Why the Hellenistic era hypothesis should be taken seriously

[andrewcriddle]

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.

Yes but the idea that Hesiod say is a source for the Hebrew Bible would not necessarily require a Hellenistic date for the Hebrew Bible.

About Hellenistic Plato, I agree that use of Plato in the Pentateuch must if true be Hellenistic, Gmirkin, however, emphasises resemblances between the literal sense of the Timaeus and Genesis while tending to ignore the metaphorical reading of creation in the Timaeus in the early Hellenistic period.

Andrew Criddle

[andrewcriddle]

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?

First I think that one has to start with at least a weak presumption that ancient works of history are at least loosely based on what the writer thought to have happened. (They were often wrong but that is a different matter.) Although works that were intended to be regarded as fiction by the reader and works intended as 'fake news' certainly existed they were secondary to works intended to inform the reader. At the very least I think questioning this presumption leads to an inability to do ancient history at all.

Secondarily I do not see that questioning the underlying history of ancient texts, logically leads to a tendency to regard them as free compositions of a very late date. The invention of stories about the remote past with no basis in earlier (maybe legendary) tradition, certainly happened but it was rather rare.

Finally, there are also technical problems with the idea of the Pentateuch as a largely invented work of the Hellenistic period. It requires you to adopt improbable secondary positions such as dating Deutero-Isaiah to the Hellenistic period and to take a possible but IMO unlikely position explaining away Hecataeus as evidence for pre-Hellenistic Pentateuchal traditions.

NB This is an argument against regarding the Pentateuch as a free composition of the Hellenistic period. The idea that the archetype of the Samaritan Pentateuch the LXX and the MT is Hellenistic is IMO unlikely but much more plausible than the invention almost de novo of the Pentateuch in the Hellenistic period.


Andrew Criddle

[Secret Alias]

One almost gets the feeling that the Pentateuch being written in the Hellenistic period counts on the overcomplication of argumentation to succeed. Again if the Qumran material was established 250 - 200 BCE the material was unlikely to have been an exemplar of the Pentateuch. How do we connect this sectarian material in the desert with an alleged exemplar established 70 - 25 years prior in Alexandria which doesn't completely resemble it? I don't know but it has to be agreed that any argument like this is forced. Forced arguments aren't generally persuasive. They require too many "maybes" and "could be" statements to convince anyone. So why is the forced argument that the Qumran material dated to 250 - 200 BCE went through a series of "corrections" from an Alexandrian exemplar dated to 270 - 260 BCE so convincing to people at this forum who aren't at all familiar with Hebrew or scholarship of the Hebrew Bible? The answer should be obvious. Willful ignorance of Hebrew is rarely a good starting point for a evaluating a Hebrew text.

[Secret Alias]

More problems with Gmirkin's thesis. What if the LXX only dates to the second century BCE? Hjelm:

We have Jewish and Samaritan traditions about the Septuagint that ascribe its origin to the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who reigned from 283-246 BCE, to have a translation of the Jewish Law for his library in order to settle Jewish and Samartian controversies.5 Demetrius the Chronographer, who is widely believed to have lived in the time of Ptolemy the IV (220-205) seems to have used the Septuagint for his work on Jewish chronology from Abraham to the Exodus entitled Concerning the kings of the Jews'. The fragments that have survived also discuss the exile under Senaccherib and concludes with a chronological summary up to Ptolemy, the IV it is assumed. However, it has been questioned whether the Ptolemy mentioned should, in fact, rather be labelled the VII (145-144 BCE), who likewise bore the epithet ”Philopator”, with the addition ”Neos”. That would date the work to the mid-second century BCE and correspond with its internal chronology, which the usual dating to the third century does not. The number IV added to Ptolemy's name derives from Clement of Alexandria's retelling of Alexander Polyhistor's excerpts of Demetrius.6 Thus the Septuagint Pentateuch may date to the second rather than the third century BCE. https://books.google.com/books?id=gj0r- ... 22&f=false

On the Samaritan tradition that the LXX was established to find a "middle ground" between Jews and Samaritans who were warring about the scripture:

