2025-12-22

Looking for Evidence for a Persian Period Temple in Samaria’s Mount Gerizim – Part 3

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

by Neil Godfrey

Continuing with Part 3….

Surely a simpler explanation is that the capitals bearing those motifs [Astarte’s tree of life and guardian cobra heads] were on Mount Gerizim because they were not forbidden in Persian times.

This time I will skip the background introduction and begin with a list of English language articles by Yitzhak Magen. There are no doubt other articles that I have not noticed but I am more than willing to address anything of relevance if they come to my notice. Do the following writings add anything to Magen’s claim that he has published “unequivocal” proofs of a Samaritan Temple in Mount Gerizim in Persian times?

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 Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and Rainer Albertz. Eisenbrauns, 2007.
Naveh, Joseph, and Yitzhak Magen. “Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions of the Second-Century BCE at Mount Gerizim.” ’Atiqot 32 (1997): 9–17.
Stern, Ephraim, and Yitzhak Magen. “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim.” Israel Exploration Journal 52, no. 1 (2002): 49–57.

I’ll address them in chronological order.

Article 1

Naveh, Joseph, and Yitzhak Magen. “Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions of the Second-Century BCE at Mount Gerizim.” ’Atiqot 32 (1997): 9–17.

Magen begins by explaining a detail that partly contradicts something he wrote in a later work and that was discussed in Part 1 of this series. In this 1997 article, the massive wall with its three imposing gates, the same that reminded him of Ezekiel’s description of a gated wall surrounding the Jerusalem Temple, was not from the Persian period at all.

The area of the sacred precinct on the summit of the mountain is about 5 acres. Two building stages have been identified: the ancient precinct, dating to the Persian period, and a later one, from the Hellenistic period; the precinct occupied the same area in both stages. The later precinct was surrounded by a particularly thick wall, built, like the residential buildings, of dressed quarried stones, and coated on the outside with three layers of plaster. . . . Three gates can be dated to this stage: the southern gate, originally used by worshippers as the main entrance gate, of which a tower and a broad staircase have survived; and the northern and eastern gates, of which several cells have survived, recalling the structure of the gates in the book of Ezekiel (40:6-16) and the Temple Scroll. (my bolding and italics in all quotations)^[1]

Later Magen wrote that some of the Persian period gates also reminded him of Ezekiel’s description. Details to help the reader decide what was so Ezekiel-like in the Persian wall are not abundant in his later post.

Again, Magen makes his emphatic declaration of what “we know” about the date of this temple for which he has provided no evidence:

However, while Josephus dates the construction to the reign of Alexander the Great, we now know that it was built in the time of Nehemiah.^[2]

The remainder of the article addresses the inscriptions on the stones within the area of the precinct. All that needs to be pointed out here is that all of these inscriptions are dated from the Hellenistic era and later.^[3]

The unprecedented large number of inscriptions at one site indicates that the Samaritans habitually wrote inscriptions on building stones, from the Hellenistic period onward.^[4]

So when one quotes Magen’s translations of the inscriptions that seem to suggest the existence of a temple connected in some way to the stones, one is doing nothing more than sharing evidence suggesting a temple in the Hellenistic period or later. We will return to the dating of the inscriptions in the last part of this post.

Article 2

Stern, Ephraim, and Yitzhak Magen. “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim.” Israel Exploration Journal 52, no. 1 (2002): 49–57.

Now here we have a most interesting article. Two capitals of Phoenician design, bearing Phoenician and Egyptian religious motifs, were discovered on Mount Gerizim by Yitzhak Magen’s team.

^[5]

They consist of two motifs, “the central triangle with the two spiralling volutes and a Phoenician palmette”, very common among the Phoenicians and Iron Age Israel (that is before the Assyrian captivity).

[T]hey represent the Phoenician-Israelite version of the ‘tree of life’ (fig. 7), that major and most common ancient Near Eastern motif (Stern 1995: 319-334), towards which devotees turned with raised hands, standing or kneeling on both sides. This motif . . . was adopted from an Egyptian prototype, and is depicted . . . on a number of ivories found in the palace of the Israelite kings at Samaria . . . ^[6]

^[7]

The article continues:

It now seems almost certain that the ‘tree of life’ in these times symbolised the goddess ‘Astarte, the main Phoenician female deity. . . .

The other sacred emblem appearing on one of our capitals (fig. 1) is that of seven uraei [raised cobra heads], the heads of whom were cut away, . . . . In Egypt, uraei symbolised divine protection and as such they served as guardians to sacred locations . . . ^[8]

Stern and Magen conclude that the capitals were originally made in the time of the Israelite monarchy, perhaps for use in Shechem. So how to explain their presence on Mount Gerizim? Their answer: they were relics of the old “House of Yahweh” in Shechem but were taken from ruins there and re-used for the Temple on Mount Gerizim in Persian times.^[9] This is their conclusion, even though they earlier wrote,

[B]oth capitals exhibit the motifs of the ‘tree of life’ and the uraei, which were prohibited during the Persian and Hellenistic periods by the Samaritan religious authorities, who—at this period—were strictly monotheistic. To the best of our knowledge, these two emblems are strict exceptions among the finds of the Mount Gerizim temple.^[10]

^[11]

Surely a simpler explanation is that the Persian period Samaritans continued the same form of Yahweh worship much as it had been practised in the days of the kingdom – and as it still appeared to be practised among Jews at Elephantine in Egypt, complete with a pantheon of gods alongside Yahweh. In other words, the capital with those “pagan” motifs was on Mount Gerizim because they were not forbidden in Persian times.

So I don’t see any evidence in this article for the kind of temple Magen would want us to imagine was constructed in Persian era Mount Gerizim.

Article 3

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 Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and Rainer Albertz. Eisenbrauns, 2007.

Once more Yitzhak Magen begins his discussion by claiming the two-stage construction on Mount Gerizim’s “sacred precinct” area: the Persian period of the mid-fifth century BCE and the Hellenistic period of the early second century BCE. Magen describes the layout of the “sacred precinct”, its measurements, and so forth. The western wall has no discernable gate and Magen believes this is because it was closest to a Temple’s “holy of holies”:

This lack of gates may be due to the location of the Holy of Holies, the extremely hallowed rear extremity of the temple. I believe that the current Samaritan sacred site known as “The Twelve Stones” is located in the area of the Holy of Holies.^[12]

Unfortunately “belief” is not evidence. Magen continues:

The Persian-period enclosure most likely featured three chamber gates: to the north, the east, and the south, reminiscent of the temple gates depicted in the book of Ezekiel (40:10–16), which was the basis for the temple built by the returning Babylonian exiles. The temple built by the returnees served, in turn, as the model for the temple erected by the Samaritans on Mt. Gerizim.^[13]

So gates that “most likely” were there are “reminiscent” of Ezekie’s gates, which was the blueprint for the Jerusalem Temple supposedly built by returnees from Babylon – even though we have even less evidence for such a temple in Jerusalem at this time nor any for waves of returnees from Babylonian captivity. (See Evidence Against Jerusalem in Persian Times Producing the Hebrew Bible)

The closest Magen comes to offering any semblance of a Persian period temple is the following:

The precinct yielded thousands of pottery vessels and burned bones of sacrifices—of sheep, goats, cattle, and doves. The coins from the Persian period, the pottery vessels, and Carbon 14 (C-14) testing at the site enable us to ascribe the first phase of the temple to the mid-fifth century b.c.e. This temple was active for approximately 250 years, until the establishment of the new temple in the Hellenistic period.^[14]

And then,

Numerous discoveries from the sacred precinct substantiate the existence of a Temple to the Lord. Dozens of finely dressed ashlars of similar size and fashioned with stone masons’ marks had been removed from the temple’s walls and were unearthed in the excavations. These stones, the only ashlars discovered on Mt. Gerizim in either private or public construction, were quarried away from Mt. Gerizim before being brought to the site. The debris yielded proto-Ionic or Aeolic capitals belonging to the early temple from the Persian period (fig. 8). The inscriptions discovered on Mt. Gerizim are the most striking indication of the existence of a temple.^[15]

Those inscriptions, as we have seen, are acknowledged by Magen elsewhere to belong to the Hellenistic and later periods, not the Persian period. And figure 8 is a repeat of the one we saw bearing the pagan motifs associated with Astarte’s Tree of Life and the Egyptian guardian cobra (uraei).

^[16]

Concerning the inscriptions, Magen explains their relevance for a temple:

The inscriptions discovered on Mt. Gerizim are the most striking indication of the existence of a temple. Some contain the titles of the priests who served as religious functionaries (fig. 9),4 while others contain the formulas “before the God in this place,” “before (the) God,” or “before the Lord,” which are always indicative of a temple (fig. 10).5 An additional inscription in Hebrew notes “that which Joseph offered for his wife and his sons before the Lord in the temple” (fig. 11).6 Yet another inscription mentions the “house of sacrifice,” an expression that parallels an expression used to refer to the temple in Jerusalem (2 Chr 7:12).7 An inscription in Paleo-Hebrew script contains the Tetragrammaton, apparently as part of the phrase “the house of the Lord” (fig. 12).8 A Greek inscription on a sundial contains the phrase “Highest God,” which is the name of the Lord in Greek. Perhaps the most fascinating discovery is a small gold bell with a silver clapper from the fringes of the high priest’s ephod (Exod 28:33–35; fig. 13). ^[17]

Each of the footnotes I have preserved in the above quotation (from 4 to 8) point to twenty translations of inscriptions found in the volume that we discussed under the heading JSP vol. 2 in Part 1 of this series. Recall that Magen had introduced all of those inscriptions with this observation of their post-Persian date:

The excavations of Mt. Gerizim brought to light some four hundred inscription fragments in Neo-Hebrew and Aramaic (lapidary and Proto-Jewish) scripts, inscribed on building and paving stones, that were found inside the city’s Hellenistic period sacred precinct. Scores of Greek inscriptions were uncovered as well, some from the Hellenistic period, but most dating from the reconstruction of the Samaritan sanctuary in the reign of Constantine I in the fourth century CE; some also dated from the time of the subsequent Byzantine church. Also found were a few inscriptions in the Samaritan script, whose style dates them to the medieval period. The unprecedented large number of inscriptions at one site indicates that the Samaritans habitually wrote inscriptions on building stones, from the Hellenistic period onward. . . .

We believe that most of the early inscriptions should be dated to the Hellenistic period (third-second centuries BCE), although some may belong to the earliest period of the sacred precinct (fifth-fourth centuries BCE).^[18]

No further discussion attempts to justify the “belief” that “some may” belong to the fifth-fourth centuries.

As for the “dating the first phase of the Temple and the surrounding precinct”, Magen refers readers to the finds already covered in this series:

This section is devoted to the Persian period, with the goal of ending the long-standing debate concerning the beginnings of the Samaritan temple at the site. I anticipate that the presentation of the ceramic finds, the coins, and the C-14 examinations of the bones and ashes of the sacrifices will securely date the construction of the first phase of the temple to the mid-fifth century B.C.E. and not to the late fourth century B.C.E.—the time of Alexander the Great—as was claimed by Josephus (and subsequently by later scholars). ^[19]

As we have already seen, Magen does well enough in convincing us of the date of the pottery but continues to fail to explain how this pottery is evidence of a nearby temple:

[A]ll the pottery discovered at the site’s sacred precinct is to be securely dated to the period between the fifth and the fourth centuries b.c.e., that is, before the conquest of Alexander the Great. This dating is further supported by the numismatic finds.^[20]

Similarly, again as we have seen by now, with the coins:

Despite the abundance of coins at the site, the number of coins from the Persian period is relatively small. . . .

I conclude, therefore, that all the Samaritan coins found on Mt. Gerizim, even if undated, preceded the time of the conquest of Alexander the Great (figs. 27–29).^[21]

And the date of the ashes of the sacrificed animals? As we would expect:

Several C-14 samples were taken of charred wood and bones found at the site, all from the strata belonging to the early phase of the sacred precinct—the Persian–Ptolemaic period (450–200 B.C.E.), preceding the Seleucid conquest of the land of Israel in the time of Antiochus III.^[22]

And we recall Magen’s perhaps inadvertent reminder elsewhere that there were more common centres for regular sacrifices than temples:

The sole acceptable fashion of worshiping a deity, whether YHWH or some other god, was by the construction of altars, shrines, and temples and offering sacrifices and burning incense.^[23]

Conclusion

I believe that I have given Yitzhak Magen a fair chance to demonstrate the existence of a temple on Mount Gerizim in Persian times. When I first saw his emphatic claims (e.g. “unequivocal proof”) I assumed that he must have published irrefutable material evidence for that temple. I remained puzzled, however, by a few remarks of other scholars holding on to doubts or even outright rejection of such a temple. And the only other scholars who insisted on the temple cited the same source: Y. Magen. So I read and re-read Magen’s volumes on the archaeological finds and have presented the main points in this series of posts. I fail to see how Magen has come close to demonstrating that a Samaritan temple was built on Mount Gerizim in the Persian period.

And without that evidence, we cannot assume that Deuteronomy or any other work reflecting temple ideologies of the Pentateuch was being composed.

The fact is that Magen has left indications in his writings that support the alternative view that Samaria in Persian times embraced a polytheistic cult worship of Yahweh. Evidence for Pentateuchal ideas does not surface until well into the Hellenistic period.

Notes

^[1] Joseph Naveh and Yitzhak Magen, “Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions of the Second-Century BCE at Mount Gerizim,” ’Atiqot 32 (1997): 9. Bolded highlighting is mine.

^[2] Naveh and Magen, “Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions of the Second-Century BCE at Mount Gerizim,” 10.

^[3] Naveh and Magen, “Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions of the Second-Century BCE at Mount Gerizim,” 10ff. The same article covers inscriptions clearly made in the Christian era.

^[4] Yitzhak Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I: The Aramaic, Hebrew and Samaritan Inscriptions, trans. Edward Levin and Michael Guggenheimer, JSP Series Judea and Samaria Publications 2 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2004), 13. Magen does qualify this point by saying that “some may belong to the earliest period of the sacred precinct (fifth-fourth centuries BCE). (p.14)

^[5] Ephraim Stern and Yitzhak Magen, “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,” Israel Exploration Journal 52, no. 1 (2002): 49.

^[6] Stern and Magen, “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,” 53.

^[7] Stern and Magen, “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,” 53.

^[8] Stern and Magen, “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,” 54.

^[9] Stern and Magen, “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,” 56.

^[10] Stern and Magen, “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,” 55.

^[11] Stern and Magen, “Archaeological Evidence for the First Stage of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,” 55.

^[12] Yitzhak Magen, “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, ed. Oded Lipschits et al. (Eisenbrauns, 2007), 160.

^[13] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 161.

^[14] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 164f.

^[15] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 166.

^[16] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 166.

^[17] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 166ff.

^[18] Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I, 13f.

^[19] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 176.

^[20] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 179.

^[21] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 179f. Coins are from pages 207, 209, 211.

^[22] Magen, “The Dating of the First Phase of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim in Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” 180.

^[23] Yitzhak Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, trans. Edward Levin, JSP Series 7 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008), 10.

2025-12-21

Looking for Evidence for a Persian Period Temple in Samaria’s Mount Gerizim – Part 2

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

by Neil Godfrey

Continuing …..

Background: I have set out the evidence that indicates the Persian provinces of Yehud (Judea) and Samaria were polytheistic societies, worshiping Yahweh, yes, but a Yahweh as part of a pantheon of deities. Judaism as we recognize it only surfaces in the archaeological record in the Hellenistic period, from around the mid third century BCE. I have found Russell Gmirkin’s comparisons of biblical literature with Greek and other Near Eastern literature to be thorough and his case for the biblical literature being indebted for most part to Greek works solid. As for how to validly recover history of ancient Israel and Judah I side with those who place the archaeological record first and use that archaeological data to understand the contexts and purposes of the later narratives of the Bible. Compare Troy: we can either interpret all the finds of Troy through our reading of Homer, or we can study the remains of Troy to better understand the later works of Homer.

