Why the Hellenistic era hypothesis should be taken seriously

[Secret Alias]

So according to Gmirkin the missing "key" to unlock the "truth" about the origin of the LXX is the Babylonian Talmud's claims about the Jewish translators fear of upsetting Ptolemy by using the name of his wife, "Hare," in a derogatory manner. Think about this (and this epitomizes the grandiose claims of Gmirkin's "brilliance"). For generations people have studied the Septuagint and known about the silly story in the Talmud. It's not a new discovery. Rather it is a new claim that the story of Ptolemy's wife being named "Hare" finally and definitively "proves" that the LXX was established during the reign of Ptolemy II. Of course this is what the Book of Aristeas tells us. But no one took Aristeas too seriously for obvious reasons. But now, with the employment of this reference to Ptolemy's wife being named "Hare" we can definitively "know" that the date of the composition of the LXX was 270 BCE.

This is so mind-bogglingly stupid it reminds me of things you'd find in an Eisenmann book.

Either "Hare" really was the name of Ptolemy's wife or it was a mistake for Lagos being the head of the Ptolemy clan. If it was a "mistake" then the evidence from the Talmud can't be that persuasive. No one hopes to win a debate by introducing something that factually incorrect. The aside that Gmirkin "throws in" (i.e. maybe it was a "play on words" for Arsinoe) simply doesn't work either. The two words do not resemble one another. The Talmud literally says that the name of Ptolemy's wife was "Hare" and this accounted for the translators ignoring the obvious word for hare in Greek. Let's admit then that if it was true (they still might have chosen another word for a reason that has nothing to do with Lagos) the "clue" is of no help to dating the translation as all Ptolemies were descendants of Lagos. So we're back to square one.

But the idea that these sort of allegedly "brilliant" arguments "break the deadlock" which plainly exists in the study of the Septuagint, namely that no one really knows when the text was translated, is so over-the-top it reminds me of something in show business as opposed to serious scholarship. The LXX could have been translated any time before the earliest surviving fragment of the Septuagint which is some time in the second century BCE.

The supporters of Gmirkin at the forum will tell us it doesn't matter how Gmirkin arrives at his conclusions. His thesis is so "powerful" and so "brilliant" that the parallels with Plato alone "prove" that the Pentateuch was dependent on Greek sources. But if it the arguments were so strong why does Gmirkin introduce such garbage as the Talmudic story of "Hare" the wife of Ptolemy. Surely Gmirkin thought it was important to "prove" the dating of the LXX suggested by the unworthy source of the Book of Aristeas. If it was not important he would have just presented his "powerful" parallels with Plato on their own.

The difficulty Gmirkin saw, and it is one I draw attention to repeatedly here, is that our surviving Qumran fragments are in fact earlier than the earliest LXX fragments. That's a bad look for any theory. The Qumran fragments date from 250 - 200 BCE and the LXX fragments from the second century BCE. So now the Platonic parallel and the Berossos borrowing arguments have to stand on their own or at least get made from almost the same disadvantage they have with the establishment of the Pentateuch in the Persian period. It is still possible that someone in Judea or Samarian got a hold of Plato and was influenced by his brilliance. But it is not nearly as likely given the "maybes" and "ifs" involved. The neatness of claiming you've "proven" the LXX was created in 270 BCE in Alexandria where this library full of books like Plato and Berossos now almost fully disappears.

The supporters are left hanging on to the idea that the Qumran fragments come from a period which could still technically have an exemplar come from Alexandria get brought back to Judea and then the Qumran fragments. But again, this doesn't work. The Qumran community was a sectarian community from a larger Judean orthodoxy which in turn split from the Samaritan community which developed the narrative around Samaritan locales and concerns. Very very unlikely that these three events could have taken place immediately following the alleged "creation" of the Alexandrian exemplar from a visit to the Alexandrian library.

[Leucius Charinus]

Are there clear examples of Greek influence on the Hebrew text of the Bible? It's been argued that there are Greek words here or there. But overall the answer is no. This is not my decision but the decision of people that actually work with the Hebrew text for a living.

