Why the Hellenistic era hypothesis should be taken seriously

[neilgodfrey]

The reason is simple. The hypothesis is born from the fundamentals of historical methods as practised by historians in fields other than biblical studies. Biblical scholars, it is no secret to anyone, not even to themselves on the whole, do have interests that go beyond pure historical research.

The Documentary Hypothesis, it has been pointed out by at least one scholar in the biblical field, might well never had got off the ground had the Elephantine remains been discovered earlier and had more time to gain traction and wider and more focused attention than it had before the time of Wellhausen and co's work.

So much in biblical studies that passes for facts are actually hypotheses.

None of this is to say that biblical scholars are "biased" or "unscholarly". Of course they are scholarly and their biases are generally known and admitted and taken into account. But their work tends to be picked up by others and over time taken for granted as fact.

Much of the effort on this forum in discussions about the OT, it seems to me, involve struggles to explain why certain evidence is lacking but that a particular hypothesis is still the best explanation despite this gap.

The view that the Pentateuch was a product of the Hellenistic era can stand even quite apart from Gmirkin's work because it is at least consistent with the factual evidence. There is no independent evidence that the OT was composed prior to the Hellenistic era. Of course that does not prove it was a Hellenistic product. But it does at least allow for the theoretical possibility that it was created in the Hellenistic era. Lemche and others have proposed the idea in scholarly venues before Gmirkin's studies appeared.

When a hypothesis has been long-standing we have both a potential strength but also a potential weakness. We tend to react to new ideas defensively and sometimes even resort to personal attacks and ridicule in our attempts to defend them. We resort to a flurry of "what about this or that?" questions and sometimes even find ways to resort to accusations related in some way to Hitler and the Holocaust. Ridicule is usually the best defence, though. Muddying the waters and outright misrepresentation are also handy tools.

So change is very often a generational thing. It happens as the new ideas are embraced by the new students who are less emotionally and intellectually committed to the old ideas.

The fact remains that there is no independent evidence to situate the Pentateuch prior to the Hellenistic era. It also is a fact that scholarship has only cursorily (by comparison) considered assessing the evidence within the Pentateuch itself with Hellenistic literature and thought. Those are facts. Another fact is that Documentary Hypothesis is not without its inconsistencies and problems.

Those facts do not prove that the Pentateuch was created in the Hellenistic era. But they do at least make it possible to ask the question and a whole host of sub-questions and not be ridiculed for doing so.

The unscholarly and anti-intellectual approach is to shut down the asking of those questions by means of ridicule, personal attack, misrepresentation, etc.

Gmirkin's work has expanded on the work of other scholars who have at least cracked open the door to comparing the Pentateuch with Hellenistic culture. One can dismiss his work as "parallelomania" but then one would have to demonstrate that his work really does fit Samuel Sandmel's description of that word in a way that does not equally apply to comparing the Pentateuch to Hittite, Mesopotamian or Syrian/Ugaritic works.

Proposing arguments to explain why evidence is lacking should be considered a warning sign. There may be very good reasons for why a hypothesis is valid, even "true", and why evidence for it is lacking. But they need to be justified in a serious manner, not with ad hoc explanations. As someone said, the first reaction to any challenge to our pet theory is to find ways to defend it, and to construct all sorts of new and old arguments, even contradictory ones, for that effort. And we read opposing views with hostile intent, seizing any word or phrase that we can identify as "wrong" before we take a breath and try to see it in its intended context.

The Hellenistic provenance of the Pentateuch does not deny any use of pre-Hellenistic literature. Hellenization even means a uniting of Greek and Asian cultures, not a replacement of one by the other. Some of the literary and ideological parallels identified by Gmirkin have also been noted by other scholars who have proposed that it was the Hebrews who influenced the Greeks. They have been obliged to make that the direction of borrowing entirely because of the strength of the Documentary Hypothesis.

Maybe doing away with the DH would allow for a simpler explanation of the actual evidence.

[rgprice]

What I find interesting is the fact that ancient scholars frequently compared the Jewish scriptures to Greek sources, especially Plato. Of course Josephus made the comparison of Genesis and Exodus to Manetho and Berossus. It seems that many ancient scholars showed significant similarities between Greek and Jewish works, but those ancient and Christian scholars also concluded that it was the Jews to influenced the Greeks.

Of course, many scholars over recent centuries have found this proposal to be highly improbable, but the primary result has been simply to ignore these supposed parallels and to basically stop asserting Jewish influence on Greek culture, and to kind of just brush the whole issue under the rug. But, the issue has to be addressed and decided one way or another.

Either the pillars of Greek culture are founded upon a Judaism, for which we can find no independent evidence of existing prior to the 2nd century BCE, or Judaism has borrowed from the Greeks, implying an origin or Judaism proper or earlier then the 4th century BCE, or all of the apparent parallels between Judaism and Hellenism, which were in fact foundational to the origin of Christianity and essentially the rock that the Catholic Church was founded upon, from Eusebius to Lactantius to Augustine and on down, are all just a mirage and really are either coincidental or imaginary.