One notable archaeologist has effectively declared that there can be no debate concerning the strength of evidence for the existence of a Samaritan Temple of Yahweh on Mount Gerizim in the Persian period, and that this temple was built and functioned according to the biblical laws of purity, cult and commandments. Others have repeated his dogmatic claims and even used them to argue for some early form of Deuteronomy existing as early as Persian times — thus overturning the hypothesis that biblical literature did not primarily emerge until Hellenistic times. So extensive is the evidence for the existence of this Persian period temple that the same archaeologist has said it can be appreciated through the following:

Extensive answers to the questions raised [i.e. the archaeological evidence for a fifth-century date of the Temple on Gerizim] can be found in three books published in the JSP series (Judea and Samaria Publications, volumes 2, 7 and 8), and in additional articles, all in English.^[1]

Yitzhak Magen’s assertions of “unequivocal proof” of a Gerizim Temple in Persian times have been repeated by others, again with specific citations:

The archaeological digs carried out by Yitzhak Magen from 1982 to 2006 have confirmed the existence of a Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim although, so far, only its temenos (surrounding precinct) has been unearthed. . . . ⁶

⁶ . . . On the Samaritan sanctuary and its dating, see (Magen 2007; 2008b, pp. 97–205). . . . ^[2]

In this series of posts we are looking for the evidence said to be found extensively in

JSP series, volumes 2, 7 and 8;
and perhaps then additional articles by Magen in English

The last post looked at volume 2 of the JSP (Judea and Samaria Publications) series. Do we find anything more decisive in volume 7?

JSP Series, Volume 7

Or more completely referenced:

Magen, Yitzhak. The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan. Translated by Edward Levin. JSP Series 7. Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008.

Here on page 10 we learn that Magen interprets details in the Book of Nehemiah according to his belief that the Mount Gerizim temple existed in Nehemiah’s time. And that belief is said to be grounded in archaeology:

According to the archaeological finds from Mt. Gerizim, the first phase of the sacred precinct was built in the Persian period, in the fifth century BCE . . .

But Magen then concedes that there is some room for doubt on this point so draws a bottom line:

What we know for sure is that the historical and archaeological background of the erection of the temple is firmly entrenched in the fifth century BCE, at the time of Nehemiah and Sanballat.^[3]

Despite that dogmatic statement, I am still waiting to read where Magen explains how we “know for sure”. Reading on I come once again to Magen’s insistence that there is archaeological evidence for (Pentateuchal/biblical) purity laws and their forbidding of any links with paganism being observed in this early time:

Sanballat controlled the sacred site of Mt. Gerizim, with its ancient tradition that was untainted of paganism, and which was one of the most ancient such sites in the Land of Israel.^[4]

It is actually in the Hellenistic era that Magen acknowledges evidence for undisputed observance of those Pentateuchal laws:

The Samaritans did not allow Hellenistic culture and art to penetrate the life of the city. . . .
The Samaritans on Mt. Gerizim during the Hellenistic period were much more isolationist and conservative than the Jews in Jerusalem. . . .
We believe that in the Hellenistic period the laws of the Torah and the purity laws were more strictly observed at Mt. Gerizim than in Jerusalem. The population of the former was composed primarily of priests who had settled in proximity to the temple after the destruction of the city of Samaria, and consequently was a priestly city, as well as a temple city.*

In other words, one might think, Magen cannot help but acknowledge that the evidence for Niels Peter Lemche’s and Russell Gmirkin’s hypothesis of a Hellenistic origin of the Biblical literature is stronger than any notion of part of it being a product of Persian times.

* Magen, Yitzhak. Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City. JSP Series 8. 2008. pp ix, 89

But elsewhere Magen was not so sure about those purity observances (as we noted in the previous post):

[I]t appears that the prohibition of graven images and likenesses was not scrupulously observed during the Persian period. This is evident in the material culture of the time, such as the images on coins from this period, both Samaritan and Jewish.^[5]

I ought to point out that I am not claiming that there was no temple on Mount Gerizim prior to the Greek conquests of Alexander. What is problematic is the dogmatic assertion that that temple did exist and the murkiness of what is said to be the evidence for it. I am sure the Samaritans did have a temple somewhere. But whatever its location, as pointed out above and related posts, it was almost certainly a temple dedicated to Yahweh along with other gods and knew nothing of some of the most distinctive commands of Deuteronomy or other Pentateuchal books (e.g. that only one place of worship was permitted).

Indeed, Magen’s following remarks could be understood as supportive of such a (polytheistic) temple:

The silence of the Book of Nehemiah and of other books written or redacted in the fifth to fourth centuries BCE concerning the existence of the temple at Mt. Gerizim has not been satisfactorily explained. Every people and every populace worshiped some god; why, then, would it be exceptional for the governor of Samaria to build a temple to the God of Israel at Mt. Gerizim? In the Iron Age and Persian period, temples were found everywhere, and the exiles who went to Babylonia and Egypt almost certainly prayed in temples; the Elephantine temple was not the only one. We may assume that the Jewish and Samaritan communities in Egypt and in other places of exile continued to worship YHWH at some sort of altar or temple. The sole acceptable fashion of worshiping a deity, whether YHWH or some other god, was by the construction of altars, shrines, and temples and offering sacrifices and burning incense.^[6]

And then we come to this most telling paragraph (my bolding):

The period between the destruction of Samaria and the establishment of the Samaritan temple at Mt. Gerizim in the fifth century BCE remains an enigma, leaving us with neither an archaeological nor a historical glimpse into the nature and religion of the population of the region of Samaria. This lack of information has impeded our understanding of Samaritan history in the Persian period.^[7]

But there are archaeological glimpses^[8], and they do not favour Magen’s assumptions or assertions to the contrary.

JSP 7 is not very enlightening about the evidence for the Persian period Gerizim Temple. Let’s look at Magen’s third reference.

JSP Series, Volume 8

The title for this volume:

Magen, Yitzhak. Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City. Translated by Edward Levin and Carl Ebert. JSP Series 8. Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008.

Surely in a volume with the title “Temple City” we will at last meet some of the “extensive” evidence promised us. Magen points out, however, that the archaeological finds point to cultural continuity in the region of Samaria from the days of the biblical northern kingdom of Israel through to the Persian period. I am sure he does not mean that the biblical notoriety of Samaria’s “paganism” continued into Persian times alongside his Gerizim Temple, but how else are we to understand the following observation?

The settlement upheaval and the destruction of the Northern Kingdom occurred in the late eighth century BCE, followed by Assyrian resettlement of peoples brought from neighboring lands with the remnant left in Samaria. These fateful historical events left hardly any traces in the material culture of Samaria.^[9]

We have seen that Yonatan Adler has observed clear markers in the material culture that point to the emergence of a community’s observance of Pentateuchal laws. Yet it appears that Magen has to confess that there is no comparable evidence in the case of Persian period Samaria.

Recall the Elephantine correspondence with the priests of Samaria indicating that Samaritan religion embraced a pantheon of gods along with Yahweh. Was there really no change in the Persian period from the Iron Age religion? Is not the case for a Hellenistic origin of what we know as Judaism (and the Pentateuchal laws) becoming a little more likely?

Vridar posts setting out the evidence that we do have for Samarian religion in Persian times:

Magen’s list the “archaeological finds” that “date the temple at Mount Gerizim” to Persian times begin with the pottery:

The ceramic assemblage presented here was taken predominantly from the clean pre-Hellenistic loci of the sacred precinct, which also yielded Persian-period coins. Most of the pottery vessels are characteristic of the Persian period and include juglets, flasks, cooking pots, kraters (frequently ornamented with wedge decorations), bowls (some red-slipped and burnished), lamps with a flat base, and fragments of Attic vessels.^[10]

Nowhere, though, does Magen explain how that pottery dated to Persian times should be interpreted as evidence for a temple nearby.

Similarly with the coins discovered in the “sacred precinct” of Mount Gerizim. Of the thousands of coins uncovered there^[11] 72 date from the Persian period. Of these 72 coins Magen explains the early coins attest the existence of the sacred precinct in that century.^[12]

Unless I missed it, Magen does not explain how these coins are evidence for the sacredness of the area. Other sites with abundant finds of coins he interprets differently:

In both buildings, about 885 coins were found, lending support to the notion that these public buildings were involved in commercial activities taking place at the city gate.^[13]

and

The structure yielded 158 coins, more than were found in the other structures, which also indicated this was a public structure.^[14]

Why a sacrificial site should be interpreted as a temple Magen leaves unexplained. As noted earlier, he does acknowledge that simple shrines and altars were (surely more commonly) set up for that purpose.^[15]

I suppose the abundance of bones from sacrificed animals in the same area where the Persian period coins were found and the fact that there was a gated wall separating that space from the wider area secures Magen’s interpretation that the coins found here must be interpreted as indicating something more sacred than normal commercial activity. But evidence for a temple structure is not provided.

But while on the subject of coins….

Let’s take a look at those Persian period coins. As per the previous post:

The earliest coin discovered at the excavations … is a silver drachma from Cyprus (Soli?), roughly dated to 480 BCE.^[16]

Now let’s look at some other coins lest this one above be thought of as an outrageous anomaly. The following samples are said to have been minted in Samaria and belong to the Persian period.^[17]

Magen sums up the evidence:

To conclude this section on the dating of the first phase of the sacred precinct, we may state with a great degree of certainty that on the basis of the pottery, coins, and C-14 testing, the first phase of the precinct was built in the fifth century BCE. ^[22]

He has indeed shown readers pottery and coins from the Persian period but nowhere explained how those finds demonstrate the existence of a nearby temple. Later, he writes:

[T]he archaeological finds from Mt. Gerizim attest that “Sanballat the Horonite,” mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah (Sanballat I), established a temple at Mt. Gerizim.^[23]

Magen certainly listed archaeological finds from the Persian period but nowhere explained how those finds demonstrate the existence of a nearby temple.

Perhaps we need to turn to the articles he mentioned. We will look at some of those in the next post in fading hopes of being informed of his “unequivocal proof” for a Persian period Mount Gerizim temple.

Notes

^[1] Yitzhak Magen, “Dating of the Samaritan Temple on Mt. Gerizim. Yitzhak Magen’s Response,” Biblical Archaeology Society, September 6, 2012, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/scholars-study/magens-response/.

^[2] Jonathan Bourgel, “The Samaritans during the Hasmonean Period: The Affirmation of a Discrete Identity?,” Religions (Basel, Switzerland) 10, no. 11 (2019): 2, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10110628. I was alerted to Bourgel’s reference by Peter Kirby’s post on earlywritings forum: https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14039. The citations Bourgel provides are problematic for anyone seeking material evidence for a Persian period temple on Gerizim and will be discussed in posts here. Bourgel’s assertion of “confirmation” of the temple proves to be as hollow as Magen’s claim in the above quotation.

^[3] Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, trans. Edward Levin, JSP Series 7 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008), 14.

^[4] Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, 11.

^[5] Yitzhak Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, trans. Edward Levin and Carl Ebert, JSP Series 8 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008), 153,

^[6] Yitzhak Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, 10

^[7] Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, 14.

^[8] See Comparing Samaria and Judah/Yehud – and their religion – in Persian Times

^[9] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 167.

^[10] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 167.

^[11] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, ix.

^[12] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 168.

^[13] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 19.

^[14] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 74.

^[15] Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, 14.

^[16] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations III The Coins., 84.

^[17] Yitzhak Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations III The Coins., JSP Series 19 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2022), 131f.

^[18] Ya‘akov Meshorer and Shraga Qedar, Samarian Coinage, (Israel Numismatics, 1999), 83, no. 1.

^[19] Meshorer and Qedar, Samarian Coinage, 106, no. 127.

^[20] Meshorer and Qedar, Samarian Coinage, 112, no. 159.

^[21] Meshorer and Qedar, Samarian Coinage, 120, no. 204.

^[22] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 169.

^[23] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 173.

2025-12-20

Looking for Evidence for a Persian Period Temple in Samaria’s Mount Gerizim – Part 1

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

by Neil Godfrey

The broader context of that discussion had been my defence of Russell Gmirkin’s thesis that the Hebrew Bible, especially the Pentateuch (which includes Deuteronomy, of course) was composed as late as some time after the conquests of Alexander the Great, less than three centuries before the time of Christ.

This post follows on from An Attempt to Date a pro-Samarian Deuteronomy to the Persian Period — which in turn was a response to When was the pro-Gerizim book of Deuteronomy written?

As a rule of thumb it is not a bad idea to consult scholarly authorities to learn “what’s what”. But scholars are also human and fallible, and sometimes have their own agendas that they attempt to push on less than attentive readers. So another rule, more precise than measurement by random thumbs, is this: it is an even better idea when consulting scholarly authorities to be alert for the evidence they cite to support their “what’s whats”.

That little gem of wisdom came to me when I noticed a case for the Book of Deuteronomy, at least in some early Samaritan form, being composed in Persian times. The starting point of the Persian period argument was to appeal to the authoritative declarations of an archaeologist who has had the Albrightian habit of interpreting archaeological finds in ways that would ensure confirmation of some plausible interpretation of biblical narratives.

To argue, against Gmirkin, that Deuteronomy was composed in Persian times, the claim was made that Deuteronomy was largely written against the backdrop of a Temple on Mount Gerizim in Samaria.

To argue, against Gmirkin, that the Book of Deuteronomy was composed well before the Greeks, indeed in those Persian times we associate with Haggai and Zechariah, Nehemiah and Ezra, the claim was made that it was in significant part written against the backdrop of a Temple to Yahweh on Mount Gerizim in Samaria. Deuteronomy’s insistence that only one place of worship was permitted, along with the various other purity laws, rituals and commandments, all made sense given the authoritative assurance of a standing Temple. (For an explanation of how it was Deuteronomy that came to be specifically related to the Samaritan temple see an earlier post: The Samaritan Tenth Commandment.)

But alas, the opening line of that argument is an appeal to authority but when we look for the supporting evidence we find nothing but dust and ashes being scattered in the wind.

Here is the beginning of the argument per the earlywritings forum:^[1]

From Yitzhak Magen, regarding the temple at Gerizim (ca. 475-445 BCE, i.e. the “middle” and before 445 BCE), based on archaeological excavations:

The archaeological excavations at Mt. Gerizim proved unequivocally that the temple on the mount was built in the middle of the fifth century B.C.E., that is, most likely before Nehemiah’s arrival in 445 B.C.E.

It is always handy to have an overpowering descriptor like “unequivocally” when one fails to provide specific evidence. And it is specific evidence that another scholar had asked of Yitzhak Magen:

I have a question . . . . Magen states that his excavations reveal that the Temple on Gerizim was built in the time of Nehemiah . . . . It seems to me that the archaeological evidence for a fifth-century date would have to be quite powerful to overcome the documentary evidence. And since there is nothing remaining of the Gerizim temple itself . . . . . strong archaeological evidence for the earlier date would be most enlightening.^[2]

Magen responded with his “proved unequivocally” declaration quoted above. He indicated that the proofs were so “extensive” that they could not be summarized briefly but required the reading of three books and additional articles:

Extensive answers to the questions raised in this letter can be found in three books published in the JSP series (Judea and Samaria Publications, volumes 2, 7 and 8), and in additional articles, all in English.^[3]

“More specifically”, Magen continued, there is an argument he derives from a reinterpretation of details found in the Book of Nehemiah. I will set that argument aside because it reminds us of the bad old days when “biblical archaeologists” were notorious for finding ways to interpret archaeological finds that marvellously “proved” some particular interpretation of the Bible. We have no independent evidence to confirm that Nehemiah has any serious relationship to historical events of the Persian period, however the text is interpreted. Until such evidence is forthcoming it is best to guard against interpreting the archaeological evidence tendentiously in the light of the Bible. (I have discussed scholarly critiques of the historical value of Nehemiah “extensively” on this blog: search “Nehemiah” alone for core arguments and then “Nehemiah and Finkelstein” for additional archaeologically-based criticisms.)