History is not determined by decisions but by historical evidence.

Arnaldo Momigliano discusses the religion of his father:

p.20
"The Greeks like history, but never made it the foundation of their lives."

"To the biblical Hebrew, history and religion were one. This identification,
via the Gospels, has never ceased to be relevant to Christian civilisation."

p.23
"History had nothing to explain and little to reveal to the man who meditated
the Law day and night. The Torah is not only permanent in its value, but
regular in its effects."

p.24
"The Law of the Jews was definitely beyond history".


The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography
Arnaldo Momigliano
Sather Classical Lectures (1961-62)
Volume Fifty-Four
University of California Press, 1990
http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/The%2 ... graphy.htm

To portray the Hellenistic era hypothesis as racially inspired is lunacy.

To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
~ Woody Allen

[Secret Alias]

I think Pete should get the final word with his usual nonsensical citations of Arnaldo Momigliano. The 270 BCE conspiracy theory is just mountainman 2.0 with a developed sense of academic coquetterie. Congratulations Pete on embracing this kindred theory. Learn something from Gmirkin, learn his techniques well and your theory might end up being held up by at least one or two forum members too.

[Leucius Charinus]

Those with theories should welcome attempts at refutation by means of citing the ancient historical evidence which survives. Theories are forever and a day always hypothetical. They are always provisional in the face of new evidence and the re-interpretation and re-evaluation of old evidence.

It's never about attracting followers its about attracting refutation. You don't seem to understand this most basic principle. Trolling like that which you pump out belongs in the entertainment industry and not in the industry of scholarship.

[rgprice]

I've recently been studying the history of Roman history and have been struck by quite a few things.

#1) The writing of Roman history as we know it began in the Hellenistic era, around the 3rd century BCE.
#2) Early Roman historians wrote in Greek and patterned their work on Greek sources.
#3) The "pre-history" of Rome was essentially constructed from Greeks mythology, including the stories of Aeneas and Romulus and Remus.
#4) Roman pre-history was written moralistically, used to frame the moral ideals of the Romans who were writing the accounts.

Now, it seems to me that a Hellenistic development of the Pentateuch fits right in with this model. Indeed, what we find is that this was an era when many histories were produced in Greek.

The first Roman to write history in prose was the senator Q. Fabius Pictor who, late in the third century BCE, wrote an account of Roman history from the beginnings to the Second Punic War. He wrote in Greek, for there was as yet little literary prose in Latin, and Greek was the lingua franca for peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. The Babylonian priest Berossus and the Egyptian priest Manetho both wrote histories of their own people in Greek and, in third-century BCE Egypt, a Jewish scholar named Demetrius wrote a biblical history in Greek. A large team of Jewish scholars in Alexandria also translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek (Septuagint).
-Mellor, Ronald. The Roman Historians (p. 16). Taylor and Francis

Of course, Mellor is here passing on the conventional claim regarding the Hebrew Bible. Yet there are so many parallels between all of these works. We know that this was a period in which many groups were writing national histories in Greek. We know that many of these were were influenced by Greek writers. We know that Roman pre-history is largely a literary construct developed from Greek literary sources.

So when we look at a civilization like that of the Romans and historians can easily conclude that the widely accepted accounts of Roman origins are largely or entirely fabricated from Greek literary sources, it really makes no sense to conclude that the same is not probable for accounts like those of the Jews. In other words, postulating a Hellenistic origin of the Jewish scriptures is merely suggesting that accounts of Jewish history developed in much the same way as those of other civilizations, such as the Romans.

[Secret Alias]

There were also Greek speaking settlements in Italy and their language and culture were quite similar.

[Leucius Charinus]

#3) The "pre-history" of Rome was essentially constructed from Greeks mythology, including the stories of Aeneas and Romulus and Remus.

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

Roman myth and literature

The history of Aeneas was continued by Roman authors. One influential source was the account of Rome's founding in Cato the Elder's Origines.[16] The Aeneas legend was well known in Virgil's day and appeared in various historical works, including the Roman Antiquities of the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (relying on Marcus Terentius Varro), Ab Urbe Condita by Livy (probably dependent on Quintus Fabius Pictor, fl. 200 BCE), and Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus (now extant only in an epitome by Justin).

