the c. 273-272 Torah-creation hypothesis

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neilgodfrey
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Re: the c. 273-272 Torah-creation hypothesis

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andrewcriddle wrote: Tue Oct 11, 2022 7:47 am
neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Oct 07, 2022 2:35 am
rgprice wrote: Wed Oct 05, 2022 8:37 am This is from Lester Grabbe's highly respected work:

Two biblical books claim to describe the Jews of Palestine in the Persian period; these are Ezra and Nehemiah. One of the most accepted conclusions of today is that much of the book of Nehemiah is based on Nehemiah's personal account (the so-called `Nehemiah Memorial/Memoir'). Thus, we have some indication not only of Nehemiah's deeds but even of his attitudes and (private?) thoughts. This is valuable material; on the other hand, we must recognize that it is very one-sided and reflects the entrenched opinions and biases of a strong-willed willed man. We can hardly use it as a dispassionate chronicle of events. Nehemiah's own firmly held views shape the entire narrative. The material in Ezra is quite different. In it are a number of alleged documents of the Persian administration. Although these have been widely accepted as authentic in recent English-language language commentaries, their genuineness has been strongly questioned in Continental scholarship.
-Lester L. Grabbe. An Introduction to Second Temple Judaism: History and Religion of the Jews in the Time of Nehemiah, the Maccabees, Hillel, and Jesus (Kindle Locations 448-452). Kindle Edition.

Of course, Nehemiah makes references to the Torah. Nehemiah 8 in particular describes a presentation of the "Book of the Laws of Moses".
I was surprised at Grabbe's naivety in appearing to assume that typical novelistic features in the story of Nehemiah are evidence of an imaginary diary as a source.

Eric Clines, to my way of thinking, patiently demonstrated the novelistic genre of our book of Nehemiah in a chapter in his book What Does Eve Do to Help? (link is to my series of 5 posts on that chapter)
The chapter is The Nehemiah Memoir Clines seems to accept that large parts of the book of Nehemiah were written by the historical Nehemiah. What he is primarily questioning is Nehemiah's honesty and objectivity in recounting his experiences.

Andrew Criddle
"Seems"? Perhaps seems. But if we wish to be objective readers and not be swayed by any sort of agenda then I think we should take seriously Eric Cline's own explanation for what he was "primarily" about in that chapter:

There has been a very strong tendency to take the Biblical writing at its face value and a disinclination to entertain a hermeneutic of suspicion such as is a prerequisite for serious historical investigation. It is shocking to see how the narrative of the Nehemiah Memoir has in fact been lazily adopted as a historiographical structure in the writing of modern scholars, and how rarely the question of the probability of the statements of the Nehemiah Memoir has been raised.1 . . . .

. . . . It has been the intention of the present study to show that a strict regard to the literariness of the document and to the role of the reader in the processing of the document is inevitably profitable for the historian.

If it were merely a simple matter of questioning the objectivity of a narrative, of seeing reasons to suspect an author might not be fully transparent about his motives, and so forth, then it would have been a very bland chapter indeed insofar as it would be telling us nothing new or discussion-worthy about how historians as a rule are found to approach their sources.

But that is not what Clines seems to be addressing at all. He is addressing the all-too-common failure of historians -- especially in biblical studies -- to first grapple with questions of literary tropes, literary functions, and then to follow up those studies by rigorously applying the results to how a document is read.

Clines includes a footnote there. Following up that reference we read:

Particularly noticeable in this regard are the works of Myers, The World of the Restoration, pp. 108-22; Herrmann, pp. 310-14; Miller and Hayes, pp. 469-72; Widengren, pp. 528-32.

One of the guilty names that Clines points to is Siefgfried Hermann. Here are some selections from from the relevant pages (310-311):

Nehemiah’s report is composed in the first person and is full of impressive pictures and scenes. The narrative character is striking, and cannot be a complete fiction. . . .

The tale is well told, and may be tailored to Nehemiah’s later achievements, but it is not lacking in contemporary colouring, and cannot be dismissed entirely as fiction. . . .

Sure, it's easy for historians to say they are sceptical and have reservations about an author's objectivity and honesty but the historian needs to undertake some groundwork before reaching such a position. He or she needs to understand the nature of the text itself.

The literary tropes Clines identifies in the book of Nehemiah are, I would suggest, consonant with "historical fiction". Historical fiction can be written by a real person writing his "memoirs" and by an author speaking through a created literary figure.

How does a reader begin to sift the history from the fiction?