So let’s assume that the archaeological evidence for a Mount Gerizim Temple in the Persian period is so vast and overwhelming that one can only grasp it by reading three volumes and various articles. I will for most part therefore confine the following discussion to the works Magen signalled:

JSP series, volumes 2, 7 and 8;
and perhaps then additional articles of his in English

JSP Series, Volume 2

More completely referenced, this work is

Magen, Yitzhak, Haggai Misgav, and Levana Tsfania. Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I: The Aramaic, Hebrew and Samaritan Inscriptions. Translated by Edward Levin and Michael Guggenheimer. JSP Series 2. Israel Antiquities Authority, 2004.

On page 12 Magen writes,

The archaeological finds prove that Josephus was indeed mistaken in ascribing the construction of the temple to the days of the fourth century BCE Sanballat, Alexander’s contemporary.

That remark pulled me up because I thought I had been reading carefully up to that point and could not recall reference to such probative archaeological finds. Was Magen going to list those finds later? A review of the table of contents and other skimming left me thinking there was no room for a later explanation. Perhaps the evidence would be covered in later volumes. But till then, it appeared that Magen was referring to what the reader should already know. So I re-read the preceding pages and took closer note of this passage (my bolding):

The many coins and pottery vessels discovered in the sacred precinct attest to the construction of the temple in the Persian period, during the fifth century BCE. The finds include pottery, as well as 68 coins from the fifth and fourth centuries BCE (preceding the arrival of Alexander the Great in the Land of Israel).

The earliest coin dates from 480 BCE. The temple on Mt. Gerizim was thus built in the days of Sanballat the Horonite (Sanballat I), governor of Samaria in the days of Nehemiah, who arrived in the Land of Israel in 444 BCE (Neh. 2:1-10).^[4]

I re-read pages 1 to 10 again – and again. How could coins and pottery vessels in themselves stand as witnesses to a temple nearby? On page 1 Magen had written that

A sacred precinct with a temple to the God of Israel that was built in the Persian period, during the fifth century BCE, stands on the highest part of the mountain.

(We will see in a future post how Magen finds other ways of interpreting the significance of what coin finds indicate when they are not needed to somehow witness to a nearby temple.)

I was still looking forward to reading the supporting evidence for that temple. On page 3 I read the following:

The sacred precinct, centered around the temple, was built on the highest point on the mountain . . . . The excavations revealed two main construction phases: the precinct and the temple were first built in the fifth century BCE, during the Persian period . . . .

Still waiting for the evidence for this temple. First, a description of the sacred precinct itself is presented:

The early precinct measured 98×96 m. . . . , including the gates. This square structure was built of hewn fieldstones extracted from the mountain’s exposed upper strata of rock. . . .

The rooms around the inside of the precinct wall are reminiscent of the open-roofed chambers and courtyards mentioned in Ezekiel, in whose vision of the Temple in Jerusalem they were used by the Temple officiaries for cooking the sacrifices brought by the people (Ez. 46:22-24).

The structure of the Persian period precinct, in particular the six-chambered gates, bear a resemblance to the description of the Temple in Ezekiel (ch. 42) and to that of the future Temple in the Temple Scroll found at Qumran, which is itself based to some extent on Ezekiel’s description. The consistency of the remnants of the sacred precinct on Mt. Gerizim with the descriptions of the Temple in these two sources would seem to support the claim by Josephus that the temple on Mt. Gerizim was constructed on the model of the Temple in Jerusalem (Ant. 13:256).^[5]

Your mileage may differ from mine, but I don’t see how such comparisons with the Book of Ezekiel (otherwise unattested until the Hellenistic period) and its vision of a wall and cooking rooms can confirm the existence of a Temple within those walls in the Persian period. My difficulty in agreeing with Magen’s method here is compounded by the fact that he had already stated – twice – that that wall had even been “rebuilt” in Hellenistic times:

In the third century BCE, in the Hellenistic period, the temple and the sacred precinct were rebuilt . . . .^[6]

In the Hellenistic period, under Seleucid rule (early second century BCE) the precinct and temple were rebuilt.^[7]

If the evidence for the existence of that “rebuilt” temple and its supposedly related wall were more secure for the Hellenistic era, would not that kind of archaeological evidence stand in favour of Russell Gmirkin’s hypothesis? So far Magen has failed to provide any material evidence for the existence of a temple in the Persian period. Suggesting that the evidence we do have belongs to the “rebuilt” wall in the Hellenistic period does not provide strong help for his case.

But I continue to re-read these first ten pages looking for “other evidence” for this temple that I may have missed. Here is the next item:

A great number of finds were discovered on Mt. Gerizim, including hundreds of thousands of burnt animal bones inside thick layers of ash, thus testifying to the existence of a temple dedicated to the God of Israel in which sacrifices were offered.^[8]

No date is cited for those bones but I suspect they would include the sacrifices offered throughout the Hellenistic era. There are other questions arising, too. Magen explains in a later publication (JSP vol 7) that sacrifices were performed at a variety of sacred sites and not only at temples:

We may assume that the Jewish and Samaritan communities in Egypt and in other places of exile continued to worship YHWH at some sort of altar or temple. The sole acceptable fashion of worshiping a deity, whether YHWH or some other god, was by the construction of altars, shrines, and temples and offering sacrifices and burning incense.^[9]

So remains of sacrificed animals are not necessarily evidence for a temple at all.

I also fail to see how one could determine the god to whom the animals were sacrificed from the bones themselves. After all, we do know that Yahweh-worshiping contemporaries with close relations to the Samaritans during the Persian period worshiped Yahweh alongside other deities. See the post Comparing Samaria and Judah/Yehud – and their religion – in Persian Times for details.

Magen cites late rabbinical and biblical sources to explain the meaning of other finds on Mount Gerizim. There were many bathtubs in private houses and these are presented as evidence that priests were following the Pentateuchal laws for priests to maintain purity when at the temple:

According to the Pentateuch ritual cleansing is performed by bathing in water . . . (Lev. 14:8 et passim). . . . . It would thus seem that the many bathtubs found on Mt. Gerizim were intended for the use of the temple priests, who were required to remain in a state of ritual purity at all times, not only when serving in the temple.^[10]

^[11]

Finally, we have another “proof” of the observance of biblical laws – and by implication the Persian period existence of the ideology we read about in Deuteronomy:

The finds on Mt. Gerizim indicate very strict observance of the commandment “You shall not make for yourself an idol” (Ex. 20:4). No human or animal images of any kind were unearthed in the excavations . . . ^[12]

Except that Magen appears to have changed his mind shortly afterwards (in JSP 8) when he wrote, instead, that:

it appears that the prohibition of graven images and likenesses was not scrupulously observed during the Persian period. This is evident in the material culture of the time, such as the images on coins from this period, both Samaritan and Jewish.^[13]

As noted above (see note 4) the earliest coin is dated 480 BCE. Here is a photograph of that coin (not provided by Magen) held in the British Museum:

^[15]

A graven image of a lion and an Egyptian ankh! Hardly indicators that they marked the presence of the Deuteronomist’s Temple! And apparently dated 480 BCE though of course we have no way of knowing how many hands it had felt and purses it had inhabited before it found its way to Mount Gerizim.

But we are moving away from the first of several readings Magen advised for us. In the next post we will look at more of Magen’s “extensive” evidence for the temple on Mount Gerizim in the Persian period.

Notes

^[1] Peter Kirby, “When was the pro-Gerizim book of Deuteronomy written?,” Biblical Criticism & History Forum, September 19, 2025, https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14343.

^[2] John Merrill, “Dating of Samaritan Temple on Mt. Gerizim. Merrill’s Letter,” Biblical Archaeology Society, September 6, 2012, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/scholars-study/merrills-letter/.

^[3] Yitzhak Magen, “Dating of the Samaritan Temple on Mt. Gerizim. Yitzhak Magen’s Response,” Biblical Archaeology Society, September 6, 2012, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/scholars-study/magens-response/.

^[4] Yitzhak Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I: The Aramaic, Hebrew and Samaritan Inscriptions, trans. Edward Levin and Michael Guggenheimer, JSP Series vol. 2 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2004), 10.

^[5] Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I, 6.

^[6] Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I, 1.

^[7] Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I, 6.

^[8] Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I, 9.

^[9] Yitzhak Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, JSP Series vol. 7 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008), 14.

^[10] Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I, 10.

^[11] Yitzhak Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations III The Coins, JSP Series vol. 19 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2022), 83.

^[12] Yitzhak Magen et al., Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I: The Aramaic, Hebrew and Samaritan Inscriptions, trans. Edward Levin and Michael Guggenheimer, JSP Series vol. 2 Judea and Samaria Publications 2 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2004), 10.

^[13] Yitzhak Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, trans. Edward Levin and Carl Ebert, JSP Series vol. 8 (Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008), 153.

^[14] Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume II, A Temple City, 194.

^[15] Sir George Francis Hill, Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Cyprus (The Trustees, 1904), Plate XIII.

2025-12-02

Evidence Against Jerusalem in Persian Times Producing the Hebrew Bible

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

by Neil Godfrey

The following (and previous) post can be used as part of an argument for the Hellenistic origin of the Hebrew Bible.

In the previous post I bracketed off the main paper in a reader that might not be immediately visible in all browsers so here it is reformatted to be read directly as a blog post.

There are two parts to the essay. In the first, I address the theoretical or literary reasons many scholars have assigned much of the biblical literature to the Persian period and point out why those reasons are flawed. Some have wondered why certain Bible sections would seem to present Persian time as the setting for a revival of a reformed and revived Yahweh worship and the beginnings of what we would recognize as Judaism unless that had a historical basis. As I point out in the first part, we see an alternative answer when we acknowledge that Hellenistic writings were quite open to looking back on the Persian era as something of a golden age in order to contrast it with “the present evil times”.

The second part is the main argument: we look at the archaeological evidence that can tell us whether Jerusalem was the kind of society where we would expect to find scribes and priests engaged in the archival work of selecting and collating various texts, writing out new or revised treatises and traditions, — (in Hebrew) — and so forth. One must note the degraded condition of Jerusalem ever since the Babylonian conquest. The area settled was drastically reduced. Some estimate a population as low as 400, but others prefer to imagine (without any evidence) that a large area between the city proper and the Temple Mount was also populated and so bring an estimated population up to 5000. Jerusalem at this time has been described as a “post-collapse society” — a society where a remnant continued to eke out a living by occupying ruins, meaning that their dwellings remained ruins with scant attempts at rebuilding. No Hebrew inscriptions are to be found. Jerusalem was not even an economic or administrative hub. Yet some archaeologists continue to interpret the finds — more particularly, certain absences of finds — as indicators of the kind of community posited by Nehemiah and Ezra, with a thriving priesthood tending a regular flow of pilgrims coming to worship at their cherished Temple. This image owes much to biblical literature and traditions. It is very difficult to catch glimpses of it in the recovered evidence, as the essay following demonstrates.

PPJerusalemInContext 1024x768 — A rough outline of the place of Jerusalem in the Persian period — Ramat Raḥal was the administrative centre, Moza was more economically active, the defence of trade routes and centers (not Jerusalem) was the priority. (Trade routes loosely based on Fischer, Moshe, Benjamin Isaac, and Israel Roll. *Roman Roads in Judaea II: The Jaffa-Jerusalem Roads: The Jaffa-Jerusalem Roads.* Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996. 312.)

The Persian Period and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A Reassessment of the Evidence from Jerusalem

Impressive evidence for scribal infrastructure in Judah disappeared, I repeat, disappeared after the 586 BC destruction. In the Babylonian and Persian period the southern highlands show almost no evidence of Hebrew, underlining Hebrew, inscriptions. . . . Not a single Hebrew inscription is known for the period between 586 and 350. Not an ostracon, nor a seal, nor a seal impression, nor a bulla. In short, there is no evidence for Hebrew writing culture in Yehud. — Israel Finkelstein¹

This essay seeks to test common arguments that much of the biblical literature was taking shape in Persian period Jerusalem against Finkelstein’s observation above. It will begin with some general methodological points of argument before exploring in depth how the evidence has been interpreted by archaeologists.

The Hebrew Bible’s formation is almost² universally recognized as a complex process involving the collation and redaction of multiple Judean and Samarian texts into a more or less coherent narrative. Numerous scribes—and even entire scribal schools—worked with archived sources to produce documents forming the ideological foundation of the Jerusalem Yahweh cult.³ The results reveal a high level of literary sophistication among both authors and intended audiences.⁴

There is also a widespread understanding that much of this literature was composed or at least took final shape in Persian-period Jerusalem.⁵ The paucity of archaeological evidence in Jerusalem from the Persian period is not generally seen as a major hurdle since the “lack of a distinct Persian material culture has also been noted in other territories under Persian rule.”⁶ In Jerusalem, this relative absence of Persian period remains has been explained as later building over earlier Achaemenid levels.⁷ Scribal institutions are assumed to have continued in the land despite the Babylonian deportations. Especially since the appearance of Hans Barstad’s The Myth of the Empty Land in 1996 the view that these conquests inflicted on Jerusalem major, even irreparable, cultural and institutional collapse has been widely dismissed as an ideological “biblical myth”.⁸ It is now common to accept the continuation of both a substantial population and cultural and cultic institutions, including the scribal class,⁹ and even that a significant number of elites returned with the advent of Persian rule.¹⁰ Hence Jerusalem is often imagined as the cradle of biblical composition.

The essay has two parts. The first assesses arguments linking specific literary outputs to Persian period material conditions; the second focuses on Jerusalem. A comprehensive study would extend beyond the city to the wider province of Yehud, Samaria, and Elephantine, and compare Persian-period evidence with Iron Age and Hellenistic contexts. That extended scope could confirm or challenge conclusions of this essay. But we begin with a limited focus. Unless otherwise stated references to Jerusalem will be to Persian period Jerusalem.

Part One

A common rationale for situating the development of biblical literature in the Persian period is the perception of its ideological and thematic resonance with the Persian world. The texts are said to reflect a community “euphoric”¹¹ over Cyrus’s conquests and “obsessed with ideological constructions and memories” of monarchy, exile, and hopes of return, redemption, and utopian renewal.¹² Biblical writings, it is argued, assume a stable, divinely ordered world¹³—Egypt being the hostile exception¹⁴—and express faith in a future golden age following national disaster.¹⁵ Since these themes align with conditions in sixth- to fourth-century Jerusalem—peace, absence of native kingship, imperial recognition of a universal “God of heaven,” and enmity toward Egypt—Jerusalem is posited as their setting. Underlying this view is the assumption of returning priests, scribes, and others from Babylonia, as depicted in the Bible, though archaeology yields no evidence even for small-scale repatriation.¹⁶

Linking literary themes to archaeological contexts without accompanying justification is logically flawed, as Benjamin Sommer¹⁷ and Jon Levenson have shown¹⁸. The error lies in overlooking alternative historical settings that could also match the literature. One example¹⁹ is Konrad Schmid, who, despite acknowledging Sommer’s critique, continues this approach “with due caution.”²⁰ In doing so, he repeats the same mistake: identifying the “God of heaven” as a Persian-period concept among Jehudians²¹ while neglecting the possibility of Hellenistic influence on Pentateuchal authors. Ironically, his cited source discusses both Persian and Hellenistic usages, yet the latter is deemed inconceivable as a formative context for biblical literature.²² An inverted version of this error occurs when archaeological data are used to exclude Persian-period composition. Thus Finkelstein argues that some biblical narratives emphasize places irrelevant to Persian Yehud and thus could not have been written then.²³ Such reasoning ignores the likelihood that Persian-period scribes engaged with earlier materials and fails to consider other forms of ideological or cultural relevance.

