Plato and the Pentateuch

[neilgodfrey]

So, ng, you admit to misrepresenting. Maybe that's a step.

Mocking misrepresentations in the form of parody and teasing are clearly obvious (otherwise they would not be parodies) and not intended to deceive -- otherwise their would be no parody or teasing involved. But misrepresentation that arises from a wilful refusal to inform oneself of the actual facts of what Gmirkin has written is blatantly dishonest.

[StephenGoranson]

neil, your misrepresentation was not clearly obvious to all potential readers; you amazingly excuse your own flat lie....wow.
As to your repeated claim, ng, that I have given misrepresentations of REG writings, do you not feel it incumbent on your sometime-pretended propriety urgings to give two or three documented examples?
As for peer review, of the three publications REG last mentioned, above, all three are from a Copenhagen series.
Does any human within these lights consider, say, Copenhagen Prof. N. P. Lemche to be an unbiased peer reviewer?

[Russell Gmirkin]

Would you be kind enough to try to answer this question, even by citing from something which you have published?

The Library of Alexandria surely collected books, mostly on papyrus. But is there evidence that they created anthropological field studies to create books in non-Greek languages?

Stephen's question is pretty incomprehensible. I assume he was making an attempt at sarcasm. But there are ancient testimonies that the Library of Alexandria under Ptolemy II Philadelphus sought to fulfill the earlier ambitions of Alexander the Great by having the library translate texts from every language into Greek for addition to the collection (Canfora 1990: 23-25, 101, 120, 126-27, 131, 186). See, for instance, Tzetzes, De comoedia, on the collection and translation of books from "all the peoples of the world." One Byzantine source claimed:

Learned men were enlisted from every nation, men who as well
as being masters of their own languages were wonderfully well
acquainted with Greek. Each group of scholars was allocated
the appropriate texts, and so a Greek translation of every text
was made.

A passage from Epiphanius says:

The second sovereign of Alexandria after Ptolemy, to wit the
king known as Ptolemy Philadelphus, was a man who loved
beauty and culture. He founded a library in this same city of
Alexandria, in the district known as Bruchion (a quarter now
altogether abandoned), and he put one Demetrius Phalereus in
charge of it, instructing him to collect together all the books of
the world.... The work proceeded, and books were gathered
from all parts, until one day the king asked the director of the
library how many books had been collected. The director replied:
'There are about 54,800. We hear, however, that there
is a great quantity of books among the Ethiopians, the Indians,
the Persians, the Elamites, the Babylonians, the Chaldaeans,
the Romans, the Phoenicians and the Syrians.'

A passage from Isidore of Seville, De bibliotecis V.3.3 reads:

And from here grew the fashion, known among
all sovereigns and in every city, for obtaining the books of
various peoples and, by the work of translators, turning them
into Greek. This is why Alexander the Great, or perhaps
his successors, set about building libraries in which every
book would be contained. And Ptolemy called Philadelphus,
in particular, who was deeply versed in letters and who vied
with Pisistratus in his devotion to libraries, brought together
in his library not only the works of the gentiles but the holy
scriptures too. In fact, seventy thousand volumes were to be
found in Alexandria in those days.

Some of these translations (besides the LXX) made at the Great Library are known from various classical sources. One of them was probably the Tyrian Annals, translated from Phoenician by Menander. The translation of the writings attributed to Zoroaster, numbering over 2 million lines, was another notable example. Professor Michael Lockwood has argued in several books and many articles that the delegation of Buddhists who traveled to Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (and other Greek centers of learning) in a diplomatic mission documented in a well-known stele from the time of Ashoka the Great (ca. 268-232 BCE) invented the Brahmi script (which has clear affinities to Greek) in order to record in writing certain previously oral works on Buddhist religious teachings to be added to the Great Library. (Lockwood had already developed these theories several years before encountering my research, by the way).

So there is considerable evidence for the Great Library translating as many works in "barbaric" (non-Greek) languages as it could obtain.

Canfora, Luciano, The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990.

[ABuddhist]

Would you be kind enough to try to answer this question, even by citing from something which you have published?

The Library of Alexandria surely collected books, mostly on papyrus. But is there evidence that they created anthropological field studies to create books in non-Greek languages?

Stephen's question is pretty incomprehensible. I assume he was making an attempt at sarcasm. But there are ancient testimonies that the Library of Alexandria under Ptolemy II Philadelphus sought to fulfill the earlier ambitions of Alexander the Great by having the library translate texts from every language into Greek for addition to the collection (Canfora 1990: 23-25, 101, 120, 126-27, 131, 186). See, for instance, Tzetzes, De comoedia, on the collection and translation of books from "all the peoples of the world." One Byzantine source claimed:

Learned men were enlisted from every nation, men who as well
as being masters of their own languages were wonderfully well
acquainted with Greek. Each group of scholars was allocated
the appropriate texts, and so a Greek translation of every text
was made.

A passage from Epiphanius says:

The second sovereign of Alexandria after Ptolemy, to wit the
king known as Ptolemy Philadelphus, was a man who loved
beauty and culture. He founded a library in this same city of
Alexandria, in the district known as Bruchion (a quarter now
altogether abandoned), and he put one Demetrius Phalereus in
charge of it, instructing him to collect together all the books of
the world.... The work proceeded, and books were gathered
from all parts, until one day the king asked the director of the
library how many books had been collected. The director replied:
'There are about 54,800. We hear, however, that there
is a great quantity of books among the Ethiopians, the Indians,
the Persians, the Elamites, the Babylonians, the Chaldaeans,
the Romans, the Phoenicians and the Syrians.'

