Russell Gmirkin

2025-08-06

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

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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

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2025-08-04

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

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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

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2025-08-03

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

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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.

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 ….

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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:

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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:

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2025-07-30

Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 3

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

by Neil Godfrey

I’ve addressed the Documentary Hypothesis several times before (see a list of post beginning here). The DH is the basis through which the Hebrew Bible is understood to have begun its development as early as the days of David and Solomon, and in the time of the Babylonian Captivity and through to the period of the Persian Empire. Russell Gmirkin took up the proposal of Thompson and Lemche that the Pentateuch and other biblical texts had their origin as late as subsequent to the conquests of Alexander the Great, less than 300 years before the common era.

Here are a few of my posts in the Academic Discussion section of the Earlywritings Forum that attempted to draw attention to the circularity at the heart of the DH.

Demonstrating the Circularity at the Heart of the Documentary Hypothesis

It had been suggested on the forum that by claiming circularity was at the heart of the DH there was some “caricature” of the DH involved, that the DH was not being presented in a fair way. So I went back to the source and in response to being asked “who” exactly dated the texts in such a way, wrote (I was writing to an audience whom I assumed would know that Julius Wellhausen was the principal pioneer of the DH (=Documentary Hypothesis):

By whom? Here is what Julius Wellhausen wrote in Prolegomena:I.II.2

The Jehovistic Book of the Covenant lies indeed at the foundation of Deuteronomy, but in one point they differ materially, and that precisely the one which concerns us here. As there, so here also, the legislation properly so called begins (Deut. xii.) with an ordinance relating to the service of the altar; but now we have Moses addressing the Israelites in the following terms: “When ye come into the land of Canaan, ye shall utterly destroy all the places of worship which ye find there, and ye shall not worship Jehovah your God after the manner in which the heathen serve theirs. Nay, but only unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes for His habitation shall ye seek, and thither shall ye bring your offerings and gifts, and there shall ye eat before Him and rejoice. Here at this day we do every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes, but when ye have found fixed abodes, and rest from your enemies round about, then shall the place which Jehovah shall choose for His habitation in one of your tribes be the one place to which ye shall bring your offerings and gifts. Take heed that ye offer not in every place that ye see; ye may not eat your holy gifts in every town, but only in the place which Jehovah shall choose.”

The Law is never weary of again and again repeating its injunction of local unity of worship. In doing so, it is in conscious opposition to “the things that we do here this day,” and throughout has a polemical and reforming attitude towards existing usage. It is rightly therefore assigned by historical criticism to the period of the attacks made on the Bamoth by the reforming party at Jerusalem. As the Book of the Covenant, and the whole Jehovistic writing in general, reflects the first pre−prophetic period in the history of the cultus, so Deuteronomy is the legal expression of the second period of struggle and transition. The historical order is all the more certain because the literary dependence of Deuteronomy on the Jehovistic laws and narratives can be demonstrated independently, and is an admitted fact. From this the step is easy to the belief that the work whose discovery gave occasion to King Josiah to destroy the local sanctuaries was this very Book of Deuteronomy . . .

The whole reasoning process begins with the assumption of the historical veracity (at least in its core) of the biblical Josiah account. From that assumption it follows that the book of Deuteronomy was the source of those reforms (after all, Deuteronomy attacks false worship, just like Josiah did) and therefore Deuteronomy had to have been in existence before the time of Josiah.

That is an invalid argument. How do we know Deuteronomy existed before Josiah? Because the Josiah narrative tells us so? How do we know the Josiah narrative is based on true history? Because the book of Deuteronomy explains his motivation for the reforms. How do we know the book of Deuteronomy explains his reforms? . . . . gets dizzying….

by neilgodfrey » Mon Feb 19, 2024 10:58 am

—oo0oo—

The above failed to impress, so I added another:

Here is another demonstration of the circularity in the dating of Deuteronomy to the time of (or before) Josiah. It is from William Dever in Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah (2017), pp 611-613.

First, Dever reminds us of the importance of archaeology in assessing the historicity of the biblical accounts:

[A]rchaeological data are primary because an external witness is required to lend support to the historicity of the biblical narratives, if possible, and archaeology is, by definition, the only candidate (including, of course, the texts that it may recover). Archaeology is primary because it provides an independent witness in the court of adjudication, and when properly interrogated it is often an unimpeachable witness. (p. 18)

Agreed 100%.

