Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

rgprice wrote: ↑Thu Jun 29, 2023 8:50 am

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.

Berossus is clearly based on much older sources. Most scholars think it more plausible that the Pentateuch and Berossus ultimately share a common source than that one was based on the other.

About Manetho it is less clear partly because there are problems with reconstructing what Manetho actually said about the Exodus from the surviving extracts. The most likely solution may be that the text as we have it makes use of an ancient Egyptian tradition about expulsion of foreigners from Egypt to Palestine and rewrites it to become a hostile almost parodic version of the Jewish story of the Exodus, which was ultimately known from Jewish sources. See the discussion in Judeophobia. The idea that Manetho was a source for the Pentateuch is IMO unlikely.

I feel that Gmirkin exaggerates the similarities between Plato and the Pentateuch, see previous discussions on this forum. There are unambiguous parallels between the Pentateuch and both Manetho and Berossus whatever may be the explanation. I am not aware of parallels between Plato and the Pentateuch that are unambiguous in that sense.

Andrew Criddle

Another question. What is the "discovery" that Gmirkin is alleged to have made that overturned millennia of Biblical studies? People have been studying the Bible forever. If there wasn't "something new" it would imply that Gmirkin had a superior knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, the Bible, Plato, history - something and everything. Almost prophetic or supernatural wisdom.

@andrew

Yes, both Berossus and Manetho are based on older sources, but the issue is the parallels between the scriptures and the specific accounts of Berossus and Manetho. In addition, while Berossus is based on older sources, what case can be made that Jewish writers would actually have had access to those sources?

Here is the problem that I see. When it comes to the parallels between the Jewish scriptures and other sources, two approaches have been used generally:

1) Just ignore it
2) Propose that the Jewish writers used some ancient source, but don't provide any specifics, just assume that to be the case and move on.

Genesis and the Babylonian material is a perfect example. Yes, there are clearly parallels between Genesis 1-11 and various Babylonian/Sumerian stories, and many people are happy to simply say, "Well the Jewish writes must have known those stories and been influenced by them."

Ok. How exactly? In what way? What about the specific word for word literary parallels? If these stories were only written in cuneiform how is it that Jewish writers were reading them? They knew cuneiform? How is this explained? When and where did they come into contact with these materials? How were the materials transmitted? If the stories originated in the 13th century BCE, and one is proposing that the Jewish scriptures were authored between the 6th and 4th centuries in Persian Palestine, how and why were these stories used? If they existed only on cuneiform tablets held in Babylonian libraries, how did the Jewish writes of the 5thish century get hold of them?

No one has any answers and are mostly happy to simply shrug and move on.

What Gmirkin has proposed, however, is well defined and very plausible. It just has the challenge of moving the writing of the Jewish scriptures up to a much more recent date.

The proposition that the Jewish scriptures were NOT dependent on Berossus, Manetho and other Hellenistic era sources requires a detailed explanation for how it is that there are so many parallels between the Jewish scriptures and various Hellenistic works.

Beyond simply saying that the Jews could have been influenced by earlier versions of the Babylonian works, we have to consider the chances of what happened taking place. Within Genesis we have a fairly concise set of parallels to about 5 or 6 (or more) Babylonian/Sumerian works that have been recompiled in a way to create a new narrative that summarizes and reinterprets these various writings. And our earliest definitive evidence that the Jewish works existed is with the creation of the Greek version of Genesis.

Now, at around the same time, it "just so happens" that a Babylonian priest, Berossus, also "published" a Greek summary and reinterpretation of these ancient Babylon/Sumerian stories, that very closely parallels the Jewish account. So you are telling me this is just a coincidence? Or are you going to argue that Berossus was influenced by the Jews? And again BTW, there is extensive evidence of Babylonian civilization and Babylonian knowledge of these going back over 3,000 years. The earliest actual evidence of the existence of Torah observant Jews doesn't come until the 3rd or 2nd century BCE.

