The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

[neilgodfrey]

but I think it pretty much demands that any answer must take into account that there was earlier pre-existing material that editors did not have free reign to junk,

and this is exactly what Gmirkin's thesis does.

and that the text grew over a period of time.

and this raises the question I have been seeking an answer to but that answer has so far been absent. Why is a period of time greater than a year or two necessary?

If a text expressing a particular ideology or belief system was inherited by a generation that held different views, would we not expect the new generation to either replace or rewrite the old text so that they would have a work that reflects their new understanding?

But that's not what we see in the Pentateuch. Whoever was piecing together the different pieces of literature was clearly not overly bothered by maintaining contradictory and variant and inconsistent accounts.

Does not such a body of work appear to be the work of a "committee"? You know, a camel is a horse designed by a committee, as they say.

If we try to explain a body of texts as being revised in successive generations to reflect different ideologies then we have a situation where a single mind or idea -- even if represented by several editors -- are in charge of each stage. If their intent was to introduce new ideas and supplant the old ideas then we have the problem of why they did not smooth out the contradictions.

But if we have authors representing different groups, priesthoods, traditions, working together, in a cooperative spirit -- as at least one specialist scholar has argued was indeed the case with Samaritan and Jerusalem priests -- then would we not expect what we in fact have: the different traditions etc all wrapped up into one.

Or if we find such an idea unlikely, is it any more unlikely than the former, which is surely not without its own problems or unanswered questions.

This is not to mention the festival laws, which (though Gmirkin presumably does not consider them as connected to Plato)

Plato's Laws stresses the importance of regular festivals, and lots of them.

[Peter Kirby]

Not "fair to unpopular arguments"? Everything about that characterization is off. The response to Doudna's paper was fair, nobody cared that the idea was merely "unpopular," and, as was pointed out at length, "arguments" had not actually been made for Doudna's idea. After I had already posted an entirely fair argument against the idea, which at no point referred to its status as "unpopular" or not, it was said about Doudna's paper: "It is not presented as a detailed argument to make the case." It is impossible to be unfair to an argument when there isn't one, and a fair response can certainly be a negative one.

The point I had in mind was that my attempt to point out the facts of Doudna's presentation -- to be fair to his presentation -- prompted at least one person to express the view that I was motivated by a particular liking for the idea :-/

So, please, let me get this straight... in your opinion, is this what happened?

(1) You defended fairness
(2) I attacked your fairness
(3) I attacked your fairness because it was fairness for an unpopular presentation
(4) Suddenly, I struck out with a personal attack, viciously accusing you of liking something
(5) I am a person for whom "the concept of being fair to unpopular arguments is beyond [my] comprehension"

Is that about right?

[austendw]

but I think it pretty much demands that any answer must take into account that there was earlier pre-existing material that editors did not have free reign to junk,

and this is exactly what Gmirkin's thesis does.

Does he? I didn’t get that from him. For the avoidance of doubt, I really meant written material. I'm not clear that Gmirkin acknowledges much pre-existing written material in the Pentateuch, barring a few bits (like the Hammurabi Laws brought to Samaria by Babylonian deportees). And my impression is that he considers most of the differences between the Biblical text and Greek “originals” as being adaptations introduced by the Judeo-Samarian writers, rather than being derived from their own pre-existing literary creations, incorporated into the Pentateuchal composition. But he doesn’t go into great detail about this so it’s difficult to be definite.

and that the text grew over a period of time.

and this raises the question I have been seeking an answer to but that answer has so far been absent. Why is a period of time greater than a year or two necessary?

It is very difficult to discuss this in terms of broad generalisations. Some parts of the editorial activity could indeed take little time. But in other cases, texts show evidence of sustained scribal activity - repeated, successive amplifications of a text that cannot seriously be squeezed into such a short period. This sort of textual amplification has nothing at all to do with the Documentary Hypothesis either in principle or detail.

