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

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StephenGoranson
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by StephenGoranson »

neilgodfrey asked for an example. austendw already gave such: the various law codes.

Using words such as hard-wired, embedded, and incredulity may not be a legitimate way to dismiss the example.

Especially when "ethnic" religions (relatively speaking: Judaism compared to Christianity; Hinduism compared to Buddhism) tend to preserve ancient words regarded as sacred.

For example, if I recall correctly, Parsi Zoroastrian priests chant some texts in old Avestan language, even when some of those words are not fully understood.
austendw
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by austendw »

neilgodfrey wrote: Sat May 20, 2023 2:58 am
austendw wrote: Mon May 08, 2023 4:28 am 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.
Yes, well that was a dreadful attempt to express what I was trying to convey. Let's do it with an example - which comes from reading the two Darshan's essays.

In those essays he points out that the casuistic sacrificial instructions that form a part of the priestly writings have strong and clear parallels with various Greek versions of the same "genre" discovered by archaeology. The point I am making (though Darshan doesn't) is that this demonstrates a clear common cultural relationship which cannot be attributed to a Pentateuchal borrowing from a literary work during the Hellenistic period, because there was no such Greek book to account for influence from Greece to the Bible regarding this field, and no one is suggesting that the priests of Marmarini read a version of, or even a fragment of the biblical texts on the subject. So, despite casuistic sacrificial regulation text being a pretty specialist genre, its cultural spread clearly happened (and I am not declaring in which direction it went because its not clear and probably wasn't linear) however mysterious the route, or mode of transmission however. And this, I think, addresses the question you asked some time back about how likely it was that Greek laws or suchlike could be transmitted on trading ships... suggesting that erudite information could only reasonably be transmitted by within the scholarly milieu - ie biblical scholar/authors encountering Greek literature in the Hellenistic period. Darshan shows that, however perplexing they may be to us, there were other routes from the 6th century for a similarly abstruse genre to spread round the Eastern Mediterranean, which I am suggesting may equally applicable for explaining some if not all of the parallels between Plato's laws and biblical laws.

That's also why the accuracy of the evaluation of these parallels becomes important: the closer the parallel, the more particularly literary the connection, the more likely that they are indeed direct adaptations, the less close they are the more likely they can be explained in the way Darshan describes. And that, of course, goes for narratives and stories too, which after all need not be abstruse and so can spread geographically with as much ease. Which in turn leads to Darshan's other essay:

The Origins of the Foundation Stories Genre in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Eastern Mediterranean (2014)
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by neilgodfrey »

StephenGoranson wrote: Sat May 20, 2023 4:16 am neilgodfrey asked for an example. austendw already gave such: the various law codes.

Using words such as hard-wired, embedded, and incredulity may not be a legitimate way to dismiss the example.

Especially when "ethnic" religions (relatively speaking: Judaism compared to Christianity; Hinduism compared to Buddhism) tend to preserve ancient words regarded as sacred.

For example, if I recall correctly, Parsi Zoroastrian priests chant some texts in old Avestan language, even when some of those words are not fully understood.
austendw in fact gave many examples of inconsistencies, contradictions, redactions. I also gave some extra ones, including the most classic one of all that comes from Russell Gmirkin's works: the inconsistent figures of Yahweh in Genesis and Exodus.

But such examples of different factional or ideological preferences were not what I was asking for. What I was asking for are examples of such inconsistencies that cannot be explained -- can ONLY be explained -- on a "longue durée" model of composition over many decades, a century or more.

The problem with the traditional model --- and this is where the "hardwire" and "incredulity" references come into it, because the response has been to imply I must not be familiar with the traditional arguments of Pentateuchal composition -- that problem is that if a viewpoint has been seen as invalid after a generation or more, and that new generation finds it important enough to introduce a correction to the existing documents, then we have to ask why they did not at the same time remove the older, "wrong" idea.

The response so far, as I understand it, to that question has been to say that the new generation was still faced with the presence of others who held firmly to the old view and would not allow the total revision or erasure of their beliefs from the writings.

My response has been: That is exactly the situation proposed by Russell Gmirkin and is the very case of "collaborative" engagement in producing an inconsistent set of books. So why cannot such a situation have been the very one that created the Pentateuch as a single project in the first place? Why do we have to introduce generations to explain it?

