The creation of the Hexateuch at Alexandria ca. 270 BCE (and the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek60) inaugurated a political and theological revolution in the national life of Judea and Samaria, replacing traditional national institutions with a novel theocratic form of government, new laws and a new national literature, in accordance with the political and literary agenda outlined in Plato’s Laws (Gmirkin 2017: 261–9). For the most part, the Platonic political agenda was successfully implemented in the reinvention of Jewish and Samaritan national life (cf. Gmirkin 2017: 261–9). Instead of the former rule under a governor during the Neo-Babylonian, Persian and early Hellenistic Era, there was now a new theocratic form of government under a high priest and gerousia (senate) closely modeled on Plato’s Nocturnal Council (Gmirkin 2017: 36). Incorporating Plato’s Laws and other Greek laws researched at Alexandria’s Great Library and retaining a few Old Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian laws preserved among the Samaritans (Gmirkin 2017: 144, 175 n. 366, 263, 2020b: 87), a new constitution and law code was created. These laws were given a divine origin in the Torah’s foundation story, much as Plato had prescribed, in which Yahweh had revealed them to Moses. This new law code recognized existing priesthoods and temples and incorporated local religious customs, as Plato also advised, in order to enhance the aura of antiquity and divinity associated with the new legislation (Gmirkin 2017: 254–5, 262–3). The Pentateuchal foundation story and laws authored and translated into Greek at Alexandria ca. 270 BCE were supplemented in Jerusalem shortly thereafter by the creation of an entire national library of approved literary texts, also following Plato’s agenda in Laws (Gmirkin 2017: 261–9). The sacred texts of the Hebrew Bible formed the basis of the Jewish educational system, especially as reflected in the proliferation of synagogues in the third century BCE in Egypt and later in Palestine (Gmirkin 2017: 268–9). By ca. 200 BCE, according to all available literary and historical evidence, Jews and Samaritans had come to fully accept the Mosaic foundation story as actual history, and the new constitution and laws of ca. 270 BCE as their ancient foundational heritage, much as Plato might have predicted (Republic 3.415c–d). As an external program of nation-building, the creation of the new national life in ca. 270–200 BCE under the agenda laid out in Plato’s Laws must be viewed as extremely successful.
Gmirkin, Russell E.. Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts (p. 288).
Gmirkin, Russell E.. Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts (p. 288).
Again, viewing the writing of the Torah in 270, as a process of documenting existing laws, stories, and traditions with a Hellenized framework is one thing. Viewing the writing of the Torah as the invention of a largely new set of laws, stories, and traditions, including the introduction of the exclusive worship of Yahweh as the Creator of the universe, is another matter. I'm not saying its impossible, its just stretches the realm of plausibility.