And here I have to ask you how familiar you are with the various different Pentateuchal literary theories? I presume you are familiar with the Documentary Hypothesis, though I don't know if you are familiar with it in terms of precise textual analysis or justknow of it in outline, as the once standard scholarly position. I suppose that if you eliminated the dates that R E Friedman give the traditional source documents, you could probably come up with a version that more or less compatible with a shallow composition period that you are advocating. (And the Neo-Documentary approach might work too.) However much modern literary analysis of the Pentateuch has seriousoly exploded the structure of the DH (with the exception of the priestly/non-priestly distinction that remains an almost universal constant) and approaches texts in a different way and with a different understanding of the supplementary, redactional and scribal activity. So the redactional architecture of the Pentateuch that they are proposing is often very different to that of the old Documentary approach, and I think does not fit well into the shallow 2 year+ period you are suggesting. I will have to see if I can come up with a good case that illustrates what I mean clearly.

If a text expressing a particular ideology or belief system was inherited by a generation that held different views, would we not expect the new generation to either replace or rewrite the old text so that they would have a work that reflects their new understanding?

No, I wouldn't expect it – not necessarily. What we find are nuanced revisions, expansions, supplementations of earlier versions that seem to express evolving views rather than extreme shifts of ideas that call for the "suppressing" the old. We can certainly see evidence of different "scholarly schools" - Priestly, Deuteronomistic - whose texts all show signs of parallel successive development. But at some point the different scribal writings were all viewed as valid, or somewhat compatible, or above all of value to later redactors/tradents, despite the discrepancies. On top of that we see what one might call post-amalgamation redaction/supplementation - overlaying both priestly and non-priestly texts, which presupposes that they have already been conflated, perhaps undertaken with a view to bringing them into closer alignment. In addition to that that, we see cases of piecemeal scribal supplementations (see below) and these too often show signs of wanting to bring different narratives or laws into cloers harmony with each other. The shear complexity and variated nature of the stratification and supplementation, the differences in approach and its successive nature bespeaks a pretty long period of complex development, not a short-term process. At least, so it appears to me

But that's not what we see in the Pentateuch. Whoever was piecing together the different pieces of literature was clearly not overly bothered by maintaining contradictory and variant and inconsistent accounts.

Which is certainly hard to align with Gmirkin's notion that the Pentateuch was a single project authorised by the High Priest, and that the scholars had the same Greek source or sources. If Plato was the source of the laws, how can one explain the 3 "competing" corpora of laws being derived from them? Or, to put it another way. He/you suggest that the text is shows evidence of "different groups, priesthoods, traditions" which suggests a coming together of diverse texts. But, according to Gmirkin, a vast amount of this same textual material is derived from the Greek texts "discovered" in Alexandria. So how did the textual diversity happen in the first place? How did the "different groups" get to develop their own versions of the Greek texts they all began with, which then had to be re-combined? The two elements of the theory (the origin of the Pentateuch as a specific project, and analysis of it as a comflation of different texts) pull in precisely opposite directions.

Does not such a body of work appear to be the work of a "committee"? You know, a camel is a horse designed by a committee, as they say.

If we try to explain a body of texts as being revised in successive generations to reflect different ideologies then we have a situation where a single mind or idea -- even if represented by several editors -- are in charge of each stage. If their intent was to introduce new ideas and supplant the old ideas then we have the problem of why they did not smooth out the contradictions.

But that's not what I think. It is very complicated, and impossible to think about in abstractions or broad generalisation. I am talking mostly about scribal and redactional revision and supplementation rather than someone "supplanting old ideas". Some of the constituent elements (pre-Pentateuchal texts that became integrated into the Pentateuch) do seem to rival other texts (but this is hard to be sure about), or at least didn't expect them to be appearing in the same collection as they do appear in now. Others seem to be intentional efforts to override earlier material (sometimes while seeming to faithfully repeat them!) The earlier stages were clearly not about producing an authoritative law book. They were simply scribal works and made far less grandiose claims

But if we have authors representing different groups, priesthoods, traditions, working together, in a cooperative spirit -- as at least one specialist scholar has argued was indeed the case with Samaritan and Jerusalem priests -- then would we not expect what we in fact have: the different traditions etc all wrapped up into one.

