Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

But the point again is it crowds the timeline. You have a Tetrateuch with everything about Gerizim and the Persian notion of a king living in his 'house' with a pardes in his front lawn. Then a Deuteronomy or 'second law' still with the Persian loanwords. Then Joshua still with the Gerizim obsession. And then sometime thereafter the 'Jerusalem is the real holy place of God' thing gets off the ground. How do you fit all of this within the 3rd century creation timeline and find a Exodus-Leviticus scroll at the JEWISH sectarian community of Qumran which takes within a few generations of the alleged 'birth' of the Alexandrian text. Just can't fit it all in.

And why start a document in the Greek period with explicit asslicking to Persian religious doctrine and presuppositions of how the 'king of kings' lived at Gerizim? Why speak of the Torah as a 'fire law' in Persian in Deuteronomy? Why can't these Jews and Samaritans living in Greek Egypt can't give up their dependence on Persia? Why do the Samaritans obsess over fire in their services the way they do? All developed in the Greek period? Really? Why is that more reasonable?

On the Samaritan interest in fire https://books.google.com/books?id=ZwmWE ... 22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=fX2Yz ... ia&f=false

You are conflating a lot of other stuff with Gen 1-11. While there are other elements of Gmirkin's overall thesis, this is only about Gen 1-11. There is nothing in the relation of Gen 1-11 to Berossus that says the bulk of the rest of the Torah couldn't have been written hundreds of years earlier.

And of course there are inherent similarities between Persia and the Babylonians. There is a lot of overlap there, since the Persians conquered and occupied Babylonia. There is a lot of shared culture.

But we aren't the signs of Persian influence in both stages of development (Tetrateuch + Deuteronomy) confirmation of what we know from a half dozen other sources viz the Torah was written in the Persian period? What "burning problem" does moving the text to Alexandria in the Hellenistic age solve? Why isn't a quacking duck-walking fowl exactly what it appears to be? Why isn't a duck just a duck? Why make God a Persian king living in a palace with Adam in his quadriform pardes and depict Moses as a satrap dispensing his eshdat lamo? Why are these Alexandrian Greeks so intent on fooling everyone about its Persian provenance? Why the Persian beginning and end?

The argument for a Persian Pentateuch https://www.academia.edu/44787078/How_t ... Pentateuch

Interesting:

rgprice wrote: ↑Fri Oct 28, 2022 4:14 pm Interesting:

3 Another set of post-Persian text elements might be the specific num-
bers in the genealogies of Gen 5 and 11.14 These numbers build the overall chronology of the Pentateuch and differ significantly in the various versions. But these are just minor elements.

Fourth, an important argument by those who favor a generally preexilic date
for the Pentateuch is the absence of Persian loanwords. We are told that if the
Pentateuch were to contain texts from the Persian period, then Persian loanwords
would be expected in the texts. There are not any such loanwords. How significant is this?18 Apparently, this argument is not very strong. To begin with, there are very few Persian loanwords in the Hebrew Bible as a whole.19 Admittedly, no
Persian loanword can be found in the Pentateuch, but why should we expect the
case to be otherwise? It is necessary here to recall the specific narrative setting of
the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch basically plays out in the 2nd millennium b.c.e.,
in the period before David, Solomon, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and, of
course, the Persians.

On loanwords -- I am reminded of the very definition of Hellenism -- it is about the melding of Persian and Greek ways, Greek and other "Near Eastern" cultures. It was one of the reasons some historians said Alexander ran afoul of some of his Macedonian friends. I use lots of words derived from Latin and medieval French, and words borrowed from France, Malaya, India, America, Australian aborigines, but I'm not living under the Roman empire or William the Conqueror, etc etc

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Fri Oct 28, 2022 2:44 pm The argument for a Persian Pentateuch https://www.academia.edu/44787078/How_t ... Pentateuch

Let's all read that article. It's a great example of how to discuss this question:

The topic of this article pertains to the problems of dating biblical texts. As is
well known, this area is contested and hotly debated in biblical studies, and it is
very hard to rely on any kind of consensus.1 For some scholars, the Pentateuch
does not include any Persian period texts, but was already (basically) complete
in the early 6th century.2 For others, the Pentateuch is basically a product of the
Persian or even Hellenistic period.3 The very fact that such highly divergent positions
are maintained by serious scholars shows that there is no way of proving a
Persian date for specific Pentateuchal texts. All we can do is assess the likelihood
of competing theories. -- p. 101

To start with, there is some evidence to argue that the Pentateuch is basically a
pre-Hellenistic text. For most scholars this is well accepted, but in the overall
landscape of biblical studies, it is not.6

6 Cf. e. g., N. P. Lemche, “The Old Testament – A Hellenistic Book?” SJOT 7 (1993), 163–193;
repr. in Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period (ed.
L. L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 317; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 287–318.

Amazingly, there is no resort to regular swearing or constant expressions of one's sexual hangups or characterizations of "silly", "conspiracy theory", "stupid/stupidest". "ridiculous", "dishonest", "von daniken level", nor allusions to antisemitism or atheist bias -- and not even to caps to shout a point.

Amazing. Scholars truly are a "different species". (Let the chimps keep typing away.....)

StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Fri Oct 28, 2022 6:02 am There are questionable assumptions made above.

For example, the assertion that Berossus was the first tradent of Mesopotamian stories. That (conveniently) dismisses oral tradition (though RG otherwise claims to use oral tradition?!) as well as possible writers whose works have not survived. The view above rests overmuch on what is extant. Like it or not, much has been lost.

For example, the (ng) statement:
"The archaeological evidence of Jewish settlements throughout the Persian era in Mesopotamia, Levant, Egypt tells us that they had no knowledge of anything we can find in the Bible." Archaeology does not provide proof of a negative (no knowledge!?). Archaeologists are not mind-readers, even though ng may claim to know what other people have not read. Archaeology does provide evidence, e.g., of avoidance of eating pigs.

Like it or not, historians rely upon reconstructions of the past based on evidence. (Schmid, in the article discussed above, laments that his biblical scholar peers have too often bypassed this basic principle that is taken for granted among other historians.) The texts are to be interpreted in the light of the evidence, not the other way around.

StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Fri Oct 28, 2022 6:02 am That proposal has been accepted among Hebrew Bible scholars--correct me if mistaken--by something less than one percent of them.
One could ask why, unless one endeavours to dismiss all the other scholars as fooled zombies.

Eeeek!!! Heeelllp!!!! A new idea!!!! A question directed toward the conventional wisdom! Quick! Kill it! Kill it!

Amazingly, there is no resort to regular swearing or constant expressions of one's sexual hangups or characterizations of "silly", "conspiracy theory", "stupid/stupidest". "ridiculous", "dishonest", "von daniken level", nor allusions to antisemitism or atheist bias -- and not even to caps to shout a point

Don't even know what to say.