So if you are going to make an argument for independence, then that argument has to be made and be convincing. There has to be some convincing argument as to how it is that these two different Greek writings that summarize and reinterpret disparate ancient Babylonian/Sumerian were produced within decades of one another. If the Jewish Greek writing is a translation of a much older Hebrew work that was produced independently of Berossus and which Berossus had no knowledge of, how is it then that these two writers created so many parallels? How did they both draw upon the same collection of stories, which as far as anyone knows, were never put into a collection together and did not inherently go together?

And this is really just one small piece of the puzzle. That's just Berossus and Genesis, but there are many other parallels as well.

But again, everyone wants to say, "Nah, that can't be", but they don't explain the relationships, they just ignore them or wave their hands.

@SA

What is the "discovery" that Gmirkin is alleged to have made that overturned millennia of Biblical studies?

We can ask the same question about Paul and the Gospels or Marcion or Luke. What we see is that "Biblical studies" is rooted in a lot of flawed assumptions about how documents relate to one another. Specifically, about the order of influence.

For centuries it has been believed that the Gospel writers had no knowledge of Paul's letters. But much of my work, and several other modern scholars, show that this is exactly wrong. In fact the Gospels are based on Paul's letters. The reason there are similarities between the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels and Paul's teachings isn't because both were independently passing on oral traditions that go back to Jesus, but because the Gospel writers were using Paul's letters as the source for teachings to attribute to Jesus.

So, no, there is no "new discovery", there is just a fresh interpretation of the same old evidence. This applies to both Old and New Testament studies.

We can ask the same question about Paul and the Gospels or Marcion or Luke. What we see is that "Biblical studies" is rooted in a lot of flawed assumptions about how documents relate to one another. Specifically, about the order of influence.

So the answer is: Gmirkin has superior understanding of the Hebrew Bible.

Follow up question: how familiar are you with the study of the Hebrew Bible?

rgprice wrote: ↑Thu Jun 29, 2023 8:50 am

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.

Just to add another angle to this one, Plato himself was pre-Hellenistic but Plato's works and ideas became pervasive throughout the Greek speaking world and then the Latin world right through for centuries after his time.

Hellenistic era works in this context include other pre-Hellenistic authors who became standards among educated circles, including Homer, Hesiod and Herodotus.

Biblical studies attracts all kinds of hypotheses from both professional scholars and amateur hobbyists and everyone in between. In other history disciplines I don't think we have such an extreme variety of options on the table.

The reason, in my view, is that there are no independent controls used as yardsticks. Rather, there are hypotheses that are often ultimately based on openly acknowledged circular reasoning. But to maintain intellectual respectability it's called the "hermeneutic circle". Thus the narratives of the gospels are assumed from the get go to have some basis in historical events and the grand narrative of the OT (Exodus to Ezra) are assumed to have some historical core beneath all the legendary and theological accretions. Upon those assumptions the various hypotheses are constructed.

That's not how historical inquiry works in any other area, as far as I am aware off-hand. The reason is because other areas of historical inquiry do not start with a narrative and look for explanations, but they start with independent controls: eyewitnesses, monuments, diaries, documents, writings with content that can be confirmed by independent sources and that are produced by persons whose reliability can be reasonably assessed.

The simple reason the Hellenistic era hypothesis is entitled to be taken seriously is because it fits with independent controls. It is follows the same sort of inquiry that other historical researchers employ. It begins with the most secure independent evidence: the physical remains and independent testimony of the existence of key writings. Both of those forms of independent evidence are found squarely in the Hellenistic era. There is no independent control confirming any biblical source prior to the Hellenistic era.

It sounds outlandish -- because we have been so habituated into associating the Old Testament with "very very old" and images of Mesopotamian Egyptian and Ugaritic Bronze Age remains. I completely understand why we baulk at the notion. I also resisted the idea of a Hellenistic provenance of the OT as extreme for quite some time. But the more one looks into the arguments on both sides, the more one has to conclude, I believe that the pre-Hellenistic thesis is grounded in circularity; the Hellenistic thesis is embedded within the constraints of independent controls.