As I say, it is difficult to think about this in broad generalisations but I don’t get the feeling that the many tensions in the Pentateuch really express a contemporary cooperative spirit in any meaningful sense at all. And when you say "traditional" I'm not sure what you mean. Written traditions? Oral traditions? What concrete traditions are you thinking of that can be identified in the text we have now?

Or if we find such an idea unlikely, is it any more unlikely than the former, which is surely not without its own problems or unanswered questions.

I'd say that the sheer evidence of the complexity of the text makes the notion of a longer period more likely than any “couple-of-years” theory. The texts themselves give evidence of very complex levels of literary interventions. The DSS offer interesting evidence of this sort of scribal activity. See 4Q22 PaleoExodus in which, inter alia, a passage from the Deut 5 narrative has been spliced into Ex 20 narrative. There is evidence that the same sort of supplementation happened earlier in the transmission of the text and can be found in various texts of the Pentateuch, where successive additions have either sought to update ideas, particularly with ideas expressed elsewhere in the five books, and thus bring texts into greater consistency.

My opinion doesn’t really start from an overall theory and chronology - it start with texts. Concrete cases. Chapters, paragraphs, verses, words. Examination of texts in detail reveals the stratification that for me simply doesn't look like scholars sitting round a table, as at a seminar, planning a "collaboration" ... though that doesn't rule out some editorial decisions being made in this fashion.) Could some texts be combined over a short period of time? Yes. Could other texts have developed in a couple of years? No. The Pentateuch is too complex to be reduced to a single, simple model.

As regards absolute chronology, as I’ve said very often, I’m pretty agnostic because I’m more interested in “excavating” the textual strata than giving them absolute dates.

This is not to mention the festival laws, which (though Gmirkin presumably does not consider them as connected to Plato)

Plato's Laws stresses the importance of regular festivals, and lots of them.

Do you believe that the texts regarding the festival laws in the Pentateuch existed before Plato? Or were they created afresh by Plato-influenced scholars in order to follow Plato's suggestion?

I daresay I have repeated myself a lot in the above. But I’ll just let it stand.

(Edited to add and reshape the following)

To be honest, part of me would like to give Gmirkin a rest – and spend more time with, to my mind at least, more promising investigations into the subject of the relationship between the Biblical and Greek/Hellenistic literature and other new areas of research.

I now realise that there are, after all, other scholars who discuss this subject and their less ambitious claims may (one hopes) be based on more compelling evidence and more robust method than I think Gmirkin provides in his (for me) over-speculative model.

Another area of interest would be to explore the proposition that Judean and Samaritan scholars collaborated on the Pentateuch: to see if there really is evidence of that. I've been reading two John S Bergsma essays which actually take a more radical view: that the Pentateuch is a mostly Samarian/Samaritan work, with little Judahite/Judean input at all, and therefore hardly a "collaboration" as such, which I found pretty compelling, though I've still to be entirely convinced.

[Secret Alias]

It's like Erich von Däniken. Disprove that aliens visited Earth. Can't disprove it? Must be true.

[neilgodfrey]

Not "fair to unpopular arguments"? Everything about that characterization is off. The response to Doudna's paper was fair, nobody cared that the idea was merely "unpopular," and, as was pointed out at length, "arguments" had not actually been made for Doudna's idea. After I had already posted an entirely fair argument against the idea, which at no point referred to its status as "unpopular" or not, it was said about Doudna's paper: "It is not presented as a detailed argument to make the case." It is impossible to be unfair to an argument when there isn't one, and a fair response can certainly be a negative one.

The point I had in mind was that my attempt to point out the facts of Doudna's presentation -- to be fair to his presentation -- prompted at least one person to express the view that I was motivated by a particular liking for the idea :-/

So, please, let me get this straight... in your opinion, is this what happened?