SG, your example of priests chanting archaic words they no longer understand is not relevant -- unless you can explain how it is. The question is about contradictions that are clearly understood as such in the single text.
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by neilgodfrey »

Thanks for this response, Austen. It may or may not surprise you to know that I was alerted to one of the Darshan essays by Russell Gmirkin himself. I believe Darshan's actual examples point to the very situation in which Gmirkin places the creation of the Pentateuch. Darshan certainly does not attribute the introduction of new religious stories and practices to the traveling trader making an appearance in an old society -- not at all. Rather he speaks of new colonies preserving their identity by the creation of their own founding myths that set them apart from the people in the neighbouring regions. It is when new states form in those areas that the comparatively new founding myths of the earlier immigrants might be adapted to meet the new needs of those new states. That's exactly the situation posited with the new regime imposed by the Greeks on the Samaritans from the time of Alexander's conquests.
austendw wrote: Sat May 20, 2023 2:13 pm
neilgodfrey wrote: Sat May 20, 2023 2:58 am
austendw wrote: Mon May 08, 2023 4:28 am 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.
Yes, well that was a dreadful attempt to express what I was trying to convey. Let's do it with an example - which comes from reading the two Darshan's essays.

In those essays he points out that the casuistic sacrificial instructions that form a part of the priestly writings have strong and clear parallels with various Greek versions of the same "genre" discovered by archaeology. The point I am making (though Darshan doesn't) is that this demonstrates a clear common cultural relationship which cannot be attributed to a Pentateuchal borrowing from a literary work during the Hellenistic period, because there was no such Greek book to account for influence from Greece to the Bible regarding this field, and no one is suggesting that the priests of Marmarini read a version of, or even a fragment of the biblical texts on the subject. So, despite casuistic sacrificial regulation text being a pretty specialist genre, its cultural spread clearly happened (and I am not declaring in which direction it went because its not clear and probably wasn't linear) however mysterious the route, or mode of transmission however.
The sacrificial rituals and religious festivals and priesthood hierarchies were not innovations taken from the Greeks -- that is not Gmirkin's argument. Rather, existing priesthood and practices embraced the narratives of the Greeks and adapted them to what they already had in their long-standing practices. Gmirkin points to abundant evidence of that in the preservation of the names of Canaanite deities, for example. Just to repeat the point: Hellenization is a blending of Greek and Asian cultures, not a rejection of one or wholesale adoption of the other.
austendw wrote: Mon May 08, 2023 4:28 am And this, I think, addresses the question you asked some time back about how likely it was that Greek laws or suchlike could be transmitted on trading ships... suggesting that erudite information could only reasonably be transmitted by within the scholarly milieu - ie biblical scholar/authors encountering Greek literature in the Hellenistic period. Darshan shows that, however perplexing they may be to us, there were other routes from the 6th century for a similarly abstruse genre to spread round the Eastern Mediterranean, which I am suggesting may equally applicable for explaining some if not all of the parallels between Plato's laws and biblical laws.
I responded to this point in my opening above. But to add, here is some of what Darshan writes:

Despite the migration of peoples and the changes of power in Mesopotamia or Egypt, no such phenomenon of discontinuity occurred in either of these realms, and the political and national structure remained unaltered down to the Persian period.

and

. . . the immigration traditions tend to reinforce a sense of uniqueness and superiority over those who perceive themselves as belonging to the old order and ancient administration.


The new colonies established in the Mediterranean were completely virgin, constituted wholly by migratory ethnic groups planted, by their very nature, in foreign soil.

That is, the trading colonies --- not passing trading ships -- maintained their separateness from the surrounding peoples. The original inhabitants of the region kept separate.

When the "states" surrounding the newcomer trading settlements disintegrated for whatever reason or underwent radical changes, that is when they arguably adopted and adapted the foundation stories of the "newcomers":

Numerous groups adopted the migration narratives that were circulating among the nomadic societies in the eastern Mediterranean, forging them into a foundation tradition—even when they were not applicable to all members of society—because they corresponded to the ideals embraced by the new states in the region during this period.