Now, at this point, regardless of Gmirkin's thesis, I think viewing Judaism as we know it, i.e. Deuteronomistic Judaism, as anything other than Hellenistic in origin is inconceivable.

The only real way I can conceive of the Pentateuch being produced, the following Hasmonaean revolution, and accounting for all we know from archaeology is that Judaism as we know it originated in a manner very similar to modern religions, such as Mormonism or Scientology. I envision the origins of Judaism as something very similar to the origins of Mormonism in fact, though with a following militant component that would have turned something like a Mormon movement into something like the Russian Revolution.

But this view also comes from having studied so many other Hellenistic era religious/philosophical movements, and the creation of other Hellenistic religious texts. Doing things like fabricating a religious text, or artifact, burying it, then staging the discovery of the work and then founding a movement on it was in fact commonplace.

For example, see Cicero's account of the origins of the temple at Fortuna Primigenia:

According to the annals of Praeneste, Numerius Suffustius, who was a distinguished man of noble birth, was admonished by dreams, often repeated, and finally even by threats, to split open a flint rock which was lying in a designated place. Frightened by the visions and disregarding the jeers of his fellow-townsmen he set about doing as he had been directed. And so when he had broken open the stone, the lots sprang forth carved on oak, in ancient characters. The site where the stone was found is religiously guarded to this day.

This whole thing was clearly a ruse, but nevertheless, resulted in the founding of a significant, and profitable, oracle center.

The point is that many people can only seem to conceive of the origin of ancient religions as something entirely different than modern ones, and as slow accretions of traditions that amassed within a community over time and became calcified. But there is no reason to actually think this. This is nothing more than delusional idealism. Religions often started rapidly, originating from the claims or an individual or small number of people. Religions also frequently made use of consciously fraudulent methods to hide to true nature of their origins. This was no different then that now.

[neilgodfrey]

Philip Davies, a "minimalist" who argued for a Persian era origin of the biblical texts, identified the core of the problem in the orthodox models: the foundational hypotheses are grounded in circular reasoning. It is the same in NT studies that attempt to reconstruct Christian origins from the gospels and Acts. I have set out the four basic points he identifies as problematic at http://vridar.info/bibarch/arch/index.htm

The whole notion of a gradual evolution of ideologies about god, rituals, is entirely hypothetical and based on certain presumptions about the texts that cannot be proven or disproved. I am currently reading a very detailed study of about the books of Chronicles and find the analysis to be first rate in many places, but there is a small catch: the author does say at one point -- apparently to bring his thesis into the fold of conventional wisdom -- that some circular reasoning is inevitable. But he justifies this misstep by saying it is "only a small circle"! To avoid circularity entirely would open up possibilities that are not considered kosher.

There may have been deliberate deception involved, as you suggest, and maybe that's how it happened, but that's not how I would argue the point.

What "minimalists" have going for them is that they reject any interpretation that is circular and rely entirely on constructing hypotheses that can be justified, step by step, in independent evidence.

That's what makes their work worthy of serious study -- and such a threat, unfortunately, to some scholars who cannot handle the discomfort of the results of that method.

Gmirkin is not doing "minimalism" per se but is building on the scope of evidence that minimalists have opened up for serious consideration.

There is one scholar who is currently a respected member of her community, creditably published, etc, who really does argue in article after article for the possibility of Hebrew literature influencing the Greeks, even Plato! So the evidence is there to see. Some simply pretend it is not "real" and simply ignore it as "coincidence" etc.

Judaism has been described as a classic form of Hellenism, one of the Hellenistic sects or parties or a "haíresis" (heresy) that emerged out of the breakdown of the old styles of Levantine empires.

[rgprice]

There is one scholar who is currently a respected member of her community, creditably published, etc, who really does argue in article after article for the possibility of Hebrew literature influencing the Greeks, even Plato! So the evidence is there to see. Some simply pretend it is not "real" and simply ignore it as "coincidence" etc.

This is the thing. The relationships between Plato and Judaism are inescapable, well documented, and go all the way back to our earliest commentors on Judaism. In fact, denying a relationship between Judaism and Plato requires essentially throwing out much of analysis of the oldest and deepest Jewish thinkers. You have to then say that Josephus, Philo, and a dozen other writers from the 1st century BCE through the 5th century were all entirely wrong and had no idea what they were talking about and just delusional.

Or, we can see that Philo actually knew what he was talking about and understood the connections between Judaism and Plato, though he didn't acknowledge the true nature of the connection.

Try to ignore the connection is just idiotic. But this is where we are, because once yo acknowledge the connection, you have to address it and have to explain it. If people have a hard time accepting a Hellenistic origin of Judaism, it is 1,000 times harder to credibly argue a Jewish origin of Hellenism!

And this is the reality. Either, as ancient Jews claims, Greek culture, ethics, law, civics, etc. all originated from the Jews. Somehow, ancient Greek thinkers got hold of Jewish writings in the 9th-4th centuries and were able to turn them into Greek masterpieces that then changed the course of Greek civilization, OR it goes the other way around.

The evidence for the development of Greek culture if vast, deep, rich, spread over large geographic regions and spans thousands of years, going back to the 12th century BCE. We have museums upon museums filled with the artifacts of Greek culture. The oldest known work of European literature is a Greek papyri, the Derveni Papyrus, dated to the 4th century BCE.