Virgil's Aeneid


The Aeneid explains that Aeneas is one of the few Trojans who were not killed or enslaved when Troy fell. Aeneas, after being commanded by the gods to flee, gathered a group, collectively known as the Aeneads, who then traveled to Italy and became progenitors of the Romans. The Aeneads included Aeneas's trumpeter Misenus, his father Anchises, his friends Achates, Sergestus, and Acmon, the healer Iapyx, the helmsman Palinurus, and his son Ascanius (also known as Iulus, Julus, or Ascanius Julius). He carried with him the Lares and Penates, the statues of the household gods of Troy, and transplanted them to Italy.

Several attempts to find a new home failed; one such stop was on Sicily, where in Drepanum, on the island's western coast, his father, Anchises, died peacefully.

After a brief but fierce storm sent up against the group at Juno's request, Aeneas and his fleet made landfall at Carthage after six years of wanderings. Aeneas had a year-long affair with the Carthaginian queen Dido (also known as Elissa), who proposed that the Trojans settle in her land and that she and Aeneas reign jointly over their peoples. A marriage of sorts was arranged between Dido and Aeneas at the instigation of Juno, who was told that her favorite city would eventually be defeated by the Trojans' descendants. Aeneas's mother Venus (the Roman adaptation of Aphrodite) realized that her son and his company needed a temporary respite to reinforce themselves for the journey to come. However, the messenger god Mercury was sent by Jupiter and Venus to remind Aeneas of his journey and his purpose, compelling him to leave secretly. When Dido learned of this, she uttered a curse that would forever pit Carthage against Rome, an enmity that would culminate in the Punic Wars. She then committed suicide by stabbing herself with the same sword she gave Aeneas when they first met.

After the sojourn in Carthage, the Trojans returned to Sicily where Aeneas organized funeral games to honor his father, who had died a year before. The company traveled on and landed on the western coast of Italy. Aeneas descended into the underworld where he met Dido (who turned away from him to return to her husband) and his father, who showed him the future of his descendants and thus the history of Rome.

Latinus, king of the Latins, welcomed Aeneas's army of exiled Trojans and let them reorganize their lives in Latium. His daughter Lavinia had been promised to Turnus, king of the Rutuli, but Latinus received a prophecy that Lavinia would be betrothed to one from another land – namely, Aeneas. Latinus heeded the prophecy, and Turnus consequently declared war on Aeneas at the urging of Juno, who was aligned with King Mezentius of the Etruscans and Queen Amata of the Latins. Aeneas's forces prevailed. Turnus was killed, and Virgil's account ends abruptly.

Other sources

The rest of Aeneas's biography is gleaned from other ancient sources, including Livy and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Livy, Aeneas was victorious but Latinus died in the war. Aeneas founded the city of Lavinium, named after his wife. He later welcomed Dido's sister, Anna Perenna, who then committed suicide after learning of Lavinia's jealousy. After Aeneas's death, Venus asked Jupiter to make her son immortal. Jupiter agreed. The river god Numicus cleansed Aeneas of all his mortal parts and Venus anointed him with ambrosia and nectar, making him a god. Aeneas was recognized as the god Jupiter Indiges.[17]

History writing during the Republic and the Imperial epochs had different political and military environments. The later stuff like the Aeneid celebrated the golden imperial Roman age brought into being by Caesar Augustus. Libraries housing Greek and Latin wings of literature were commissioned.

So when we look at a civilization like that of the Romans and historians can easily conclude that the widely accepted accounts of Roman origins are largely or entirely fabricated from Greek literary sources, it really makes no sense to conclude that the same is not probable for accounts like those of the Jews. In other words, postulating a Hellenistic origin of the Jewish scriptures is merely suggesting that accounts of Jewish history developed in much the same way as those of other civilizations, such as the Romans.

This is entirely reasonable.

[Leucius Charinus]

The ORIGINS of The Tower of Babel Story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j2mgduwCUM