Stenhouse, Kitāb al-Tarikh (1985), n. 485: Dalia took office around 323 BCE; Josephus, Ant. 12.6-12, mentions that the descendants of those taken captive ('from the hill country of Judaea and the district around Jerusalem and from around Jerusalem and from Samaria and those on Mt Garizein') to Egypt by Ptolemy Soter had such quarrels, Samaritans opting for Gerizim and Jews for Jerusalem. N. Collins, '281 BCE: The Year of the Translation of the Pentateuch into Greek under Ptolemy II”, in Brooke and Lindars (eds.), Septuagint, Scrolls and Cognate Writings, pp. 403-503, bases her dating “on sources which are independent of Aristeas and have confirmed the essence of his basic report' (p. 477). Müller, First Bible of the Church, and R. Hanhart, Studien zur Septuaginta und zum hellenistischen Judentum (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1999), do not give exact dates of the translation, but rather imply a third-century origin and an argument for a dating after 150 BCE, see F. Clancy, 'The Date of LXX', S.JOT 16/2 (2002), pp. 207-25. https://books.google.com/books?id=ZFevA ... AF6BAgHEAI

There is so much that doesn't work with Gmirkin's thesis here. The Samaritans do not believe their ancestors were working together to establish an exemplar in Alexandria but rather a translation with smoothed out differences. The Gerizim and Jerusalem positions predated the Hellenistic period. More significant however are the scholars which date the LXX much later than 270 CE.

I am sure the folks here like Thompson and his wife in other situations. Now Hjelm isn't liked I am sure. Rather childish reducing history down to "likes."

[Secret Alias]

And then there is Fragment 3 of Aristobulus which mentions translations of excerpts of passages from Exodus to Joshua before the LXX https://books.google.com/books?id=P7EVE ... xx&f=false

[Secret Alias]

The Samaritan account of the creation of the LXX:

