Is exclusive Yahwehism even plausible prior to the Hasmonaeans?

[neilgodfrey]

One more point --- if I have understood you correctly, you are hinting at the time of the Hasmoneans for the composition of the Pentateuch's laws. Russell Gmirkin has posted a neat little summary of the data that sets a lowest possible date for the Pentateuch at viewtopic.php?p=148963#p148963

Not necessarily. But I am suggesting that it would be after the fall of the Persian empire. It seems that the most logical time to wrote something like the Pentateuch would be as a result of the fall of the Persian empire when there was a power vacuum, and a desire to create a Jewish state in the presence of this power vacuum. But actual implementation of the precepts of the Pentateuch would had to have waited until the Hasmonean era.

So surely the Pentateuch was aspirational, but the point is, these aspirations would seem absurd under Persian rule. The aspirations of the Pentateuch are for a Jewish state. Surely Jews living in 5th century Yehud would not have considered such aspirations. The fall of the Persians offered an opportunity, which the Hasmoneans ultimately seized.

When you speak of power vacuum -- was there really one in Samaria/Jerusalem? The Samarians rebelled but were put down and recolonized by Macedonians. The power was felt very brutally when the Macedonians came.

[neilgodfrey]

But actual implementation of the precepts of the Pentateuch would had to have waited until the Hasmonean era.

If what the scholars say about the other law codes then it may be hard to think they are even aspirational. They were entirely idealistic it would appear.

[rgprice]

If what the scholars say about the other law codes then it may be hard to think they are even aspirational. They were entirely idealistic it would appear.

Firstly, "if". There is no consensus as to the exact purpose of legal collections like the Code of Hammurabi. But surely we all agree that the Code of Hammurabi and other collections like it, were produced within the context of ruling cultures. In other words, the Code of Hammurabi was compiled within a society that was in charge of its own legal system. Whether the code was used in an official capacity or followed to the letter is a matter of debate, but it is not debated that the code was compiled by Babylonians within the Babylonian empire by Babylonian leadership, during a time of Babylonian rule.

Arguing that the Pentateuch was produced during the Persian era is entirely at odds with this.

And there are many aspects of the legal content in the Pentateuch that go far beyond collections like the Code of Hammurabi. For example Leviticus 25.

39 “If any who are dependent on you become so impoverished that they sell themselves to you, you shall not make them serve as slaves. 40 They shall remain with you as hired or bound laborers. They shall serve with you until the year of the Jubilee. 41 Then they and their children with them shall go out from your authority; they shall go back to their own family and return to their ancestral property. 42 For they are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves are sold. 43 You shall not rule over them with harshness but shall fear your God. 44 As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you that you may acquire male and female slaves. 45 You may also acquire them from among the aliens residing with you and from their families who are with you who have been born in your land; they may be your property. 46 You may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property. These you may treat as slaves, but as for your fellow Israelites, no one shall rule over the other with harshness.

This is particularly intriguing. How would this even make sense in the context of a subject population?

The "nations around you", " aliens residing with you"? Are we postulating that the writer was just living entirely in fantasy land? This is language that only makes sense in the context of a self-governed autonomous society. How could a subject living within an empire write something like this?

So we are left with two possibilities: 1) The compiler of the Pentateuch is merely passing on language that was produced at an earlier time. This language was produced at a time of autonomous Israelite self-rule. This would necessitate that this language comes from some time prior to the 8th century BCE. 2) This language was produced after the fall of the Persian empire, when the writer envisioned an autonomous Jewish state, perhaps as late as the Hasmonean era.

But, even in the case of #1, why is someone in the Persia era compiling this information from the time of Israelite autonomy? What purpose does it serve?

My point is that the Pentateuch is truly a manifesto. Why are manifestos written? When are they written? Manifestos are written during times of change or to bring about change. Why would anyone be writing this during the Persian era? Is there something about the Persia era that we don't know? Everything I've read about the Persia era states that it was a period of peace and stability during which time the subject population in Yehud had it pretty good. If that's the case, why is someone writing a militant manifesto about war, conquest, the establishment of an independent Jewish state, eradication of everyone living on the land, exclusion and separation?

The Pentateuch is a manifesto advocating for the establishment of an independent Jewish state. Can we agree on that? Why would anyone in the Persian era be writing a manifesto advocating for the establishment of an independent Jewish state?

Even if we take the legal material in Exodus to be nothing more than the precepts laid out in the Communist Manifesto, just idealistic theorizing, why would someone in the Persian era be doing this theorizing? Are we to argue that Jews in the Persian era were making designs to rebel and break free from the Persians to form their own state? I've seen not a single person ever make this case.

[neilgodfrey]

Even if we take the legal material in Exodus to be nothing more than the precepts laid out in the Communist Manifesto, just idealistic theorizing, why would someone in the Persian era be doing this theorizing? Are we to argue that Jews in the Persian era were making designs to rebel and break free from the Persians to form their own state? I've seen not a single person ever make this case.