(1) You defended fairness
(2) I attacked your fairness
(3) I attacked your fairness because it was fairness for an unpopular presentation
(4) Suddenly, I struck out with a personal attack, viciously accusing you of liking something
(5) I am a person for whom "the concept of being fair to unpopular arguments is beyond [my] comprehension"

Is that about right?

Oh my god, Peter. Are my words so incomprehensible?

I said I defended a fairness about a specific thing.

You did not attack "my fairness" at all and I don't know how you can think I ever said anything like that.

Where does this "vicious" come from? We are on totally different planets. I really don't think of you as being "vicious" or anything much at all because I really don't know you and have never had the slightest thought that you might be vicious about anything.

You did tell me what I was liking and I was mystified because I wondered how you could see that sort of thing in my mind or in anything I wrote.

As for your point number 5, I think you are over-reaching there. I am quite sure in the abstract and in normal everyday life and communication you have very good comprehension skills. But it does appear that from time to time you miss the target by a smidgen.

[Peter Kirby]

So far off I don't know where to begin. What's up with you? Is this really so important? I thought I was defending fundamental comprehension of an article with concrete evidence from the actual words in the title and article itself.

What's with all this vague and ambiguous word "fairness" that can apply to anything when I was trying to be very specific, and where do "vicious" and "attack" come from? get real, please. Calm down. Try to focus on exactly what I'm saying and stop reading more into it that what the words actually say.

Not "fair to unpopular arguments"? Everything about that characterization is off. The response to Doudna's paper was fair, nobody cared that the idea was merely "unpopular," and, as was pointed out at length, "arguments" had not actually been made for Doudna's idea. After I had already posted an entirely fair argument against the idea, which at no point referred to its status as "unpopular" or not, it was said about Doudna's paper: "It is not presented as a detailed argument to make the case." It is impossible to be unfair to an argument when there isn't one, and a fair response can certainly be a negative one.

The point I had in mind was that my attempt to point out the facts of Doudna's presentation -- to be fair to his presentation -- prompted at least one person to express the view that I was motivated by a particular liking for the idea :-/

So, please, let me get this straight... in your opinion, is this what happened?

(1) You defended fairness
(2) I attacked your fairness
(3) I attacked your fairness because it was fairness for an unpopular presentation
(4) Suddenly, I struck out with a personal attack, viciously accusing you of liking something
(5) I am a person for whom "the concept of being fair to unpopular arguments is beyond [my] comprehension"

Is that about right?

Oh my god, Peter. Are my words so incomprehensible?

I said I defended a fairness about a specific thing.

You did not attack "my fairness" at all and I don't know how you can think I ever said anything like that.

Where does this "vicious" come from? We are on totally different planets. I really don't think of you as being "vicious" or anything much at all because I really don't know you and have never had the slightest thought that you might be vicious about anything.

You did tell me what I was liking and I was mystified because I wondered how you could see that sort of thing in my mind or in anything I wrote.

As for your point number 5, I think you are over-reaching there. I am quite sure in the abstract and in normal everyday life and communication you have very good comprehension skills. But it does appear that from time to time you miss the target by a smidgen.

I'm going out to dinner right now. It really isn't important, as you pointed out.

[neilgodfrey]

but I think it pretty much demands that any answer must take into account that there was earlier pre-existing material that editors did not have free reign to junk,

and this is exactly what Gmirkin's thesis does.

Does he? I didn’t get that from him. For the avoidance of doubt, I really meant written material. I'm not clear that Gmirkin acknowledges much pre-existing written material in the Pentateuch, barring a few bits (like the Hammurabi Laws brought to Samaria by Babylonian deportees). And my impression is that he considers most of the differences between the Biblical text and Greek “originals” as being adaptations introduced by the Judeo-Samarian writers, rather than being derived from their own pre-existing literary creations, incorporated into the Pentateuchal composition. But he doesn’t go into great detail about this so it’s difficult to be definite.

Yes, he does. It's a major part, if not the major part, of his proposal of a collaborative effort of multiple interested parties in the composition of the Pentateuch. It's hard to miss. There is more than a "few Hammurabi-like bits" in the Pentateuch and Gmirkin addresses many of them.