In the day of this above - mentioned ( High ) Priest Dalyan , 43 there arose a king whose name was Faltama ( Ptolemy ) . He loved learning and wisdom , was diligent in gathering books containing them , eagerly occupied himself with them , and exerted himself in making himself familiar with them . Now , when the Egyptians saw that he pursued the way of justice and travelled in the path of truth , they chose him to be king over them ; they thereupon sent a message to him asking him to come to them , so that they might set him up to reign over them. So he went out and came to them , and they made him king over them ; and when he learned that the cause of his election was his love of knowledge , his eagerness for it , and his traveling ( in the way ) of justice , his desire for wisdom increased all the more. He searched for it ever more diligently , and he intensified his efforts to gather books dealing with it . So he assembled books and searched for them in every country and place that he might become known for his learning. Now in the tenth year of his reign he became acquainted with the disagreement which existed between the Samaritans and 45 the Jews regarding the Torah , and with the refusal of the Samaritans to accept any book other than the Torah that was reputedly handed down by a prophet . In his desire to become acquainted with this matter, he sent to the Jews asking them 46 for a number of their elders , and addressed a similar request to the Samaritans also . And so there came from the Samaritans a man called Aaron, and with him a company of 47 Samaritans among whom was the scholar Symmachus , and Jahudta . 48 From the Jews there came a man called Eleazar , and with him a company also. Now , when Ptolemy learned of their arrival at Alexandria , which at that time was a seat of knowledge , he commanded that lodgings be assigned to them according to their number in the place which is called al - Ruwak and that each one of them be kept separated from his companions. Then He commanded also that there should be with everyone of them a Greek scribe to write down what everyone of them translated . And so the Samaritans translated the Torah , while the Jews translated both the Torah and the other books which they had ; and it is said that 50 the world was darkened for three days . When the King learned of this , he looked in the Torah which was in the hands of the Samaritans and saw there some things which were not in the Torah of the Jews ; and he found that for the most part the sacred text possessed by us was more perfect than that possessed by them.97 He thereupon inquired about the cause of this disagreement , whether it concerned things indispensable to the Law , or whether the Law was perfect without them and could dispense with them . To this the Samaritans replied : The ķibla53 one of the principles of the Law and one of its pillars . It is utterly impossible that Moses the Lawgiver should have died without informing the people of the ķibla. . With us it ( the Kibla ) is the last of the Ten Commandments , for the first of them prohibits the worshiping of anyone other than God , this is followed by commands and prohibitions , and after this God concluded the Ten Commandments with the commandment appointing the Kibla ( towards Mount Gerizim ) be- cause the marks of His majesty and dignity appear upon it . For this ( that is , the kibla ) the Jews have no explicit commandment . Rather , according to them , Moses died without informing ( the people ) of the place , yet he has commanded both us and them to offer a sacrifice at that very place , as it is written , year by year ; nor did the ( High ) Priest (Aaron) inquire whither this sacrifice should be brought. Now in the past did the High Priests offer sacrifice or did they not ? If they did , it must have been in an accustomed place . And if they did not offer it , they transgressed the command of God Most High . This despite the fact that they agree that the Tabernacle stood on the Mount for many years , and that the people every year offered what He had prescribed for them . Moreover , the Creator Most High has strin- gently commanded us in His Divine Scripture that we 60 should not offer burnt sacrifices in any place we may see , but only in the place which God has chosen : There thou shalt offer thy burnt offerings and there thou shalt do all that I command61 thee , today . He has thus prohibited us from offering sacrifices anywhere else , and ordered us to offer His burnt offerings in that specific place alone and to bring there the tokens of our worship for Him . Indeed , He ( Himself ) has mentioned both in our text ( of the Law ) and in theirs , that this place is a high and lofty mountain ( and not the low hills of Jerusalem ) , by saying upon one of the mountains , at the place where Isaac was offered as a sacrifice , in 64 the mountain of Thine inheritance , the place which Thou hast made for Thee to dwell in. Then He called it the ancient mountain as He said in the Blessing