The answer to that question involves resort to external or independent references. If they don't exist then where can we possibly start?

Or maybe there are independent sources and the Elephantine papyri do point to a Judaism of the day in which everyone understood the sabbath was a market day and god should be worshiped alongside his wife.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: the c. 273-272 Torah-creation hypothesis

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MrMacSon wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 11:44 pm
Secret Alias wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 5:01 pm I really don't know. The non-use of Joshua is puzzling though. Could be coincidence. Or ...
Are you referring to Joshua the book?
or Joshua/s the human/s (in the Hebrew Bible or Tanakah) ?
I don't know why SA hasn't answered you, but I believe he was talking about a Samaritan book of Joshua. No doubt he will correct me if I am wrong.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: the c. 273-272 Torah-creation hypothesis

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Secret Alias wrote: Tue Oct 11, 2022 10:10 pm If people are interested reading serious scholarship about the development of the earliest "canon" in the Persian period https://www.jstor.org/stable/3268406?re ... b_contents. I think it is more persuasive
I don't think you read the article before posting. It offers no evidence for the canonization taking place in the Persian period. It merely presents a case for a particular process of redactions and collations set in the Persian period -- taken for granted. Nothing in the process described would necessarily change if it were set in the Hellenistic period.

(If you think I have missed a key point of the argument in the article then you are welcome to point it out to me, but please don't respond with accusations of antisemitism, a hater of Christianity, a conspiracy theorist, or references to holocaust denial, or mind-reading dehumanizing accusations that I lack a human soul and am an agent of evil.)
Secret Alias
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Re: the c. 273-272 Torah-creation hypothesis

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The article was cited to underscore the complexity of the development of a canon (there are/were many). This complexity necessarily required centuries. The observations in the article couldn't have taken place in Alexandria. 323-285 BCE are the dates for Ptolemy I and the range of dates for the mass transportation of Jews and Samaritans to Egypt. Anything before 331 is "Persian." Genesis - Judges was written before 331. As close to 100% certainty. As certain as meat coming from animals (in theory if you arent in a slaughterhouse it could be argued that pigs are slaughtered and buried in some elaborate "hoax" and bacon is really grown on special trees the meat industry won't let us see). Could "Platonic" ideas have filtered to Shechem? Sure.
StephenGoranson
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Re: the c. 273-272 Torah-creation hypothesis

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Neil G., in Saturday posts, implied that Andrew C. had an agenda, and that he, NG, was more objective. Unless he was joking.
Would defending, without reserve (?), all R. Gmirkin arguments for the c. 273-272 Torah-creation hypothesis suggest an agenda?
Secret Alias
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Re: the c. 273-272 Torah-creation hypothesis

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For me the main argument for the Torah being created outside of Israel is the fact that the Torah postpones the establishment of an altar at Gerizim. I always thought the Torah WAS READ DIFFERENTLY by Jews in Egypt. There are nevertheless better explanations than an Egyptian origin for the composition. Andrew is the coolest. Never will I ever say a bad word about him even when we disagree.
StephenGoranson
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Re: the c. 273-272 Torah-creation hypothesis

Post by StephenGoranson »

About Elephantine, Egypt. Some of them wrote for advice.
That does not indicate that no Torah or Bible existed.
If there is anything made clear in the Bible it is that not everyone followed the commandments.
M. Gandhi reportedly said, mutatis mutandis, "I will become a Christian when I meet one."
John2
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Re: the c. 273-272 Torah-creation hypothesis

Post by John2 »

Secret Alias wrote: Thu Oct 13, 2022 9:24 am ... the biggest clue as to the uncanonical or disputed nature of the Pentateuch ...

There's also Jer. 8.8: ("How can you say, 'We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us'? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie").

For me this is interesting since I view Jeremiah as the author of Deuteronomy (and Joshua to 2 Kings) and he was a descendant of Northern priests now living in Judah, which makes me wonder what pre-Ezra Torah source he had in mind here (if memory serves, Deuteronomy -in addition to the "D" law code- only knows the "J" and "E" sources, and by process of elimination that would leave "P" -primarily Leviticus- which would make sense because "P" is arguably the law code of Southern priests and a re-write of "J" and "E").


https://biblehub.com/interlinear/jeremiah/8-8.htm
andrewcriddle
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Re: the c. 273-272 Torah-creation hypothesis