But I'm not sure what your point is about "written" material exactly. It's all written material that is being addressed.

and that the text grew over a period of time.

and this raises the question I have been seeking an answer to but that answer has so far been absent. Why is a period of time greater than a year or two necessary?

It is very difficult to discuss this in terms of broad generalisations. Some parts of the editorial activity could indeed take little time. But in other cases, texts show evidence of sustained scribal activity - repeated, successive amplifications of a text that cannot seriously be squeezed into such a short period. This sort of textual amplification has nothing at all to do with the Documentary Hypothesis either in principle or detail.

An example would help. How many or which of the various "seams" and redactions would necessitate more than a few months? And how does one explain such efforts that leave the contradictions standing?

And here I have to ask you how familiar you are with the various different Pentateuchal literary theories? I presume you are familiar with the Documentary Hypothesis, though I don't know if you are familiar with it in terms of precise textual analysis or justknow of it in outline, as the once standard scholarly position. I suppose that if you eliminated the dates that R E Friedman give the traditional source documents, you could probably come up with a version that more or less compatible with a shallow composition period that you are advocating. (And the Neo-Documentary approach might work too.) However much modern literary analysis of the Pentateuch has seriousoly exploded the structure of the DH (with the exception of the priestly/non-priestly distinction that remains an almost universal constant) and approaches texts in a different way and with a different understanding of the supplementary, redactional and scribal activity. So the redactional architecture of the Pentateuch that they are proposing is often very different to that of the old Documentary approach, and I think does not fit well into the shallow 2 year+ period you are suggesting. I will have to see if I can come up with a good case that illustrates what I mean clearly.

I have explained what I mean when I use the term "documentary hypothesis" because I am very aware of certain criticisms of the original DH -- but I would prefer you to be specific with actual examples that address the question I have raised. I look forward to the good case you come up with.

If a text expressing a particular ideology or belief system was inherited by a generation that held different views, would we not expect the new generation to either replace or rewrite the old text so that they would have a work that reflects their new understanding?

No, I wouldn't expect it – not necessarily. What we find are nuanced revisions, expansions, supplementations of earlier versions that seem to express evolving views rather than extreme shifts of ideas that call for the "suppressing" the old. We can certainly see evidence of different "scholarly schools" - Priestly, Deuteronomistic - whose texts all show signs of parallel successive development. But at some point the different scribal writings were all viewed as valid, or somewhat compatible, or above all of value to later redactors/tradents, despite the discrepancies. On top of that we see what one might call post-amalgamation redaction/supplementation - overlaying both priestly and non-priestly texts, which presupposes that they have already been conflated, perhaps undertaken with a view to bringing them into closer alignment. In addition to that that, we see cases of piecemeal scribal supplementations (see below) and these too often show signs of wanting to bring different narratives or laws into cloers harmony with each other. The shear complexity and variated nature of the stratification and supplementation, the differences in approach and its successive nature bespeaks a pretty long period of complex development, not a short-term process. At least, so it appears to me

So if the different scribal schools were all in harmonious cooperation to produce the horse that looked like the camel, then why is it necessary to place them in some kind of diachronic time-line of activity? If they are in dialogue with one another, why does that have to be over a century or decades and not, rather, years? Would not a shorter time actually favour the likelihood of maintaining a long enough cooperative spirit?

But that's not what we see in the Pentateuch. Whoever was piecing together the different pieces of literature was clearly not overly bothered by maintaining contradictory and variant and inconsistent accounts.

Which is certainly hard to align with Gmirkin's notion that the Pentateuch was a single project authorised by the High Priest, and that the scholars had the same Greek source or sources. If Plato was the source of the laws, how can one explain the 3 "competing" corpora of laws being derived from them? Or, to put it another way. He/you suggest that the text is shows evidence of "different groups, priesthoods, traditions" which suggests a coming together of diverse texts. But, according to Gmirkin, a vast amount of this same textual material is derived from the Greek texts "discovered" in Alexandria. So how did the textual diversity happen in the first place? How did the "different groups" get to develop their own versions of the Greek texts they all began with, which then had to be re-combined? The two elements of the theory (the origin of the Pentateuch as a specific project, and analysis of it as a comflation of different texts) pull in precisely opposite directions.