While stories of this kind initially flourished independently in each society, these new states were also exposed to conceptual and literary ideas via the cultural exchanges that took place in the early eastern Mediterranean.

austendw wrote: Mon May 08, 2023 4:28 amThat's also why the accuracy of the evaluation of these parallels becomes important: the closer the parallel, the more particularly literary the connection, the more likely that they are indeed direct adaptations, the less close they are the more likely they can be explained in the way Darshan describes. And that, of course, goes for narratives and stories too, which after all need not be abstruse and so can spread geographically with as much ease. Which in turn leads to Darshan's other essay:
There is no question that the Samaritans and "Jehudians" and others in the Nabatean and Syrian regions shared cultic practices. It is the old and existing priesthoods that, Gmirkin argues, adapted Greek narrative themes when changes of state were introduced by or soon after Alexander.

There is no suggestion that the entire religious and cultic system was invented from scratch in the Hellenistic era.
That was the essay I spoke of at my introduction.
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by austendw »

neilgodfrey wrote: Sat May 20, 2023 3:21 pm Thanks for this response, Austen. It may or may not surprise you to know that I was alerted to one of the Darshan essays by Russell Gmirkin himself. I believe Darshan's actual examples point to the very situation in which Gmirkin places the creation of the Pentateuch. Darshan certainly does not attribute the introduction of new religious stories and practices to the traveling trader making an appearance in an old society -- not at all. Rather he speaks of new colonies preserving their identity by the creation of their own founding myths that set them apart from the people in the neighbouring regions. It is when new states form in those areas that the comparatively new founding myths of the earlier immigrants might be adapted to meet the new needs of those new states. That's exactly the situation posited with the new regime imposed by the Greeks on the Samaritans from the time of Alexander's conquests.

[...]

The sacrificial rituals and religious festivals and priesthood hierarchies were not innovations taken from the Greeks -- that is not Gmirkin's argument. Rather, existing priesthood and practices embraced the narratives of the Greeks and adapted them to what they already had in their long-standing practices. Gmirkin points to abundant evidence of that in the preservation of the names of Canaanite deities, for example. Just to repeat the point: Hellenization is a blending of Greek and Asian cultures, not a rejection of one or wholesale adoption of the other.

[...]
That was the essay I spoke of at my introduction.
Let me start by saying that I'm finfing it very difficult to keep track of crossing questions and answers. That's not anyone's fault, of course; it's the nature of the platform. But I now have about four windows open with four draft answers to four of your posts and I am completely at sea. And to add to it, there are quotes within quotes within quotes, and within a draft reply I can hardly tell who wrote what, where and when. As we say in London, it's doing my head in. We may have to agree to disagree agreeably.

I think I heard of The Origins of the Foundation Stories Genre in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Eastern Mediterranean (2014) at the same time and in the same way as you - from Gmirkin's comment... in Vridar, I think (?).

But that particular essay is not in fact materially related to Darshan's two other essays about the casuistic sacrificial rules, which have nothing to do with colonies or origin stories. I should never have mentioned that third essay because it has skewed the discussion away from the central point I was making. The two essays are these:

The Casuistic Priestly Law in Ancient Mediterranean Context: The History of the Genre and its Sitz im Leben (2018)

and

The Casuistic Law in Leviticus, the New Marmarini Inscription, and the Eloulaia and Nisanaia Festivals (2022)

They are about a particular genre in the Pentateuch that cannot have been borrowed from the Greeks by any literary adaptation in the Hellenistic period because there was no such literary work from which such an adaptation could have taken place. Nevertheless the similarity in the genre as far away as Marmarini in mainland Greece is very real. Therefore the spread of this genre was by some means other than literary borrowing of the sort Gmirkin suggests in his three books. That's my point. We don't know how they were transmitted, but transmitted they were. And given that this very specialist form or rules could be transmitted through the Eastern Mediterranean/Syro-Levantine world in this way, other Graeco-Levantine motifs could have spread by the same now unidentifiable ways.

It seems to me that the core argument of, say, the Plato book is that if we find laws in Plato or Greece in general that have parallels in the Pentateuch then they are best, or most economically, or most plausibly explained by, or even we have no other option but to explain them as direct adaptation of Plato's book; that cultural diffusion arguments are speculative, or involve inventing speculative common origins; or they are subject to Occam's Razor or some such. Darshan's two essays on these sacrificial regulations I think offer an effective rebuttal of that argument, by showing that cultural diffusion certainly did happen in the Eastern-Med/Levant from the 6th Century BCE. And that therefore legal parallels could in principle have arisen because of that process (and whether that is or isn't a preferable explanation to Gmirkin's proposals cannot be taken for granted and needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis).

