Plato and the Pentateuch

[ABuddhist]

Well, my major problem with Gmirkin's model is that if the Pentateuch was inspired by Plato and was an attewmpt to fuse Greek learning with Hebrew culture, why did the Pentateuch portray a flat Earth when Plato accepted that the world was spherical? Did the Pentateuch's authors regard a flat Earth as so important to their tradition?

[StephenGoranson]

Neil recommended "...respectful and intellectual engagement...." I hope he starts taking his own advice.
Mr. Gmirkin made an unsupported charge of "anti-Semitism"--and not a peep out of Neil,
nor any apology from REG!

To return to the history substance--many of my observations still unaddressed--it seems relevant to me (I have read REG arguments aplenty), and others, that a plausible trajectory of Semitic writings started well before the 270s. I have not claimed, for example, that the exact MT or the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia fully existed by the 270s but that, e.g., variant Torah texts among Dead Sea Scrolls attest to long previous development of written Torah. Most Scrolls scholars of whom I am aware agree. Agree in general that pre-270s Torah texts existed--not necessarily agree on any particular DH (or similar, supplementary, etc.) exact proposal. I see no need to demonize such proposals, as a few here apparently do; nor to make the perfect the enemy of the good; rather, just to realize that some are excessively speculative in details.
The Torah-movement people (by whatever additional names appropriate) had temples and priests and writing and texts. They, I suggest, did not wait around for centuries like empty clueless inferior vessels until superior Greek invitation got them to create written Torah de novo.

Much as I do like libraries. Would that the Alexandria one had survived. But papyrus and parchment usually has a limited life span. Many old copies of the Torah have been lost.

[Secret Alias]

And with regards to this theory. If the point of Gmirkin is to write something for people to read while eating marijuana edibles and "blue sky" the possibilities. Fine. It's a great edibles accompaniment. But the idea that pagans who hated Jews didn't draw attention to the fact that Jews stole from Plato is already not likely. If the Jews had a library card and borrowed the writings of Plato when they wrote the Pentateuch someone would have picked up on it. Moreover the earliest fragments from Qumran are fairly dated to the third century BCE. The idea that fragments would be recovered from this remote location associated as it was with a sectarian group which renounced another group who had taken over Judaism when Judaism itself is a schism from a cult at Gerizim makes it impossible to fit all these "stops along the way" with a third century origin in the Alexandrian library. I am sorry it doesn't work.

[Secret Alias]

And have you read Plato? I mean sat there with your edibles and gone through the Republic beginning to end? And after that picked up the Pentateuch. Would anyone really come up with the idea that the authors of the Pentateuch borrowed from Plato? I mean really? Philo is certainly Platonic and he interpreted the Pentateuch in a way inspired by Plato and the Greek philosophers. But what does that have to do with anything? There's a band called Jazz Sabbath who reinterpreted song from Black Sabbath with jazz arrangements (because Rick Wakeman's son apparently was hired for tours with Ozzy Osborne and Black Sabbath). What does Wakeman's reinterpretation of Black Sabbath have to do with Black Sabbath?

[Russell Gmirkin]

Well, my major problem with Gmirkin's model is that if the Pentateuch was inspired by Plato and was an attempt to fuse Greek learning with Hebrew culture, why did the Pentateuch portray a flat Earth when Plato accepted that the world was spherical? Did the Pentateuch's authors regard a flat Earth as so important to their tradition?

It's not a question/issue that I've considered before. Could you lay out the Pentateuchal passages you are thinking about? I'm always happy to discuss questions of evidence.

[Secret Alias]

Has anyone in the history of the study of the Bible before Gmirkin ever noticed how "Platonic" the Pentateuch is? I ask this as someone who doesn't know the answer. They've always studied Plato. Christians started studying the Bible since the second century. Many since Justin did the two together. I don't remember coming across a lot of people who said the Hebrew of Genesis or Exodus or Joshua seems to echo Plato. Christians liked Philo's take on the Pentateuch and generally considered him to be inspired. Most early Christians though Moses wrote the Pentateuch. I'd love to learn of eighteenth and nineteenth and twentieth century scholarship before Gmirkin who noticed borrowings of the Hebrew authors from the Pentateuch.

[Russell Gmirkin]

And have you read Plato? I mean sat there with your edibles and gone through the Republic beginning to end? And after that picked up the Pentateuch. Would anyone really come up with the idea that the authors of the Pentateuch borrowed from Plato? I mean really? Philo is certainly Platonic and he interpreted the Pentateuch in a way inspired by Plato and the Greek philosophers. But what does that have to do with anything?

I think I detect buried inside the rhetoric an actual question related to this thread, which I would be happy to address.