Post by andrewcriddle »

neilgodfrey wrote: Thu Oct 13, 2022 9:45 pm
andrewcriddle wrote: Tue Oct 11, 2022 7:47 am
neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Oct 07, 2022 2:35 am
rgprice wrote: Wed Oct 05, 2022 8:37 am This is from Lester Grabbe's highly respected work:

Two biblical books claim to describe the Jews of Palestine in the Persian period; these are Ezra and Nehemiah. One of the most accepted conclusions of today is that much of the book of Nehemiah is based on Nehemiah's personal account (the so-called `Nehemiah Memorial/Memoir'). Thus, we have some indication not only of Nehemiah's deeds but even of his attitudes and (private?) thoughts. This is valuable material; on the other hand, we must recognize that it is very one-sided and reflects the entrenched opinions and biases of a strong-willed willed man. We can hardly use it as a dispassionate chronicle of events. Nehemiah's own firmly held views shape the entire narrative. The material in Ezra is quite different. In it are a number of alleged documents of the Persian administration. Although these have been widely accepted as authentic in recent English-language language commentaries, their genuineness has been strongly questioned in Continental scholarship.
-Lester L. Grabbe. An Introduction to Second Temple Judaism: History and Religion of the Jews in the Time of Nehemiah, the Maccabees, Hillel, and Jesus (Kindle Locations 448-452). Kindle Edition.

Of course, Nehemiah makes references to the Torah. Nehemiah 8 in particular describes a presentation of the "Book of the Laws of Moses".
I was surprised at Grabbe's naivety in appearing to assume that typical novelistic features in the story of Nehemiah are evidence of an imaginary diary as a source.

Eric Clines, to my way of thinking, patiently demonstrated the novelistic genre of our book of Nehemiah in a chapter in his book What Does Eve Do to Help? (link is to my series of 5 posts on that chapter)
The chapter is The Nehemiah Memoir Clines seems to accept that large parts of the book of Nehemiah were written by the historical Nehemiah. What he is primarily questioning is Nehemiah's honesty and objectivity in recounting his experiences.

Andrew Criddle
"Seems"? Perhaps seems. But if we wish to be objective readers and not be swayed by any sort of agenda then I think we should take seriously Eric Cline's own explanation for what he was "primarily" about in that chapter:

There has been a very strong tendency to take the Biblical writing at its face value and a disinclination to entertain a hermeneutic of suspicion such as is a prerequisite for serious historical investigation. It is shocking to see how the narrative of the Nehemiah Memoir has in fact been lazily adopted as a historiographical structure in the writing of modern scholars, and how rarely the question of the probability of the statements of the Nehemiah Memoir has been raised.1 . . . .

. . . . It has been the intention of the present study to show that a strict regard to the literariness of the document and to the role of the reader in the processing of the document is inevitably profitable for the historian.

If it were merely a simple matter of questioning the objectivity of a narrative, of seeing reasons to suspect an author might not be fully transparent about his motives, and so forth, then it would have been a very bland chapter indeed insofar as it would be telling us nothing new or discussion-worthy about how historians as a rule are found to approach their sources.

But that is not what Clines seems to be addressing at all. He is addressing the all-too-common failure of historians -- especially in biblical studies -- to first grapple with questions of literary tropes, literary functions, and then to follow up those studies by rigorously applying the results to how a document is read.

Clines includes a footnote there. Following up that reference we read:

Particularly noticeable in this regard are the works of Myers, The World of the Restoration, pp. 108-22; Herrmann, pp. 310-14; Miller and Hayes, pp. 469-72; Widengren, pp. 528-32.

One of the guilty names that Clines points to is Siefgfried Hermann. Here are some selections from from the relevant pages (310-311):

Nehemiah’s report is composed in the first person and is full of impressive pictures and scenes. The narrative character is striking, and cannot be a complete fiction. . . .

The tale is well told, and may be tailored to Nehemiah’s later achievements, but it is not lacking in contemporary colouring, and cannot be dismissed entirely as fiction. . . .

Sure, it's easy for historians to say they are sceptical and have reservations about an author's objectivity and honesty but the historian needs to undertake some groundwork before reaching such a position. He or she needs to understand the nature of the text itself.

The literary tropes Clines identifies in the book of Nehemiah are, I would suggest, consonant with "historical fiction". Historical fiction can be written by a real person writing his "memoirs" and by an author speaking through a created literary figure.

How does a reader begin to sift the history from the fiction?

The answer to that question involves resort to external or independent references. If they don't exist then where can we possibly start?