Why is it hard to align with Gmirkin's theory? Are you assuming that the High Priest is a dictator who is incapable of a cooperative spirit?

Plato was not the only and sole source of the laws. The Pentateuch is not a revision of Plato. It is an amalgam of Greek and Asian thought -- the very definition of "Hellenistic".

The authors of the Pentateuch were not blank slates being exposed to Plato. No-one has suggested anything like that. They had their traditions, their rituals, that they brought into the effort.

Does not such a body of work appear to be the work of a "committee"? You know, a camel is a horse designed by a committee, as they say.

If we try to explain a body of texts as being revised in successive generations to reflect different ideologies then we have a situation where a single mind or idea -- even if represented by several editors -- are in charge of each stage. If their intent was to introduce new ideas and supplant the old ideas then we have the problem of why they did not smooth out the contradictions.

But that's not what I think. It is very complicated, and impossible to think about in abstractions or broad generalisation. I am talking mostly about scribal and redactional revision and supplementation rather than someone "supplanting old ideas". Some of the constituent elements (pre-Pentateuchal texts that became integrated into the Pentateuch) do seem to rival other texts (but this is hard to be sure about), or at least didn't expect them to be appearing in the same collection as they do appear in now. Others seem to be intentional efforts to override earlier material (sometimes while seeming to faithfully repeat them!) The earlier stages were clearly not about producing an authoritative law book. They were simply scribal works and made far less grandiose claims

Well, it is very clear that the final product did not survive word for word as if God-breathed. It was clearly subject to revisions from the get-go by other parties. We know that from the DSS and what we can learn from the various Greek renditions comparing Hebrew remains, including the MT.

As for the main text that we have today (or texts, LXX and MT -- neither of which are the pristine copies of the original) -- thinking in concrete terms is absolutely essential -- as you say.

But though I've been using the term "cooperative" a lot, it is also clear that -- like in many groups that are attempting to work together -- some factions do dig their heels in and the end product is not what everybody would have liked. And that's exactly what Gmirkin sees in the Pentateuch -- as do you -- but the difference is that Gmirkin (and I cannnot fault his reasoning here) sees the final product of contradictions emerging from a "group project". If it were not a group project then the contradictions are so stark that it is very hard indeed to imagine the dominant later party allowing "wrong ideas" to stand. They would be rewritten -- as normally happens in such scenarios. That there was a group effort does help explain why contradictions were allowed to remain.

But if we have authors representing different groups, priesthoods, traditions, working together, in a cooperative spirit -- as at least one specialist scholar has argued was indeed the case with Samaritan and Jerusalem priests -- then would we not expect what we in fact have: the different traditions etc all wrapped up into one.

As I say, it is difficult to think about this in broad generalisations but I don’t get the feeling that the many tensions in the Pentateuch really express a contemporary cooperative spirit in any meaningful sense at all. And when you say "traditional" I'm not sure what you mean. Written traditions? Oral traditions? What concrete traditions are you thinking of that can be identified in the text we have now?

I have specific instances in mind -- not just "abstractions" -- e.g. the conflict between the rather laissez-faire atmosphere re gods in Genesis by comparison with the jealous god of Mount Sinai. I'm thinking of the different ten commandments -- how the fourth commandment has two quite different rationales in different places. I'm thinking of the absence of the mention of Jerusalem vis a vis Mount Gerizim, etc.

As for traditional -- I'm thinking that the rituals of certain sacrifices were longstanding before the Hellenistic era. So was the worship of Yahweh, obviously. Some of the motifs attached to that god in Canaan-Syria are carried over into the Pentateuch. There were evidently traditions relating to various places in Canaan that emerge in narrative of Genesis. Gerizim had its traditions, no doubt, as did Jerusalem. Passover had its traditions that were not identical to how they ended up in the Pentateuch.

