhist »

StephenGoranson wrote: Fri Aug 19, 2022 4:03 am "There Was Never One Version of the Bible"
by Prof. Carol A. Newsom
recently posted at:
https://www.thetorah.com/article/there- ... -the-bible

If Prof. Newsom is correct, then that is yet another reason that Mr. Gmirkin's proposal that one original version (of the Torah portion) was written at one time c. 273-272 is mistaken.

PS
On Wed Aug 17, 2022 9:35 pm Mr. Gmirkin implied that I was "outside academia."
But I do have another academic article forthcoming in the (academic) press.
It is not on the subject of this thread--thankfully.
1. Your citation of Professor Newsom's thesis, with all due respect, is not a good argument, because it invites the simple response "If." Furthermore, one could reply to Professor Newsom's argument by simply listing Gmirkin's books (perhaps with links to where to dowwnload them) and say "If Gmirkin is correct, then this is yet another reason why Professor Newsom's proposal that there was no one original version of the Torah portion is mistaken." But that would not be a good argument, I would think.

2. Gmirkin only made one post here on 17 August as far as I can tell (although maybe timezone issues distort my findings), which I present here.
Russell Gmirkin wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 1:01 pm
StephenGoranson wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 6:47 am Please notice that my sentence quoted above--
"If translators of the Hebrew Bible first five books into Greek had difficulty understanding the Hebrew, then it is unlikely that they were the same Gmirkin-hypothetically-bilingual people who wrote the Hebrew."
--does not include the word "Septuagint."

Yet Russell E. Gmirkin posted (above) in reply to that:
"....So "Septuagint Translator" in this context refers to the whole Greek Bible, not the Pentateuch, as Stephen carelessly assumes....."

Wow.
Stephen,
You have been asked more than once to provide a source for your claim that the Pentateuch translators had difficulty understanding the Hebrew. You purportedly have a PhD; you purportedly have worked as a university librarian; yet it doesn’t show, since yet you seem incapable of reading relevant academic sources or citing authorities. I can only assume by your reluctance in this instance that you have no academic source to cite, or that whatever your source is, it does not support your interpretation.

If it’s not something you picked up off the internet, I think it safe to provisionally assume/conclude it traces back to Tov’s seminal discussion and involves a misunderstanding of what was referred to as the Septuagint, probably on your part. I will gladly revise my conclusion if you would care to provide your source and if it provides examples of systematic difficulties by the Greek translators with the Hebrew. That would be news to me, and I always welcome valid new information and insights, even from trolls.

You should be aware of the apparently universal practice of translation, in which one person (oftentimes the author) reads the original while the scribe or secretary writes down the translation. That’s how it happened in the ancient world, according to contemporary research (see van der Lowe 2008). The Aramaisms and Egyptianisms in the LXX (Pentateuch) point to the amanuensis or scribe as likely of Egyptian Jewish heritage (Joosten 2010). So any conclusions regarding the language skills of the translator would apply primarily to the amanuensis, not the author / reader. My latest book on Plato’s Timaeus puts forward evidence that the use of Timaeus in both the Greek and underlying Hebrew of Genesis 1-3 suggests that the authors personally undertook to translate these critical chapters that had significant philosophical content. Elsewhere in the Pentateuch they likely used secretaries as was more usual. See my discussion in Gmirkin 2022: 88-89.
He did not imply that you were outside of academia, nor did he accuse you of such. Rather, he said that your academic qualifications were not being displayed during your efforts to refute his claims.

3. I can understand why you would be thankful that your next published article will not be addressing Gmirkin's thesis, because this discussion has revealed that you lack the knowledge of the sources which Gmirkin has used in order to justify his thesis.
User avatar
neilgodfrey
Posts: 6161
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 4:08 pm

Re: Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts [Gmirkin]

Post by neilgodfrey »

ABuddhist wrote: Fri Aug 19, 2022 5:54 am
1. Your citation of Professor Newsom's thesis, with all due respect, is not a good argument, because it invites the simple response "If."
Everything you said is quite correct, but I would add that Newsom's article for Torah.com contained nothing in principle that is not well-known among scholars and certainly nothing in it in the slightest has any bearing on Gmirkin's thesis. That Stephen thinks there is something in Newsom's article that does undermine Gmirkin's thesis only reminds us, painfully once again, that Stephen is either wilfully ignorant of Gmirkin's argument or has once again only skimmed and misread the article he thinks debunks Gmirkin.

Stephen -- please quote the passage in Newsom's article that undermines any part of Gmirkin's thesis. (I won't hold my breath waiting.)
Last edited by neilgodfrey on Fri Aug 19, 2022 6:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
ABuddhist
Posts: 1016
Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:36 am

Re: Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts [Gmirkin]

Post by ABuddhist »

neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Aug 19, 2022 6:12 am I would add that Newsom's article for Torah.com contained nothing in principle that is not well-known among scholars and certainly nothing in it in the slightest has any bearing on Gmirkin's thesis.
Why not? Gmirkin's thesis is that there was a single Torah created relatively recently for the Jews.
Post Reply