A concept or setting associated with Persian culture need not have been adopted during the Persian period itself. Hellenistic writers, for instance, are known to have looked back to Persian times for ideological or literary inspiration, idealizing a pre-Alexandrian past.²⁴

Linguistic evidence has likewise been used to support a Persian-period provenance for the Pentateuch or parts of it—and also to challenge such dating on “ideological” grounds.²⁵ These debates remain unresolved.²⁶ Even paleo-Hebrew is ambiguous: it appears both in early inscriptions and in Hellenistic-Hasmonean coins, showing that the script was revived after the Persian period.²⁷

Part Two

Turning to Jerusalem, population estimates potentially show whether a viable literary scribal elite could have existed.

Map illustrating extent of the southwestern hill area that ceased to be occupied after 586 BCE.²⁸

Jerusalem’s inhabited area shrank drastically in the Persian period; archaeologists agree the southwestern hill was abandoned.²⁹

Population estimates for the city by the late fourth century range from 5,000 to as few as 400.³⁰ The latter figure could hardly sustain a scribal elite capable of advanced literary production.

If Yehud was so small and impoverished, how could its social and religious elites have supported the literary activity attributed to this era?³¹

Oded Lipschits, noted for his detailed analysis of Jerusalem’s Babylonian and Persian-period archaeology,³² estimates a population of 1,000–1,250,³³ possibly up to 3,000 for Jerusalem and its environs.³⁴ The gap between his figure and the lowest estimates (400–500) stems mainly from how “negative evidence” is interpreted.³⁵ By including the Ophel hill—where no Persian structures, floors, or pottery have been found—Lipschits doubles Finkelstein’s estimate.³⁶ Lipschits justifies this by hypothesis and assumption:³⁷ he points to (a) an adjacent area where pottery sherds were dumped and (b) his own reasons for believing that the area would have attracted occupation.³⁸ This reasoning—interpreting an absence of evidence through speculative hypothesis—is not unique to Lipschits; Finkelstein has explained in detail why he rejects such an approach.³⁹

Lipschits’ map showing the extent of the Ophel area beside the rest of the city.
Not immediately clear in this map but a point that should be noted when assessing debates over habitation is that
the Ophel area is an incline between the Temple Mount and City of David.⁴⁰

Scribal elites required financial backing: writing materials were expensive, archives demanded long-term upkeep, and schools needed sustained support throughout the Persian period. Such activity presupposes a sufficient tax base, comparable to that supporting administrative or military staff.⁴¹ Yet archaeology offers no evidence that Jerusalem functioned as an economic or administrative hub. Moza, about 7 km away, shows denser remains indicating a more active economy,⁴² while Ramat Raḥel, 3 km south, served as the province’s fifth-century administrative centre.⁴³ Zwickel adds another indicator of Jerusalem’s economic insignificance:

If one considers the location of the Persian-period settlements north of Jerusalem, they all appear not to have been oriented toward the city of Jerusalem. Rather, they lie in the immediate vicinity of a road that leads up from the Jordan Rift and descends toward Jaffa. It was not Jerusalem that was of significance for these settlements; the forts were not intended to protect the way into the holy city, but to secure the trade between Transjordan and the Mediterranean coast. (AI translation) ⁴⁴

Though “depopulated and impoverished”,⁴⁵ Jerusalem has been proposed as a pilgrimage centre.⁴⁶ Its temple supposedly attracted regular visitors from afar. Comparisons have been made with other low population yet frequented cult centres—Delphi, Olympia, and Praeneste⁴⁷—none of which was known for sophisticated scribal activity.⁴⁸ The idea presupposes that biblical traditions were part of people’s consciousness so early – which of course is what is being questioned here. Zwickel even wonders whether anyone saw a reason to build a temple in the early part of the Persian period.⁴⁹ Nonetheless, correspondence from the Jewish colony in Elephantine, dated 407 BCE, is addressed “the High Priest and his colleagues [or “brothers”] the priests who are in Jerusalem”,⁵⁰ so we can infer by the end of the fifth century Jerusalem did have a cult centre, presumably a modest temple of some kind, supporting multiple priests. Notably, the letter was written in Aramaic, not Hebrew.⁵¹ Further, both papyri remains and the iconography associated with the Yahwist temple in Elephantine attest to a polytheistic cult that the Jerusalem priests were expected to recognize.⁵² The cultic practices of Elephantine were inconsistent with Pentateuchal laws,⁵³ raising further difficulties if Jerusalem scribes at this time were developing the Pentateuch.

Archaeological finds that have been associated with pilgrimages to Jerusalem are coins. These coins bear paleo-Hebrew inscriptions naming “Yehud”⁵⁴. They are from the later half of the fourth century⁵⁵ and are the only artefacts from Persian Yehud that contain Hebrew script.⁵⁶ Being of low denomination they are often thought to have served in the temple cult, providing indirect support for Jerusalem as a pilgrimage centre. This inference must be balanced against two facts: their iconography—such as the ear and the deity on a winged throne—parallels pagan cult imagery;⁵⁷ and Jerusalem priests evidently accepted another Yahwist temple outside Jerusalem. Without assuming that the Hebrew scriptures were already authoritative and prescribed Jerusalem’s cultic centrality, there is no evidence that it functioned as a pilgrimage centre. Materially, Jerusalem shows no sign of being either a pilgrimage or literary hub.

What is of particular significance, however, even if one accepts a population double or more than Finkelstein’s “minimalist” estimate, the crucial fact remains—emphasized at the outset of this essay—that throughout two centuries of Persian rule there is a “total disappearance of Hebrew” in Yehud.⁵⁸ Evidence for scribal activity in the language of the Hebrew Bible does not reappear until the Hellenistic period.

There is almost a complete absence of Hebrew inscriptions from the Persian province of Yehud. Until the mid-third century B.C.E., practically no evidence exists of writing in Hebrew (apart from the Bible). Ironically, this is exactly the time when Biblical Hebrew literature is supposedly exploding, when Biblical Hebrew literature has its magical moment.⁵⁹

Aramaic, the language of Persian administration, not Hebrew, is found in inscriptions.

Administrative scribal outputs (specifically here, seal impressions on jar handles) are hardly evidence for literary activity but it is nonetheless worth noting that the name Yehud appears only in Aramaic script.⁶⁰ Only in late Hellenistic (Hasmonean) times does it appear in paleo-Hebrew.⁶¹ The name for Jerusalem (yršlm) itself is unattested in the Persian period, emerging only in Hellenistic administrative contexts when Hebrew script began to replace Aramaic.⁶² For this reason, along with sixth century Babylonian references to Jerusalem as the “city of Yehud”, Ya’akov Meshorer has even questioned whether Jerusalem was known by that name among administrators until after the Persian period.⁶³ This potentially further weakens the idea that Jerusalem had any distinctive status.

One might suggest that Hebrew literary works have simply been lost because they were written on papyrus. Yet if scribes had engaged in Hebrew literary activity, some trace would likely appear in other media—seals, bullae, or ostraca.⁶⁴ Though papyrus decays, scrolls were labelled with appropriate clay-based identification. Scribes would have their own seals. All indications point to scribes working exclusively in Aramaic administrative contexts.

Despite the absence of archaeological evidence for sophisticated literary activity in Jerusalem, and despite the positive evidence for a very low population, scholars still imagine a thriving post-586 scribal culture producing an advanced literary heritage. The reason appears to be interpreting both positive and negative archaeological evidence through biblical narratives. Even where the justification for this scenario is not made explicit it nonetheless is present, as can be seen in the work of Lipschits. Lipschits, as pointed out above (note 30), is among the most prolific authors of archaeological data on Jerusalem and Yehud. His studies frequently note how closely his population estimates closely match those in Nehemiah—sometimes uses Nehemiah through which to reconstruct Jerusalem,⁶⁵ at other times claiming the figures merely coincide with archaeological results.⁶⁶ (In one publication he criticizes scholars who cite different Nehemiah passages when proposing “minimalist” population estimates.⁶⁷) For this reason, his methods warrant scrutiny—as has been done in part by Finkelstein (note 37 above) and Avraham Faust.⁶⁸

Faust contends that the Babylonian conquest caused such a sharp break in material culture that the Persian province of Yehud should be viewed as a “post-collapse society”.⁶⁹ A frequent feature of a post-collapse society is a precipitous population collapse (75-90%), not only in the urban areas but also in their rural hinterlands.⁷⁰ Social order collapses, self-sufficiency increases, trade and specialized crafts fade from view, urban construction largely ceases or reuses older structures, much of it recycling older buildings, and the archaeological record is notably more ephemeral.⁷¹ For Faust, Tainter’s analysis of “post-collapse societies” fits the evidence for Persian period Jerusalem.

Maps illustrating the extent of Jerusalem in the late Iron Age, Persian and Hellenistic periods.⁷²

Analyzing various population estimates for the Persian period, including those of Lipschits, Faust concludes that soon after 586 BCE the population in Jerusalem’s administrative zone fell to about 20% of its pre-destruction level, reaching only a third of its late Iron Age size some 250 years later.⁷³ Lipschits agrees that certain areas saw dramatic declines but disputes that they applied to all regions.⁷⁴ While this essay cannot review the full debate between Lipschits, Faust, and Finkelstein, two archaeological indicators merit emphasis. Both point to a profound cultural and sociological rupture after 586: the disappearances of the four-room house and the Judahite tombs.⁷⁵

The four-room house, characteristic of Judahite society in Iron Age II, was more than a functional design: it reflected cultural patterns now lost, appearing across rural and urban settings, among rich and poor, fulfilling private and public functions, and even being a template for tombs.⁷⁶ That it should disappear, without even the older houses being re-used, suggests a major cultural dislocation. Another break from the Iron Age is the absence of new or reused Judahite tombs in the Persian period.⁷⁷ Only two such tombs have been found within Jerusalem.⁷⁸ Lipschits acknowledges this is an indicator of the city’s “wretchedly poor”⁷⁹ state. Yet later he attributed these disappearances more positively to reflecting “deep religious and social change.”⁸⁰ Part of the rationale is the inability to accept that Babylonian deportations caused such devastation. Against this point, Faust cites evidence that deportations alone were not the reason for the population collapse, but losses also that resulted from famine, disease, massacres, fleeing refugees that are known to have accompanied such wars.⁸¹

Returning to the literary perspective, it deserves notice that post-collapse societies often develop a post-collapse mythology of what went before:

Often the fall of early states and empires comes later to represent a paradise lost, a golden age of good government, wise rule, harmony, and peace, when all was right with the world.⁸²

This outlook contrasts sharply with the biblical literature, which portrays the past not as an ideal age but as one of repeated apostasies requiring repentance. Yet even here a leading archaeologist has recreated memories of a golden age among a section of those inhabiting Jerusalem’s ruins, as the following explains.

At the same conference that featured the Finkelstein quotation cited at the start of this essay, Lipschits uncontroversially described Jerusalem as “sparse and poor residences built into the ruins of the Iron Age city.”⁸³ He highlighted a two-storey house showing evidence of a plentiful food supply, presumably from trade with the Phoenician coast⁸⁴, suggesting a relatively prosperous household. Notably, Lipschits interprets these finds—and even the thoughts and memories of those living among these ruins— through passages from Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Haggai, Zechariah, Ezra-Nehemiah, demonstrating how scriptural references shape his reading of both the evidence and the “negative evidence”.

we should interpret the “return to Zion” as a slow and gradual process of a very small number . . . of the exiled elite, who did not leave an imprint on the archaeological data⁸⁵

assuming that they contain some historical reliability⁸⁶

with no support from any other source⁸⁷

The paper constructs the mentalities, historical consciousness and memories of two distinct groups in Jerusalem: descendants of those who had remained in the land and elite descendants of deportees who had (without leaving a trace in the ground) returned. The former, on looking every day at the ruins around them, are said to have recalled the past as a glorious era that was ruined because of the sins of the elites. The elites returned, looking down on the “remainees”, wondering if now was the right time to rebuild the temple. The ideological debates Lipschits constructs, and even the existence of two groups, is entirely read into the meagre archaeological data from the biblical texts:

The existence of both perspectives is most clearly expressed in the prophecy of Haggai . . . Zechariah 1:12–17 can also be interpreted in this direction, and Ezekiel . . . .

This is the basis of my attempt to understand the reality revealed in the archaeological excavations in Jerusalem.⁸⁸

The reader is left to imagine a scribal elite, presumably sheltering in spaces eked out among ruins yet with access to writing materials and archived scrolls, with the means of sharing and passing on their skills, penning, editing, collating texts with the divergent ideological perspectives of the “remainees” and “returnees” in mind.

Faust applies the label “continuity school” to scholars who believe that, despite comparative impoverishment of the times, sophisticated scribal institutions survived the Babylonian conquest.⁸⁹ Among others who share his criticisms of this school are Stern,⁹⁰ Schniedewind,⁹¹ Oded,⁹² Vanderhooft.⁹³ As a leading figure in this “continuity school”, Lipschits hews closely to both the archaeological data and to hypotheses to explain the absence of that data. At the same time he insists that the archaeological method has its limitations in historical research and warns against the “motivation and ‘hidden polemics’” of scholars whom he characterizes as proponents of “the myth of the empty land”.⁹⁴ By proponents of the “empty land” myth he is referring to scholars like Faust and Stern who interpret the evidence as depicting a post-collapse society from which Jerusalem and its region took two and a half centuries to recover.

The material evidence presents Jerusalem as an impoverished region, catastrophically reduced both geographically and demographically, with scant remains of residential architecture, without any signs of Hebrew script except in a few late coins, with no sign of an affluent community present, with no unambiguous indicators of any of the rituals or observances to be found in the biblical texts. The material evidence suggests cultural practices that conflict with those biblical texts. The only evidence of scribal activity lies in the basic administrative tasks in Aramaic. The prevailing reconstruction of an adequate literary culture in Persian-period Jerusalem can be sustained, it appears, by resisting the “motivation and hidden polemics” that would read the biblical narratives into the “negative evidence”.

Endnotes

Continue reading “Evidence Against Jerusalem in Persian Times Producing the Hebrew Bible”

2025-11-30

Persian-Period Jerusalem: An Unlikely Cradle for the Biblical Literature

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

by Neil Godfrey

Past posts here have argued for the Biblical literature taking shape primarily in the Hellenistic era. That’s not the common view, however.

While traditional views have assigned the earliest “proto-books” to the Iron age, the time of the Kingdoms of David and Solomon, or the time of King Josiah, much of the shaping of the biblical texts is thought to have happened after the return of Judeans to the Persian province of Yehud and Jerusalem. It was in this period — the fifth and fourth centuries, the setting assigned to Ezra and Nehemiah — that scribes and priests are often thought to have engaged in selecting, collating and redacting texts into what became the Hebrew Bible.

This Persian-period and Jerusalem-centred basis for the creative activity on the biblical literature has many theoretical and hypothetical arguments underpinning it. But what happens if we take a closer look at the “facts on the ground”, as they say? What if Jerusalem at this time had all the signs of a “post-collapse society”, one in which a few score inhabitants could do little better for themselves than to live in ruins, I mean unrepaired ruins? Centres of economic activity and administration were found elsewhere: Moza, about 7 km away, has left remains of stronger economic activity; Ramat Raḥel, 3 km south, was the administrative centre of the province. Persian forts in the region were positioned to protect trade routes that bypassed Jerusalem. And not a single Hebrew inscription is to be found in Persian-period Jerusalem.

PersianPeriodMap — Map generated by Claude AI

Below is an essay I wrote a month or so ago as part of a post-grad course. It discusses in depth why Jerusalem in the time of the Persian empire is not likely to have been a base for scribes engaged with work on what was to become the Hebrew Bible. (I have made only slight alterations to the original essay.) More relevant maps are included in the essay.

Download (PDF, 629KB)

2025-10-22

Yonatan Adler’s New (Free) Book Relating to Hellenistic Period and the Hebrew Bible

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

by Neil Godfrey

Yonatan Adler has posted on his academia.edu page that from today we are able to download his new book for free.

Free to download for two weeks only!

Starting today, you can download for free my new book:
Between Yahwism and Judaism: Judean Cult and Culture during the Early Hellenistic Period (332–175 BCE)

Download it now, and read it later.

