I am posting here on my blog what I had posted in the “Academic Discussion” of the EarlyWritings Biblical Criticism & History Forum and I hope soon to post specific criticisms or responses that were made in that space. I am collating both those criticisms and my own responses as far as I can find them to make them all accessible here. The reason for doing this is that on that forum some of my comments were removed (without notifying me) to other places outside the Academic Discussion area and replies made to them without my being aware of what was going on. To the extent I have tracked those down I will post them here. (I may have more to say about the range of discussion that is permitted on that forum — and enforced by means of ridicule and insult directed at those who dare to question the fundamentals of core biblical studies models and methods.) I will, of course, also be posting other scholarly arguments that have been used to date the books of the Hebrew Bible to the Persian period and earlier.
Here is one of the earlier criticisms. It is from Stephen Goranson:
My reply (originally posted on the earlywritings forum):
Michael Langlois has the scholarly professionalism to acknowledge when others have interpretations that differ from his own, noting what is possible outside his own preferences and where another specialist has disagreed with him.
He writes in relation to 4Q46 (p. 270):
4Q46 would thus be at home in the fifth or fourth centuries BCE; an earlier date is not impossible but lacks clear parallels, whereas a date in the third century is possible but unnecessary.
In relation to 4Q12: (p. 271):
. . . would also be at home in the fifth or fourth centuries BCE, perhaps in the third century should the development of the script be slow. McLean dates 4Q12 to the “middle of the second century” BCE; 64 such a late date is unnecessary.
On 2Q5 (p. 271)
. . . this manuscript could be at home in the fourth or third centuries. McLean dates it to ca. “150 to 75 BCE” 65 which seems unnecessarily late.
On 6Q2 (p. 271)
Overall, 6Q2 may also have been copied around the fourth or third centuries BCE. McLean acknowledges the affinities between 6Q2 and 2Q5 and ascribes them both the same unnecessarily late date between 150 and 75 BCE.
On the 1Q3 fragments (p. 272)
Although a date in the fourth century is possible, 1Q3 is probably more at home in the third century, like 4Q11. McLeanʼs dating between “150 to 75 BCE” 67 is, once again, probably late, while Birnbaumʼs dating “ca. 440 B.C.E.” 68 is too early, flawed by his methodology.
And on the 6Q1 fragments (p. 272)
… may have been copied around the third century BCE. McLean dates 4Q101 “between 225 and 150 BCE,” 69 and 6Q1 and 4Q123 to the “last half of the second century” BCE 70 ; these ranges are possible but too narrow and a bit late.
- Langlois, Michael. “Dead Sea Scrolls Palaeography and the Samaritan Pentateuch.” In The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Dead Sea Scrolls, edited by Michaël Langlois, 255–85. Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology 94. Leuven ; Bristol, CT: Peeters, 2019.
As has been noted elsewhere [in earlier discussions on the Early Writings Forum], Langlois “does not point to any palaeographic feature that positively indicates a 5th or 4th century as opposed to third century BCE date”.
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What possible reason could the Qumran separatists have to exist and “copy holy texts” BEFORE the Hasmonean Period [after 150 BCE]? Answer, NONE.
It is worth saying another word of appreciation here, as I have in the past, for Neil’s blog. His exploration, with copious reference to relevant scholarship, of what he has been calling the Hellenistic era hypothesis has been most valuable in bringing wider attention to the subject. Closely related hypotheses have of course been explored already in scholarly work of no small merit. This discussion must not only be taken seriously, but the hypotheses themselves may well have a claim to being the best explanation of the available evidence.
If there is anything that I need to clear up, ask me anything.
Yes. Do you have other “aliases” that relate in any way at all to how persons related to the “Hellenistic era hypothesis” measure up? Be honest and up-front and truthful.
I have never used an alias of any kind. Everything I have written is under my name, Peter Kirby.
What about the statistical aspect, given that few Dead Sea Scrolls have so far been tested for C14?
Someone just pointed out to me that Stephen Goranson on another forum was announcing that I “refused” to post his above comment. All of SG’s comments are defaulted to the Trash bin but given his complaint about this particular one was brought to my attention I have decided to post it.
My response: Fair enough — when we have more hard evidence (statistically comprehensive and valid) then we can go with where that evidence leads. I have gone with where the evidence we currently have leads us.
It is hardly a valid procedure to dig in stubbornly to a hypothesis on the grounds that one day more evidence might verify it.
