2023-02-20

Where Did the God of the Bible Come From? – [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – 8]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Most of us have been conditioned by the conventional wisdom that the Old Testament books were written between the eighth and fifth centuries. But there is no independent evidence for the existence of any of the Bible’s books or any knowledge of biblical traditions (Davies, 1992 and Vridar.info notes), nor any evidence for the practice of Judaism itself (sabbath observance, dietary practices, etc) until the Hellenistic era — the third century (Lemche, 1993 and the post Old Testament – A Hellenistic Book?; Adler, 2022 and the post The Late Origins of Judaism). It is against this background of the hard archaeological evidence that we must approach Gmirkin’s thesis of Hellenistic influence on the Bible.

With thanks to Taylor & Francis (Routledge) for the review copy

We come to the final, and longest, chapter of Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts: Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in the Primordial History by Russell Gmirkin. If the author of Genesis did use Plato’s Timaeus-Critias, what does that tell us about Jewish monotheism in the third century BCE?

In the discussion of Genesis 1 we saw Gmirkin’s case for the Genesis authors drawing upon Plato’s notion of “cosmic monotheism” — the idea of a sole creator god beyond space and time who brings about the universe, including time itself, and then retires from the scene. This god was of a higher order of divinity from other gods and it is in that sense that we speak of “monotheism” here.

In covering Genesis 2 we observed the narrative moving into a storybook world featuring a god who walked amidst his garden and spoke with his created humans and their offspring.

We read of God appearing to address a council of fellow divinities when he (or one of him/them) says, “Let us make humankind in our image….”, “Let us make him a helper….” and then at Babel, “Let us go down and confuse their language….” The supreme deity creates the perfect world but it appears that lesser deities create potentially sinful mortals and interact with them. Sons of god are even said to bear children with human women. And then we encounter the patriarchs sacrificing at altars to gods recognized by their Canaanite neighbours.

Gmirkin compares this outline with Plato’s narrative in Timaeus and Critias. As in Genesis, Plato begins with a supreme craftsman (demiurge) god who is without human form or body and beyond space and time yet who is responsible for creating the perfect universe. After that, lesser gods take over and create corruptible humans and interact with them.

When we read Genesis against the background of Plato’s myths we begin to understand solutions to hitherto perplexing puzzles about Genesis, Gmirkin notes:

Various otherwise perplexing narrative details, small and large, attain a new clarity when interpreted in light of Platonic parallels. Most significant are those relating to a directly polytheistic mythical narrative context that complements (and in small details contradicts) the cosmic monotheism of Genesis 1: the appearance of a multiplicity of gods in both the First Creation Account (Gen 1:26) and the tale of the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:18 [LXX], 3:22); the contrast between the portraits of Elohim as supreme Creator in Genesis 1 and Yahweh as a storybook terrestrial god introduced in Genesis 2-3, and the marriages between gods and mortal women (Gen 6:1-4). The book of Genesis, like Plato’s Timaeus, promoted two complementary visions of the divine realm of the gods: a transcendent philosophical monotheism manifested in the creation of the perfect kosmos at the dawn of time, and a conventional terrestrial polytheism that accommodated the popular beliefs and cults of tradition. Both of these carefully balanced Platonic theological elements were highly innovative: that a single supremely good eternally existent god created the heavens and earth, and that the pantheon of well-known terrestrial gods, his sons and daughters, were also universally good and worthy of honor. (Gmirkin, 247)

There are also compound forms of these names for god, such as Yahweh-Elohim and El-Shaddai. There are various explanations for these in the literature — a) that the one god took on various “guises” (or hypostases), b) that they were different gods, c) that later editors were attempting to change the text (for which there is manuscript evidence) for theological reasons. Gmirkin understands that some of these later changes to the text were introduced by editors seeking to bring Genesis more closely in line with the theological perspective of Exodus-Deuteronomy.

The Genesis god of creation was called Elohim. The storybook god who appears after creation was given the name Yahweh. Yahweh, as you no doubt recognize, is also a transliteration of that famous tetragram YHWH, the god uniquely associated with the Old Testament. In Genesis 1 YHWH is not the creator.

So much for Genesis, but what about the world outside the literature?

Archaeological evidence informs us that before we have any signs of knowledge of biblical accounts Yahweh was a local deity of Jews, Samaritans and others along with other divinities, such as the mother-god Asherah. All the evidence we have for religious practices in the times of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah points to polytheism. Yahweh is simply one among a pantheon of deities.