And of course, please share and spread the word.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/between-yahwism-and-judaism/DF4B36DC1118F3DDAF3A060C7B4878CC

Past posts relating to Yonatan Adler’s work:

Snippets from the Conclusion of Between Yahwism and Judaism:

This study set out to investigate the character of Judean cult and culture during the Early Hellenistic period, as a transitional time between the preceding Persian era and the subsequent Late Hellenistic and Roman periods. . . .

One thing has become very clear in my other studies is that there was no clear archaeologically discernable divide between conditions in Persian Yehud (the Persian province of Judea) and those of the early Hellenistic period. Those of us interested in Russell Gmirkin’s views of the Egyptian provenance of the Hebrew Bible will be interested in this observation (my bolding):

In Judea, we find a strong degree of cultural continuity from the preceding Persian period in terms of language (Aramaic), naming conventions, and material culture – with almost no evidence for Greek influence in these matters. In Egypt, by contrast, Judeans began to replace Aramaic with Greek, and began to adopt Greek names alongside traditional Hebrew and Aramaic names. However, as the trigger for both these developments in Egypt was likely the very practical need to facilitate social and commercial contacts in an increasingly Greek-speaking environment, we should probably not regard these shifts as a fundamental rejection of traditional Judean culture in favor of Greek.

Interesting. More questions arising.

2025-10-11

The Tel Dan Inscription — (The Sacred “House of David” Inscription — “proof” of the biblical Kingdom of David)

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

by Neil Godfrey

Such problems are never discussed. It is obvious that the inscription has been accepted in modern Israel as a kind of magna carta for the relations between the modern state and ancient Israel, a holy text, even more holy than the Hebrew Bible and as such beyond discussion – including any discussion about the meaning of the “house of David” part of the inscription.

Some points about this inscription less well known publicly, from a passage in N.P. Lemche’s Back to Reason…..

All bolded highlighting is my own.

The inscription was linguistically without serious problems, a phenomenon Cryer noted as exceptional since no other inscription of the time and of a similar size and complexity has ever presented itself in a similarly unproblematic way; somehow they all have at least one phenomenon which has to be discussed among specialists for years. The Tel Dan inscription knows of no such problems; it is totally translatable.

The reception in those days [from 1993-94, when it was discovered] was almost universally positive, if not simply overwhelmingly positive. The only exception was the Italian specialist in Northwest Semitic languages Giovanni Garbini (1931-2017), who simply rejected the inscription as a rude falsification. Apart from a few linguistic arguments, Garbini based his rejection of the inscription on its similarity in content to, especially, the Mesha stele; it is as if you lifted the text of Tel Dan Fragment A and placed it over a similarly sized section of the Mesha inscription, an astonishing amount of identical phrases and issues appear.

The main battle over the inscription’s authenticity was, however, not fought over linguistic details; it was quite different and had to do with physical peculiarities. It is often maintained that the minimalists had to reject this inscription as genuine simply because it represented a blow to their very minimalism which rejected the historicity of King David. Those waving such opinions are unaware of two things: First of all, the Tel Dan inscription is not a proof of the existence of King David, only at best of a house of David. This is hardly a distressing surprise to the minimalists, because it is exactly what is to be expected, because there is no dearth in the Old Testament as far as references to this “house of David” go. The title “the House of David” makes David as historical as “the House of Windsor” makes Windsor a historical person, as it has been put. The second thing is that the minimalists – or not all of them – did not consider the inscription a fake from the very day of its publication. . . .

The change in attitude came late, in 1995, when Frederick Cryer returned to Copenhagen from a visit to Jerusalem where he had been at the Israel Museum with Russell Gmirkin. Gmirkin had taken a couple of perhaps not quite legal photos of the inscription. Cryer brought them back to Copenhagen for a seminar and just handed them over to me with the question: Can you see it? And it was easy to see: in the almost non-existent first line the vertical line in the “m” did, at the edge of the inscription fragment, suddenly turn to the right (it was supposed to continue in an angle to the left) – down the broken side. This means that if this is really so, the text on the slab has been engraved on it after the slab had been “produced”, which again means that it must logically be a fake inscription and not an ancient one. . . . George Athas discusses Gmirkin’s evidence but dismisses it as “scratches”, which they of course definitely are (Athas 2003, 35-9): Nobody ever said that the slippage was intentional. Finally – and it is really an ironic coincidence (?) – the problems are very clearly exposed in an unusually clear photo of the inscription by Zev Radogan printed on the cover of a book by Megan Bishop Moore and Brad E. Kelle, Biblical History and Israel’s Past (Moore and Kelle 2011).

Such problems are never discussed. It is obvious that the inscription has been accepted in modern Israel as a kind of magna carta for the relations between the modern state and ancient Israel, a holy text, even more holy than the Hebrew Bible and as such beyond discussion – including any discussion about the meaning of the “house of David” part of the inscription. (Lemche, 106-108)

What of the actual words translated “house of David” [bytdwd]?

It is noted that the writing: bytdwd is unusual. Otherwise, words in this inscription are separated with a marker, a dot. Accordingly, we should expect bytdwd written as byt . dwd, in two words. No such marker is found here. If it is an ancient inscription we have no way of knowing the reason for this omission; perhaps a slip from the side of the engraver, but then we should ask: Why exactly here? Was it intended to catch the eye of the reader? It is simply too much of a coincidence? In the early part of the discussion this led to a series of alternative proposals to understand the meaning of the bytdwd, including proposals that it was the name of some locality in the vicinity of Dan, a sanctuary or the like. As the interpretation of the inscription assumed canonical importance, such divergent opinions were simply dismissed without further discussion. The peculiar writing bytdwd received, after Cryers intervention, no more attention, although it is exceptional to find the word bayit “house, temple, family, dynasty” written in early Aramaic as byt. Normally the -y- is left out. We should have expected in normal writing bt . dwd or maybe simply bt . dd, and the discussion should have started from this point. (Lemche, 108)

Just one more thing….

From Lemche’s Amman lecture (in Thompson):
In a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Sydney, which was recently published by Sheffield Academic Press, the Australian scholar George Athas presents a new, innovative and well-argued theory about the Tel Dan Fragments (Athas 2003). According to Athas, fragments A and B1/B2 belong to one and the same inscription, though the extant portions were some distance apart in the unbroken original. Performing a hands-on experiment in which he reconstructed the conditions under which the inscription would have been created—Athas proposes that an ancient scribe would have chalked his words on the stone surface before a skilled mason carved them—Athas was able to demonstrate that the variations in line orientation are quite in keeping with an inscription made on a large piece of stone:

If Athas is correct—and in my view his approach is quite brilliant—all earlier reconstructions of this text and its interpretation are rendered obsolete, since most of them are based on theories involving the non-existent joins. (53f)

One more issue has to be addressed before we can leave this inscription behind: the combination of the two (three) fragments into one text. It is no more seen as problematic, but it was when the combination was first made. The fragments (A and B_1-2) do no[t] align. This is obvious if we try to do so as I did in my Amman-lecture (Lemche 2003c, 53 — see side box). But do we have a join where they meet? The authorities of the Israel Museum definitely think so. I only have the opinion of a leading Israeli archaeologist of my own generation who was able to inspect the fragments before they were joined, and his response was: There are no joins. George Athas made an ingenious reconstruction of the inscription based on the angle of the chisel used to cut out the inscription on the slab, and it turned out that the angle is different on fragment A and fragments B_1-2 (Athas 2003, 191). Comparing the angles of the letters of the inscription he placed fragment B_1-2 further down than fragment A, bursting, in this way, the usual interpretation of the inscription as a victory stele of Hazael of Damascus. Of course in the light of the ongoing canonization of the inscription his challenge was never taken up and the usual but most likely impossible interpretation remains in force.⁹³

93 A question not taken up here is the one of the circumstances of the finding of the fragments. There was some confusion about the exact place where it was found, but definitely not as part of a wall of fortification. Fragment A was extracted from below a wall somehow sticking out in the open where it was discovered by the Israeli archaeologist Gila Cook. Ihe first photos of the inscription in Israel Exploration Journal 43 (p. 82) did not show it in situ but moved from its original placed out to the plaza in front of it and standing up. The confusion became total when The Biblical Archaeology Review (March/April 1994, p. 38) published a photo of the inscription in situ (sic!) but inverted. The conditions surrounding the discovery of the two other fragments are not much different. As to the joining of the fragments, Hagelia presents an overview of the interpretations of the stele (until c. 2005) (Hagelia 2006, 13-50). A recent view separating fragments A and B can be found in Knauf and Guillaume 2016, 94, repeated in Knauf and Niemann 2021, 208, where Knauf admits to be the originator of this separation in his “histories”.

(Lemche, 108f)

For other related posts see https://vridar.org/tag/tel-dan-inscription/

Lemche, Niels Peter. Back to Reason: Minimalism in Biblical Studies. Sheffield, South Yorkshire ; Bristol, CT: Equinox, 2022.

Further Agreement with the Hellenistic Dating of the Hebrew Scriptures

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

by Neil Godfrey

Lemche . . . accounts for the Grand Canyon yawning between biblical “minimalists” (like himself, Thomas L. Thompson, Jason Van Seters [sic — read “John Van Seters”], and Philip R. Davies) and “maximalists,” the latter being . . . fundamentalist literalists, evangelical scholars who think they are real critics but are actually a kind of sophisticated apologists, and others who really practice critical methodologies (tradition criticism, form criticism, etc.) but still try to preserve the substantial historical accuracy of Old Testament narratives, albeit by means of “rationalistic paraphrase.” All these allies vilify minimalists as nihilistic, anti-Semitic, postmodernists, wild rhetoric not seen since the days of the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy. It is Lemche’s mission in this book to demonstrate that the inertial credulity of these apologists (for, essentially, that’s what all of them are) stems from a failure of intellectual nerve. . . . For the so-called “minimalism” is simply the result of the consistent application of tried-and-true critical methods . . . (Price, 153 — highlighting is my own. Van Seters agrees with minimalists like Lemche and Thompson on critical points but his name, as far as I am aware, is not normally associated with “minimalists” per se)

and

Scholars like Lemche, Thompson, and the rest have amply demonstrated, from both archaeological and textual analysis, that the biblical “history” of Israel is anything but. Instead, it must now be recognized as a piece of Hellenistic literature, bearing every mark of that genre. There was no historical Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, or Josiah. Samson = Hercules. Yahweh has the same ontological value as Zeus. Jonah no more than Jason. Such is the astonishing truth that one must dare to know. (Price, 154 — again, my highlighting)

Price, Robert M. Review of Niels Peter Lemche, Back to Reason: Minimalism in Biblical Studies. Equinox Publishing, 2015. Viii. + 188 pp. The Journal of Higher Criticism Volume 20 Number 2 20, no. 2 (Summer 2025): 152–54.

2025-09-26

An Attempt to Date a pro-Samarian Deuteronomy to the Persian Period

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

by Neil Godfrey

An argument has appeared on the earlywritings forum proposing that an early form of the Book of Deuteronomy was produced in the Persian period — more specifically, in Persian period Samaria.

It is mid-semester break for me and the scholarship relating to Persian period writings in Yehud and Samaria is still fresh in my mind (see the previous two posts) so here’s my chance to offer a critical review of a few details.

Archaeologist Yitzhak Magen’s dogmatic declaration that archaeological excavations “prove unequivocally that the temple on [Mt Gerizim] was built in the middle of the fifth century BCE” (before Nehemiah’s presumed arrival in Jerusalem) is quoted uncritically. Ironically later in the discussion Peter Kirby quotes Gary Knoppers who clearly responds to Magen’s published evidence with a measure of equivocation — Knoppers is not the only scholar to observe that the actual evidence presented is by no means definitive and could point to a shrine or altar rather than a temple. Magen’s quote is presented without any apparent awareness of the entirely circumstantial nature of Magen’s evidence and the doubts raised about his interpretations in the scholarship. (As for me, I simply don’t know if there was a temple on Mt Gerizim in the Persian period but as I will explain below, if there was, in the context of other evidence it would actually pose a problem for the argument that Deuteronomy was a product of the priests of such a temple. )

Magen’s dogmatic quote is followed by Diana Edelman’s conclusion that “it is more logical to assume” a Temple was constructed at Jerusalem in the Persian period in the time of Nehemiah — after Magen’s claim that the Samarian temple was erected before then.

The significance of this chronology for Peter K is that since the Mt Gerizim temple was constructed before the Jerusalem temple, then there was hope — as we find expressed in Deuteronomy — that this would be the sole and only temple for “Israel”. (PK does appear to assume the name “Israel” designated the region of Samaria at this time.)

[Unfortunately Peter concludes this section of his argument by misapplying a quote from C. Behan McCullagh’s Justifying Historical Descriptions. PK’s argument thus far is, he notes, one that “seems like the best explanation” and “in accordance with the way historians use such arguments, no more is implied than that ‘it is likely to be true'” — but adds that there remains “some reasonable doubt about this explanation” and a better explanation might come to his awareness some time. — McCullagh wrote that arguments to the best explanation are far from conclusive (p. 26) and his point about the kind of argument that is “most likely to be true” he applied only to those arguments that meet all 7 conditions that are required for us to justify belief — such as “the battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18th June 1815, and there can be no doubt who won the battle.” But it was encouraging to at least see an effort to apply a historian’s discussions of historical method here.]

Another encouraging point was to see a reference being made to archaeologist Israel Finkelstein’s “Black Hole” paper in which he emphasizes the lack of evidence in Yehud (Persian period Judah/Judea) for the kind of scribal culture necessary to produce any of the biblical writings. This detail coheres with Peter Kirby’s case for Deuteronomy being in an early form as a pro-Samarian text, one that justified the Samarian temple on Mount Gerizim — not a pro-Jerusalem document. The Finkelstein point is followed by a copy and paste of a full 12+ pages of Gary Knopper’s chapter in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period that notes:

the demographic strength of Samaria (compared to the low demographic situation of Yehud) in the Persan period — and the “flourishing” of the Samarian economy up until the early Hellenistic period.
Hebrew script was used alongside Aramaic — though the supporting citations Knoppers applies here greatly qualify that statement.
Most names of the period were Yahwistic.
Cultural exchanges existed among Jews of Elephantine, Yehud and leaders of Samaria.
Recent excavations “suggest” that “some sort of sanctuary or temple existed on Mt. Gerizim”.

This is followed by other indicators of the pro-Samarian interest of Deuteronomy, including a reference to a 2011 article by Stefan Schorch (compare my own discussion of a Schorch paper) — and arguments based on archaic Hebrew. No reference is made to controversies related to the linguistic arguments — see reference #12 in an earlier post.)

Finally, reference is made to the Yahwist temple at the Persian period Judean colony in Egypt at Elephantine. For PK, this colony followed “pro-Judean tradition” rather than Samarian according to correspondence discovered at the site. He appears to be unaware of Gard Granerød’s Dimensions of Yahwism in the Persian Period where we read:

Finally, the [Elephantine] community’s orientation towards Jerusalem and Judah suggests that the community considered itself affiliated with Jerusalem and Judah, perhaps as a diaspora community. At least two official letters written to Judah and Jerusalem are known. . . . The letters to Jerusalem and Judah were written against the background of the conflict with the Egyptian priests of Khnum and the local Persian administration in Upper Egypt. Assumedly, the conflict about the temple of YHW sharpened the community’s identity as Judaeans by providing an impetus to reconfirm its ties with the homeland, Judah. However, regardless of whether this was the case or not, the Elephantine Judaeans did not only orientate themselves towards Judah and Jerusalem; they also maintained contact with the Sanballat dynasty in Samaria (A4.7:29 par.). The Elephantine Judaeans received assistance from Samaria by means of a statement. The statement was given by a representative of the Sanballat dynasty in Samaria together with the governor of Judah (A4.9). Regardless of what implications this cooperation between Samaria and Judah may have for the political history of the provinces of Judah and Samaria, the point here is that the Elephantine Judaeans, by also orienting themselves towards Samaria thus displayed a special relationship with Samaria, a relationship that in turn seems to have been confirmed by the ruling dynasty in Samaria. (p. 32)

Here PK overlooks what might be the most damning detail against the plausibility of Deuteronomy being a product of Persian period Samaria. That fact that most personal names found were Yahwistic, the evidence for at least a shrine of Yahweh in Mt Gerizim and assuming a Temple to Yahweh somewhere in Samaria at the very least, — all of that data needs to be studied in the context of contemporary Yahwistic practices, not interpreted through the text of Deuteronomy itself. It is the date of Deuteronomy that is in question here — not the date of Yahweh worship.