As regards the passage you highlighted, I'm going to have to re-read the essay and get back to you, because that is absolutely not what I took away from the essay. I understood it rather differently. So I'll have to check and see if I've misremembered it. I'll get back to you that soon .... If I haven't become totally befuddled in the meantime.
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by austendw »

austendw wrote: Sun May 21, 2023 2:27 am
neilgodfrey wrote: Sat May 20, 2023 3:21 pm Thanks for this response, Austen. It may or may not surprise you to know that I was alerted to one of the Darshan essays by Russell Gmirkin himself. I believe Darshan's actual examples point to the very situation in which Gmirkin places the creation of the Pentateuch. Darshan certainly does not attribute the introduction of new religious stories and practices to the traveling trader making an appearance in an old society -- not at all. Rather he speaks of new colonies preserving their identity by the creation of their own founding myths that set them apart from the people in the neighbouring regions. It is when new states form in those areas that the comparatively new founding myths of the earlier immigrants might be adapted to meet the new needs of those new states. That's exactly the situation posited with the new regime imposed by the Greeks on the Samaritans from the time of Alexander's conquests.
That was the essay I spoke of at my introduction.
Ok, I realise that my oblique reference to the "Origins of the Foundation Stories Genre" essay by Darshan was lazily expressed and so misleading - I didn't mean to say what you think I said. I was referring back, vaguely, to a comment you made about "the various suggestions that have attempted to explain the evident Greek influences in the Pentateuch by means of Phoenician traders"

What I really meant to say, and this followed my discussion of the two essays about the transmission of the casuistic sacrificial regulations genre between Greece and the Levant from the 6th Century BCE, was that this third essay discussed similar transmission of origin stories in the "in the first third of the first millennium b.c.e." The point I was making was that intercultural connectivity could explain the transmission of a lot other literary motifs, genres and shared cultural customs.
Several factors indicate that these traditions depicting a nation’s history in terms of migration and settlement were not the possession of the
Greeks and Israelites alone in the Mediterranean but were characteristic of many of the small kingdoms in the region at the beginning of the first millennium b.c.e.
[...]
Consequently, this genre did not take written form until the beginning of the first millennium b.c.e. At the same time, in the first third of the first millennium b.c.e. a series of national narratives arose and developed within the new states and the Greek and Phoenician colonies founded during this period. The abundance of traditions promoted the reinforcement and preservation of wandering and migration traditions already prevalent among the seminomadic societies in the region and led to their establishment as foundational narratives. The contact between neighboring states familiarized the peoples of the region with various foundation and settlement stories and led to a cultural exchange. (p.709)
This model, and its specific dating, offers an alternative to the Wajdenbaum/Gmirkin approach. It isn;t meant to deny the possibility of cultural exchanges in the Hellenistic period, but argues for a much more varied and long-standing cultural connection with Greece. In other words, some of the parallels that Gmirkin and Wajdenbaum insist could be nothing but Hellenistic adaptations of Greek literature may actually go back to the earlier normative cultural connections between the states of the Eastern Mediterranean.
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Re: The Problem With The Theory That the Pentateuch Was Written in Alexandria

Post by neilgodfrey »

austendw wrote: Sun May 21, 2023 2:27 am As we say in London, it's doing my head in.
I've been thinking of stepping back and starting a new thread to focus on the core issues.
austendw wrote: Sun May 21, 2023 2:27 amIt seems to me that the core argument of, say, the Plato book is that if we find laws in Plato or Greece in general that have parallels in the Pentateuch then they are best, or most economically, or most plausibly explained by, or even we have no other option but to explain them as direct adaptation of Plato's book; that cultural diffusion arguments are speculative, or involve inventing speculative common origins; or they are subject to Occam's Razor or some such. Darshan's two essays on these sacrificial regulations I think offer an effective rebuttal of that argument, by showing that cultural diffusion certainly did happen in the Eastern-Med/Levant from the 6th Century BCE. And that therefore legal parallels could in principle have arisen because of that process (and whether that is or isn't a preferable explanation to Gmirkin's proposals cannot be taken for granted and needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis).
No-one has denied "cultural diffusion" in the "Eastern-Med/Levant from the 6th Century BCE" as a fact of life.