The most significant borrowing from Plato comes from Plato's Laws. Lots of scholars in the ancient world saw numerous parallels between Plato's Laws and the Laws of Moses. Eusebius wrote about this extensively. However, all of them assumed that Plato must have borrowed from Moses, since (like many modern scholars) they naively accepted that Mosaic writings preceded those of the Greeks, because that's what the Jewish and Samaritan scriptures claimed. But a systematic comparison of biblical laws, laws of the Ancient Near East and Greek laws shows extensive biblical reliance on Greek laws, and Plato's Laws in specific, as I discuss in Gmirkin 2017. Have you sat there with your edibles (colorful image ) and gone through Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible beginning to end? You might change your perspective if you gave it a fair read.

Additional significant borrowings from Plato come from Plato's Timaeus (Genesis 1-3) and Plato's Critias (especially Genesis 6). I discuss these extensively in Gmirkin 2022, Plato's Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts. Philo, probably foremost among scholars in the ancient world, picked up on the extensive parallels between Genesis 1 and Timaeus. The LXX translation of Genesis 1-3 is also thought to reflect Timaeus at many points.

Echoes of a number of other books by Plato appear in Genesis 2-3, such as Statesman and Protagoras.

One also sees connections with Plato's Republic here and there: Gmirkin 2017 cites Plato's Republic 138 times and Gmirkin 2022 cites Plato's Republic 113 times.

Gmirkin, Russell E., Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible. Copenhagen International Seminar. New York–London: Routledge, 2017.

—Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts: Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in the Primordial History. Copenhagen International Seminar. New York–London: Routledge, 2022.

[Secret Alias]

So no one before you is a fair summary?

[Russell Gmirkin]

Has anyone in the history of the study of the Bible before Gmirkin ever noticed how "Platonic" the Pentateuch is? I ask this as someone who doesn't know the answer. They've always studied Plato. Christians started studying the Bible since the second century. Many since Justin did the two together. I don't remember coming across a lot of people who said the Hebrew of Genesis or Exodus or Joshua seems to echo Plato. Christians liked Philo's take on the Pentateuch and generally considered him to be inspired. Most early Christians though Moses wrote the Pentateuch. I'd love to learn of eighteenth and nineteenth and twentieth century scholarship before Gmirkin who noticed borrowings of the Hebrew authors from the Pentateuch.

Jewish and Christian claims for the priority of Moses and biblical literature are discussed in Arthur J. Droge, Homer or Moses?: Early Christian Interpretations of the History of Culture (Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie 26; Tübingen: Mohr, 1989). Such claims were made by the Jewish writers Eupolemus, Aristobulus, Philo and Josephus; the Church Fathers Justin Martyr, Tatian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius and Augustine; and “pagan” authors such as Numenius of Apamea. Parallels with Plato’s Laws were laid out in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospels 12.4-5, 36-42, 47.

Early higher criticism often noted parallels with Plato's Laws. See Hugo Grotius, De Veritate Religionis Christianae (Paris: Jean Le Maire, 1629); Theophilus Gale, The Court of the Gentiles, or a Discourse Touching the Original of Human Literature (4 vols.; London: Thomas Cockeril, 1669-1677); John Spencer, De Legibus Hebraeorum, Ritualibus et earum Rationibus libri tres (Cambridge: Richard Chiswell, 1685); Archbishop John Potter, Archaeologia Graeca, or the Antiquities of Greece (2 vols.; London: Abel Swall, 1697-98); Hugo Grotius and Jean Le Clerc, The Truth of the Christian Religion in Six Books: Corrected, and Illustrated with Notes by Mr. Le Clerc (London: James and John Knapton, 1709); Enoch Cobb Wines, Commentaries on the Laws of the Ancient Hebrews: With an Introductory Essay on Civil Society and Government (New York: G.P. Putnam and Co., 1853); J. Benjamin Marsden, The Influence of the Mosaic Code upon Subsequent Legislation (London: Hamilton, Adams and Company, 1862).

More recently, see Otto Kaiser, “Das Deuteronomium und Platons Nomoi: Einladung zu einem Vergleich”, in H. Spieckermann and R.G. Kratz (eds.) Liebe und Gebot: Studien zum Deuteronomium. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 190 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 60-79; Anselm C. Hagedorn, Between Moses and Plato: Individual and Society in Deuteronomy and Ancient Greek Law (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004); Łukasz Niesiołowski-Spanò, “Primeval History in the Persian Period?” SJOT 21 (2007), 106-26; Philippe Wajdenbaum, Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2011). Evangeline Dafni has also wrote extensively on Platonic parallels.

I've probably missed a few. I left out many authors who have noted parallels with Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, etc.

[Secret Alias]

Ok I will have to go through these. Thank you.