When the Judahites were defeated by Nebuchadnezzar and many of them transported to Babylonia, we know that there they continued to worship Yahweh along with other gods — in this case the Babylonian gods. Even into the Persian era, wherever archaeologists have uncovered Jewish settlements, they find the worship of other gods alongside Yahweh. Some readers may find this surprising or think the interpretation of the evidence is perverse, but until I post more about the evidence of what has been dug up from the ground here is a smattering of many publications that interested readers can turn to for further detail:

It is not only a question of whether or not the people of Judah worshipped Yahweh alone, but as indicated in the side-box above, in particular with the Adler reference (see also his academia.edu outline of the book), archaeological evidence points to practices contrary to biblical laws and religious customs until the second century BCE.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the Pentateuch was a Hellenistic era work so it follows that Hellenistic ideas should be seriously considered among its sources.

Since Gmirkin’s analysis places the origin of the first five books of the Bible in Hellenistic times (the third century BCE) it would follow from the state of the evidence as alluded to above that Genesis 1

arguably represents the earliest expression of monotheism among the Jews and Samaritans, alongside the equally novel benevolent terrestrial polytheism of the rest of Genesis. (249)

So in Genesis we have an expression of the Plato-like supreme and sole deity, existing outside space and time, creating the cosmos and then retiring, followed by references to what looks like another deity (Yahweh) living and interacting with mortals (e.g. in Garden of Eden, with Cain and Abel, visiting and eating a meal with Abraham, wrestling with Jacob), along with patriarchs honouring the gods of the Canaanites (e.g. with Melchizedek at Salem, Bethel, El Shaddai, El Olam . . .). At the same time we find the patriarchs enjoying positive relations with their “pagan” neighbours. Abraham bonds with Amorites, engages in peaceful negotiations with Hittites and Philistines, is honoured by Egyptians, while breakdowns only happen as a result of personal wrongs and not because of any “evil” inherent in the different races themselves.

After Genesis, Yahweh changed

In both the stories and legal content of Exodus-Joshua one sees the rejection of benevolent terrestrial polytheism in favor of a Yahwistic monolatry that equated the local patron god of the Jews and the Samaritans with the creator of the universe and which opposed the gods of the nations and their cultic practices. Given that Exodus-Joshua was arguably written contemporaneously with Genesis . . . , yet from a radically different perspective, this suggests a fundamental clash in philosophy and agenda between authorial groups involved in the creation of the Hexateuch ca. 270 BCE. (Gmirkin, 249)

There are other authors who argue that a single author was responsible for the Pentateuch: Bernard Barc, Thomas Brodie, Jan-Wim Wesselius and Philippe Wajdenbaum. (See the post, Did A Single Author Write Genesis – II Kings?) Barc, who also argues for a Hellenistic origin of the Pentateuch, views the respective appearances of the god El and the god Yahweh as two different “forms” (hypostases) of the Most High and each performs an allotted function in a single plan of history. Gmirkin argues for a deeper influence of Plato and other Greek ideas on the text. A difficulty for the average reader when pondering this question is the fact that most Bibles are translations of a Hebrew text that was finalized in the Christian era. To discover earlier versions requires a comparison with ancient Greek translations and the Dead Sea Scrolls (first addressed here). We also have the question of how the final editor made changes to Genesis when he incorporated the work into a set with the following books.

Are the views of Barc, Brodie, Wesselius and Wajdenbaum able to respond adequately to the challenges Gmirkin raises? My next task is to step back and refresh my memory of the details of all of Gmirkin’s works and try to see how all of the evidence coheres.

Gmirkin does, however, offer a plausible response to those who find themselves troubled over what seems to be a fuzzy line between the gods and cults in Genesis but it casts an eye beyond Plato. Elohim is the creator but Yahweh-Elohim engages with humans; El Elyon and El Shaddai are both “Els”. In the views of the Stoic philosophers the many Greek gods were different aspects of “one god”:

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.147.

The deity, say they, is a living being, immortal, rational, perfect or intelligent in happiness, admitting nothing evil, taking providential care of the world and all that therein is, but he is not of human shape. He is, however … called many names according to his various powers. They give the name Dia (Δία) because all things arc due to (διά) him; Zeus (Ζήνα) in so far as he is the cause of life (ζην) or pervades all life; the name Athena is given, because the ruling part of the divinity extends to the aether; the name Hera marks its extension to the air; he is called Hephaestus since it spreads to the creative fire; Poseidon, since it stretches to the sea; Demeter, since it reaches to the earth. Similarly, men have given the deity his other titles, fastening, as best they can, on some one or other of his peculiar attributes.