The Pentateuch is not "a copy" of a Greek genre -- it is a blend of cultural heritages. It is not "an adaption" of Plato's Dialogues -- though I know you don't take your criticism that far.

Gmirkin is not saying that if we find parallels between Pentateuch laws and Greek writings then we should somehow default to a Greek origin of those laws. On the contrary, Gmirkin's whole point is to open up, to broaden, the range of comparands to the Pentateuch. The problem raised by Lemche was that on the whole only Eastern Med/Levantine literature had been submitted for comparison and the Greek literature by and large set aside. Gmirkin's point is to see what happens if we include the Greek literature alongside the other items of comparison.

I have been trying to emphasize that Gmirkin certainly acknowledges East Med/Levantine motifs and influences in the Pentateuch. They are not denied. Though he has argued -- demonstrated, I believe -- that some hitherto purported parallels with Mesopotamian writing in fact have closer and more detailed comparisons with Greek writings.

But at the same time the Pentateuch is a Samaritan-Judean writings building on Samaritan-Judean heritages, cult, rituals. Those are the warp and woof of the work. The most obvious instance is the presence and role of the god Yahweh. He's not a Greek deity. He's not Plato's Demiurge. He's as Canaanite/Nabatean/Syrian as you can get.

No doubt the Yahweh cult had traditions of ritual sacrifices that were later incorporated into any narratives of origins.

But he has been amalgamated with Greek themes and concepts. The genre of the narrative about the founding of a new colony is a Greek innovation, for example. The Semitic god Yahweh and a subset of Semitic peoples who worshiped him have embraced the founding story of a new colony, a Greek tale, to express their own origins.

The best explanation for such an innovation belongs, I think, to a time when radical changes had happened to that innovating culture.
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Re: The Problem With The Theory ...

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Philistines!

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

Post by neilgodfrey »

austendw wrote: Sun May 21, 2023 10:36 pm The point I was making was that intercultural connectivity could explain the transmission of a lot other literary motifs, genres and shared cultural customs.
My turn to express some confusion, now. --- as you said, we are doing our heads in with too much stuff...

I had another look at the Origins of Foundation Stories article by Darshan (is that the one you are referring to in your last comment?)

My reading of it suggests to me that the only cultural source for that genre of literature would have been the Greeks -- but not directly, according to Darshan. Is that the point -- "not directly" -- you have been trying to stress? On page 10 Darshan writes:

The number of literary parallels between the Greek and Israelites foundation stories and the absence of this genre from the literature of the great ancient Near Eastern empires makes it difficult to assume that the affinities between them are coincidental or merely reflect similar patterns of thought. At the same time, the similarities cannot be the consequence of direct literary influence in either direction.

Why cannot the similarities be the consequence of direct literary influence?

Οn page 15 Darshan explains, if I understand him correctly:

The majority of the foundation narratives I have presented thus far— relating to the Israelites, Dorians, Aramites, Philistines, Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, and the kingdom of Que— belong to societies which became states at the end of the second millennium and beginning of the first millennium B.C.E. with the collapse of the great kingdoms in the region (Egypt, Hatti, and Mycenae).

But the question I have been asking is: What evidence do we have that Israel, around the turn of the millennium, around 1000 BCE, adopted a Greek-like foundation story of migration and settlement into their land?

As far as I am aware we have only the hypothesis that the Pentateuch records or adapts traditions that originate at that time.

The archaeological evidence that we have of Samaria from that time and right through to the end of the Persian period offers us no support for any hypothesis that distinctive Pentateuchal ideas were known or practiced throughout that time. Samaria's Yahweh worship appears to have been no different from other forms of Yahweh worship among other peoples throughout that era.

It is only with the Hellenistic era that we find our earliest independent (independent of the Pentateuch itself) evidence for the existence of the Pentateuchal literature.

Once we step outside the hypothesis that Darshan is working with, then there is no reason to claim, as he does, that

The similarities cannot be the consequence of direct literary influence in either direction.

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

Post by StephenGoranson »

The title of this thread is not about possible cultural influences having moved in multiple directions at various times, which few dispute.

Rather, the subject at hand is whether a specific, proposed,
conspiracy,
ca. 273-272,
in Alexandria,
between two groups,
one, agents of Plato (beautiful dialogue writer; failed poet; failed politician) plus several other Greek writers, and,
two, some group sent from Judaea and (maybe also) Samaria,
actually happened.
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