Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

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This thread is very poorly organized, because it does not identify what the "Babylonian stuff" is, who alleges that it came from Berossus, and who alleges that it came from Plato. I assume that this is a criticism of what Goranson claims that Gmirkin alleges about certain material, but such a thing is not explicitly said by Goranson.

But then, given how poorly Goranson has presented Gmirkin's arguments and relate scholarship, I would prefer to wait for a better source - such as reading Gmirkin's books (sometimes again, other times for the 1st time) - in order to learn what Gmirkin says about "Babylonian stuff", Plato, and Berossus.

Lest people accuse me of making up Goranson's misrepresentation, consider the following:

ABuddhist wrote: ↑Thu Aug 18, 2022 8:37 am

StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Thu Aug 18, 2022 6:47 am 1) To try to clarify the silver amulet disagreement.
IIUC, REG considers the silver amulets--which are reliably dated to circa 600 BCE--to attest to an oral source. Not written. Compare Numbers and Deuteronomy. Some others disagree.

2) Emanuel Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research, Third edition, Eisenbrauns, 2015, page 85, on Deut 26:12:
"The rendering of the LXX is based on a wrong grammatical combination of two words...."

1. With all due respect, your summary of the disagreement about the silver amulets elides that Gmirkin is not alone in believing that the amulets attest to an oral source.

Russell Gmirkin wrote: ↑Sun Aug 14, 2022 6:34 am (1) The Ketef Hinnom silver amulets with verbal parallels to Num 6:24-26 are extensively discussed, with bibliography, in Berossus and Genesis, 27-28. It is agreed by Gabriel Barkay (2004), who discovered the amulets (nice guy—met him in Jerusalem in 1997 when he led an archaeological tour of the City of David for a group of us Dead Sea Scrolls scholars), Ada Yardeni (1991), Levine (1993) and others that the amulets reflect an oral priestly formula and are of no evidentiary value in dating the Pentateuch/Numbers as a written text.

(1-a) I don’t know which one of the four authors of Barkay, Lundberg, Vaugh and Zuckerman 2004 wrote the following in the Conclusions section, which seems to have tendentious theological overtones consistent with the Fuller Theological Seminary (Lundberg), USC School of Religion (Zuckerman) or the [Lutheran] Gustav Adolphus College (Vaugn): “We can thus reassert the conclusion reached by most scholars that the inscriptions found on these plaques preserve the earliest known citations of biblical texts. The new readings outlined in this article show that these plaques not only contain biblical quotations, but they also provide us with the earliest examples of confessional statements concerning Yahweh.”

(1-b) This was certainly NOT Gabriel Barkay (contra Goranson), given that the very next paragraph [which Neil Godfrey also quotes] essentially reverses this unwarranted conclusion, citing Barkay’s earlier publication notes: “As has already been noted (Barkay 1992: 176-81; Yardeni 1991: 181-85), the presence of the Priestly Blessing in this late preexilic context does not in and of itself prove that the biblical context in which the blessing appears in the MT had already been consolidated. However, this does point to the preexilic presence of formulations also found in the canonical text, particularly when the confessional statements concerning Yahweh in Ketef Hinnom I are taken into account.” This reiterates Barkay's and Yardeni’s reasonable position in other articles that the oral priestly formula is pre-exilic, but not necessarily part of the written biblical text known from later times.

The switch from explaining Genesis from Babylonian sources to Greek Plato source was not too hard for ABuddhist to recognize and to respond, non-Buddhistly, clingingly, with an irrelevancy.

StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 1:11 pm The switch from explaining Genesis from Babylonian sources to Greek Plato source was not too hard for ABuddhist to recognize and to respond, non-Buddhistly, clingingly, with an irrelevancy.

Buddhists are permitted to remember things and act accordingly when addressing other people's ideas. Aryadeva was skilled in refuting false religions in debates, as was Vasubandhu. Besides, I fail to understand how citing your poor representation of Gmirkin's ideas is irrelevant to your efforts to begin a discussion about Gmirkin's ideas.

If you had not had such a poor track record of representing Gmirkin's ideas, then other people here in this forum might be more willing to engage with you in this thread in the belief that you accurately represent his ideas.

The switch from Babylonian to Plato--misrepresentation?

If you had not had such a poor track record of representing Gmirkin's ideas, then other people here in this forum might be more willing to engage with you in this thread in the belief that you accurately represent his ideas.

What kind of fucking nonsense is this? I've had more than my share of run ins with Stephen. Doesn't mean that I won't engage with him because we disagree on some issues. The world is filled with too many lonely people who try to weaponize isolation in order to make people more unhappy. For what crime exactly? Being smart? Engaging in a discussion about an idea? What fuck is wrong with you? Let's get this straight. There is truth and then there is untruth. If Gmirkin is right and the Pentateuch originated in Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE it's not GMIRKIN'S IDEA but 'the truth' that the Pentateuch was created at that particular time and Gmirkin has advanced an argument in its favor. Let's discuss ideas not individuals. I've had issues with Stephen as with many other members of the forum. But ideas are ideas. Let's discuss ideas not individuals.