It is possible that the well-known Stoic assimilation of the Greek gods to their monotheistic god, the creative fire, influenced the biblical conflation of deities associated with various titles of the ancient god El with the local patron god Yahweh. (Gmirkin, 300, my formatting)

Let’s continue Gmirkin’s discussion.

Something Completely Different: Here is a light-hearted digression on God’s treatment of the Egyptians at the Red Sea that comes from a study on the history of swimming through the ages:

The Hebrews left Egypt ‘with boldness’, but when they reach the Red Sea they accuse Moses, ‘Have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you so dealt with us, to bring us up out of Egypt?’ Moses (brought up by Egyptians, and perhaps therefore knowing how to swim himself ) soothes the Hebrews, and tells them not to be afraid. He stretches out his hand over the sea. God parts the Red Sea for the Hebrews, and then drowns the Egyptians. . . . .

This was the reverse of what readers might have expected, knowing that the Egyptians had always been strong swimmers and the Hebrews had never known how to swim. The parting of the Red Sea takes on new meaning when we realize that the Hebrews are non-swimmers, afraid of the water, being pursued by confident, experienced Egyptian swimmers.

from pages 55-56 (heard on Late Night Live)

It is only after Genesis, in the book of Exodus, that Yahweh claims to have been the God of the Patriarchs in Genesis and that he will tolerate no rivals. The covenant he makes with his people is to wipe out the Canaanites after having reigned death and destruction on the Egyptians.

God — Yahweh — has changed.

What of the god of the Flood, though? Did not Gmirkin say the biblical author had a more vicious view of god than Plato. At least Plato’s deity sought to discipline humans through calamity for their own good while the biblical god simply wanted to destroy humanity outright. Perhaps some of the Genesis authors also slightly wavered in their view of Yahweh’s character.

Plato’s Program and the Birth of Montheism

Gmirkin concludes from his comparative analysis that the Pentateuch was the work of authors united in seeking to introduce Plato’s program for an ideal society.

Plato taught that there was a supreme deity, formless and beyond space and time, yet who was perfectly good. Such an idea arose from the attempts of Greek philosophers to understand the origins of the universe. This concept of god (Gmirkin traces in some depth the history of the idea and the different functions of the gods of the Greek civic cults, the gods of the literary mythical world and god(s) of the natural philosophers) was the beginning of monotheism as we understand the term.

For Plato (and much of the western world has followed his idea) belief in the concept of a supreme, perfectly good deity is the first requirement of a virtuous society.

Civic authorities periodically accused and punished philosophers who openly taught “atheism” — which was how they understood the new monotheism with its implication of the rejection of other gods. Plato, however, found a role for these lesser gods in the wider society despite his philosophical preference for monotheism. But those lesser deities needed to be refashioned through literature and other arts and regular festivals as perfectly good. Old myths of gods misbehaving had to be banned. People could continue to cement their social bonds by gathering for the worship of these earthly, yet now “purified”, deities.

These ideas of Plato are what Gmirkin finds in Genesis.

Plato further envisioned a Nocturnal Council of the piously qualified as a vital institution to rule his ideal society. Members would be responsible for maintaining the morality of the public and public administration.

In Plato’s Laws, the divine philosophical ruling class elite exercised its power through an institution called the Nocturnal Council to accord with its meetings in the pre-dawn hours (Laws 12.95Id, 961b). Although Laws never explicitly mentions philosophers, “the members of the Nocturnal Council are philosophers in all but name” (Hull 2019: 217). The major function of the Nocturnal Council was to control the internal affairs of the nation. The ruling class elites of this “divine council” (Laws 12.969b; cf. the “divine polity” of 12.965c) would administer the nation’s new laws (Laws 7.809b; 12.951d, 952a-b) and education (Laws 7.811c-812a; 12.951d, 952a-b, 964b-c) from the earliest age on (Laws 12.952b), approve and strictly control its literature (Laws 7.802b-c, 811c-e) and enforce its religious beliefs (Laws 10.908e-909d), controlling the beliefs, and even the collective national memory of the populace, who would come to regard their constitution and way of life as established since time immemorial by their patron gods (Laws 7.798a-b). Through this new theocratic form of government in which the people believed they were under divine rule, the whole of national life would come under the perpetual control and guidance of philosophers, with the willing cooperation of the people who believed their leaders to be the divine agents of the supreme god. (Gmirkin, 268)

