Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jun 26, 2023 1:15 pm I meant at this forum. I've tried to make clear numerous times that these people allow for 7 seven centuries to exist for our earliest surviving copies of Plato to have been preserved but when Qumran has fragments usually dated to within a few decades of their supposed "invention" in Alexandria they exclaim "that's enough!" No more time for the development of the Pentateuch. It's so frustrating. This theory requires the Qumran evidence to almost be exemplars of the Alexandrian-invented Pentateuch without actually the Qumran texts resembling the LXX. People that buy into the theory don't do so because it is "so convincing." It's because Gmirkin takes a sledgehammer to the study of Hebrew and tells them Greek is enough. Complete nonsense.

That's not the case. First of all, it is possible that the Qumran community are the writers of the Pentateuch. Why not? I'm not proposing this I'm just saying there is no reason to discount the possibility.

Secondly, as has been discussed in this thread. There are significant similarities between numerous Hellenistic era works and the Pentateuch. Those similarities can only be explained in three (or four) ways:

1) The Hellenistic works are all derived from the Pentateuch or other lost Jewish writings.
2) The Pentateuch is derived from the Hellenistic works.
3) The similarities (noted by ancient writers such as Josephus, Philo, pre-Christian Greek and Romans scholars, and all of the Church fathers) are just coincidence.
4) Ignore the situation and pretend like it doesn't exist.

One has to either present a plausible explanation for Hellenistic dependence on Jewish literature, show that the supposed similarities do not arise from literary dependencies or dependencies on Hellenistic era information, or claim that no such similarities exist and burry one's head in the sand saying LALALALALA.

First of all, it is possible that the Qumran community are the writers of the Pentateuch.

No this is not possible or is at least very unlikely. Very unlikely possibilities should not be considered hence my personal disgust at the 270 BCE White power explanation to the origin of the Pentateuch. As I've said numerous times already we should find it surprising that we have anything close to exemplars of ancient texts. Why? Because as the surviving manuscripts associated with Plato's writings illustrates an expectation of centuries not decades should be supposed with any discovery. Ancient documents were prone to corruption and the documents which survive survive because of where (i.e. desert conditions) they were abandoned and not owing to the proximity of garbage dumps and deserts to the place of origin for ancient texts. In the case of garbage dumps, the fact Oxyrhynchus preserves us early copies of known documents has nothing to do with it being the place of origin for those texts. Oxyrhynchus happens to be an Egyptian garbage dump rather than a Roman or Athenian garbage dump:

For more than 1,000 years, the inhabitants of Oxyrhynchus dumped garbage at a series of sites out in the desert sands beyond the town limits. The fact that the town was built on a canal rather than on the Nile itself was important, because this meant that the area did not flood every year with the rising of the river, as did the districts along the riverbank. When the canals dried up, the water table fell and never rose again. The area west of the Nile has virtually no rain, so the garbage dumps of Oxyrhynchus were gradually covered with sand and were forgotten for another 1,000 years.

The commonality with Qumran is the lack or rain rather than either or both being located near places where exemplars would be expected to be kept. As such, as a rule of thumb ANY preservation of an ancient KNOWN text HAS TO be owing to the place the text was stored. As such, Qumran preserved texts because of its desert locale rather than any holiness or originality of said texts. A general rule of thumb then applies, the documents at Qumran were, like most ancient texts, copies of copies rather than exemplars.

The underlying point to keep in mind:

Water's extensive capability to dissolve a variety of molecules has earned it the designation of “universal solvent."

so you are going with this option:

4) Ignore the situation and pretend like it doesn't exist.

Got it.

I'm going with the "just because I got lucky doesn't mean she loves me" theory. Qumran material survived because it's very dry there. That's all.

Qumran has nothing to do with it. Why are there so many similarities between the Pentateuch and various Hellenistic works? How is that explained? Why did Josephus, Philo, and dozens of other Greek and Roman scholars claim that various Greek works were copied from the Jewish scriptures? Why are there so many similarities that are so profound that the Church Fathers concluded that Plato's works were essentially a third set of scriptures, after the works of Bible?

Qumran has nothing to do with it.

Of course Qumran has everything to do with the origins of Judaism.

1. there are Pentateuch fragments dated to as early as 250 BCE at Qumran
2. the reason these fragments survive has everything to do with the dryness of the desert. Nothing to do with the texts being exemplars.
3. given more than 700 years separate Plato from our earliest fragments of Plato would it be unreasonable to seriously consider that the fragments of the Pentateuch at Qumran represent remnants of a text written centuries earlier.

