Search Results for: gmirkin

What Happens to the Documentary Hypothesis if the Pentateuch was written 270 BCE?

What happens to the Documentary Hypothesis (DH) if, as outlined in recent posts, the Pentateuch was first written in the third century BCE? That’s the first question that comes to most of us when first hearing a thesis like this. This post outlines Russell Gmirkin’s chapter on the DH, and is thus a continuation of … Continue reading “What Happens to the Documentary Hypothesis if the Pentateuch was written 270 BCE?”

Why the Books of Moses should be dated 270 BCE (clue: “Rabbits”)

In Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch Russell Gmirkin presents a case for the Books of Moses, Genesis to Deuteronomy, being based largely upon the writings of Babylonian and Egyptian historians: Berossus (278 BCE) Manetho (ca 285 BCE) His first task is to demonstrate that we have … Continue reading “Why the Books of Moses should be dated 270 BCE (clue: “Rabbits”)”

The Books of Moses — Unknown 300 years Before Christ?

I have been posting on the works of several scholars who argue that the Old Testament scriptures were composed much later than traditionally thought (Thompson, Davies, Lemche, Wesselius, Wajdenbaum) but there remains much more to be written about their arguments, and more published scholars to draw into the same net (Nielsen and Gmirkin are two … Continue reading “The Books of Moses — Unknown 300 years Before Christ?”

New Understandings of the Old Testament: Jacques Cazeaux

This post is a continuation of a protracted series on the views of Philippe Wajdenbaum whose doctoral thesis, arguing that a good many of the Biblical stories and laws were inspired by Greek literature, has been published as Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible. Several of the more recent posts have … Continue reading “New Understandings of the Old Testament: Jacques Cazeaux”

The Genesis Creation Story and its Third Century Hellenistic Source?

The influences of Mesopotamian creation stories in Genesis are clear. But how those stories came to be re-written for the Bible is less clear. Russell E. Gmirkin sets out two possibilities in Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch: The traditional Documentary Hypothesis view: Around 1400 BCE the … Continue reading “The Genesis Creation Story and its Third Century Hellenistic Source?”