and

While the exoteric function of the Nocturnal Council was the administration of the state and its beliefs through control of its legislation, literature, education and religion, its even more important esoteric function was the continued pursuit of philosophical and scientific studies, thought to be essential to the proper administration of the polis. The Nocturnal Council thus functioned both as the ruling body of government and as a university for the continued study of theology, astronomy, ethics and international law, like Plato’s Academy (Morrow 1993: 509; Hull 2019: 228). Investing the nation’s highest educational institution with the full power of government not only ensured wise philosophical rule in the present but allowed the perpetuation of training in the arts of enlightened government from one generation to the next (Laws 12.960d-961b, 965a-b). (Gmirkin, 269)

Here we begin to overlap with what we have covered in other posts about Gmirkin’s earlier work. See the archived posts on Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible.

Authors Divided

Gmirkin identifies two groups authoring the Pentateuch. Both groups were sympathetic to Plato’s program, at least to a point.

The authors of Genesis expressed an “ethical and philosophical” agenda;
Those of Exodus to Deuteronomy/Joshua, however, pursued a “cultic and nationalistic” program.

Group 1

In Genesis, we appear to be entering a world of “benevolent polytheism”. The gods are never in dispute with one another and no god or cult is ever condemned.

The picture is one of a Platonic ideal of peace and harmony among the nations and their gods. Significantly, other than Genesis 14, the single example of villainy carried out by one people against another saw Simeon and Levi slaughter the Shechemites. This act of genocidal violence was condemned by Jacob, lest their names “become a stench among the Canaanites” (Gen 34:30)—an irony indeed in light of the Hexateuch’s later mandate to eradicate the Canaanites from the land. In Genesis, by contrast, the gods and nations live in a natural state of harmony and mutual respect, with the just punishment of humans reserved for the gods alone, and that only for human wickedness and violence. (Gmirkin, 276)

Group 2

In Exodus-Deuteronomy/Joshua, we continue to see the Greek influence and especially that of Plato’s Laws (examined more closely in a previous series) but now there is a “strict combative monolatry … central to the Mosaic foundation story in Exodus-Deuteronomy and the conquest story in Joshua.”

If these literary works were composed around 270 BCE then we can imagine a scenario that fits with the archaeological evidence and acknowledge that the Jews and Samaritans were tolerant of polytheism until new religious reforms were introduced and enforced. As noted above, we know that Yahweh was worshipped alongside other gods up until the third and second centuries BCE. We further know that both Judea and Samaria were ruled by councils led by high priests of the Yahwistic cults in Jerusalem and Mount Gerizim.

It seems self-evident that this monolatrous, monopolistic promotion of Yahwism against all the other gods originated with personnel that adhered to the Yahweh cult. (Gmirkin, 279)

Contrary to the scenario in Genesis, in Exodus-Joshua we find constant warfare against other gods and ethnic groups.

One may contrast the combative monolatry in Exodus-Joshua with the scene in Genesis 14 in which Abraham and the kings of Canaan joined in worship of the supreme god El Elyon. It is apparent that radically different ethical values are expressed in Genesis and Exodus-Joshua, with Genesis emphasizing pacifistic norms of good relations and common values among all ethnic groups in the patriarchal era (Lind 1980: 36-46), and the stories of Moses and Joshua postulating an intractable hostility between the nations and their gods. While Genesis proclaimed the goodness of the gods, both cosmic and terrestrial, in Exodus-Joshua we see a series of tales about gods behaving badly and a resulting inherent intransigent animosity between nations. . . .

This Ancient Near Eastern conception of national gods at war was an integral part of the cultural heritage of the Jews and Samaritans and permeated biblical narratives about the Israelites at war. The aggressive nationalism of Exodus-Joshua, closely allied with the Yahweh cult, appears to represent a conservative preservation of the old Ancient Near Eastern ways of thinking against the new philosophical ideals of the Platonists who held it possible for all nations and religions to live together in peace. (Gmirkin, 280)

A Conflicted Foundation Story

In other posts we have seen the way the Pentateuch adheres to the outline of a Greek foundation story for a new settlement. Despite differences there remains a literary unity (observed through the many cross-references) throughout Genesis to Deuteronomy. The unity does not extend to the character of Yahweh or view of Canaanites, however.