Or if we find such an idea unlikely, is it any more unlikely than the former, which is surely not without its own problems or unanswered questions.

I'd say that the sheer evidence of the complexity of the text makes the notion of a longer period more likely than any “couple-of-years” theory. The texts themselves give evidence of very complex levels of literary interventions. The DSS offer interesting evidence of this sort of scribal activity. See 4Q22 PaleoExodus in which, inter alia, a passage from the Deut 5 narrative has been spliced into Ex 20 narrative. There is evidence that the same sort of supplementation happened earlier in the transmission of the text and can be found in various texts of the Pentateuch, where successive additions have either sought to update ideas, particularly with ideas expressed elsewhere in the five books, and thus bring texts into greater consistency.

Again, specific examples to illustrate the necessity for decades or centuries would help.

Why does "complexity" require a gradual evolution over a very long time? Over time, the need for revision would be expected to come from a new situation where a new group is dominant -- in that case, though, one would expect the contradictions to be erased.

You disagree, saying the different groups existed side by side with some sort of tolerance, iiuc. But if that's the case, then why the need for a long time instead of it happening within a relatively short project time period?

My opinion doesn’t really start from an overall theory and chronology - it start with texts. Concrete cases. Chapters, paragraphs, verses, words. Examination of texts in detail reveals the stratification that for me simply doesn't look like scholars sitting round a table, as at a seminar, planning a "collaboration" ... though that doesn't rule out some editorial decisions being made in this fashion.) Could some texts be combined over a short period of time? Yes. Could other texts have developed in a couple of years? No. The Pentateuch is too complex to be reduced to a single, simple model.

As regards absolute chronology, as I’ve said very often, I’m pretty agnostic because I’m more interested in “excavating” the textual strata than giving them absolute dates.

You may accept that I, too, am starting with concrete cases, chapters, verses, etc. That would help the communication, perhaps.

Again -- I would be interested in examples of contradictions that cannot be explained in the group-project theory. You presumably have some in mind that can be explained over a short period of time but also have others that cannot be so explained. What are some examples of the latter?

I don't deny that there are some passages that may have intruded in at much later dates or in a different environment (though an example does not come to mind right now -- unless it's the daughters of Zelophehad -- but we are talking about core stuff.

This is not to mention the festival laws, which (though Gmirkin presumably does not consider them as connected to Plato)

Plato's Laws stresses the importance of regular festivals, and lots of them.

Do you believe that the texts regarding the festival laws in the Pentateuch existed before Plato? Or were they created afresh by Plato-influenced scholars in order to follow Plato's suggestion?

I don't "believe" anything for which we have no evidence. The Elephantine papyri indirectly indicate that there were no written festival laws comparable to what we read in the Pentateuch. There were certainly festivals, and probably some inscriptions somewhere relating to observance of them. But let's stick with the evidence.

In sum, my takeaway from your reply is that the Pentateuch is "too complex" to imagine a cooperative effort. This is the assumption that is being challenged by Gmirkin and others -- that "there had to be written texts of such and such a kind" in the Persian era and there "has to be an earlier version of the Pentateuch writings" -- simply because it's so complex and it's how we've been hard-wired to make sense of it all.

My response is that we should not be misled to thinking that "cooperative" means always of the same mind in all details. Often parties agree to work together for common causes despite strong differences and then we have the horse looking like a camel product.

My impression of your disagreement is that it is based on incredulity -- and some lack of awareness of the details of Gmirkin's works. I would really appreciate specific examples to support your case -- what are some instances that simply defy a likelihood of different priestly groups, Judeans and Samaritans, working together, with some more Hellenistically inclined than others?

Incredulity is evident when you ask if I have much familiarity with the opposing theories and suggest I am speaking at an abstract level. No, it is the awareness of those opposing theories which have occupied most of my reading time, and I have tried to regularly bring the discussion down to requesting specific examples or explaining things in concrete terms.