of Joseph . " With the finest produce of the ancient mountains and the abundance of the everlasting hill . " And because of this , Joseph considered specially the dignity which is in it this majestic mountain , the home of God's might ; for Joseph when he was the cause of the life of his father ailing , inherited the place which was the place of everlasting life. And it belonged especially to him , and in the Torah there are many proofs of this. And it is the place of Return ( to the life to come ) also ; and it is one of the great roots of religion , and one of its supports because if one does not know that there certainly is reckoning and requital , he would follow his own passion and go to extremes therein , and would be less interested in , and glad about , his religion and its works , and have neglected obedience if there is no promise of re- ward for obedience nor threat of retribution for disobedience ; and one would also take the road of passion and neglect his obligations and duties . And it has come about in a number of places that we and they agree upon some of it , and differ on others ; but what we disagree about is the section which more rightly concerns the life to 70 come , which says in our Book : To the Day of Vengeance and Recompense ' , but with them ' Vengeance is Mine , and recompense ' . And the difference between His saying : ' Vengeance is Mine and recompense 'and His saying that their deeds are with Me and stored up in My storehouse until the Day of Vengeance , is great . And there is a great distinction between them , because according to their wording , He could take vengeance at this hour , or tomorrow , before and after , and it might be in this world or it might be in the next world ; but with us it is when He describes the multitude who have neglected to obey Him and have become accustomed to do and to praise what is not to be done , as the sting of snakes and the poison of malevolent serpents . His saying being : ' Their grapes are grapes of poison , their clusters are bitter ' . But , of course the grapes in this context were not poison , nor their clusters bitter , and by that He only meant to what evil he who used it wrongly would come in the next world . And so later on He said by the way of predestination : " Is not this laid up in store with me , sealed up in my treasuries until the Day of Vengeance and Recompense ? " And there is in this world no day of such description . Then He said in this section " I kill and I make alive " . But He does not put any to death except one who is alive , and He does not make alive except one who is dead . Then He said at the end of the threat , " Praise His people But He does not put any to death except one who is alive , and He does not make alive except one who is dead . Then He said at the end of the threat , " Praise His people , O you nations " , Tidings to His people who know His Law , that He avenges their blood for their oppression . And He said after this section , ' And I repay those who disobey Me with Vengeance , ' meaning He gives a surfeit of retribution to His opponents who forsook knowledge and the doing of what was laid down in His Law . And he said "Cleanse the land of his people" and the hidden meaning in it is that the Most High compelled one who touches a grave ( to be 78 unclean ) seven days ; and one was not purified except after -79 the making of atonement on the third day and the seventh , and then one was completely free of uncleanness . Then one went to the ritual of cleansing , as the obedient do , for their obedience completely frees them from the impurities with which they were mixed and the touching of their tomb does not cause impurity because of them , for the world has become pure just as the tombs of the apostate are defiled . And there comes in one of our songs : " People will leave this world with what they have obtained for the next world , or with what they have lost . And when Death comes to them , they go out of this world , and nothing followed them from it to the Next World except their deeds and what their souls had acquired . With good they are rewarded in it , or with bad they are requited therein . of the things of this world we have not mentioned many , and have not bothered with ( them ) since this is not the place for them." And when the king reflected on what they had said , and meditated on their arguments , he knew that the truth was in their hands and that the complete , perfect Torah was that which they had , and he said to them : " What do you say about those whom the Jews call prophets and these books which they have ?" And they said : " As to these , verily , we do not recognise their prophecy nor their books because they ( the books ) , O King , either have come down by the hand of prophets or by other than prophets ; and if they were by the hand of prophets , the Mosaic Law has forbidden that after Moses there should be a prophet , for He says : ' And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses.