The idea that a copy of Exodus dated to around 250 - 200 BCE only went back a couple or so generations is unlikely. The scrolls there were likely copies of copies and perhaps copies of copies of copies.

If these were copies of ancient Greek poetry said to be written in the fifth century no one would attempt to argue for a later date. This is just racist thinking.

To summarize.

1. whenever the provenance of the author of the Torah is named or inferred WHO IS NOT MOSES by ancient sources the period in question is Persian not Hellenistic.
2. Since the earliest Torah fragment is not from before 270 BCE I can't outright disprove the idea that the LXX wasn't the first Torah. But it contradicts the widespread attribution of the Torah to Ezra's authorship. These stories were used by pagans to do essentially the same thing as Gmirkin is doing, i.e. lower the value of the Torah. For some reason even ancient adversaries of the Torah and Judaism couldn't claim the Torah was written in Alexandria. These same adversaries never mention any literary dependence of the Torah on Greek authors including Plato.
3. "goodwill" is presumed to exist in scholarship, goodwill and fairness are supposed to decide outcomes. Celsus for instance could have claimed that Judaism borrowed from the Greeks but does not because he didn't think it was a reasonable, fair conclusion.
4. All our sources describe the LXX as a translation of a Hebrew original including mention of a festival celebrating the translation
5. the vocabulary of the Torah is presumed to be Hebrew hence the use of onomastica in Greek speaking Jewish communities. Greek has no influence on the literary structure of the Torah
6. the earliest Torah fragment is usually dated within 25 - 75 years of the beginning of the Ptolemaic dynasty. It does not resemble the LXX text type.
7. it would be surprising to find an exemplar of the Torah among the self-described sectarians at Qumran. It would be even more surprising if our earliest fragments dated to around 250 - 200 BCE only dated back 25 - 75 years. In fact it would be absolutely NOT in keeping with the pattern we see with regards to the preservation of early manuscripts from antiquity where centuries not decades mark the distance between surviving material and the original author.

While it is not impossible that the Torah could have been written within days, months, years, decades or a few generations of the Qumran fragments given 1 - 7 it is far more likely they come from the Persian period. In fact I think in light of all the evidence it is the only reasonable possibility.

Almost nothing you've said is relevant.

The issue is very simple. Are there literary dependencies between the Jewish scriptures and Hellenistic era works, or not? What we know is that numerous scholars over the past 2 millennia have concluded that there are literary dependencies.

There is no reason to go beyond this first question. This issue has to be addressed before anything else.

And as for stuff like, "Celsus". First of all, we don't have the works of Celsus, we have polemics against Celsus. Secondly, a huge part of the point here is that these ancient scholars had a horrible grasp of the provenance of literary works. They were wrong about almost everything all the time. Clearly, forgery and fraud were rampant among ancient writers and they employed a number of techniques to obfuscate the true provenance of their writings.

The Roman Senate was being misled by writings attributed to Sibyls. All of these works were forgeries and they were foundational to Roman governance. The Jewish Sibylline works appear to have been accepted as authentic by numerous Roman scholars and may have even been incorporated into the official Senatorial collection. All of the Christian Church Fathers thought they were authentic. Hundreds of works are known that were attributed to people who were not the real authors. There was no Homer! Yet there were dozens of works attributed to Homer, all supposedly from like the 9th century BCE, while many were produced as late as the 1st century. I mean come on, these people had no idea where these writings came from.

rgprice wrote: ↑Thu Jun 29, 2023 7:57 am Almost nothing you've said is relevant.

The issue is very simple. Are there literary dependencies between the Jewish scriptures and Hellenistic era works, or not? What we know is that numerous scholars over the past 2 millennia have concluded that there are literary dependencies.

There is no reason to go beyond this first question. This issue has to be addressed before anything else.

Could you clarify which Hellenistic Era works you mean ?
I thought we were discussing links between the Jewish scriptures and Plato.
But Plato is normally regarded as Classical period rather than Hellenistic.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Thu Jun 29, 2023 8:24 am Could you clarify which Hellenistic Era works you mean ?
I thought we were discussing links between the Jewish scriptures and Plato.
But Plato is normally regarded as Classical period rather than Hellenistic.

Andrew Criddle

Well, per Gmirkin, Manetho and Berossus for starters, but he identifies a number of other works as well.

And yes, Plato is Classical, but he's fourth century BCE. So if Plato was used, then it means the scriptures have to be after Plato, which would put them at the tail end of the Classical era or the Hellenistic era.