Plato and the Pentateuch

[ABuddhist]

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.

That ignores the fact that Gmirkin has been published by a mainstream academic/scholarly press.

[ABuddhist]

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.

Well,
The Flat-Earth Bible, by Robert J. Schadewald, Reprinted from The Bulletin of the Tychonian Society #44 (July 1987) says, "The Genesis creation story provides the first key to the Hebrew cosmology. The order of creation makes no sense from a conventional perspective but is perfectly logical from a flat-earth viewpoint. The earth was created on the first day, and it was “without form and void (Genesis 1:2).” On the second day, a vault the “firmament” of the King James version was created to divide the waters, some being above and some below the vault. Only on the fourth day were the sun, moon, and stars created, and they were placed “in” (not “above”) the vault.
The Vault of Heaven
The vault of heaven is a crucial concept. The word “firmament” appears in the King James version of the Old Testament 17 times, and in each case it is translated from the Hebrew word raqiya, which meant the visible vault of the sky. The word raqiya comes from riqqua, meaning “beaten out.” In ancient times, brass objects were either cast in the form required or beaten into shape on an anvil. A good craftsman could beat a lump of cast brass into a thin bowl. Thus, Elihu asks Job, “Can you beat out [raqa] the vault of the skies, as he does, hard as a mirror of cast metal (Job 37:18)?”"

Similarly, Dr. Steven DiMattei, in his book "Genesis 1 and the Creationism Debate: Being Honest to the Text, Its Author, and His Beliefs—Not Ours", has discussed that the 1st chapter of Genesis portrays a flat Earth. For a summary, see https://contradictionsinthebible.com/th ... genesis-1/ .

I know that my citations are not as good as yours are, but I hope that they fulfill their purpose here well enough.

[mlinssen]

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.

Ah, the argument of incredulity. You are religious after all, it would seem.
Let me ask you this: has any "Thomas translator" ever noticed that the fountain in logion 13 is not bubbling, but actually boiling?
Because that is the only definition of the verb, 'to boil'.
Let me ask you this: has any "Thomas translator" ever noticed that the leaven in logion 96 is not leaven, but actually colostrum?

For the boiling fountain, Schenke: page 484, footnote 20

http://idb.ub.uni-tuebingen.de/opendigi ... ruct&p=254

For the colostrum, Koepke: page xlvii

https://www.academia.edu/42043037/The_J ... _of_Thomas

Or just the dictionary, of course: viewtopic.php?p=146602#p146602

You see, Stephan Hueller: confirmation bias is an extremely powerful tool, that basically wields itself in biblical academic. And surroundings, apparently

[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.

The Flat-Earth Bible, by Robert J. Schadewald, Reprinted from The Bulletin of the Tychonian Society #44 (July 1987) says, "The Genesis creation story provides the first key to the Hebrew cosmology. The order of creation makes no sense from a conventional perspective but is perfectly logical from a flat-earth viewpoint. The earth was created on the first day, and it was “without form and void (Genesis 1:2).” On the second day, a vault the “firmament” of the King James version was created to divide the waters, some being above and some below the vault. Only on the fourth day were the sun, moon, and stars created, and they were placed “in” (not “above”) the vault.

The Vault of Heaven

The vault of heaven is a crucial concept. The word “firmament” appears in the King James version of the Old Testament 17 times, and in each case it is translated from the Hebrew word raqiya, which meant the visible vault of the sky. The word raqiya comes from riqqua, meaning “beaten out.” In ancient times, brass objects were either cast in the form required or beaten into shape on an anvil. A good craftsman could beat a lump of cast brass into a thin bowl. Thus, Elihu asks Job, “Can you beat out [raqa] the vault of the skies, as he does, hard as a mirror of cast metal (Job 37:18)?”"

Similarly, Dr. Steven DiMattei, in his book "Genesis 1 and the Creationism Debate: Being Honest to the Text, Its Author, and His Beliefs—Not Ours", has discussed that the 1st chapter of Genesis portrays a flat Earth. For a summary, see https://contradictionsinthebible.com/th ... genesis-1/ .

I know that my citations are not as good as yours are, but I hope that they fulfill their purpose here well enough.

Thanks. I get it now. I didn't recall offhand any flat-earth passages in the Pentateuch, but that model has been historically applied to Genesis 1.

The Genesis creation account is the central topic of my 2022 book, Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts: Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in the Primordial History. I talk about the raqia or dome of the firmament in several passages, which I'll quote below (sorry, no page numbers):

The book of Job is explicit in portraying God as a master architect who designed the cosmos, laying the foundations under the earth, setting up pillars at the ends of the earth, and fashioning a raqia or vault of beaten metal to form the sky above.

One may contrast the parsimonious and relatively austere account of Gen 1:1–2:3 (as noted in Sarna 1989: 3) with the mythical cosmogony implicit in Job, where God also appeared as a craftsman, an architect who laid out the earth’s foundations (Job 38:4-6), set up pillars at the ends of the earth (Job 26:11; cf. Ps 75:3; 1 Sam 2:8), beat out the dome of the sky like a polished brass mirror (Job 37:18), and set boundaries for the sea (Job 38:8-10). Compared with Job, the absence of story in Gen 1:1–2:3 is striking.

The sky that separated the waters above from the waters below was called raqia (Gen 1:6-8), a word that conveys the notion of a beaten flat surface. But Gen 1:6-8 did not describe God hammering out such a surface as in Job 37:18, where the sky was compared to a crafted brass mirror. In Ps 18:11; 19:4; 104:2, the sky was hung like a curtain, a second biblical usage of raqia, but neither does this imagery appear in Genesis 1. Since Genesis 1 made no story connection between the fashioning of the sky as a raqia and God as architect or builder of the cosmos, in Genesis 1 the word raqia is best understood as a simple reference to the dome of the sky.