[neilgodfrey]

Key point --

The discussion above -- as well as the title of the thread -- is missing the key point of Russell Gmirkin's study, a bit.

The focus of Gmirkin's study is a comparative analysis of the Pentateuch with Greek works and comparing this analysis with the well-worn studies that have sought comparisons with the Asian works. It is about broadening the scope of material for comparison.

That is the key point -- that time and time again the comparisons show closer affinities (more numerous, specific in detail and theme) with Greek literature than with the Asian lit. Not always, but often.

By simply ignoring this analysis we close ourselves off from the question of how to explain these affinities. Not all scholars do close their eyes to them -- some are brave enough to even propose that the Greeks somehow were influenced by the Hebrew literature in some way. Some propose an influence through the Persian era. But none has taken up the level of analysis that Gmirkin has -- at the public invitation, I understand, of N.P. Lemche's article.

Whether the Pentateuch came together through a gradual evolutionary process, or was, for most part (despite a few rough edges) composed as a single project, is another question. It is not the same question as asking if there was a significant Hellenistic influence in the Pentateuch.

Ditto for the Alexandrian provenance of the work.

The idea of a collaborative project at Alexandria is Gmirkin's best explanation for what he finds in his analysis of the Greek influence in the Pentateuch. It coheres with the independent, external evidence -- what is and is not in the archaeological record and with other writings of the era.

I think it is important to keep the two parts of the question separate: the Greek influence and the details of where and how.

But what the where and how question does raise, at least G's answer to that question, is the same as what "minimalists" have raised on other grounds -- keeping in mind G's independence from the "minimalists".

The idea that the Pentateuch came together over a long period of trial and error, redaction and addition, etc ... is so embedded in our way of thinking about the work, so much part of our understanding of its history, that it is hard to accept that such a model is not at all necessary to explain what we have.

I have asked austendw for specific contradictions and duplications etc that he believes cannot be explained apart from a model of a very long -- let's say at least a generational -- process. I really would appreciate anyone positing such "evidence" for what austendw calls the "diachronic" model.

The strongest one that comes to my mind is the two natures of Yahweh: the relative "liberal" of the early chapters of Genesis and the "godfather" figure of Exodus.

[neilgodfrey]

One needs to think of it as a sort of cultural mycelium... and complex interaction, and complex relationships at many levels - both vertical and horizontal (ie chronologically vertical and geographically horizontal). It is in the nature of this cultural consanguinity to be more a "background" an environment rather than a "foregrounded" figure upon it (to go all Gestalt all of a sudden) so it's workings are not obvious... the results of it are evident, however.

Speaking of abstract generalizations versus thinking in terms of realistic, on the ground actualities -- this is an instance of what I find to be very abstract. You may have missed my earlier requests seeking an explanation in concrete historical terms.

[neilgodfrey]

A propos of which, did you manage to read any of Guy Darshan's essays? Or Jonathan Ben-Dov's one on "Influence"? If so, any comments about them?

I don't recall if I responded to this question earlier. I have read several of Darshan's articles and I can't recall if I have also read Ben-Dov but I have certainly read several in depth works on the background of Mesopotamian science and how it appears to find its way into the Bible.

But I don't understand how these ideas relate to Gmirkin's thesis? -- Except that the Pentateuch is a product of ideas that had their roots in various times and places: Mesopotamia, Syria, Canaan, in particular. I can't help but wonder if questions like this are coming from an assumption that Gmirkin is virtually denying these Asian influences, or minimizing them to some sort of virtual tokenism. If so, that is simply not the case at all. Of course the Pentateuch is not a Greek work -- it is a Semitic work, the product of Samaritans and Judeans/Jehudians. Yahweh is a Syrian/Canaanite god. Gmirkin's thesis is raising the case for more, not less. The most obvious sign of Greek influence, in my view (not Gmirkin's as far as I know) is the literary format itself -- the five books (or six or seven depending...) -- and the literary structure and themes. These features are so familiar to us it may be too easy to miss the obvious -- that they have no Asian parallel up to the Hellenistic era.