"And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like 21 Moses " If we demanded from them the substance of their claim , although that sort of thing is not accepted by us , then either it will bring something like what is in the Torah either ( their argument is the same as the Torah ) and in that case there is no need of it ; or it falls short of what is in the Torah ; then to follow the more complete thing is more necessary , or their argument contains an increase on what is in the Torah , and in that case the religious law both with us and with them has prohibited the acceptance of that sort of thing according to His saying : " You shall not add to it or take from it " meaning that the Law is complete nor to annul what is in it , for that would be abrogation . Abrogation is not allowed with us . And he said : " O he who is present with the king , the argument of the Greeks in favor of abrogation is that which was banned at a later time , and what was bad at one time may become accept- able at another time ; and that follows the aim of the Lawgiver , and the character of those on whom it was imposed . And these things are not of that which the law pertains to , in so much that the quality ( ought to ) adhere to it as long as that thing endures . And these things are not of that which the law pertains to , in so much that the quality ( ought to ) adhere to it as long as that thing endures . And they said : " Consider this answer ; had what you mentioned of characters and circumstances been right , considering these things , differences at the same time would have been possible as the characters of people of one period are not equal nor similar throughout , but are different and disagree . But as for your saying that it is not one of the things on which a judgment depends , whereas the quality adheres to it as long as that particular thing endures ; but our shortcoming and our inability would not realise its cause and its means , and it is not that if minds could not grasp the knowledge of something , that thing would be im- possible in itself.112 And when the Creator Most High , knew by His foreknowledge , of our inability , and the shortcoming of our intelligences to comprehend the knowledge of the reasons of this and its causes , He disclosed it to us by religious law and He indicated to us its rules and its qualities , with a complete indication , and some He indicated in detail ; but we must not assume that the rule follows therefrom , as He forbade to us the camel , since it lacks certain of the marks of purity , and the pig as well , and others , even though these marks are there , and this is the cause of the rule ; and the rule follows the cause and the cause is lasting as long as the species endures , for the Law lasts as long as Creation lasts . And sufficient for us is what Tradition has to say about its being eternal , and the mention of its causes in general , such as the permitted animals and the forbidden animals similarly . And regarding the being eternal , we know that we know that the necessity of rule ( s ) about it is everlasting , and that is that one should follow its prescriptions ; and it is not right to follow the honour of the worshippers over dispositions nor their customs and only follow the substance of it , and the essence of it particularly , but the impressive prescriptions concerning the rule ( s ) and the exclusive adherence to rule always openly." As he was pleased with their answer and their arguments pleased him , so their status was raised in his eyes and their weight became preponderant with him , and they continued like that . May God have mercy on them . They had clear arguments and eloquent and incisive proofs and sound and weighty reasons . And he honoured them , and raised their names amongst men , after Aaron came to King Ptolemy . And he ( Aaron ) said to him ( King Ptolemy ) We have received from the seventy elders ( God have mercy on them ) who bear the marks of the prophet , and who receive this Law from him , that he prohibited them from accepting anything other than it , because the Creator , Most High is He , when He taught by his foreknowledge how mankind can be reformed and its affairs be set aright , sent down by the hand of His prophet ( the most trustworthy of His world ) a Law comprising the manner of the road to righteousness for humanity and keeping to that righteousness , and humanity's following the Law in this world . If they do not approach in pilgrimage to a place in which He is , then He would grow anxious about their word ; but the pilgrimage is made now by their command to the place in which He is , and whosoever does not do that , He kills and the Jews prevented them from pilgrimage to the Blessed Mount , and when they prevented them , three sects branched off . One of them was called the Pharisees , and the meaning of that is ' Those who separate themselves and this priest was from this sect. And another sect was called the Sadducees , and they were only called by this name because they disliked to behave other than 89 And their dwelling was in villages which are around Aelia.93. 90 justly ; and they quote only the Torah and what the Scriptures indicate by analogy , and they do not allow anything other 92 than it , of that which the Pharisees ' sect allows of books , wishing to remain in accordance with the ancestors. The other sect was called the Hasidim , and the meaning of that is the righteous ones , and this sect is the one which is nearest 95 to the Samaritans ; and they hold their their belief and dwell in the villages that are in the neighborhood of the Blessed Mountain for the purpose of devoting themselves to worship. And there was between the Sadducees and the Pharisees , violent enmity , and each party allowed shedding the blood of the other . And the cause of that was the secession of the elders 98 who separated in the time of John ( Hyrcanus ) that they might have a book of religious law, for it was agreed that that would bring benefit on them . And his commander in - chief and his chief men came and the seceding elders were present with him ; and they passed judgment on his intelligence and got the mastery over him ; and when they ate and drank out of respect to him and he said joyfully to them : ' Indeed I am a disciple of yours and shall have recourse , in what I do , to what you say and what you see fitting. And I have accepted what you have said and I ask you if you have known sin and error in me ; ( if so ) bring me back from that and prevent me from ( committing ) 101 it . " And they said to him : " May God bring you back from error and sin , and may you be virtuous and straightforward in 102 all your doings . But among them was a man called Eleazar , and he was great among them . He wanted to stop him ( John Hyrcanus ) from appointing to the priesthood any of his relatives. And he said to him : " If you want to be virtuous and to give up sin as you have mentioned , then it is up to you to remove yourself from from the priesthood , and to be satisfied with kingship , because you are not fit for it ( the priesthood ) ; and that is because your mother was a prisoner in the days of Antiochus." And he said to him : ' As for my mother , when she was captive , she and my father were routed and hid in a cave of the mountain . So what is the reason for depriving me of this right and handing over His ( God's ) service to the elders of the seceding group ( the Pharisaic party ) ? ' So he brought them and he said : ' What do you say about a man who reviles a man about something of which he was never guilty ? ' And the elders said : ' We want to know the sentence . ' So he told it to them . And they said : ' He ought to seek pardon by an offering , or he should be struck forty ( times ) . ' He replied : ' Truly ( I say ) that he should make an offering and be struck forty ( times ) . ' Then from that time he ( John Hyrcanus ) transferred to the sect of the Sadducees . And he forsook the Pharisaic party and treated them as enemies . And he said : 112 " These truly are the Pharisees , i.e. seceders from the Law 113 of God " . And he killed a great company of them and he burnt their books prevent people from teaching about Pharisaism , and he killed many of those who disobeyed him . The Sadducees and the Samaritans were permitted to kill them. king had before this come down to Sebaste , which is a town of the Samaritans , and has besieged it closely and had conquered it , and slaughtered many 116 of the Samaritans . Then he came to Nablus , and waged a mighty battle , and killed a great number of the two parties , but was not able to enter it as he had been able to do at Sebaste . But when John ( Hyrcanus ) transferred to the Sadducees and did to the Pharisaic party what he did and burnt their books , and prohibited the children from learning from them , ( then ) he returned to seek ( to make ) the pilgrimage to Nablus to the Blessed Mountain , and confirmed that it was the House of God . But the Samaritans refused to make it possible for him to go ( up ) to it . And they were vigilant to prevent him , and overcame his pride by the greatness of their God . So when he despaired of that , he began sending offerings and alms , and gifts to it , and he continued ( doing ) that , and the Jews who were called Pharisees went away to Aelia . https://books.google.com/books?id=HMlJA ... 22&f=false