There is scant trace of "Israelite" civilization. We have a few tiny remains of Semitic origin that are maybe one one thousandth the volume of Greek materials, or not even really. No real evidence of Judaism proper, i.e. anything that distinctly adheres to the Jewish scriptures, until the 2nd century BCE. To claim, that it was the Jews who gave rise to Hellenism and not the other way around is beyond absurd.

So we're left then with a majority of scholars who just try to ignore the situation thing, which is really all you can do if you aren't willing to address the possibility that Judaism originated in Hellenistic times.

And it is really much like trying to argue that the works of Mormonism actually pre-date America. It's like not accepting the obvious elements of Mormonism that result from American influence.

[billd89]

Of course the OT is an Alexandrian product 3rd C BC, cobbled together with older bits. I was grateful to find Gmirkin's thesis, but it's eminently logical and just an antidote to nonsense protecting Jewish Myth. We don't protect Xtian Myth from logical criticism -- no 'special exception' pleading allowed here.

Judaism as we know it originated in a manner very similar to modern religions, such as Mormonism or Scientology.

In 1938, Anonymous Authors re-created a Jewish Mystery cult for the richest man on earth, and 85 years later that fact is still entirely unknown.

[neilgodfrey]

Since on this forum I have been called something of a "fanboy" of Russell Gmirkin I should make a couple of things clear.

Yes, I like and am at the moment persuaded by Gmirkin's basic thesis. And for that reason it is necessary for me to be all the more critical of his work in order to not let that persuasion get the better of intellectual integrity.

I think I have succeeded in some way given my finding some difficulty with reliance upon the letter of Aristeas and how he builds his Alexandrian model on it. Russell G might well be right, but I find myself still at arm's length on that part of his thesis.

I could say much more on this topic of self-awareness and testing hypotheses and the how certain ideas "rise to the top" in academia, etc, and think I am willing to respond to any specific doubts. But the above point is the one I make for now without writing a full essay.

[StephenGoranson]

Though I find the question whether X is absolutely excluded in some universe an exceedingly weak "defence," and find ng's dismissal of austendw's Noah example perfunctory,
let me take the opportunity to agree with ng on one point:
"...difficulty with [Gmirkin's] reliance upon the letter of Aristeas and how he builds his Alexandrian model on it."
One difficulty indeed.

[Secret Alias]

The hypothesis will be ignored because it lacks nuance. His struggle with Samaritanism is indicative of this. He didn't take it seriously enough as having a central role in the foundation of the religion of the book. We gone through this before. You don't care because you are only interested in this theory for its ability to "nuke" the Bible. Personal familiarity has an odd way of making motive apparent. This is not an explanative tool. It's a final solution for Biblical studies. Like castration as a "solution" for male sexual dysfunction.

[neilgodfrey]

and find ng's dismissal of austendw's Noah example perfunctory,

I at no point "dismissed" austendw's example of an explanation of the diachronic explanation for the narrative. I acknowledged and accepted it. I made it clear in my discussions with austendw that I acknowledged the seams and rifts in the text.

Yes, such explanations as austendw offered fill the publications. They are the standard kind of interpretation of the breaks and seams and gaps in the text.

But the point I was making was that this kind of interpretation is only an example of how a text can be explained by a diachronic model. I acknowledge that there are countless such examples in the literature.

In the end I think austendw and I agreed that we were talking past each other. He was addressing one question and I was addressing another. He was giving examples of how one model of biblical origins can make sense of a text. I was proposing that another model could provide different explanations for the same text.

Just giving an example of how one can explain a text by a diachronic model does not rebut the point that another model can offer a different explanation.

I was hoping that any response here would have addressed the scholarship I referred to that is a basis on which an alternative model can be partly made -- a point that derives not from Gmirkin's thesis, by the way.

What is being "dismissed" or totally ignored in this discussion is any example of narrative that cannot be explained "synchronically" but can only be explained "diachronically". austendw unfortunately did not explain why his explanation was the only valid one and why the same gaps etc cannot be explained synchronically.

My copy and paste of an alternative perspective derived not from Gmirkin, by the way.

[neilgodfrey]

As for reasons why radically new ideas do not often become quickly adopted, anyone with basic knowledge of how a university and academic life actually works in the real world will know the answer. I recently was told by an academic who is part of the mainstream and widely known and highly respected by his peers that his peers were still submitting articles for review that showed no knowledge of a book he himself had written and had been available for many years now.

Much has been written about this problem facing university academics. One example setting out such reasons that is available to all on the web:

• Menand, Louis. “The Limits of Academic Freedom.” In The Future of Academic Freedom, edited by Louis Menand, 3–20. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1996. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/46 ... n=crossref

P.S.

That essay (pages 3-20) was written long ago but the situation has only got worse since then. Today the decline in opportunities for tenure and increasing contract base for employment has made the situation far worse. It's why so often we seem to only learn that radical or "heretical" ideas have been secretly harboured by academics when they reach their last years or after retirement when they have nothing to lose by going public with them.