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[neilgodfrey]

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[neilgodfrey]

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[andrewcriddle]

One General issue is that the works in the Old Testament that would often be regarded as early Hellenistic like Chronicles are revising an earlier pre-Hellenistic text (Samuel-Kings) in the light of later ideology. (Yes this does treat Samuel-Kings as pre-Hellenistic but it does IMO seem considerably prior to Chronicles.) There is less evidence of creation of large scale narratives de-novo in this period.

Andrew Criddle

The model you describe suggests that a particular ideology that dominated at one time was at a much later time out of date and replaced by a new ideology. But if that was the case why was Samuel-Kings preserved by the new dominant ideological power?

That both ideological literatures were preserved would suggest, would it not, that the different ideologies were contemporary and co-existing.

I'm uneasy with the idea of an early Hellenistic 'ideological power' deciding that problematic texts should not be preserved.

I think something like this probably did happen after the Jewish wars against Rome in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. The perceived role of Apocalyptic texts in encouraging violent revolt led to a final Jewish canon which excluded works like Enoch. I doubt whether there was a controlling homogenous 'ideological power' in the early Hellenistic period which excluded earlier works that conflicted with its own agenda.

I'm reluctant to get into the discussion of what is a 'bad' circular argument, but I can't help feeling that proponents of a Hellenistic origin of the Old Testament must postulate conditions in the early Hellenistic period for which (at least IMO) we have no direct evidence and which (at least IMO) are prima-facie improbable, but which are necessary in order for the Old Testament to be produced at that time.

Andrew Criddle

[andrewcriddle]

Here is a crux of the matter. I raised it in another discussion in relation to the Flood narrative in Genesis.

Imagine a redactor, R, familiar with source A.

R discovers a second source, B, about the same event.

R has a certain ideological viewpoint that A has illustrated in some fashion. B does not reflect the same ideological viewpoint or even the same factual details.

R therefore decides to edit B to make it conform more suitably to A, creating a new text, with some added details, C.

A century later another redactor familiar with C encounters another source, D. . . .

And does the same thing. What we would expect to find is a redacted final product that has been rewritten multiple times to conform to the story as known or preferred by each redactor. (As one scholar noted, that's exactly what we see in the history of 1-2 Chronicles -- a redactor as rewritten previous sources to make a new work that meets the new ideological requirements.)

But that's not what we have in the Primary History.

Instead we have a series of narratives that are often within themselves incoherent, contradicting one another, and so forth. Instead of the diachronic model described above, would not a synchronic model have better explanatory power?

Synchronic model:

Different "Judeo-Samarian" communities are collaborating to produce a common text. Different community representatives write down their traditions or stories about this or that, and a "chairperson" works to combine them all into one story so that the interests of all are represented. The result may not be the kind of literature we think of as "classical", but it does the job.

Do we have evidence of scholars engaged cooperatively under the guidance of a leading scholar, each member of the group working independently and then comparing their results with the others, in Hellenistic times. Yes, as was the way of Aristotle and the grammarians at Alexandria. Do we have a time when different Judean-Samaritan interest groups did exist in harmony? Yes, we do, but it broke down in later Hellenistic times.

I think we may have to clarify what exactly a Hellenistic origin for the Pentateuch means.

I agree that the present canonical form of the MT of the Pentateuch is Hellenistic, not just in trivial points but in that the detailed chronology of the MT which is important in final form exegesis is Hellenistic in origin.

What I have been rejecting is the idea that a brand new historical self understanding was imposed on Israel in the early Hellenistic period.

The proposal that during the Persian period Priests at Jerusalem and Israelites in Palestine as a whole had developed their ancient traditions into two different extended narratives and that in the very early Hellenistic period after the breakdown of Persian overlordship both these narratives were combined together to produce something like our Pentateuch is IMHO probably wrong. But I regard it as much more of a legitimate option than I do the brand new historical self understanding idea.

I'm genuinely not sure whether you would regard the above as a version of your Synchronic mode proposal or as a rejection of it.

Andrew Criddle

[StephenGoranson]

As far as I know, it is not circular to observe that several ancient peoples, for example Zoroastrians, had traditions written down over a long time. Traditions may not be systematically coordinated, despite possible later scholarly attempts to so present them. Scholars often, typically, being those accepted as such via peer review. Considering that something such obtained for the "OT community" is not properly dismissed, but considered and evaluated.
Priests with a temple were among the most literate people within ancient populations; assuming such to lack written traditions, liturgy and the like would be a tendentious presumption.
Committees often tend either to homogenize or to privilege a point of view.
And, anyway, there is no evidence, of which I am aware, of a single-time, short-term or synchronic, Hellenistic Era, Old Testament committee.

[neilgodfrey]

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