The cult of Yahweh or of some form of that name is found throughout the Levant. It is not unique to Samaria or Judea.

yahweh map2 e1676103220288 1024x736 — The map indicates the places where references to the name Yahweh, or related forms, have been discovered regarding particular extra-biblical finds. . . . Names in italics denote the extra-biblical references. From Mondriaan, Marlene Elizabeth. The Rise of Yahwism: Role of Marginalised Groups. University of Pretoria, 2010. p 306

The Elephantine finds demonstrate that the cult of Yahweh followed practices that were alien to the precepts we find in Deuteronomy. The simple fact of the existence of a temple to Yahweh in Elephantine undercuts the notion that priests of Yahweh (see the above quote for cordial relations between Samaria and Elephantine) demanded a single place of worship for Yahweh. Further, Yahweh was worshipped alongside other deities, including his wife. See the linked references in the previous post. It is not until the Hellenistic period that archaeology locates specifically “biblical” precepts being embraced by communities in Palestine.

As for Russell Gmirkin’s thesis of a Hellenistic date and Alexandrian provenance for the Pentateuch, including Deuteronomy, it remains untouched by the above criticisms and coheres more neatly (according to McCullagh’s principles of sound historical argument) with both the archaeological and textual witnesses.

2025-09-23

Fundamental Problems with the Persian Period Origin of the Hebrew Bible

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

by Neil Godfrey

If we did not have the biblical narratives describing returns of Judeans to Judea during the Persian period along with allusions to the rebuilding of a temple in that time, but instead relied solely on archaeological evidence, I suggest we would have no reason to ever propose that the Hebrew Bible witnessed any significant development in the period of Persian rule.

There was a Persian period Jewish/Judean temple built at Elephantine and from the finds there we learn that “Yahweh” was accompanied with other deities — including Yahweh’s wife — in the same temple. See:

Add Adler Yonatan’s observations that there is no evidence in Judea or Samaria of any knowledge of distinctively Pentateuchal laws prior to the Hellenistic era:

Compare also the “religious” culture of Samaria in the Persian period:

Samaria in the Persian Period

And not forgetting that Yahweh worship was widespread throughout the Levant and should not be quickly equated with anything resembling “biblical Judaism”:

And keeping in mind a relatively long period of demise in both Samaria and Yehud in the early part of the Hellenistic period (Samaria had suffered the consequences of rebellion) . . . .

And bearing in mind the material existence for the biblical literature well into the Hellenistic era — and the evidence that this time also witnessed the earliest material evidence for living by Pentateuchal laws (Adler) — . . . .

And recalling Israel Finkelstein’s suggestion that we look outside Palestine for the origins of the biblical literature, including Egypt (though Finkelstein himself relies on biblical narratives to propose Babylonia and earlier Iron Age Judah as likely settings for the event) . . . .

And given the various studies pointing to distinctive structural and intertextual echoes of Greek literature in the Hebrew Bible . . . .

Nor forgetting the indications that a book like Nehemiah actually describes building activity that is known to have happened in Hellenistic (not Persian) times . . . .

It may be quite reasonable to propose Egypt, specifically Alexandria, in the early Hellenistic period as the setting for the creation of much of the biblical literature — as per Russell Gmirkin’s thesis.

2025-09-22

Plan for a Study of the Origins of the Hebrew Bible: Persian or Hellenistic period?

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

by Neil Godfrey

Following is a recent assigmnment of mine — a research plan for an essay — that I think contains some information that will be of interest to some readers. . . . Russell Gmirkin gets a mention, by the way.

Rethinking Scribal Culture in Persian Period Yehud: Evidence and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible

Background, context, rationale

According to conventional scholarship, the Hebrew Bible took shape in Yehud, the Persian period province of Judah, with Samaria sometimes added as a contributing centre. This view rests largely on readings of Ezra–Nehemiah as historical sources and on frameworks inherited from the Documentary Hypothesis. Yet excavations show Yehud lacked the urbanization or resources necessary to sustain a scribal culture capable of producing such complex literature. A question rarely addressed is why there is very scant evidence of Hebrew writing in Yehud.¹ By contrast, Iron Age II and the Late Hellenistic period yield abundant finds that “demonstrate widespread scribal activity and literacy across diverse media and inscriptional forms.”² If Yehud was not the cradle of biblical literature, the implications are considerable, extending to the origins of Judaism’s foundational texts, the interpretation of writings that situate those origins in the Persian period, and conventional accounts of Judaism’s formation.

In 2016, Israel Finkelstein argued that archaeology does not corroborate the settings of Pentateuchal narratives but rather can only illuminate the contexts of their composition.³ At the 2022 Yahwism under the Achaemenid Empire conference he updated⁴ that publication with reference to new excavations and the Tel Aviv University digital epigraphy project.⁵ He advised looking for the origins of the Biblical literature in the Iron Age and then in Babylonia (as more recently suggested by Albertz⁶ and Römer⁷) or Egypt – with additions as late as the Hasmonean era. Taken together, the material record points away from fifth and fourth century Palestine for the production of the biblical literature.

Finkelstein’s challenge has yet to gain traction in mainstream scholarship. At the same conference, only Reinhard G. Kratz explicitly addressed the tension between the archaeological record and the assumption that biblical literature was taking shape in Yehud, highlighting the disparity between the forms of “Judaism” attested in the epigraphic sources of Yehud and those presupposed in the biblical tradition.⁸

An even more radical challenge comes from Yonatan Adler’s 2022 study of archaeological evidence, which establishes that Judeans continued a polytheistic Yahwism and show no awareness of Torah observance before the third century.⁹

The 2019 volume On Dating Biblical Texts to the Persian Period sought firmer criteria for fifth-century dating.¹⁰ Its essays reflect the general trends in the study of the Hebrew Bible’s origins – relying almost entirely on textual analysis, with archaeology relegated to a secondary role, if acknowledged at all. When an attempt is made to apply a theoretical historical method, as when Konrad Schmid invokes Ernst Troeltsch’s principles, the task fails because, as is so common, historicity of the texts is presupposed, thus falling into circular reasoning.¹¹ Again reflecting common procedures in the wider field, other contributions date texts linguistically to the Achaemenid period, a contested procedure.¹²

Kratz has elsewhere sought to maintain the fifth and fourth centuries as the formative period for the biblical texts by suggesting that the traditions circulated orally at this time and crystallized into written texts only in the Hellenistic age.¹³ The papyri from the fifth century colony at Elephantine testify to a form of Yahwism with little resemblance to Pentateuchal prescriptions, despite scholarly efforts to detect in them some background awareness of biblical writings, as Kratz observes. Further, these and other Aramaic papyri from Samaria show no signs of the scribal activity that would have been necessary for the production of biblical literature.

Archaeology further indicates a markedly low population in Persian period Yehud compared with the Iron Age and Hellenistic eras—too low, some argue, to sustain centers of scribal culture.

Niels Peter Lemche has challenged the mainstream by emphasizing the circularity of arguments for a Persian period origin of biblical literature, stressing that archaeological surveys of the period render such a dating highly improbable.¹⁴ He argues that the Hellenistic period provides the most plausible setting for the creation of these texts. In recent years, a small but growing number of scholars¹⁵ have argued for strong textual relationships between the Hebrew texts and Greek literature—relationships that suggest not merely indirect influence through Achaemenid era trade contacts but to a deeper engagement with Hellenistic intellectual culture that contributed to the formation of the Hebrew Bible.

Aims and objectives

1: Clarify the scholarly consensus on the nature of the biblical literature.

Survey how scholarship generally characterizes the Hebrew Bible as a composite work shaped by multiple sources, successive redactions, and editorial layers. Establish what kind of scribal activity this consensus presupposes, and use it as the baseline for testing whether Achaemenid Palestine could plausibly support such production.

2: Assess expected forms of writing and scribal activity.

Distinguish functional writing (administrative, economic, and legal records) from evidence for sustained literary scribal culture (e.g. physical space for archives and schools, inscriptions). Specify what types of finds would be expected if a scribal society capable of producing complex literature were present.

3: Contextualize Persian period material finds within broader patterns of settlement and urbanization.

Identify the archaeological record of Persian period Palestine, comparing it with that of Iron Age II and the Late Hellenistic period. Highlight demographic and urbanization changes in key regions (Jerusalem, Bethel, Samaria, Mount Gerizim), and assess whether these shifts plausibly indicate conditions supportive of a scribal-literary culture.

4: Identify and analyze Persian period finds.

Present the relevant finds from Yehud (Jerusalem and Bethel), Samaria (Shechem and Wadi Daliyeh) and related sites. These will be described with respect to:

medium (stone, clay, papyrus, coins, seals, bullae, ostraca),
archaeological context (urban, rural, temple, cave, or administrative building),
language and script (Aramaic or Hebrew),
function and audience (who produced the text, for whom, and for what purpose).

5: Assess external and imperial evidence and arguments advanced in support of a Persian period creation of biblical literature.

Examine evidence outside Palestine that bears on the question of Pentateuchal origins, including the Elephantine papyri, the evidence for the supposed decree of Darius I to codify laws, and other fifth and fourth century literary sources (e.g. Herodotus, Theophrastus). Assess the debates over whether the external archaeological evidence corroborates or challenges the idea of a necessary scribal milieu.

6: Review other common arguments for Persian period authorship.

Survey the evidence and assumptions underlying widespread arguments that biblical literature essentially came together in Persian-ruled Palestine, and evaluate critical responses in the scholarship. Particular attention to be given to:

linguistic variations in the Pentateuch and their chronological implications,
narratives of Ezra and Nehemiah as historical witnesses to fifth century events.

7: Explore alternative explanations for the provenance of the Hebrew Bible.

Identify alternative models for the origins of the Hebrew Bible and assess their viability (e.g., Hellenistic-period composition or layered traditions). Consider why biblical narratives themselves point to the time of Persian domination as formative for Judaism, and whether this reflects memory, ideology, or literary construction rather than historical fact. This will lay the groundwork for exploring models of provenance beyond the Persian period hypothesis.

Research methods, techniques, and tools

Scholarly foundations and theoretical approach

The research will begin with the most recent collective examination of Persian-period Palestine: the Yahwism under the Achaemenid Empire conference (December 2022; published 2024). Of particular significance is Israel Finkelstein’s paper, which argues from archaeological evidence against the prevailing view that the Persian period was decisive for the emergence of biblical literature.¹⁶

Primary evidence—data from the time and place under investigation—will be assessed independently, rather than interpreted through biblical texts, unless those texts can be shown to convey information that has been transmitted reliably from direct interaction with the event. Archaeological finds will be treated on their own terms, not used to confirm religious or ideological¹⁷ narratives. This approach, sometimes criticized as “hyper-critical,” is instead an effort to respect the integrity of different sources: material data as direct evidence of their period, and literary texts as works requiring literary analysis before being considered evidence for historical events.¹⁸ As several scholars have long observed¹⁹ the Persian period construct of the biblical literature is based on circular argumentation—assuming underlying historicity of biblical narratives and interpreting archaeological finds through those narratives to confirm the basic narrative construct

Archaeological and epigraphic data

The study will consult the major published corpora and excavation reports relevant to Persian period Palestine. These include standard print publications²⁰ as well as specialized online databases to check for more recent finds. Of particular importance are:

IIP: Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine – https://www.inscriptionsisraelpalestine.org/
ETANA: Electronic Tools and Ancient Near Eastern Archives – https://etana.org/node/6795

Bibliographic research

Online and hard copy scholarly sources from diverse perspectives will be assessed for both the nature of the archaeological finds and the various interpretations of these finds. See the Annotated Bibliography.

Translation tools

Because much of the relevant scholarship is published in German, French, and Hebrew, among other languages, digitization and translation tools (including ABBYY Finereader and AI-translation programs) will be employed to ensure access to non-English work.

Scope

The focus will be on Persian administered Yehud and Samaria. Other areas and periods will be referenced only for summary comparison and analytical purposes. Conventional scholarly views of the biblical literature will be used for comparison; no separate literary analysis will be undertaken. Alternative hypotheses will be briefly noted.

Notes

¹ Finkelstein, Jerusalem the Center of the Universe, 351.

²Finkelstein, “Jerusalem and Judah 600–200 BCE Implications for Understanding Pentateuchal Texts,” 14.

³Finkelstein, 3.

⁴Finkelstein, “Archaeology’s Black Hole: Jerusalem and Yehud/Judea in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods.”

⁵Faigenbaum-Golovin et al., “Literacy in Judah and Israel.”

⁶ Albertz, Israel in Exile.

⁷ Römer, “Comment Dater Les Textes Du Pentateuque ? Quelques cas d’étude”; Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History.

⁸ Kratz, “Where to Put ‘Biblical’ Yahwism in Achaemenid Times?”

⁹ Adler, The Origins of Judaism.

¹⁰ Bautch and Lackowski, On Dating Biblical Texts to the Persian Period.

¹¹ Schmid, “How to Identify a Persian Period Text in the Pentateuch.”

¹² Ehrensvärd, “Why Biblical Texts Cannot Be Dated Linguistically”; Hurvitz, “The Recent Debate on Late Biblical Hebrew”; Young, “Starting at the Beginning with Archaic Biblical Hebrew.”

¹³ Kratz, “Temple and Torah: Reflections on the Legal Status of the Pentateuch between Elephantine and Qumran”; Kratz, Historical and Biblical Israel.

¹⁴ Lemche, “The Old Testament—A Hellenistic Book?”

¹⁵ Thompson and Wajdenbaum, The Bible and Hellenism; Gmirkin, Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts; Gmirkin, Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible; Gmirkin,Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus; Wajdenbaum, Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible; Wesselius, Origin of the History of Israel.

¹⁶ Finkelstein, “Archaeology’s Black Hole: Jerusalem and Yehud/Judea in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods.” Even Finkelstein, who warns against such circularity in his paper, himself falls into the same trap when interpreting Iron Age Judah as the time of a literary renaissance and the composition of the Book of Deuteronomy (Silberman and Finkelstein, The Bible Unearthed).

¹⁷ El-Haj, Facts on the Ground, 8.

¹⁸ Eckhardt, “Memories of Persian Rule: Constructing History and Ideology in Hasmonean Judea,” 262; Finley, Ancient History, 12f, 21; Kosso, “Observation of the Past,” 30ff; Liverani,Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography, 28; Moles, “Truth and Untruth in Herodotus and Thucydides,” 90, 115, 120; Woodman, “From Hannibal to Hitler: The Literature of War,” 120.

¹⁹ Lemche, The Old Testament Between Theology and History: A Critical Survey; Lemche, Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society Before the Monarchy; Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People; Davies, In Search of “Ancient Israel.” Despite such criticisms the scholarly field has for most part resisted a method that fully gives primacy to archaeology. A large segment of scholars adopts a “centralist” position, one that is in between accepting the Bible to be true until proven otherwise and those who avoid a priori presumption of historical reliability in the Hebrew Bible (Lemche, Ancient Israel, pp 5-9).

²⁰ Magen, Misgav, and Tsfania, Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I; Dušek, Les manuscrits araméens du Wadi Daliyeh et la Samarie vers 450–332 av. J.-C.; Stern, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Volume II; Porten, The Elephantine Papyri in English.

Bibliography

Adler, Yonatan. The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal. In The Origins of Judaism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022.

Albertz, Rainer. Israel in Exile: The History and Literature of the Sixth Century B.C.E. Studies in Biblical Literature, no. 3. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.