All knowledge is provisional. It’s hardly a strong counter-argument to say that one does not have enough evidence to verify one’s counter-argument yet — but that one day we might have it, soo……
Back to the trash bin for trolls, SG.
I am a bit confused if you can clarify. Your other articles say its not as old and its 60Ad and now you say it is older to be around 300BC? I figure you tried to prove its newer and not older.
From other sources the OT is not as old and taken from Greek stories and Plato to be strikingly similar. Since info does not come out of nowhere which is why Greeks took them time to formulate things and to not make the most important thing which is religion seems odd.
Thanks
I would be surprised if I ever said all the Dead Sea Scrolls were as recent as 60 CE. Can you point me to the post you are referring to?
Neil, I read the Langlois article. He makes a case for possibility of paleohebrew Qumran texts dated earlier than Cross, etc. have considered them, but so far as I can see that is as strong as it gets–a case for unverified possibility. You are completely correct that one cannot cite the possibility of future evidence, that does not now exist, as an objection to the substantial arguments that have published for a 3rd century CE date of composition of the Pentateuchal texts in their familiar form.
The good thing about Langlois’s argument is it is testable and falsifiable, through radiocarbon dating: simply radiocarbon date the ca. 4 paleohebrew texts Langlois considers good candidates for ca. 5th-4th or 4th-3rd BCE dates, and find out.
The existing radiocarbon data on Qumran texts establishes (a) there were 2nd BCE text copy dates; (b) there were 1st BCE text copy dates; and (c) there may or may not be 1st CE text copy dates. That is, two centuries certain and one century possible but uncertain, judging on published radiocarbon dating grounds alone. There is not yet any establishment of any Qumran text copy date earlier than 2nd BCE from radiocarbon data properly interpreted and understood.
At times Langlois seems to want to suggest a schematic in which paleohebrew script was replaced (in chronological succession) by the use of Aramaic script, and yet that will not work as a schematic (and Langlois does not press the matter), since radiocarbon datings in fact show Qumran texts in paleohebrew contemporary with Qumran texts in Aramaic script; plus, evidence of coins and the Samaritan texts shows paleohebrew continued in use, just not by everyone.
It seems to me that all of the remaining Qumran texts which have not been radiocarbon dated are likely to be in the same 2nd-1st BCE date range as the ones which have been sampled for dating, in agreement with the overwhelming number of accepted known dates for Qumran texts in the 2nd and 1st BCE, and that the Qumran texts represent pluralism in collection of texts from diverse contemporary sources, scribes, languages, and choice of script to write Hebrew texts.
The default assumption would be that this would hold true for the palaeohebrew texts among the Qumran finds too, e.g. a default hypothesis that the typologically most developed paleohebrew Qumran texts will be ca. 1st BCE, and the typologically earlier paleohebrew Qumran texts will be ca. 2nd BCE before the typological developments represented in the typologically later Qumran paleohebrew texts.
Langlois suggests those typological developments in paleohebrew (and obsolescence of the earlier traits) seen in Qumran paleohebrew texts could have occurred centuries earlier than previously supposed, which is good as a suggestion and a good research question answerable by radiocarbon dating, but does not constitute any kind of actual negative argument toward the hypothesis of 3rd century BCE composition of biblical texts in the form in which they are known in the Qumran finds.
Langlois does attempt to make the point that, while acknowledging an overlap of paleohebrew and Aramaic script in the Qumran texts in the 2nd and 1st BCE, Langlois says for the 1st CE there are only Qumran texts in Aramaic script, and none in paleohebrew (Langlois also seems to question whether Qumran texts were being produced in the 1st BCE as well, though this point is ambiguous on radiocarbon grounds and there is no good positive reason to assume no 1st BCE Qumran paleohebrew texts).
(On the 1st CE point, here all I can do is refer to my own publication on this point in which I make the argument there are no 1st CE dates of copies of ANY literary texts in the Qumran cave finds, that is, post-Herod the Great. I believe the majority of my colleagues in the Qumran field who have long thought so and have seen the First Jewish Revolt as the cause or impetus for the Qumran texts going into the caves, etc. have been mistaken on that point. For my argument on this see my 2017 article in a Lugano Qumran Caves conference volume, 4th down from the top at http://www.scrollery.com.)