But then compare that noble statement with how he actually uses archaeological data to “confirm” a biblical narrative:

It is the reign of Josiah (648–609) that is best correlated with the archaeological evidence that we now have. His reputation as a reformer, a restorer of tradition, comports especially well with the more favorable situation that we know obtained with the decline of Assyria

Correlation is not a proof. Dever lists in a table what is explicitly proven by archaeology at the time of Josiah:

“Poly-yahwism”; Asherah cult; Yahu names; Philistia attacked (p. 609)

In the same table he lists as “Probable; Evidence Ambiguous”

Josiahʼs attempted reforms; consulted temple scroll; maintained Judah even if vassal; Josiah slain in battle, 609

So archaeology, according to his own analysis, does not confirm the historicity of the Joshua narrative. Nonetheless, he proceeds to set forth a list of correlations with the biblical account — as if correlations can ever be anything more than correlations. (Compare the correlations with historical data of any historical novel.)

He begins on page 11:

It is the reign of Josiah (648–609) that is best correlated with the archaeological evidence that we now have. . . .

Numerous studies of these intriguing reform measures attributed to Josiah have been published, but few have paid any attention to possible archaeological correlates—that is, to a possible real-life context in the late seventh century. Most scholars have focused on whether the reform was successful, many assuming that the reforms claimed are simply too fantastic to be credible. The fact is, however, that we have good archaeological explanations for most of the targets of Josiahʼs reforms. For instance, we know what high places (bāmôt) are, and we have a number of examples of them, perhaps the most obvious example being the monumental one at Dan.

No-one denies the biblical authors were familiar with the various popular cults of the day. Simply finding evidence of these brings us no closer to finding any support for the historicity behind the narrative of Josiah and the discovery of Deuteronomy.

We have many altars in cult places and private homes, large and small. We even have an example of the altar on the roof in the debris of a building destroyed at Ashkelon in 604.

The sacred poles and pillars are easily explained, even in the Hebrew Bible, as wooden images or live trees used to represent the goddess Asherah symbolically. The tree iconography has now been connected conclusively with the old Canaanite female deity Asherah, whose cult was still widespread in Iron Age Israel, in both nonorthodox and conformist circles (above).

The weavings, or perhaps “garments” or even “curtains,” for Asherah (Hebrew bāttîm) remain a crux. Renderings by the Septuagint, the Targumim, and later Jewish commentaries suggest a corrupt Masoretic Text, but woven garments for deities and tent-like hangings for sacred pavilions are well known in both the ancient and modern Middle East.

The phrase “heavenly hosts” needs no archaeological explanation, since it clearly refers to the divine council well documented at Ugarit and in the Hebrew Bible. The reference to the “horses and chariots of the Sun” recalls examples that we have of terra-cotta horse-andchariot models from the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. In the Ugaritic texts, Baal is the “Cloud Rider” who flies across the heavens daily as the great storm god, imagery that is even applied to Yahweh in Psalms.

The Topheth in the Kidron Valley (a rubbish dump and place of abomination in any case) is readily explained by the famous sanctuary of Tanit at Carthage, where infant sacrifice was the usual rite, and there the Phoenician god was indeed Molech.

Of the various “pagan” deities condemned—Baal, Asherah, Ashtoreth of Sidon, Kemosh of Moab, and Milkom of Ammon—all are well known, as is their iconography and to some degree their cult practices.

It is not only the description of the specifics of the religious situation in Josiahʼs time that is realistic in the light of the current archaeological data. The general context of cultural and religious pluralism in the seventh century is an amalgam well illustrated by the archaeological data that we have summarized above, beginning already in the eighth century. That context helps to answer the question raised above about whether the Deuteronomistic Historiansʼ original version fits in the actual historical-cultural setting of the seventh century in Judah. It can be shown in many ways that it does but in other ways that it does not, even though the written version could have been almost contemporary (the question of an older oral tradition cannot be resolved).

It is instructive to set the central themes and ideals of the Deuteronomistic program as summarized above alongside a general description of the realities of life in seventh-century Judah as illuminated by the archaeological evidence here.

And that’s it. All Dever’s archaeological evidence has managed to do is to tell us that there is no evidence for Josiah’s reforms as per the biblical narrative. No-one has questioned the polytheistic/poly-Yahwist cult prevalent throughout Judah/Samaria/Negev/Syria. The biblical narrative assumes that most of the population did not practice “biblical Yahwism”. The whole point of the narrative is to give some historical context to the book of Deuteronomy.