There you have it. Another datum written in the second or third century. Seems to be the basis for Hjelm thinking the LXX was written in the second century BCE.

[rgprice]

Pattern of behavior.

We know that from the 3rd century on, we have many examples of Jewish writers using Hellenistic models for their works and creating Hellenistic forgeries. Prime example is the Jewish Sibylline Oracles. These are of course Jewish forgeries that mimic the writings known as the Sibylline oracles. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Jewish intellectuals ransacked the texts of Greek drama, chasing after verses that might suggest Hellenic borrowings from Hebraic ideas. And when they did not find appropriate lines, they simply manufactured them.
-Erich Gruen, Constructs of Identity in Hellenistic Judaism 2016

Hellenistic Jews were evidently tireless in rummaging through the Greek classics to find opinions and sentiments that evoked scriptural teachings.
-Erich Gruen, Constructs of Identity in Hellenistic Judaism 2016

The reinterpretation of authentic sentiments and the inventions of bogus utterances give insight into the motives of Jews learned in Hellenic literature and lore. These works go beyond what is conventionally termed apologetic writing. They do not represent mere defensive, rear-guard action by a beleaguered minority in an alien world. What stands out is the aggressive inventiveness of the stories. The Jews, of course, were in no position to challenge the political supremacy of Hellenistic powers, whether in Palestine or in the Diaspora. And they did not do so. They accepted, even acknowledged their subordinate political status. But by selectively appropriating Hellenic culture, they could redefine it in their own terms, adopting categories and genres that would be familiar to a pagan readership but making more vivid the spiritual and intellectual precedence that the Jewish audience associated with their own traditions. Through creative fictions like kinship connections, tales of homage paid by Hellenic rulers to Jewish values, and the supposed Jewish roots of Greek culture, the Jews not only affirmed their place in the larger Hellenistic community. They also articulated their special identity in a form that bolstered self-esteem by accepting honestly their political subordination but asserting—perhaps not so honestly—their cultural ascendancy.
-Erich Gruen, Constructs of Identity in Hellenistic Judaism 2016

It is from this need [to establish the Jews as the chosen people] that the famous theory of the dependence of Greek wisdom on Biblical revelation, whereby all the most valuable aspects of pagan Greek culture had ultimately been derived rived from the prophets of Israel, first arose. This notion that the Greek poets and philosophers took all their knowledge from biblical Revelation secured in the first place the historical and cultural supremacy of the Jewish people, and furthermore justified its participation in the wider Greek culture; after this, it was necessary only to assemble the missing links necessary to make the theory plausible, if only on a purely artificial and rhetorical level.
- Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity

‘It is evident that Plato closely followed our legislation, and has carefully studied the several precepts contained in it. For others before Demetrius Phalereus, and prior to the supremacy of Alexander and the Persians, have translated both the narrative of the exodus of the Hebrews our fellow countrymen from Egypt, and the fame of all that had happened to them, and the conquest of the land, and the exposition of the whole Law; so that it is manifest that many things have been borrowed by the aforesaid philosopher, for he is very learned: as also Pythagoras transferred many of our precepts and inserted them in his own system of doctrines.’
‘Now it seems to me that he [Moses] has been very carefully followed in all by Pythagoras, and Socrates, and Plato, who said that they heard the voice of God, when they were contemplating the arrangement of the universe so accurately made and indissolubly combined by God. Moreover, Orpheus, in verses taken from his writings in the Sacred Legend, thus sets forth the doctrine that all things are governed by divine power, and that they have had a beginning, and that God is over all.’
- Eusebius quoting Aristobulus

Is not this the thing which the Greeks say that Heraclitus, that great philosopher who is so celebrated among them, put forth as the leading principle of his whole philosophy, and boasted of it as if it were a new discovery? For it is in reality an ancient discovery of Moses, that out of the same thing opposite things are produced having the ratio of parts to the whole, as has here been shown.
- Philo, Who is the Heir of Divine Things (214)
some of the lawgivers among the Greeks, having transcribed some of the laws from the two tables of Moses, appear to have established very wise regulations, forbidding any one to mention in his testimony anything that he has heard, on the ground that it is right to look upon what a man has seen as trustworthy, but on what he has heard as not in all respects certain.
- Philo, The Special Laws (4.61)
In regard to this, Heracleitus, taking law and opinions from Moses like a thief, says, “we live their death, and we die their life,” intimating that the life of the body is the death of the soul.
- Philo, Questions in Genesis (4.152)

What we see is a pattern of behavior, whereby Jewish writers were utilizing Hellenistic writing models to develop their own body of literature that argued for Jewish supremacy and antiquity. We know now of dozens of works that fall into this category, of Jewish Hellenistic era writings that were forged to appear to be older than they really were. All that is really being proposed here is that the Pentateuch and other Jewish scriptures are of the same nature as dozens of other acknowledged Hellenistic era Jewish forgeries.