Don't misunderstand me -- I agree that there is no actual evidence for the Pentateuch having been composed prior to the Hellenistic era. When Lemche first raised the possibility of the Hellenistic era I baulked and resisted -- surely that was going way too far. I stuck with Davies and his various cases relating the texts to the Persian era. But facts are facts and methods are methods -- and I had to eventually agree that if we follow the fundamentals of historical methods in relation to the question of the emergence of the Jewish religion, then the only evidence-based option that we have for the time of the composition of the Pentateuch is the Hellenistic era.

Having said that, however, we do have limits on the date of the Pentateuch that need to be addressed before we assume that it "had to be" composed in the time of the Hasmoneans -- if that is what you are arguing. I earlier linked to Russell Gmirkin's summary of the evidence for dating limits.

If I understand you correctly, you are preparing material for a book, and my only interest in responding to some of your questions here is to try to alert you to what my limited experience has shown me is "out there" in the published field. It is in that context that I urge you to read the works that argue for ancient so-called "law codes" being more meaningfully categorized as "wisdom literature" or "scribal exercises" or "ideological propaganda" etc. They are not law codes in the sense that we understand by the term "law codes".

I am trying to do my little bit to draw to your attention to little snippets of articles and books that will strengthen your final case and help you to avoid pitfalls.

Yes, --- I argued the same point with austendw recently that the ideology of the Pentateuch is alien to the Persian era but very much at home in the Hellenistic era. But we run into serious problems if we take its composition so far as the Hasmonean era.

And if we say it was aspirational and trying to advocate an expansionist program by means of a fictional "law ode" that only found fruition in Hasmonean times, then we run up against the problem of it being a sui generis document without any parallel in history. That's not going to be an easy sell.

[rgprice]

Persian rule over Palestine ended around 333. The Pentateuch was reportedly translated into Greek around 270. Maccabean Revolt around 167. Hasmonaean rule from 140 to 63.

I agree that dating the Pentateuch in full to some time after 167 is too late. Is it possible that parts of the Pentateuch as we have them were produced as late as the Hasmonaean era? I don't know. See also my thread on the menorah, where John points out that Ḥa̱klîlî has argued that the description of the menorah in Exodus appears to anachronistically point to the Hasmonaean era.

But what I am saying is that it seems to me the Pentateuch, beyond even the evidence that Gmirkin and others have put forward, only makes sense as a work produced during a time either of Jewish self-rule or at least a time when there was a movement for the establishment of Jewish self-rule.

It seems to me that, outside of any other evidence, simply the ideology of the work indicates that it wouldn't have been produced during the Persian era, if anything we think we know about the Persian era is correct, because I have seen no case ever made that Jews were advocating for the establishment of an intendent state during the Persian era.

The more I read the Pentateuch, I find it unfathomable that it would have been produced during a period of subjugation, even if it were merely compiling a set of documents and stories that authentically dated to the Israelite kingdoms. It just doesn't make sense as a work to be compiled during the periods of Assyrian, Babylonian or Persian subjugation.

As you say, there are many reason to consider it a Hellenistic era work, but what I'm getting at is that its not just a Hellenistic era work, it is a work that is advocating for an independent Jewish state. So it has to have been written at a time when there was a prospect for an independent Jewish state.

And I'm trying to understand how the material in the Pentateuch may have related directly to the era in which it was written. Instead of understanding the Pentateuch as a record of the past or merely the fabrication of a national history, seeing it also as an aspirational guide to the future that addresses issues in the writer's present.

Can we read the emancipation of the Jews from Egypt as allegory for the emancipation of the Jews from Persia? In the Pentateuch God delivers the Jews from foreign rule to give them the opportunity to form their own state, but they haven't done it yet. Is not this the condition in which the writer(s) of the Pentateuch found themselves in their present?

[StephenGoranson]

Many times in Jewish history there were some "advocating for an independent Jewish state."

[rgprice]

Many times in Jewish history there were some "advocating for an independent Jewish state."

When? The record of actual "Jewish history" goes back no further than the second century BCE.

[Secret Alias]

Our first copy of Plato is the third century CE. Why all this false excitement about essentially boring things.

[neilgodfrey]

. . . .but what I'm getting at is that its not just a Hellenistic era work, it is a work that is advocating for an independent Jewish state. So it has to have been written at a time when there was a prospect for an independent Jewish state.

But describing an ideal state is not the same thing as "advocating" for or "realistically calling out for and garnering support for". Again, we return to the ideological nature of what are classified as ancient "law codes". Josephus, for instance, accused the independence fighters of having a totally wrong idea of the Torah. Most Jewish leaders seem to have not considered the Pentateuch as a call for an activist political program.

[neilgodfrey]

Our first copy of Plato is the third century CE. Why all this false excitement about essentially boring things.

If you had read the responses to this objection of yours in previous threads you would know that there is independent evidence for the existence of certain writings long before their oldest surviving manuscripts. There is no comparable evidence for the Pentateuch existing prior to the Hellenistic era -- only hypotheses that propose it existed before then.