One may reply that the biblical narrative exaggerated and the reforms were not so successful after all, but it won’t really do to imagine all sorts of reasons why we still do not have the evidence for the historicity of the narrative. We will always need independent evidence to confirm the narrative. Until we have it we cannot validly work on the assumption that we will one day find the evidence we know “must be there somewhere” to justify our dating of the sources.

Dever’s words above are a classic instance of the very problem Davies was addressing. The archaeological evidence is interpreted through the assumption that there is a historical core in the biblical narrative. Without the biblical narrative there is simply no grounds in any of the evidence cited by Dever that would lead anyone to suspect the event of Josiah’s reforms.

by neilgodfrey » Mon Feb 19, 2024 2:54 pm

—oo0oo—

Is the above not enough to demonstrate that the DH is built on circularity?

Continuing ….

The original discussion in context and in full:

Download (PDF, 652KB)

2025-07-29

Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 2

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

by Neil Godfrey

In response to the post that I copied here, one consistent critic of Russell Gmirkin’s thesis in particular (and of the Hellenistic era hypothesis for the creation of the Hebrew Bible more generally) posted the following response:

Elephantine is the site of a Persian era garrison settlement of Jews in Egypt. For an discussion of the relevance of this site for the dating of the Old Testament texts see the post re Elephantine Jews.

I had referred to the Elephantine remains here, pointing out that some scholars have suggested the Documentary Hypothesis (that assumes a long pre-Hellenistic history for much of the Hebrew Bible) would never have gained any traction if the the Elephantine papyrii had been discovered earlier.

My response:

That is logically correct. But the Elephantine remains, in the absence of remains pointing in the opposite direction, do “indicate” (as per the Opening Post) the absence of any knowledge or regard for the Pentateuch. They certainly do not support the conventional dating.

Nor are the Elephantine remains entirely irrelevant to the question:

. . . the Elephantine community stood in contact with Jerusalem. Although Elephantine was located on the traditional southern border of Egypt, it was not an isolated outpost on the fringe of the world. The Nile was navigable all the way from the Nile delta to Elephantine. A journey from Elephantine to Jerusalem might take approximately one month. In comparison, according to the Bible it took Ezra around four months to travel from Babylon to Jerusalem. In terms of travel time, the Judaeans in Elephantine were much closer to Jerusalem than was the priest-scribe who is often accorded great importance in the (re-)formation of Judaean religion in the Persian period. Whereas this may indicate potential contact and demonstrate that the historical-geographical conditions for travelling between Elephantine and Jerusalem were more favourable than those between Babylon and Jerusalem, it is also evidenced by documents from Elephantine that there was actually a two-way contact between Jerusalem and Judah (and Samaria). Not only did the Judaeans in Elephantine know the names of the tenuring governors of Judah and Samaria (in this case, even the names of the sons of the governor) and the high priest in Jerusalem (cf. A4.7 par.), they also wrote letters to them and even got a reply (although the Judaeans in Elephantine regret that the Jerusalem high priest and his colleagues did not respond to their initial letter).

Fourth, the Elephantine documents are contemporary sources and probably even more representative of the lived and practiced Yahwism of the Persian period than are the biblical texts. . . .

Granerød, Gard. Dimensions of Yahwism in the Persian Period: Studies in the Religion and Society of the Judaean Community at Elephantine. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2016. pp. 4ff

What Wellhausen wrote in 1921 about Elephantine continues to be the view of those who hold to conventional pre-Persian dates for the various literary sources that were melded to compose the Pentateuch.

Just a few years after the discoveries of the documents of the Jedaniah communal archive, Julius Wellhausen characterised the community as a “merkwürdiger Überrest des vorgesetzlichen Hebraismus.” In his view, the community located at the border between Egypt and Nubia adhered to its “altes Wesen.” Wellhausen regarded the Judaeans in Elephantine to be standing “noch auf der vorgesetzlichen Stufe,” in contrast to the elite of postexilic Judah. In his view, the Judaean community at Elephantine represented a “fossiler Überrest des unreformierten Judentums.”