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 3:06 pm

If you had not had such a poor track record of representing Gmirkin's ideas, then other people here in this forum might be more willing to engage with you in this thread in the belief that you accurately represent his ideas.

What kind of fucking nonsense is this? I've had more than my share of run ins with Stephen. Doesn't mean that I won't engage with him because we disagree on some issues. The world is filled with too many lonely people who try to weaponize isolation in order to make people more unhappy. For what crime exactly? Being smart? Engaging in a discussion about an idea? What fuck is wrong with you? Let's get this straight. There is truth and then there is untruth. If Gmirkin is right and the Pentateuch originated in Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE it's not GMIRKIN'S IDEA but 'the truth' that the Pentateuch was created at that particular time and Gmirkin has advanced an argument in its favor. Let's discuss ideas not individuals. I've had issues with Stephen as with many other members of the forum. But ideas are ideas. Let's discuss ideas not individuals.

I see nothing wrong with engaging in discussing ideas rather than the people who present the ideas, but when the people who present the ideas have a history of poorly representing the ideas which they discuss, then one must be more cautious about trusting such peoples' summaries as accurate.

Actually to be honest I am engaging with Gmirkin and I haven't read his book. Let's discuss ideas rather than individuals. TBH I really didn't like Stephen when I was discussing Morton Smith in the other section of this site. I found him really fixated on what I thought was a stupid interpretation of history. But live and let live I guess.

If there was a 'most annoying poster' here I think it would have to be me. Although I would argue for a host of others I think I'd be universally condemned as the worst offender. So I have to ask, what can I do about annoying posters? Answer: nothing.

As I see it my one sin at this forum is that I am not looking for friends or allies or followers to bring to my stupid theories and beliefs. If anything I like it when people tell me I am wrong or my ideas are stupid. That's why I come here. The idea is that it spares me embarrassment in the real world.

StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 1:11 pm The switch from explaining Genesis from Babylonian sources to Greek Plato source was not too hard for ABuddhist to recognize and to respond, non-Buddhistly, clingingly, with an irrelevancy.

I have no idea what you are talking about with a "switch from explaining Genesis from Babylonian sources to Greek Plato source." And I would politely suggest you have no idea either, given that you don't cite any academic sources. Yes, the authors of Genesis knew Homer, Hesiod, Ariston, Empedocles, Zeno, Berossus and several of Plato's dialogs (Timaeus, Critias, Statesman, Protagoras). Clearly they were better read than you. You are a veritable fountain of misinformation.

I assume that what this is about is the fact that Gmirkin's first book on this subject proposed that Genesis 1-11 was heavily based on Berossus, but that his most recent book proposes that Gen 1-11 is heavily influenced in Timaeus and Critias.

I understand the implication here, but it would have been nice to spell this out more completely, especially for readers who may not be following all of these other discussions.

Anyway, I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, however I agree that proposing "too many" literary influences may make it seem unlikely that any are actually true. It seems unlikely that a given narrative might be influenced by 5 or 6 or 7 other stories directly. But this isn't really so unbelievable.

If you you think of a movie or music album today, many clearly show influences from many different predecessors. There is also the issue of being influenced by narratives that were themselves influenced by other narratives. An example I like to use for this is the western, The Magnificent Seven.

What if a director saw The Magnificent Seven growing up and was influenced by it, and so as an adult they made a futuristic movie set in outer space that was heavily derivative of The Magnificent Seven? Well, one might think that the director was making references to the famous Akira Kurosawa film, Seven Samurai. This is because The Magnificent Seven is almost a direct copy of Seven Samurai, with the setting changed from Japan to the American West.

These types of things present difficulties in understanding relationships between ancient texts as well. What Gmirkin has done a good job of is sorting through the minutia to tease out exactly which text is dependent on which based on sometimes seemingly minor differences. For example, the Epic of Gilgamesh vs the works of Berossus.

But surely we would also recognize that a director like Quentin Tarantino draws directly on many sources, not just one movie or another.

What Gmirkin is essentially proposing in his latest book, is that Gen 1-11 draws directly on Babyloniaca, recast using the framework of Timaeus and Critias. It's as if someone were envisioning, how Plato might have interpreted Babyloniaca. Maybe that's a poor way to put it. Another way to think of it maybe is like, what if a musician wanted to cover the Charlie Daniels song The Devil Went Down to Georgia, in the style of Slayer? Then we would have a given band covering a song originally written and played by one band, using the style of a different band, displaying two distinct influences.

This type of stuff happens all the time.