That might be overstating the issue -- I don't think it is, but I am sure to find out. Andrew?

Well, I also think about it this way:
Between about 500 and 1600 every field knowledge in Western civilization was dominated by theologians who used the Bible and teleological reasoning as their guide. But as science and logic were able to demonstrate their superiority at explaining observed phenomena, slowly and surely teleology and theology gave way to science and reason. First was astronomy and geography, then biology and physics, then general history. "Biblical studies" is now the last refuge of the teleologists. It is the last remaining field dominated by theologians.

And I believe that what we will find is that the theologians have been just as wrong about the Bible as they were about everything else. "Biblical studies" has been a absolute failure of comprehension from the very beginning. Every aspect of it, start back in the 2nd century BCE, has been grounded in fundamental misunderstandings of the origin and provenance of writings.

You apparently are unfamiliar with the study of the Hebrew in the Hebrew Bible. I think this is a White problem not a Jewish problem. The study of the grammar and development of Hebrew ALREADY AT THE START OF THE LAST MILLENIUM was very advanced and likely goes back much further.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_ibn_Ezra

Reading Ibn Ezra is a treat and is totally unlikely what you guys are familiar with when you speak of "dogmatic theologians." I am saying Gmirkin isn't fit to stand next to Ibn Ezra with respect to knowledge of the Hebrew language. Maybe Ibn Ezra isn't any better than Gmirkin with respect to Greek. But the idea that you don't have to be an expert in Hebrew to develop a theory that the Pentateuch is indebted to Greek culture, philosophers and writers is ludicrous.

To show you how un-dogmatic and cultured Ibn Ezra and his family were once of his descendants is still considered " to have had great influence in the Arabic literary world. He is considered one of Spain's greatest poets and was thought to be ahead of his time in terms of his theories on the nature of poetry." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_ibn_Ezra

Jewish religious intellectuals were rarely dogmatists. Ibn Ezra is a great place to start with regards to the study of the Hebrew in the Hebrew Bible. It is and was not dogmatic.

You have to recall that the claim made by ancient Jews was that they were an ancient race who were specially chosen by God, and that God bestowed upon them the earliest laws and gave them the foundations of high culture and civilization before any other race. They accused Plato and the Greeks of having stolen from them. They claimed that it was Plato who copied from their scriptures, etc.

Why were they making these arguments? Do you believe that Plato somehow got his hands on the Torah back in the 4thcentury BCE and that this was a secret source of learning for him, from which he derived his ethics and modeled his concept of the ideal government on? Because that is essentially what Josephus alleges. Was Josephus correct? Philo also states that Plato had copied the Jews.

Why did they make these arguments? Clearly there was widespread acknowledgement of similarities between the Torah and the works of Plato.

Again, what has happened is that modern scholars have simply tried to drop this matter because it raises unsettling issues. Better to just ignore it or brush it aside. Someone had to have copied from someone here. Either Plato indeed secretly utilized a 4th century Greek copy of the Pentateuch (which not a single modern scholar today would go along with) or the writers of the Pentateuch were influenced by Plato. So which is it?

I have yet to see you put forward an argument defending the proposition that Plato derived his ideas from the Torah.

Secret Alias has consistently refused or proved incapable of engaging with the substance of any argument for the Hellenistic thesis, has simply ignored the many detailed attempts to respond patiently and painstakingly to his questions by both Gmirkin and myself and repeated the same rhetorical questions as if he simply ignored all previous answers to them, posts gratuitous and offensive images and accusations about the persons making the arguments presumably in an attempt to upset them (in which he does sometimes succeed), and posts inordinately often and frequently as if he has nothing else in his life to interest him -- and all of the above behaviours are nothing other than the definition of an internet troll.