. . . the national and religious charter in the foundation story of Exodus-Joshua involved a full rejection of Platonic theology and divine ethics present in Genesis. Plato’s central theological tenet was that goodness prevailed throughout the divine realm. The rejection of Plato’s divine ethics, in which the gods lived together without jealousy or strife, is perhaps most vividly illustrated in the remarkable assertion in Ex 15:3, “Yahweh is a warrior.” Far from exonerating the gods from evil, the theology of Exodus-Joshua characterized all the gods as wicked, save for Yahweh alone, and portrayed Yahweh as mandating a war against all the rival gods and their universally abominable religious rites. Whereas Plato understood evil in terms of disruptive irrational human appetites and ambitions and their resulting acts of unjust violence, the books of Exodus-Joshua redefined non-Yahwism as the new standard of evil and attached virtue to zealous acts of violence directed against the other gods and their worshippers within the boundaries of the Promised Land (Ex 17:14, 16; 23:23-24; 34:13; Num 25:7-13; 34:51-52; Deut 7:1-5, 16, 21-26; 12:2-3; 13:6-17; 20:13-18). (Gmirkin, 281)

The first commandment of the Decalogue would have made Plato cringe:

I the Lord thy God am a jealous God

Plato would have banished the war-mongering and jealous Yahweh from all permitted literature in his ideal society, or at least have reformed him into being an epitome of pure and exclusive goodness and benevolence.

Yahweh Becomes the Biblical Creator

Gmirkin sees the first step towards this conflation of Yahweh with the supreme Craftsman god of Plato and Creator of Genesis 1 in the account of Genesis 14:17-24 where Abraham, alongside Melchizedek, worships El Elyon, the Canaanite creator god.

This cult of El Elyon was already present in Canaan prior to the arrival of Abraham to the Promised Land at the direction of Yahweh. El Elyon, the Most High God, was seemingly the object of universal worship, by both Abraham and the Canaanite king of Sodom in Gen 14:17-24. This reflected El Elyon’s status as the supreme god, worshipped alongside and above the local gods of the nations (including Abraham’s god). This identification of El Elyon with the Creator of Genesis 1 by implication raised El Elyon to cosmic status—equal with the Demiurge of Timaeus—but did not do the same with his offspring. (Gmirkin, 284)

The next step is found in Exodus where Yahweh is conflated with the Creator of Genesis 1. Whereas in Genesis Yahweh walked and talked with Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abraham and Sarah, and Jacob, in Exodus he is a fiery god upon whom no mortal can look. He descends upon Mount Sinai in lightning, thunder and earthquake. When he enters the tabernacle to speak with Moses he does so as a cloud of glory. He forbids images to be made of him and threatens death to any who would think to look upon him.

In Genesis 1 Elohim “ceased” from his work of creation on the sabbath and is removed from the scene; in the fourth commandment of Exodus Yahweh says he (equating himself with the Elohim of Genesis 1) was “refreshed” on the sabbath, implying his work would continue in other ways afterwards.

Yahweh, the national god of the Jews and Israelites, was thereby raised to cosmic status as the god of the entire universe, a god who nevertheless paradoxically chose to dwell among the children of Israel, first in the wilderness tabernacle and later in Jerusalem’s temple. The leaders of Yahweh’s temple cult did not merely praise Yahweh as their nation’s patron god and author of their laws, but rejected all the other gods and their idols as wicked and false. (Gmirkin, 286)

From this point, the view arose that only the God of the Bible was the true god and all others were false.

Ideal and Compromise

Thus Gmirkin identifies two groups behind the Pentateuch. The authors of Genesis were

highly educated elites who sought to reform Jewish and Samaritan national life in conformance with Platonic theology, ethics and political theory. (287)

The others were

composed of conservative contemporary Yahwistic priests and national leaders who sought to preserve and expand the monopolistic power of the Yahweh cult and undermine the influence of the Platonic philosophical circles in the process. This latter group accepted the implementation of Plato’s political, legislative and literary agenda that served the practical purpose of effective nation-building (Gmirkin 2017: 250-99), but rejected the subsequent theological and ethical constraints on government and religion. (Gmirkin, 287)

If the Hellenistic era is defined as a blending of Greek and Asian cultures, then the final form of the Pentateuch, I would say, is a “classic” expression of the Hellenistic age. (Many of us probably prefer it were more thoroughly in tune with Plato’s ideals than a compromise.)