Or maybe there are independent sources and the Elephantine papyri do point to a Judaism of the day in which everyone understood the sabbath was a market day and god should be worshiped alongside his wife.
IF, as Clines holds, Nehemiah is basically biased propaganda written by a Politician describing from his point of view a controversy in which he was involved, then it has implications for objectivity but not open-ended implications. Claims about the real agenda of the opponents of Nehemiah must be taken sceptically but the accounts about public events will be more reliable.

I am deliberately avoiding possible contemporary parallels, but a possible ancient parallel is the 1st century BCE conspiracy of Catiline. The sources are so obviously biased against Catiline as to cause major problems
Macaulay
The ancient critics placed Sallust in the same rank with Livy; and unquestionably the small portion of his works which has come down to us is calculated to give a high opinion of his talents. But his style is not very pleasant: and his most powerful work, the account of the Conspiracy of Catiline, has rather the air of a clever party pamphlet than that of a history. It abounds with strange inconsistencies, which, unexplained as they are, necessarily excite doubts as to the fairness of the narrative. . . . I Yet, on the showing of the accusers, the accused seem entitled to acquittal. Catiline, we are told, intrigued with a Vestal virgin, and murdered his own son. His house was a den of gamblers and debauchees. No young man could cross his threshold without danger to his fortune and reputation. Yet this is the man with whom Cicero was willing to coalesce in a contest for the first magistracy of the republic; and whom he described, long after the fatal termination of the conspiracy, as an accomplished hypocrite, by whom he had himself been deceived, and who had acted with consummate skill the character of a good citizen and a good friend. We are told that the plot was the most wicked and desperate ever known, and, almost in the same breath, that the great body of the people, and many of the nobles, favoured it; that the richest citizens of Rome were eager for the spoliation of all property, and its highest functionaries for the destruction of all order; that Crassus, Cæsar, the Praetor Lentulus, one of the consuls of the year, one of the consuls elect, were proved or suspected to be engaged in a scheme for subverting institutions to which they owed the highest honours, and introducing universal anarchy. We are told that a government, which knew all this, suffered the conspirator, whose rank, talents, and courage, rendered him most dangerous, to quit Rome without molestation. Finally, we are told that the magistrate, who was universally allowed to have saved all classes of his countrymen from conflagration and massacre, rendered himself so unpopular by his conduct that a marked insult was offered to him at the expiration of his office, and a severe punishment inflicted on him shortly after.

Sallust tells us, what, indeed, the letters and speeches of Cicero sufficiently prove, that some persons considered the shocking and atrocious part of the plot as mere inventions of the government, designed to excuse its unconstitutional measures. We must confess ourselves to be of that opinion. . . .
However the very basic outlines are reliable. After a failed attempt at election as Consul, Catiline, who claimed the election had been stolen, was accused of inciting a treasonable conspiracy, fled Rome and was later killed in battle.

In the case of Nehemiah, if Clines is correct, claims by Nehemiah of a secret plot against him would be dubious, but his account of the legal reforms he introduced would be largely accurate.

Andrew Criddle
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neilgodfrey
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Re: the c. 273-272 Torah-creation hypothesis

Post by neilgodfrey »

andrewcriddle wrote: Sat Oct 15, 2022 4:43 am In the case of Nehemiah, if Clines is correct, claims by Nehemiah of a secret plot against him would be dubious, but his account of the legal reforms he introduced would be largely accurate.

Andrew Criddle
Which is why I said "historical fiction" can cover everything from a politician writing self-serving memoirs (that are essentially useless for historians) to a fictitious character and narrative voice in a historical setting.

Clines article invites readers to stand back and start afresh -- without presuppositions, and to begin first by a literary analysis. From there..... well it depends on the results of that literary analysis (alongside the presence or absence of external evidence which goes without saying, I presume)

How does one begin to assess whether the claims of legal reforms are historical? They may be, but how does one begin to decide if so? (Especially given what the Elephantine evidence tells us about the temple authorities of the era.)


-----
Added some time after posting the above....

In the case of Catiline, we have independent corroboration:
Sallust tells us, what, indeed, the letters and speeches of Cicero sufficiently prove, that some persons considered the shocking and atrocious part of the plot as mere inventions of the government, designed to excuse its unconstitutional measures. We must confess ourselves to be of that opinion. . . .
The interesting thing about the book of Nehemiah is that we have an authorial voice that knows the inner thoughts of the different figures in the account. A reader might be forgiven for wondering if the author was manufacturing the inner thoughts of the main character as well.
Last edited by neilgodfrey on Sat Oct 15, 2022 1:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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