Granerød, Gard. Dimensions of Yahwism in the Persian Period: Studies in the Religion and Society of the Judaean Community at Elephantine. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2016. p. 18

Do you have a comment on the circularity of the conventional dating of works like E, J, the Deuteronomist?

by neilgodfrey » Mon Feb 19, 2024 7:00 am

—oo0oo—

The above should suffice. But on the off-chance that my interlocutor is reading these posts I had better be sure to be absolutely fair and include his every word that he wrote in response to my arguments. The remainder of this post is included for that reason alone, though the extract from P.R. Davies might be of more general interest.

—oo0oo—

To which I replied:

The Hellenistic provenance can be argued without reference to the Elephantine finds. It is the absence of evidence not only at Elephantine but elsewhere, especially in the region of Canaan, that does make the Hellenistic argument (on other grounds) possible, however.

The argument for a Hellenistic provenance stands quite independently of Elephantine. The Elephantine finds were introduced as supporting evidence.

I would be interested to know if you have a comment about the critical grounds for criticism of the conventional dating of the earliest sources for the OT — the circularity of the argument and lack of independent supporting evidence. Example, the logic of the argument for Deuteronomy being composed in the time of Josiah? or the logic of the argument for other material being composed in the Babylonian captivity or even in the time of the Persian empire?

and in hope of getting into some nitty gritty of exactly how Elephantine finds could be relevant, I asked:

Would you be interested in discussing the Elephantine finds and their specific relevance to the knowledge of “some Torah books” in the Persian era in another thread if I open it up?

by neilgodfrey » Mon Feb 19, 2024 7:00 am and 7:07 am

—oo0oo—

Alas, there was to be no further attempt to explain how the Elephantine evidence had any relevance to the Hellenistic date of what became the biblical writings. Instead, SG appeared not to have followed the demonstration of how circular reasoning lay at the root of conventional dating of the Hebrew Bible and insisted that the claim of circularity was nothing more than a presumption, an assertion.

—oo0oo—

I hoped a little more detail might dispel the notion that Davies merely asserted circularity instead of demonstrating how it happens in actuality. This was, after all, a newly constructed “Academic Discussion forum” with clear rules for exchanges so I still held hope that SG would respond in a scholarly manner.

I know what the proposed sources for the Torah books are. The problem I am trying to note is that the conventional dating of sources such as J, E, D, P is circular and therefore invalid.

The point about circularity is not a mere assertion or presumption. It is demonstrated in the links I posted in the OP.

Here is what Davies wrote in 1992, and I think it deserves a response:

So far, historical research by biblical scholars has taken a different and circular route, whose stages can be represented more or less as follows:

1. The biblical writers, when writing about the past, were obviously informed about it and often concerned to report it accurately to their readers. A concern with the truth of the past can be assumed. Therefore, where the literary history is plausible, or where it encounters no insuperable objections, it should be accorded the status of historical fact. The argument is occasionally expressed that the readers of these stories would be sufficiently knowledgeable (by tradition?) of their past to discourage wholesale invention.

2. Much of the literature is itself assigned to quite specific settings within that story (e.g. the prophetic books, dated to the reigns of kings of Israel and Judah).13If the biblical literature is gene rally correct in its historical portrait, then these datings may also be relied upon.

3. Even where the various parts of the biblical literature do not date themselves within the history of its ʻIsraelʼ we are given a precise enough account in general to enable plausible connections can be made, such as Deuteronomy with the time of Josiah, or (as formerly) the Yahwist with the time of David or Solomon, Psalms with a Jerusalem cult. Thus, where a plausible context in the literary history can be found for a biblical writing, that setting may be posited, and as a result there will be mutual confirmation, by the literature of the setting, and by the setting of the literature. For example, the Yahwistʼs setting in the court of Solomon tells us about the character of that monarchy and the character of that monarchy explains the writing of this story.

4. Where the writer (ʻredactorʼ) of the biblical literature is recognized as having been removed in time from the events he14 describes or persons whose words he reports (e.g. when an account of the history of ʻIsraelʼ stretches over a long period of time), he must be presumed to rely on sources or traditions close to the events. Hence even when the literary source is late, its contents will nearly always have their point of origin in the time of which they speak. The likelihood of a writer inventing something should generally be discounted in favour of a tradition, since traditions allow us a vague connection with ʻhistoryʼ (which does not have to be exact) and can themselves be accorded some value as historical statements of the ʻfaithʼ of ʻIsraelʼ (and this will serve the theologian almost as well as history).