The Hexateuch is best understood as a compromise text with literary contributions from both of these two competing groups (and perhaps others), skillfully combined by editors. (Gmirkin, 287)

Theocratic Rule of Samaria and Judea

Samaria and Judea would not have been unique in letting Plato influence their governance. The classicist Glenn Morrow cites many instances of both clear and likely influences of Laws on the constitutions of city-states, religious and legal institutions, education and policies of governing bodies in his own time and the following Hellenistic and Roman eras. I expect to post some details in the next post as an addendum to this series.

It is one thing to read conclusions from comparative literary analysis but what about the shape of Samaria and Judea in “the real world”? We know that prior to and shortly after the conquests of Alexander the Great these territories were ruled by governors. At some time soon after the Hellenistic rule both are found to be theocracies led by a high priest and council. Gmirkin asks us to think of Plato’s Nocturnal Council.

The Jewish senate or gerousia of 70 elders led by a high priest appears to have been directly modeled on Plato’s Nocturnal Council (Gmirkin 2017: 27-28, 36, 39, 261), at least outwardly. Both ruling bodies took the form of a gerousia or council of elders. A striking commonality was the civic authority granted the high priest in both Jewish and Platonic theocracies. The Jews of Jerusalem’s temple had an office of high priest (rab cohen) at least as early as ca. 400 BCE who exercised power in the religious sphere (TAD A4.7.17-18), but it was only in the later Hellenistic Era that he became head of the gerousia and civic leader of the nation. In the Greek world, the office of “high priest,” (archheireon) was unknown outside of Plato’s Laws until ca. 250 BCE (see Morrow quoted in an earlier post). Plato’s Laws was unique both in investing the office of priest with an aura of virtue and in assigning priests civic duties. The high priest and college of priests associated with him as civic leaders in Plato’s Laws thus correspond strikingly to the Jewish high priest and chief priests who figured prominently in the gerousia (and later Sanhedrin). Both senates also historically included non-priests with a reputation for legal expertise, but the position of high priest as civic leader was considered a uniquely Jewish phenomenon throughout the period ca. 270-ca. 40 BCE. (Gmirkin, 289)

At this point I cannot resist including a comparable observation about Samaria, though it is not from Gmirkin’s book (unless I have overlooked it at the moment). The city of Samaria rebelled soon after Alexander’s conquest and it was consequently destroyed:

After the destruction of the city of Samaria and the revocation of Samaritan self-rule, the priests became the ruling class of the Samaritan people that was now concentrated around the temple on Mt. Gerizim. The high priest was the head of the theocratic state. In the wake of the destruction of the city of Samaria by Alexander the Great, all the priestly religious functionaries left the city and moved to Mt. Gerizim. Hence, Mt. Gerizim became the religious, national, economic, and political center of the Samaritans during the Ptolemaic period. Following its rebellion and destruction, Samaria became a Macedonian city. At the same time, Mt. Gerizim and its temple continued to exist and flourished as the center of the Samaritans who believed in YHWH. (Magen, 182)

Now that does look like a “happy coincidence”, does it not? Both Samaria and Judea become ruled by Yahwist priests in the wake of Greek conquest. It appears that Gmirkin’s literary analysis concluding Plato’s influence on the Pentateuch “fits” with other political and religious-cultic developments in the Hellenistic world at the time, some of which are traced to Plato’s influence (Glenn Morrow).

The theocracies in Samaria and Judea parted from Plato’s ideal in two critical ways.

a) Plato wanted the most virtuous leaders to be chosen by election. But leading priestly offices in Samaria and Judea were hereditary.

b) The councils became strictly administrative and cult organizations and did not go on to become “universities” or “conferences” of ongoing education in the kinds of wisdom Plato deemed necessary for such a system to survive as intended. For Plato, it was essential that the Nocturnal Council (or its counterpart) be an institution of ongoing philosophical education.

The original Platonic idea of theocracy under an enlightened philosophical elite was replaced by an aggressive Yahwistic monolatry freed of constraints to philosophical goodness and subject to unruly territorial ambitions. Philosophical rule was effectively decapitated. . . .

. . . Rather than the first nation under philosophical rule, Judea became known as the first nation under priestly religious rule, and Judaism as the first belief system. (Gmirkin, 293)

And the rest is history.

Gmirkin, Russell E. Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts: Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in the Primordial History. Abingdon, Oxon New York, NY: Routledge, 2022.

Magen, Yitzhak. “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E, edited by Oded Lipschitz, Gary N. Knoppers, and Rainer Albertz, 157–212. Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 2007.

Morrow, Glenn R. Plato’s Cretan City. With a New foreword by Charles H. Kahn edition. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1993.

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2023-02-20