Bautch, Richard J., and Mark Lackowski, eds. On Dating Biblical Texts to the Persian Period: Discerning Criteria and Establishing Epochs. Forschungen Zum Alten Testament. 2. Reihe, 101. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019.

Dušek, Jan. Les manuscrits araméens du Wadi Daliyeh et la Samarie vers 450–332 av. J.-C. Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2007.

Eckhardt, Benedikt. “Memories of Persian Rule: Constructing History and Ideology in Hasmonean Judea.” In Persianism in Antiquity, edited by Rolf Strootman and Miguel John Versluys, 249–65. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2017.

Ehrensvärd, Martin. “Why Biblical Texts Cannot Be Dated Linguistically.” Hebrew Studies 47 (2006): 177–89.

El-Haj, Nadia Abu. Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Faigenbaum-Golovin, Shira, Arie Shaus, Barak Sober, Yana Gerber, Eli Turkel, Eli Piasetzky, and Israel Finkelstein. “Literacy in Judah and Israel: Algorithmic and Forensic Examination of the Arad and Samaria Ostraca.” Near Eastern Archaeology 84, no. 2 (June 2021): 148–58.

Finkelstein, Israel. “Archaeology’s Black Hole: Jerusalem and Yehud/Judea in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods.” Paper presented at Yahwism under the Achaemenid empire (Prof. Shaul Shaked in memoriam), University of Haifa. December 21, 2022. Video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T21U7tBCB8.

———. “Jerusalem and Judah 600–200 BCE Implications for Understanding Pentateuchal Texts.” In The Fall of Jerusalem and the Rise of the Torah, edited by Dominik Markl, Jean-Pierre Sonnet, and Peter Dubovsk, 3–18. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016.

———. Jerusalem the Center of the Universe: Its Archaeology and History (1800–100 BCE). Atlanta: SBL Press, 2024.

Finley, M. I. Ancient History: Evidence and Models. New York: Viking, 1986.

Gmirkin, Russell E. Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch. New York: T&T Clark, 2006.

———. Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible. New York: Routledge, 2016.

———. Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts: Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in the Primordial History. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 2022.

Hurvitz, Avi. “The Recent Debate on Late Biblical Hebrew: Solid Data, Experts’ Opinions, and Inconclusive Arguments.” Hebrew Studies 47 (2006): 191–210.

Kosso, Peter. “Observation of the Past.” History and Theory 31, no. 1 (February 1992): 21.

Kratz, Reinhard G. Historical and Biblical Israel: The History, Tradition, and Archives of Israel and Judah. Translated by Paul Michael Kurtz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

———. “Temple and Torah: Reflections on the Legal Status of the Pentateuch between Elephantine and Qumran.” In The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance, edited by Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson, 77–103. Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 2007.

———. “Where to Put ‘Biblical’ Yahwism in Achaemenid Times?” In Yahwism Under the Achaemenid Empire: Professor Shaul Shaked in Memoriam, edited by Gad Barnea and Reinhard G. Kratz, 267–68. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2024.

Lemche, Niels Peter. Ancient Israel: A New History of Israel. 2nd edition. London: T&T Clark, 2015.

———. “The Old Testament—A Hellenistic Book?” In Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period, edited by Lester L. Grabbe, 287–318. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.

Liverani, Mario. Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography. Translated by Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van De Mieroop. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007.

Magen, Yitzhak, Haggai Misgav, and Levana Tsfania. Mount Gerizim Excavations. Volume I: The Aramaic, Hebrew and Samaritan Inscriptions. Translated by Edward Levin and Michael Guggenheimer. Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2004.

Moles, J. L. “Truth and Untruth in Herodotus and Thucydides.” In Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World, edited by Christopher Gill and Timothy Peter Wiseman, 88–121. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1993.

Porten, Bezalel. The Elephantine Papyri in English: Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity and Change. Leiden: Brill, 1996.

Römer, Thomas. “Comment dater les textes du Pentateuque? Quelques cas d’étude.” In Finkelstein and Römer, Aux origines de la Torah: Nouvelles rencontres, nouvelles perspectives, chap. 2. Montrouge Cedex (France): Bayard, 2019.

———. The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical and Literary Introduction. London ; New York: T&T Clark, 2007.

Schmid, Konrad. “How to Identify a Persian Period Text in the Pentateuch.” In On Dating Biblical Texts to the Persian Period: Discerning Criteria and Establishing Epochs, edited by Richard J. Bautch and Mark Lackowski, 101–18. Forschungen Zum Alten Testament. 2. Reihe, 101. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019.

Silberman, Neil Asher, and Israel Finkelstein. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. New York: Touchstone, 2002.

Stern, Ephraim. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Volume II: The Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Periods. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.

Thompson, Thomas L., and Philippe Wajdenbaum, eds. The Bible and Hellenism: Greek Influence on Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Durham: Routledge, 2014.

Wajdenbaum, Philippe. Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible. London: Equinox, 2011.

Wesselius, Jan-Wim. Origin of the History of Israel: Herodotus’ Histories as Blueprint for the First Books of the Bible. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002.

Woodman, A. J. “From Hannibal to Hitler: The Literature of War.” The University of Leeds Review 26 (1983): 107–24.

Young, Ian. “Starting at the Beginning with Archaic Biblical Hebrew.” Hebrew Studies 58 (2017): 99–118.

2025-08-06

Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 8

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

by Neil Godfrey

Russell Gmirkin did not argue that ALL of the books of the Jewish Bible originated in the Hellenistic era. When I began to post on the earlywritings forum that “Why the Hellenistic era for ALL “Old Testament” books should be taken seriously” I was attempting to set out why it is both possible and plausible to conclude that “all” were Hellenistic compositions. Russell and I had some differences in both hypotheses and historical methods, but I found the details of his case for the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) being of Hellenistic origin to be very strong: see the links in my post that initiated this series.

Finally a new critic emerged on the “Academic Discussion” section of the earlywritings forum. I post his criticism here:

This is a comment on Neil’s original post in this thread and the issues it raises about general historical methodology. It may not be a response to Neil’s position as developed in later posts.

In later posts Neil has referred to arguments that the author of the Pentateuch knew Plato et al. I’m going to leave this aside.
a/ I am not at all convinced for reasons discussed in earlier threads and don’t really want to rehash those arguments.
b/ Right or wrong this is a rather different argument that the earlier ones about general methodology. If we have solid evidence of links between Plato’s works and the Pentateuch then, accepting that Plato did not know the Pentateuch, there are straightforward implications for dating the Pentateuch whatever ones general methodology.

There is an argument that the Hebrew of the Pentateuch requires a preHellenistic date. I’m going to leave this aside.
It is agreed that prima-facie the Hebrew of the Pentaeuch is much earlier than say the Hebrew of Daniel Chronicles Ben Sira but Hebrew scholars dispute how conclusive this sort of evidence is and my personal opinion is pretty much worthless.

The post is about ALL Old Testament books but I’m afraid I can’t take it seriously in this form. It may be my narrow mindedness but I’m sure Nahum for example is a pre-Hellenistic work. The same goes for Deutero-Isaiah which has real implications for tradition found in the Pentateuch. I’m going to concentrate on the idea of the Pentateuch in anything remotely like its present form being a Hellenistic work.

On the one hand we have no unambiguous pre-Hellenistic evidence for the Pentateuch. (I regard Hecataeus on the Jews according to Diodorus Siculus as authentic but this is technically extremely early Hellenistic rather than pre-Hellenistic.) On the other hand things like the Elephantine papyri suggest that the Pentateuch was not central to Jewish religion in the early Persian period. This means that prima-facie we should take seriously the idea that the Pentateuch was not only redacted in the Persian or later period but effectively created then. I have serious difficulties with a Persian origin of the Penateuch but it prima-facie should be taken seriously.

The difficulty is that neither Neil or I regard the Persian period as plausibly creative in this way, hence ‘Persian or later period’ becomes Hellenistic period. I am unable to regard this as prima-facie plausible. Apart from anything else the creation of a work that has all the signs of a long process of development and combination of different sources almost immediately before our earliest external evidence for its existence is IMO just not how things happen. I have similar problems with the idea of the NT being created around the time of Marcion. This may be a prejudice on my part, but if so then so be it.

by andrewcriddle » Fri Feb 23, 2024 9:54 pm

For the full context see the link/file at the end of this post.

What do you think of that criticism?

At first I was somewhat excited to think that a lengthy argument was being given for me to engage with, but there was precious little argument, alas. Rather, there were lots of “I’ll leave that asides” and an “I can’t take that seriously”. There was no engagement with the case I had set out for the logical fallacy at the heart of the hypothesis that the Hebrew Bible was composed over many centuries from as early as the Iron Age. There was a lot of incredulity expressed. I was disappointed. (It did not seem worthy as a submission to a forum headed “Academic Discussion”. Was the moderator himself unaware of the meaning of “Academic Discussion”? But it appears since I left the forum Andrew has been made the moderator of “Academic Discussion” so I have no desire to return there.)

I have found this among a number of people who have long been so steeped in the Documentary Hypothesis that they have come to assume it is an unarguable fact. Different types of Hebrew are assumed to be evidence of a long evolving series of biblical compositions over centuries. That different forms of Hebrew, even those known to be old, were kept alive and used by different scribes in the same era seems to be too much for them to accept as a possibility despite the scholarly arguments for it.

I posted a copy of my response to Andrew Criddle’s objections at the same time here:

Responding to a Critic of the Hellenistic Era Hypothesis for the Hebrew Bible

For the original comment in its context and responses/criticisms see

Download (PDF, 714KB)

2025-08-04

Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 7

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

by Neil Godfrey

To follow on from my Part 2a comment …..

The biblical works have traditionally been understood as the product of an evolution over centuries, usually said to be from the ninth or eighth to the third centuries, under the influence of Mesopotamian, Hittite, Syrian, Ugaritic, Egyptian cultures.

There is a serious problem with that view, however. The absence of evidence prior to the third century for either the biblical works themselves or for the major events that the Bible narrates.

The advantage of the Hellenistic era hypothesis for the “OT” is that explains

all of the cultural influences we find in the Bible

AND ALSO explains

why we would not expect to find any evidence for either the books themselves or the major events they write about before the third century.

Notice this observation from a conference paper by Jonathan Ben-Dov (I am not suggesting Ben-Dov himself has anything to do with the Hellenistic era hypothesis):

As argued above, the metaphor of influence dictates that the source culture remains unaffected by the act of the contact. Like a candle, which can light other candles without diminishing its own flame, so the great source culture is not changed by the nation which received its cultural capital. . . .

This image, however, is not necessarily true. I would like to suggest an example from the field of Hellenism, which is close in its geographical scope and not too far away in time. People often talk of ʻHellenistic Influenceʼ on Judea, Syria or Egypt. However, the very essence of Hellenism is its being an amalgam of Greek culture with the rich and ancient cultures of the East. The Hellenistic kingdoms in Syria and Egypt were by no means Greek; they combined Greek cultural elements with the ancient traditions of the hosting countries. Hellenism was a cultural entity in constant progression.

Ben-Dov, Jonathan. “The Inadequacy of the Term ʻInfluenceʼ in Biblical Studies.” Tel -Aviv University,. Accessed February 21, 2024. https://www.academia.edu/7499569/The_Inadequacy_of_the_term_Influence_in_biblical_Studies.

That’s also the essence of what the Hellenistic era hypothesis for the Primary History in particular (Genesis to 2 Kings) is all about.

In another sub-forum in earlywritings someone used to object that the Hellenistic era hypothesis “degraded” Judeans and Samaritans by suggesting they were mindless pawns who could not have their own culture. But that criticism misunderstands Hellenism — as I have attempted to make clear from the start and as we see spelled out above by Ben-Dov.

The Pentateuch and Primary History are as unique as Hellenistic era Egypt and Hellenistic era Syria. None is “Greek”. Nor are any of them traditional “Egyptian” or traditional “Syrian”. They are each distinctive cultures that have been created by the Egyptians and Syrians themselves. Ditto for the Judeans and Samaritans, I suggest. The Pentateuch is not Greek, but nor is it a product of the pre-Hellenistic Syrian Yahwist cult. What we find in the Pentateuch, however, are many echoes of Greek literature and ideologies and many references to the Yahwist ideas found throughout Syria-Negev, etc.

For the original comment in its context and responses/criticisms see

Download (PDF, 714KB)

2025-08-03

Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 6

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

by Neil Godfrey

Why the Hellenistic era …. Part 2a

In this post I will explain “my personal reason” for strongly suspecting a Hellenistic origin of the biblical literature — though I am sure I have come across the same ideas throughout different books and articles over the years. It follows on from #5 in the preceding post. When I wrote that I was expecting to follow up with detailed discussions from interpretations of the archaeological finds but have decided now to put that off for later.

I have more recently (subsequent to writing this post on the earlywritings forum) come across a comparable view that was expressed in a 2016 conference (my bolding):

As Jean Louis Ska suggests, The disappearance of a culture triggers off a certain type of literature. This is the case in Mesopotamia with Berossus and in Egypt with Manetho. They wrote their work in Hellenistic times when their civilizations’ glory already belonged to the past. The Torah could be – to some extent – an answer of the same type to the end of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah.

– Markl, Dominik, Jean-Pierre Sonnet, and Peter Dubovsk, eds. The Fall of Jerusalem and the Rise of the Torah. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. p. 6

Russell Gmirkin, it should be noted, published evidence that pointed to both Berossus and Manetho being sources for parts of the Penteuch.

My “personal vibe” that is in sync with the Hellenistic era is reflection on “the nature of the biblical literature itself”. The Primary History [i.e. Genesis to 2 Kings] is not the kind of literature that arises sui generis from a vacuum. One expects to see antecedents over time that lead to that kind of work. And the closest antecedents we find are in the Greek literature, not in that of the SyriaMesopotamian regions. Assyrian vassal treaties, the epics of Gilgamesh, of Baal, and so forth, simply fall short by comparison.

But what kind of society produces that kind of literature? It takes more than a scribal elite responsible for administrative and trade records, or even engaged in cultic verses and prayers and spells for cures, etc. The kind of literature in our Bibles required reasonably prosperous and complex societies with a literate class that engaged with the kinds of stories and ideas that had relevance to their class, ethnic and regional identities. They had to have a reasonably widespread audience to engage with those ideas and stories and whose interest or vulnerabilities or needs encouraged their literary development. The social groups must have been somewhat extensive and complex because of the various competing and related ideas found in that literature.

In other words we are talking about fairly advanced societies in economic growth and social complexity, and who also have comparable antecedent literature.

The archaeological record does point to some kind of growth of Jerusalem and surrounds in the eighth and seventh centuries, but I am not sure it really reaches the kind of level that Finkelstein and Silberman seemed to think was adequate for a “renaissance literary activity”. Besides, what kinds of antecedents were available at or up to that time to mushroom into what we find in the Bible?

The Persian era is by all accounts that I have seen in relative decline. Persian “liberal” rule that allowed Judeans and Samarians to do their own thing is more easily understood as administrative neglect, not caring at all about their development — only collecting levees for the army and taxes for the king. (Witness the Xenophon’s ability to march his Greek army untouched through the empire!)

The economic revival, with its related social growth in complexity and size, came with the arrival of the Greeks. So did the antecedent literature.

Herodotus’s Histories has a remarkably similar structure to the Primary History: opening with world history, having a close look at Egypt as a follow up, and finally getting down to the narrow view of the conflict between two powers — AND all told within the framework of a theological interest: the lesson of the deciding hand of the god through his earthly sanctuary. And all told in a series of books in prose, both frequently with competing accounts of the same event.

wesselius — Old Testament based on Herodotus? & Correlations between the “Histories” of Herodotus and the Bible’s History of Israel

I am not denying the obvious differences when saying that. What I’m trying to do is to draw attention to the “equally obvious” similarities. Did those similarities really emerge independently? Did the Hebrew literature really inspire that of the Greeks? Were the Judeans and Samarians in the poverty-stricken, underdeveloped Persian era really hosting a literate class devouring Greek literature? (I am on record as deploring argument by rhetorical questions so I will hasten to add that those questions are more than rhetorical: they represent a series of expectations that we must propose with hypotheses other than the Hellenistic era one.)

