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

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
andrewcriddle
Posts: 2817
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 12:36 am

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

Post by andrewcriddle »

neilgodfrey wrote: Sat Aug 13, 2022 5:22 am
andrewcriddle wrote: Sat Aug 13, 2022 1:13 am However on Gmirkin's position, there is IIUC little room for a pre-Deuteronomist proto-Pentateuch.
I don't know what you are implying or what your understanding is. Where does the problem for a "proto-Pentateuch" arise in Gmirkin's thesis?
IIUC Gmirkin suggests that the Pentateuch in something like its present form originates in Alexandria c 275 BCE without being based on an earlier extended document.
The idea that there was an extended proto-Pentateuch known in Palestine in the Persian period which took its final form in Alexandria is a rather different idea. As is the idea that the original Pentateuch originating around 275 BCE is substantially different from the existing Pentateuch.

Andrew Criddle
StephenGoranson
Posts: 2311
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 2:10 am

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

Post by StephenGoranson »

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.
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: Tue Aug 16, 2022 9:35 am If translators of the Hebrew Bible first five books into Greek had difficulty understanding the Hebrew
With all due respect, in this discussion's context, even a single example would be useful.
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: Tue Aug 16, 2022 9:35 am 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.
Stephen is painfully misinformed in his understanding of the issues involved, besides neglecting to cite either sources or examples. The definitive treatment of this subject is Emanuel Tov, "DID THE SEPTUAGINT TRANSLATORS ALWAYS UNDERSTAND THEIR HEBREW TEXT?" which is Chapter 14 (pages 203-218) of the 1999 (revised) edition of his book The Greek and Hebrew Bible. Of all the numerous examples Tov exhaustively discusses, ONLY TWO come from the Pentateuch. One of them was Gen. 47:31, where "the translator read the consonants wrongly." The other was Deut. 28:25 ("The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of _horror_ to all the kingdoms on earth") where the end of the verse in Greek says "you will be _scattered_ [a diaspora] among all the kingdoms of the earth." Did a translator misunderstand this one isolated Hebrew word in the entire Pentateuch? I personally think it is more likely it is another well-understood phenomenon, where one individual read an entire verse in Hebrew and the scribe/secretary translated it all into Greek. It has been observed that translations tend to be more accurate at the start of each verse and slip a little later on, due to the difficulty of the scribe keeping the whole passage in their brain.

So "Septuagint Translator" in this context refers to the whole Greek Bible, not the Pentateuch, as Stephen carelessly assumes. And the Pentateuch is remarkably accurate. And just to state the obvious, it is pretty hilarious to imagine, as Stephen contends, that the task of translating the Pentateuch from Hebrew to Greek would be assigned to scholars or scribes who DIDN'T KNOW HEBREW. Stephen, translators are by definition bilingual.
Secret Alias
Posts: 18362
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

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

Post by Secret Alias »

What about the Samaritan/Qumran text of Exodus with 'bits of Deuteronomy' (from our perspective) imbedded in it? https://academic.oup.com/jts/article-ab ... edFrom=PDF
StephenGoranson
Posts: 2311
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 2:10 am

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

Post by StephenGoranson »

Though Mr. Gmirkin accurately quoted my sentence, he misread or misrepresented it.
Perhaps some readers here will allow that I am aware that translators are bilingual.
Admittedly, I do not at the moment have it at hand, but my readings of Prof. Tov lead me to assume that in this 16-page article he did not intend to cover all Hebrew to Greek text issues.
The answer to the question "did Septuagint translators always understand their Hebrew text?" is no.
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 »

StephenGoranson wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 3:43 am The answer to the question "did Septuagint translators always understand their Hebrew text?" is no.
And the reason you have not cited sources of examples related to the Pentateuch is....?
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: Tue Aug 16, 2022 3:03 pm translators are by definition bilingual.
Not necessarily. Consider the infamous book "English as she is spoke" by a Portuguese man with no knowledge of English and translated a French-Portuguese phrase book into English through using a dictionary. But the resulting book was so defective as a representation of English that no one took it seriously - unlike the Septuagint's Greek, which, even when divergent from the Hebrew, was as far as I know internally consistent for Greek readers and listeners.
StephenGoranson
Posts: 2311
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 2:10 am

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

Post by StephenGoranson »

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.
Secret Alias
Posts: 18362
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

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

Post by Secret Alias »

Is it possible to address the issue of a proto-Exodus text attested by the Samaritans, Qumran and possibly the circle of R Ishmael? I think there are differences between Philo's LXX and ours that are worth exploring too. Also the issue of the Samaritanikon https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/e ... samaritans is worth investigating too. Marqe makes reference to a Greek text in use by Samaritans in his surviving Aramaic writings. If the Samaritans had their own translation (Greek) of the Pentateuch doesn't that question whether or not the LXX was a collaborative effort between Jews and Samaritans? Again not hostile to the theory. Just trying to iron out details.
Post Reply