As noted, the late Prof. Cross, the regnant authority on paleographic dating in North America, and his students with positions of their own, seem to all have judged all Qumran texts in paleohebrew to share the same date range as the other Qumran texts, e.g. none earlier than ca. mid- or late-3rd BCE at the earliest. Cross judged only 3 of Qumran’s 900+ texts to be as early as 3rd BCE, and to date no Qumran text as early as 3rd BCE has yet been established from published radiocarbon dating, though it is also only fair to say none of the 3 believed 3rd BCE by Cross has yet been dated by radiocarbon in any published or reported form (to my knowledge).
I believe the leading epigrapher in North America at this time in terms of publications and reputation may be Prof. Christopher Rollston at George Washington University, with whom I have been in friendly contact in the past. I have reached out to Prof. Rollston soliciting his opinion on the Langlois argument for the possibility of four Qumran paleohebrew texts named by Langlois as possible 5th-4th or 4th-3rd BCE dates. If and when I receive his answer and it is in a form suitable for quotation with his permission, I will report it here.
In my opinion your discussions and analyses of the hellenistic era construction, of the work of Gmirkin and others, are outstanding and well-reasoned. I believe the hellenistic era context for the production of the types and genres of flourishing literature found in the Qumran biblical and parabiblical texts makes excellent sense. I agree with your point that the arguments raised in opposition to the basic notion of an emergence of the biblical Primary History texts (Gen-Kings) in the ca. 3rd century BCE–perhaps produced using the resources of what was then the world’s center of learning, the Great Library of Alexandria, as Gmirkin has developed–indeed are largely if not entirely circular in nature. Thanks for the work you put into this site and the thoughtful discussions!
Thanks for the detail about the dating of the Qumran texts and adding that all here. Hopefully we can see Prof Rollston’s response, too.
Regardless of the dating of the DSS, there must have been multiple earlier sources that were woven into the Pentateuch – that’s part of Gmirkin theory, isn’t it? Perhaps the DDS include copies of those sources.
The question in my mind is how much of the work in the Hellenistic period was just redactive, and how much was creative?
The notion of multiple sources going back to the biblical kingdoms of Judah and Israel, and others going back to the Babylonian captivity and then the Persian period — all of that is overthrown by the Hellenistic period thesis. Gmirkin I think allowed only for very little to come from earlier periods. Rather, what we have is multiple scribes working together to produce a collective narrative or set of texts. Another scholar (not a Hellenistic era advocate as far as I know) has published evidence that the Samaritans and Judeans were working together to produce the Pentateuch. Scribal groups or individuals would produce their narratives and these would be amalgamated in ways to bring together different points of view. Adler’s work demonstrating that there is no evidence of any biblical laws being observed until the later Hellenistic period is consistent with this.
Here’s one proposal taken from the conclusion of chapter 1 in John J. Collins, The Invention of Judaism: Torah and Jewish Identity from Deuteronomy to Paul. 2017.
Collins placed that scenario in the Persian period. Gmirkin in the Hellenistic.
Stefan Schorch also made an interesting observation that implies something akin to the “committee” model of authorship, though again he places it in the Persian period:
Schorch, Stefan. “The Torah as a Closed Cluster Text: Conceptualizing the Transmission of the Pentateuch in the Persian Period.” In Yahwism Under the Achaemenid Empire: Professor Shaul Shaked in Memoriam, edited by Gad Barnea and Reinhard G. Kratz, 413–32. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2024. p. 423
1. The quotes from Collins and Schorch seem completely at odds with your first reply: They accept the prior existence of independent text traditions, you (I think) reject them.
2. The scenario you (very briefly) outlined in your first reply doesn’t seem plausible to me. Surely the only reason for including such awkwardnesses as two separate stories of the creation of man, and two clumsily collated stories of the great flood, is that two stories already existed and each had their own adherents. I realize that I’m appealing to a form of the Criterion of Embarrassment, but I think here it’s justified; but maybe you have an alternate explanation.
Thanks for the reply. The peoples of Samaria and Judea were not blank slates waiting for the introduction of totally new myths. Preexisting names (even Yahweh himself) were given new life, new spins, new stories, even new characteristics in the writing of the Pentateuch. That was how myth making in the Hellenistic era worked across many areas as new administrative arrangements were coming into being.
I am reminded of the joke about a camel being a horse that was designed by a committee.
If different parties are producing their own texts — whether among the 70 or so scribes at Alexandria or persons in Judea and Samaria — and a chairman called in the submissions and shared them among everyone — their next task was to note the different ideological/historical perspectives and to come up with a document that united these different stories into one whole new narrative for everyone.
So in composing the new document they were working with pre-existing texts. The question is whether pre-existence was by a few days or a few centuries.