And then we have the ideological content of the literature. How do we explain the sudden introduction of stories of Exodus, Joshua’s Conquest, Judges, David and Solomon’s united kingdom and empire, if those — as the archaeological record tells us — never happened?

At this point it is worth looking at the propaganda use the biblical works were put to in the Hasmonean period. Were not the Hasmoneans seeking to justify their conquests by appeals to a historical heritage? In a time of Greek conquest do we not expect indigenous populations to at least sometimes seek redress by counter-narratives that put themselves in the positions of the god-blessed and ultimately greater powers? Again, these are more than rhetorical questions.

As for the divisions found even within the literature — the Samarian/Mount Gerizim point of view versus that of Jerusalem — have not scholars long since identified these differences underlying the multiple points of view (and sometimes outright conflict) within the biblical literature?

Mention has been made of Gmirkin in this thread. Before I read Gmirkin’s book I was prompted to read Plato’s Laws (as well as, again, Timaeus and Crito) by another scholar and was completely thrown back in my chair when I saw (and wondered how I had not seen it before) the striking similarities between Plato and the Pentateuch’s laws. Oh of course all those sacrifices and cultic rituals are of Levantine/Syrian/Canaanite origin, but the Pentateuch is a lot more than those.

The creation, the merging of humans and gods, the flood and annihilation, the wandering of the new generation, the coming together ….. and so forth. And then the laws about holiness, godliness, sacred feasts, marriage and sexuality, the judges and tribes, etc etc etc etc : Did Plato really twig to all of that from his reading of the Pentateuch? (At least one scholar has addressed the relationship of a scene in Plato’s Symposium with the temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.)

And further yet — how many scholars have noticed the similarities between the biblical Yahweh and the Greek Dionysus? I have read the comparisons a number of times. Surely pre-Hellenistic Yahwism was distinctively Levantine, with no appreciable differences between the Yahwism of Samaria, Judea, Negev, Canaan, Syria…. So what gave him the Greek overlay in the Bible?

Okay — these are my generally subjective responses to how I read the literature of the OT with my knowledge of Greek literature in mind. I have not presented a systematic argument, I know. But for what it’s worth, I thought it might be of some point to note how I have come to read the literatures of the Hebrews and Greeks and the conclusions that seem to present themselves to me as a result.

by neilgodfrey » Tue Feb 20, 2024 4:29 pm

To read the original post in context and to see Stephen Goranson’s critical responses ….

Download (PDF, 684KB)

2025-08-02

Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 5

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

by Neil Godfrey

By the way, I have informed Stephen Goranson that he is welcome to respond here to my resposting of his criticisms of Russell Gmirkin — despite my earlier prohibition on his posts to this blog. For this series alone I have lifted my relegation of SG’s comments to spam.

In Part 4 I pointed to discussions that answered a list of criticisms against the case that the Hebrew Bible was composed prior to Hellenistic times. Those discussions were mostly from other blog posts of mine but they covered what had been repeated at various times in the earlywritings forum. For anyone interested in the details and context of Stephen Goranson’s ongoing discussion of my responses to his list of data points (that he presented as “evidence” of pre-Hellenistic biblical writings) see the copy of the page at the end of this post.

What follows here is the second part to my attempt to justify the plausibility (even greater explanatory power) of the Hellenistic provenance of all (though Russell Gmirkin would, I think, have said only “most”) the books of the Old Testaments. In my opening post (Part 1) I addressed the circularity underpinning the dominant current view of the Documentary Hypothesis. This time I branched out into the data that is better explained by the Hellenistic era thesis.

I included this in my discussion on the earlywritings forum — again, see the link below for the context.

Why the Hellenistic era …. Part 2

There is more to the Hellenistic provenance thesis than the simple fact of the circularity of the methods of dating the OT books by the past conventional scholarship — something that so far not even SG has denied. Given that SG’s reference to Langlois (when read in full) also allows at least for the possibility of a Hellenistic provenance, we have room to continue.

Archaeology reveals

1. The archaeological evidence of pre-Hellenistic Judea-Samaria has demonstrated that major moments of biblical history are fictions. The “invasion” of Canaan by an “Israelite” ethnic group never happened. The most that can be said about the “Kingdom” of David and Solomon is that it was little more than a village incapable of extending dominance over any area of note. (Jamieson-Drake saw evidence of development from a “lower-order society” to a “chiefdom” in Jerusalem, which falls far from the level of “a state”.)

Why write fiction?

2. The question must arise, then, why such stories were told? Were the stories derived from historical memories? Archaeology has suggested that is unlikely. A fundamental and inescapable fact of any literature is that it must reflect the ideas and beliefs and understandings that are part of its cultural matrix. One specific ideological feature of the narrative of David is that it shares manners, customs, assumptions that we find in the Persian kingdom. One might therefore wonder if the stories were told as part of ideological hopes for an imminent greatness, or at least as an attempt to identify with other great powers, whether of the past and/or present.

But what kind of fiction?

3. The literary structure and style of the Primary History (Genesis-2 Kings), as other scholars (not those arguing for a Hellenistic origin, by the way) have shown, is comparable to the Histories of Herodotus. The closest genre to the Primary History is found in the Greek world. Another comparable genre is the autobiographical narrative. Some scholars have attempted to explain this observation by speculating that Greek works were well known to the subjects of the Persian empire or that even the biblical books were known to the Greeks and influenced the Greeks. One needs to look for the explanation that raises fewest difficulties or questions.

Nothing uniform — why?

4. There are vastly different styles among the biblical books. One can explain this fact by positing a long period of evolution and various cultural influences over centuries. One can also explain the same fact by positing contemporary regional differences. As one scholar noted, imagine if all we had about Socrates were the writings of Plato and Xenophon. Would we have to assume that there was a vast time gap between the two accounts since they are so at odds in so many ways?

What kind of society?

5. One ought also to look at the kind of socio-cultural-economic society that would be required to produce the biblical literature. Here again the archaeological evidence can be interpreted in favour of the Hellenistic period. But this is a vast topic of its own.

The argument emerges from other hypotheses

The scholars I have had in mind while setting out the above points have, with one exception, not been advocates of the Hellenistic origin of the biblical literature. The archaeological evidence that discounts the historicity of “biblical history”, the comparisons with Greek literature and Persian royal ideologies, — all of these are found in works of scholars who never entertained a Hellenistic time setting, as far as I am aware. Philip Davies himself (with whom I began in the OP) always argued for the Persian era for the Primary History and Prophets.

But there are also problems with a Persian era setting that disappear if we move the compositions of the books to the third century.

by neilgodfrey » Tue Feb 20, 2024 11:24 am

In the next post I will set out my personal reason for strongly suspecting a Hellenistic origin of the biblical literature.

The original forum exchange:

Download (PDF, 684KB)

2025-08-01

Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 4

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

by Neil Godfrey

Stephen Goranson has been a regular critic of Russell Gmirkin. Stephen posted the following points (in the earlywritings forum) that he claimed gave reasonable grounds for dating the entire Hebrew Bible (he referred to the “TaNaK“) before Hellenistic era:

There are reasons to consider some TaNaK texts to be older than third century, some of which have been discussed here.

Qumran texts, safely considered to be copies rather than autographs, show developments over time. And some may themselves may be older; at least, so Michael Langlois (name searchable here) has argued concerning some paleo-Hebrew mss. Few have been radiocarbon dated (more to be published). Statistically it is unlikely that the oldest one has yet been tested and published.
Deir ‘Alla inscription.
Silver amulets.
It is not plausible that temple priests, before third century, were illiterate and had nothing to read.
Semitic language history. A recent–Feb. 14, 2024–observation, for example: “A marginal linguistic difference between the Pentateuch and the rest of the Hebrew Bible” by Benjamin Suchard https://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/2024/02/14/a-marginal-linguistic-difference-between-the-pentateuch-and-the-rest-of-the-hebrew-bible/

by StephenGoranson » Tue Feb 20, 2024 5:11 am

As Stephen Goranson noted, several of those points had been discussed previously on that forum so one might have expected him to have addressed what had already been presented as responses to his claims that they pointed to a pre-Hellenistic date for the Jewish Bible. I posted my response to Stephen’s reference to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Michael Langlois’ argument in an earlier Vridar post:

Do the Dead Sea Scrolls Invalidate a Hellenistic Origin of the Hebrew Books of the Bible?

As for the Deir ‘Alla inscription, I posted my own observation about how it could well be interpreted as confirmation of Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic era thesis. See

When Yahweh was at Peace with Other Gods — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – 7e]

On the silver amulets, see my discussion at

Before “Biblical Israel” there was Yahweh

Stephen’s next point — implying the Hellenistic era hypothesis was declaring that priests “were illiterate and had nothing to read” — is just silly.

As for the difference between the Hebrew of the Pentateuch and other parts of the Bible, we cannot assume that the only explanation for the difference must be a long period of development, and I am sure Stephen knows this. Recently I translated a French work by a couple of renowned biblical and archaeological scholars that included this section:

Linguistic Evidence?

Can the question of the date of the texts of the Pentateuch, or of other biblical texts, be resolved by distinguishing between Classical Biblical Hebrew and Late Biblical Hebrew—a distinction that would offer certain seemingly objective criteria for dating biblical texts? It is not surprising that this method has gained a significant number of adherents, particularly in North America and Israel; we will not go into detail here.19 Let us simply highlight a few precautions to observe in using this method. First of all, we must ask, with E. Ullendorf and E. A. Knauf, whether Biblical Hebrew was truly a spoken language.20 The evidence for the existence of so-called Classical Hebrew21 outside the Bible is limited to a few inscriptions and personal names, which do not allow us to affirm that there existed a unified “Classical Hebrew” during the monarchical period. We must allow for dialectal variation in extrabiblical written and oral texts and, more importantly, for differences between literary language and vernacular language. Furthermore, there is no doubt that certain late texts like Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth) differ from what is called Classical Biblical Hebrew. But texts that may well be as late as Ecclesiastes can also be written in perfectly “Classical” Hebrew, as is the case with Zechariah 1–8 and the extracanonical Psalm 151.22

Finally, it is also very difficult—if not impossible—to draw a clear dividing line between “Classical” and “Late” Biblical Hebrew. As C. Edenburg recently observed, biblical texts that all scholars agree are late (from the Persian period) share with Iron Age Hebrew/Moabite inscriptions a preference for direct object suffixes attached to verbs.23 This means that we cannot assert a linear development.24 “Biblical Hebrew” is, above all, a literary language, whose lifespan would have extended beyond the spoken stage (if such a stage ever existed), and which endured in the scribal milieu. The distinction between Classical and Late Biblical Hebrew—especially when applied to an entire book—fails to take into account the widely recognized fact that every biblical text is the product of a long process of composition and revision. It thus appears that the scribes were capable of preserving or even partly inventing a language that had not been spoken for many centuries. We must therefore be cautious when claiming that the entire Pentateuch was composed before the Exile simply because it is mostly written in Classical Biblical Hebrew.25

[19] C. EDENBURG, Dismembering the Whole: Composition and Purpose of Judges 19–21, Atlanta, SBL, 2016, 115–123.

[20] E. ULLENDORF, Is Biblical Hebrew a Language?, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 1977, 3–17 ; E. A. KNAUF, « War Biblisch-Hebräisch eine Sprache? », in K. SCHMID et al. (éd.), Data and Debates, Münster, Ugarit-Verlag, 2013, 411–423 (421): « l’hébreu biblique n’a jamais été une langue parlée. »

[21] KNAUF, « War Biblisch-Hebräisch eine Sprache ? » remet même en question la plausibilité d’un tel concept.

[22] I. YOUNG, « What Is “Late Biblical Hebrew” ? », in E. BEN ZVI et al. (éd.), A Palimpsest: Rhetoric, Ideology, Stylistics, and Language Relating to Persian Israel, Piscataway, Gorgias Press, 2009, 253–268 (258–259).

[23] EDENBURG, Dismembering, 120–121.

[24] Voir I. YOUNG, « What Do We Actually Know about Ancient Hebrew », Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 27 (2013), 11–31, qui remet en question ladite théorie des trois étapes (hébreu classique, hébreu tardif et hébreu mishnaïque), voir également des appréciations différentes du livre de Job par A. HURVITZ, « The Date of the Prose Tale of Job Linguistically Reconsidered », Harvard Theological Review 67 (1974), 17–34, et par I. YOUNG, « Is the Prose Tale of Job in Late Biblical Hebrew ? », Vetus Testamentum 59 (2009), 606–629.

[25] M. EHRENSVÄRD, « Once Again: The Problem of Dating Biblical Hebrew », Scandinavian Journal of Old Testament 11 (1997), 29–40.

(Translation of a section written by Thomas Römer)

— Finkelstein, Israel, and Thomas Romer. 2019. Aux Origines de La Torah: Nouvelles Rencontres, Nouvelles Perspectives, Paris. 2019. (My electronic copy that does not include page numbers.)

The original discussion in context:

Download (PDF, 652KB)

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https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145080#p145080
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Neil Godfrey on Further Agreement with the Hellenistic Dating of the Hebrew Scriptures: “To shift the focus somewhat: There’s an interesting question posed by Diebner in his chapter on 2 Kings 22. He…” Aug 29, 02:05
Neil Godfrey on Historical Jesus: two vacuous responses from Dunn on Price: “We can assume that the gospel narratives are based on some basic core facts; we can assume that the story…” Aug 28, 22:31
Niels Peter Lemche on Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 8: “A short question based on a quesgtion formulated in my The Old Testam,ent: A Hellenistic Book? SJOT 1993: Is there…” Aug 28, 16:58
Niels Peter Lemche on Further Agreement with the Hellenistic Dating of the Hebrew Scriptures: “You write: “There was no historical Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, or Josiah.” Not absolutely happy with the formulation. I see…” Aug 28, 14:32
Jonathan on Making of a Mythicist, Act 1, Scene 2: “Brodie seems to be one of too few Biblical scholars that get the important things correct. Brodie thinks Genesis was…” Aug 28, 03:07
db on Historical Jesus: two vacuous responses from Dunn on Price: “Bruno says, “…initially Christians spread the message [about a prominent historical figure executed in 1st-century Judea,] “Jesus, the Messiah was…” Aug 27, 18:56
Bruno on Historical Jesus: two vacuous responses from Dunn on Price: “I don’t quite understand why it’s problematic to assume that initially Christians spread the message “Jesus, the Messiah was crucified”…” Aug 27, 16:19
Neil Godfrey on Good King Josiah: Why did he have to die like that? (Like Moses? Like Jesus?): “still recovering, thanks. (and still have emails to catch up with.) — my previous message was tongue in cheek –…” Aug 24, 03:45

Conclusion

Notes

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JSP Series, Volume 7

JSP Series, Volume 8

Notes

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JSP Series, Volume 2

Notes

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The Persian Period and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A Reassessment of the Evidence from Jerusalem

Part One

Part Two

Endnotes

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Rethinking Scribal Culture in Persian Period Yehud: Evidence and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible

Background, context, rationale

Aims and objectives

1: Clarify the scholarly consensus on the nature of the biblical literature.

2: Assess expected forms of writing and scribal activity.

3: Contextualize Persian period material finds within broader patterns of settlement and urbanization.

4: Identify and analyze Persian period finds.

5: Assess external and imperial evidence and arguments advanced in support of a Persian period creation of biblical literature.

6: Review other common arguments for Persian period authorship.

7: Explore alternative explanations for the provenance of the Hebrew Bible.

Research methods, techniques, and tools

Scholarly foundations and theoretical approach

Archaeological and epigraphic data

Bibliographic research

Translation tools

Scope

Notes

Bibliography

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Why the Hellenistic era …. Part 2a

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Why the Hellenistic era …. Part 2

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