It is evident that this airy region is designated in Genesis 1 as the expanse of the heavenly dome or firmament (raqia), since it is given the name Sky (Gen 1:8) and it is in this same sky that the fowl were later said to fly and in which the sun, moon, and stars were placed (Gen 1:17, 20). Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, the word raqia designates a metallic vault or dome above the earth, supported by the highest mountains, and as firm as a brazen mirror (Ex 24:10; 2 Sam 22:8; Prov 8:27; Job 37:18), and having doors and windows through which the rain and snow fell (Gen 7:11; 28:17; Ps 78:23), as in the Ancient Near Eastern mythical cosmogony. But no such meaning attaches to the term raqia here. Rather, raqia here appears as a simple legacy from the older, pre-scientific language usage, an old term for the sky familiar to the intended audience of Genesis 1, but used there without its mythical linguistic baggage. Rather, raqia is best understood as a simple reference to the dome of the sky.

I also note that the LXX translates raqia with stereoma, a Greek word that Plato's Timaeus uses for the dome of the sky (one of many parallels with Genesis 1).

dome (רקיע) of the firmament Gen 1:6 stereoma (στερέωμα) Timaeus 31b, 43c; cf. 33b

My book traces the systematic use of Greek cosmogonies (notably those authored by Plato and Zeno the Stoic, but also others) in Genesis 1. I don't detect any flat earth cosmology in Genesis 1, although I know that has been a common view by scholars in the past who have assumed that Genesis 1 drew on Ancient Near Eastern rather than Greek sources. If you get my book by interlibrary loan, I think you'll find it an interesting read. Neil Godfrey also did a very nice series of blogs about the book on Vridar.

[neilgodfrey]

Neil Godfrey also did a very nice series of blogs about the book on Vridar.

As per

• Plato and the Hebrew Bible (Gmirkin)

and

• Plato and the Biblical Creation Accounts (Gmirkin)

[StephenGoranson]

Excuse me (or not, if that is your preference), but *if*
the Hebrew Torah was composed in its entirety in Alexandria by a unified group and soon translated in Alexandria into Greek circa 273 or soon after by the same folks
why are the earliest extant Hebrew and Greek texts divergent?

[neilgodfrey]

Excuse me (or not, if that is your preference), but *if*
the Hebrew Torah was composed in its entirety in Alexandria by a unified group and soon translated in Alexandria into Greek circa 273 or soon after by the same folks
why are the earliest extant Hebrew and Greek texts divergent?

Whether the texts were composed and translated at Alexandria is irrelevant to your question. The question is relevant no matter where they were composed/translated.

Let's try to move away from the personal and address the question as an academic exercise. So leaving Russell Gmirkin aside for a moment (he answers your question in his publications, by the way) let's turn to conference proceedings published in

• Schenker, Adrian, ed. The Earliest Text of the Hebrew Bible: The Relationship between the Masoretic Text and the Hebrew Base of the Septuagint Reconsidered. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.

In the concluding chapter of that volume we see your question being addressed head on.

It is noted at the outset that the LXX is witness to an earlier Hebrew text that is now lost to us:

When comparing the LXX evidence with that of the other sources, we found that beyond MT, the LXX is the single most important source preserving redactionally different material relevant to the literary analysis of the Bible, often earlier than MT. . . .

The preservation of redactionally different material in the LXX was ascribed to . . . [a couple of factors, one of which was] . . . the relatively early date of the translation enterprise (275-150 B.C.E.), involving still earlier Hebrew manuscripts which could reflect vestiges of earlier editorial stages of the biblical books.

In other words, the LXX is witness to a lost Hebrew Vorlage. That's not Gmirkin writing in the above quotations though if you read his works it will become apparent from the outset that he is very aware of such scholarship.

The variants arose from the "beginning", as the evidence of Qumran and elsewhere attests.

[StephenGoranson]

If a Hebrew Alexandian-created Vorlage--unified, broadly officially authorized, and first-ever-imagined as by Gmirkin--and of a Greek translation in some early Alexandria-imagined by same folks (by Gmirkin) creation why were both soon lost?
Or, rather, do not appear as such in the evidence?
Your highlighted quote, Mr. Godfrey, does not support what you claim that it does.
Or do you imagine that Schenker actually approves of your urged imagined scenario?

[Secret Alias]

Remember also that Gmirkin once tried to cite material from the Hebrew text as a demonstration of Greek borrowing only to discover that the Greek words weren't present in the LXX. Theories are hard to substantiate. That's why most us theory makers end up here in this dungeon rather than in fancy offices of the universities.

[neilgodfrey]

If a Hebrew Alexandian-created Vorlage--unified, broadly officially authorized, and first-ever-imagined as by Gmirkin--and of a Greek translation in some early Alexandria-imagined by same folks (by Gmirkin) creation why were both soon lost?
Or, rather, do not appear as such in the evidence?
Your highlighted quote, Mr. Godfrey, does not support what you claim that it does.
Or do you imagine that Schenker actually approves of your urged imagined scenario?

Why is the Hebrew Vorlage for the MT and other surviving Hebrew texts lost? Are you denying the Hebrew Vorlage has been lost? Are you saying that our MT is the original text?

My quote was from Emmanuel Tov, by the way.