A passage from Isidore of Seville, De bibliotecis V.3.3 reads:

And from here grew the fashion, known among
all sovereigns and in every city, for obtaining the books of
various peoples and, by the work of translators, turning them
into Greek. This is why Alexander the Great, or perhaps
his successors, set about building libraries in which every
book would be contained. And Ptolemy called Philadelphus,
in particular, who was deeply versed in letters and who vied
with Pisistratus in his devotion to libraries, brought together
in his library not only the works of the gentiles but the holy
scriptures too. In fact, seventy thousand volumes were to be
found in Alexandria in those days.

Some of these translations (besides the LXX) made at the Great Library are known from various classical sources. One of them was probably the Tyrian Annals, translated from Phoenician by Menander. The translation of the writings attributed to Zoroaster, numbering over 2 million lines, was another notable example. Professor Michael Lockwood has argued in several books and many articles that the delegation of Buddhists who traveled to Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (and other Greek centers of learning) in a diplomatic mission documented in a well-known stele from the time of Ashoka the Great (ca. 268-232 BCE) invented the Brahmi script (which has clear affinities to Greek) in order to record in writing certain previously oral works on Buddhist religious teachings to be added to the Great Library. (Lockwood had already developed these theories several years before encountering my research, by the way).

So there is considerable evidence for the Great Library translating as many works in "barbaric" (non-Greek) languages as it could obtain.

Canfora, Luciano, The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990.

I will have to research Michael Lockwood. Many thanks for that name. With all due respect, though, you are not describing anthropological field studies - although I fail to understand why anthropological field studies would be needed in order to create books in non-Greek languages or translate non-Greek texts into Greek.

[Russell Gmirkin]

Would you be kind enough to try to answer this question, even by citing from something which you have published?

The Library of Alexandria surely collected books, mostly on papyrus. But is there evidence that they created anthropological field studies to create books in non-Greek languages?

I will have to research Michael Lockwood. Many thanks for that name. With all due respect, though, you are not describing anthropological field studies - although I fail to understand why anthropological field studies would be needed in order to create books in non-Greek languages or translate non-Greek texts into Greek.

Anthropology is a nineteenth century discipline. "Proto-anthropology" (as the precursor of anthropology is called) only goes back to the eighteenth century as an ideal of the Age of Enlightenment, according to Marvin Harris's well-respected History of Anthropology and others. So SG's "anthropological field studies" is nonsensical & anachronistic in the context of Greek learning in the Hellenistic Era. I assume he was being intentionally ridiculous, although with Goranson one can never tell.

[neilgodfrey]

oh dear, is sg misrepresenting someone again? what is to be done, what is to be done....

--------

back on an earlier comment.....\

neil, your misrepresentation was not clearly obvious to all potential readers; you amazingly excuse your own flat lie....wow.

Oi, be fair -- If anyone was so clueless as to not realize I was being facetious and took my words seriously then they would think you were a wonderful chap, a good man, you know, apologetic and civil and everything ... it made you look sincere and nice towards people. I can understand, though, that you should find such a portrayal of your self as intolerable, unbearable, beyond the pale.

[StephenGoranson]

Translating a text into Greek is different than *creating* a text in a non-Greek language.

[ABuddhist]

Translating a text into Greek is different than *creating* a text in a non-Greek language.

But

Professor Michael Lockwood has argued in several books and many articles that the delegation of Buddhists who traveled to Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (and other Greek centers of learning) in a diplomatic mission documented in a well-known stele from the time of Ashoka the Great (ca. 268-232 BCE) invented the Brahmi script (which has clear affinities to Greek) in order to record in writing certain previously oral works on Buddhist religious teachings to be added to the Great Library. (Lockwood had already developed these theories several years before encountering my research, by the way).

So there is precedent for associating the library in Alexandria with creating texts in non-Greek lannguages and non-Greek scripts.

[Secret Alias]

But why are these "victories"? It's clear that this is a theory the three of you WANT TO BE TRUE? Why Russell wants this to be true is understandable. No problems with that. I won't get into WHY I think a radical atheist and "a Buddhist" are attracted to this theory. But surely you can recognize that if this was a serious investigation and there consequences to being right or wrong this theory isn't likely to be ACTUALLY TRUE. But given this is the humanities and nothing matters yes you can keep pointing to this or that "bit of evidence" (which isn't "evidence" per se but just a log which keeps the theory afloat). Is it likely that in the first year of its operation the Library at Alexandria compiled a lot of foreign texts? No it's not. And that's the problem. All these "coincidences" have to be like bang! bang! bang!

So you've got to have Jews and Samaritans "co-operating together." You've got to have all the known text types (including the Samaritikon) all emerging after 270 CE. You got to have Jewish sectarians in the desert rebelling from a central authority in Jerusalem using a text that doesn't mention Jerusalem and preserving a manuscript that was close to 270 CE. You've got to have the emergence of the Book of Deuteronomy which literally COPIED large portions of the Book of Exodus like the day after the Pentateuch was published. You have to have the earliest possible date for the visit of these "friendly Jews and Samaritans" to a library that happens to have collected foreign manuscripts on day 1. It can't work. It's not even close to being likely. But persist if it makes you happy.

[Secret Alias]

And let's look at matters another way. Gmirkin's first book was published in 2006. It's now over 15 years later. Let's round it up to 20 years. What experts in the field of early Judaism accept the idea that the Jewish religion was founded in Alexandria in 270 BCE? Is it likely that this is going to change in another 20 years? So not a single "conversion" of anyone who isn't united by perfect hatred of Judaism and its cultural legacy in the West So what about another generation? I am dead by that time. So in my lifetime not a single authority is going to be moved over to a theory that has no actual evidence in support of it. What a surprise.