[Secret Alias]

Do you have an example of a Jewish writer doing it with a Hebrew text? Or have you gone full batshit crazy and now simply accept Gmirkin's claim that the Greek translation is an original exemplar? Like accepting Elvis as the originator of Black music.

[neilgodfrey]

Gmirkin, however, emphasises resemblances between the literal sense of the Timaeus and Genesis while tending to ignore the metaphorical reading of creation in the Timaeus in the early Hellenistic period.

Andrew Criddle

And quite justifiably so. The authors of the Pentateuch were not doing Greek philosophy but were doing theology and making a blend of Greek and Asiatic ideas which is the very definition of Hellenization. To use just one illustration that comes most easily to hand, consider Gmirkin's list of "literal" parallels between Genesis and Critias in his response to Banner's review:

I note that the account of the pre-flood world in Genesis 6 and Plato’s Critias have these striking elements in common:

• Both have the [sons of the] gods dwelling among humans on earth and taking beautiful women to wife. Others (such as John Van Seters and Guy Darshan) have noted these common motifs in Genesis 6 and the earlier Hesiodic “Catalog of Women,” but none have noted the equally strong parallels in the later account by Plato due to prevailing assumptions about the antiquity of the Genesis account.

• Both portray the offspring of the gods as a mighty noble semi-divine race of heroes (“men of name” in Gen. 6:4). Both describe a subsequent degeneration or corruption of this goodly noble line (in Critias due to the dilution of the divine element through further intermarriages with humans) into a deplorable state of wickedness and violence.

• Both described the necessity of the gods (Zeus, Yahweh) to intervene by earthquake, rain and flood to destroy the wicked generation and give humanity a fresh start.

• Up until the time of Ovid, the only known stories of a flood sent to purge the world of immorality were found precisely in Plato’s Critias and in Genesis 6.

[neilgodfrey]

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?

First I think that one has to start with at least a weak presumption that ancient works of history are at least loosely based on what the writer thought to have happened.

How do you justify this claim? Why not start with a blank slate?

I believe the many instances of narratives throughout history fall if not more then very commonly on the side of what an author wants readers to believe. Recently I was listening to how the current North Korean ruling dynasty has created the myth of its descent from the sacred Paektu Mountain. Ancient and not so ancient genealogies are intended to advance political justification of ruling elites and for that reason are from time to time "corrected".

Although works that were intended to be regarded as fiction by the reader and works intended as 'fake news' certainly existed they were secondary to works intended to inform the reader. At the very least I think questioning this presumption leads to an inability to do ancient history at all.

No, this is not correct, sorry. What ancient historians do is attempt to understand the intended function of texts and understand the position of the authors. Scholars of ancient history know full well that historians in ancient times had no idea what happened long before their own times and they were obliged to create mythical accounts to fill in the otherwise horrifying gap.

On the other hand, you are certainly correct insofar as modern scholars cannot "do" ancient history more than about 300 years before the current era from ancient texts. There was a time when classicists and others tended to paraphrase what ancient historians wrote about their distant past and present it as historical knowledge, but I do understand that such an approach is considered quite naive today and is not so commonly found.

Secondarily I do not see that questioning the underlying history of ancient texts, logically leads to a tendency to regard them as free compositions of a very late date. The invention of stories about the remote past with no basis in earlier (maybe legendary) tradition, certainly happened but it was rather rare.

We have a misunderstanding here. I am not suggesting that we open the question by doubting the underlying historical narratives. No -- we begin by trying to understand the function of the texts and understanding how they came to be, and from those analyses see what they can tell us about the ancient world.

I am not suggesting some nihilistic "let's dump ancient history" approach. What we learn from the more justifiable method I am thinking of is much more about the people and culture that produced those texts.

Finally, there are also technical problems with the idea of the Pentateuch as a largely invented work of the Hellenistic period. It requires you to adopt improbable secondary positions such as dating Deutero-Isaiah to the Hellenistic period

Can you unpack that more?

and to take a possible but IMO unlikely position explaining away Hecataeus as evidence for pre-Hellenistic Pentateuchal traditions.

"Explaining away" infers an ad hoc case. But see above what I have come to learn about how classicists and historians approach ancient texts more commonly today than they did a generation or two ago. (I am thinking here of historians in fields that do not come encumbered with the same ideological baggage as we find in biblical studies.)