A common view is that the preexistence was by centuries. A new ideology had risen to power and attempted to re-write the old obsolete ideologies. I would expect in that case that the new ideology would have an interest in removing all traces of the original ideology that they disagreed with.
A better explanation in my view is that (as Schorch indicates) a communal spirit, different factions (Samarians and Judeans before their split) striving for a common document that allowed each to claim as their own.
1. Are there any other examples of the sacred writings of a people being composed by committee in the way you describe?
2. “The question is whether pre-existence was by a few days or a few centuries.
A common view is that the preexistence was by centuries. ”
If I understand you correctly, you differ from that common view, and believe the pre-existence was a matter of days. Is that right?
But if it’s only a matter of days there would be no need to mash the different narratives, you could just select the best stories to use. Only the committee members would know.
In your quote from Schorch, he speaks of a literary culture “found in the pre-Samaritan and Samaritan texts of the Pentateuch, namely the shared literary culture of Israel and Judah, which preceded the break between Samaritan and Jews.” But that break must have been generations earlier.
3. And what evidence is there that Jews and Samaritans in those days even wanted to heal the rift? The differences between the sects were centuries old and profound. Does Schorch discuss that? I’m no scholar of ancient Judaism, but I’ve never heard of it; it’s not characteristic of ancient religious movements. Certainly such an attempt was over by the end of the 2nd cent. BCE, when the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim was destroyed.
4. To focus on a single anomaly, what committee would present readers with a head scratcher like two separate accounts of the creation of humans in two successive chapters, and right at the start of the book? Especially since the redaction could have been done much more skillfully, e.g. by cutting the account of the 6th day in chapter 1 in order to merge it with the longer account in chapter 2.
Can you provide a reason for not trusting the Criterion of Embarrassment in this case?
5. That the final redaction of the Hebrew scriptures took place in the Hellenic era, and may even have been first achieved in Greek, seems plausible (of course, what do I know). But that the J writer, whom Harold Bloom compared to Shakespeare, should have been a mere committee member, is hard for me to accept.
I don’t know off-hand of any other peoples who, though with different traditions, still saw themselves as some kind of unity, and with a need to produce a new myth of cult origins in the Hellenistic period. The Hellenistic period did, however, see other groups creating new origin myths at this time. An important question to ask, I think, is if there is any other corpus of texts like the Hebrew Bible. As far as I am aware it is a stand-alone. That would suggest the plausibility that it had stand-alone origins.
Yes — or if not “days”, possibly one day or even months — but not years.
The point of the “committee” is to include contributions from different traditions and perspectives — to accommodate the different groups to become one under the new Yahweh cult. Samaritans had different traditions from the Judeans. The point was to meld the different traditions. Hence we find, for example, some stories reflecting Samaritan origins and beliefs, and others, on the contrary, Judean ones. It made for an awkward narrative to mix them together, but it essentially “worked”. There was no “best story” because a “best story” implies one point of view, a unitary tradition.
No, the break came in Hellenistic times. There is no evidence of a splitting up of the two any earlier.
Schorch identifies the evidence of the Judeans and Samaritans working to write a common document (Pentateuch) each with their distinctive traditions preserved. He identifies a harmonious scribal program by Samaritans and Judeans. The split came later.
An even bigger problem arises if we postulate a late (say Persian era) group of “theologians” being confronted with a creation account from the Iron Age that they disagreed with and wanted to replace. Why did they leave the “false” narrative alongside their “true” one? Is not that a greater difficulty? As for contradictory narratives, Herodotus included many, but he wrote in the first person so said, “another account is…”. The Middle Eastern scribes wrote anonymously — with the “voice of god”, so to speak. So there was no room for such bridging comments between the contradictory narratives. But the narratives were not joined so completely bizarrely as to sound like utter nonsense — as is demonstrated by the way generations over many centuries, even millennia, have been able to read them as a equally true and reconcilable. They were not written for sceptical literary critics like us.
I don’t see any criterion of embarrassment in the argument. Schorch sees the contradictions as the result of two different scribal points of view working to create a common document. That makes sense of the contradictory accounts within the text.
The J writer is not universally accepted as real any more. Generalizing accounts have made it sound plausible, but when one examines the details of what is supposed to be pure J one comes across many details that don’t fit.
A few points in this passage may be of some interest, also: (SP = Samaritan Pentateuch)
Hjelm, Ingrid. “The Samaritan and Jewish Versions of the Pentateuch: A Survey.” Religions 11, no. 2 (2020): 85. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11020085. pp 1-2