Each of these assertions can be encountered, in one form or another in the secondary literature. But it is the underlying logic which requires attention rather than these (dubious) assertions themselves. That logic is circular. The assumption that the literary construct is an historical one is made to confirm itself. Historical criticism (socalled) of the inferred sources and traditions seeks to locate these in that literary-cum-historical construct. The placement of sources and traditions in this way is then used to embellish the literary account itself. This circular process places the composition of the literature within the period of which the literature itself speaks. This is precisely how the period to which the biblical literature refers becomes also the time of composition, the ʻbiblical periodʼ, and the biblical literature, taken as a whole, becomes a contemporary witness to its own construct, reinforcing the initial assumption of a real historical matrix and giving impetus to an entire pseudo-scholarly exercise in fitting the literature into a sequence of contexts which it has itself furnished! If either the historicity of the biblical construct or the actual date of composition of its literature were verified independently of each other, the circle could be broken. But since the methodological need for this procedure is overlooked, the circularity has continued to characterize an entire discipline—and render it invalid.

The panoply of historical-critical tools and methods used by biblical scholars relies for the most part on this basic circularity.

Davies, Philip R. In Search of “Ancient Israel.” Sheffield Academic Press, 1992. pp 35-37

So you can see it is not a mere assertion of presumption. It is demonstrated.

by neilgodfrey » Mon Feb 19, 2024 8:36 am

—oo0oo—

Alas, SG appeared to be impervious to registering any possibility that conventional wisdom might have an insecure foundation and curiosly claimed that the extract from Davies (above) was a “caricature”!

—oo0oo—

I had mixed feelings about that response. At least he recognized that the reasoning being described was invalid. But how did he fail to understand that it is in reality how the conventional dating argument has been made?

But still, with new rules in a new forum, surely participants would soon find their feet…..

2025-07-27

Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 1

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

by Neil Godfrey

Since I don’t expect to have much time to write new posts again before the end of the year, I will from time to time copy what I once posted on another forum in defence of Russell Gmirkin’s thesis dating the Old Testament books to the Hellenistic era.

The orthodox view is that biblical books about the Exodus, wilderness wanderings, Joshua, David, the various kings and prophets originated in the time of the historical kingdoms of Israel and Judah, even as early as the era of David and Solomon, circa 900 BCE. What became part of the Old Testament started to take on a recognizable shape after the Kingdom of Judah went into Babylonian captivity around 600 BCE. “By the waters of Babylon” Jews pining for their homeland devoutly penned much of what became their sacred literature, and on their return under Persian rule and intermittent efforts to rebuild their Jerusalem temple, circa 500-400 BCE, the “Jewish Bible” began look more like what it is today. That, more or less, has long been the conventional view of scholars.

The Hellenistic era refers to the period following Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire, from circa 300 BCE. It marks the spread of Greek cultural and political influence across Asia Minor, the Near East, and Egypt, extending as far as the borders of India, and lasting until the Roman annexation of these regions.

If these biblical writings were composed so late, a host of other questions inevitably arise, especially in relation to the historical information they seem to contain, their source materials, and even why they were written and the kind of relationship they have to the origins of Judaism.

In 2001 there was published a chapter, written by Niels Peter Lemche:

Lemche, Niels Peter. 2001. “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: Bloomsbury T&T Clark.

I discussed that chapter in a 2010 post: The Old Testament – A Hellenistic Book? (and other digressions)

Russell Gmirkin took up the idea and closely analyzed the early books of the Old Testament in the light of Greek literature. (Attic was the Greek dialect of much of Classical and Hellenistic Greek literature.) Detailed discussions of Russell’s work are linked in my earlier post, Russell Gmirkin. So the Hellenistic thesis per se is not exclusively Russell Gmirkin’s, but it seems fitting to acknowledge the particular contribution of Russell at this time.

In place of regular original posts for coming months, I would like to post some of my defences of the Hellenistic thesis for dating the Old Testament books. These defences were posted on the earlywritings forum (in its “Academic Discussion” section) but I chose to delete them from there after I lost all confidence in how that forum was run by the moderator. (Russell demonstrated far more patience there than I could muster.)

Since Russell’s sudden passing some of his critics have returned there to rebut his work without having the honesty to acknowledge and address earlier answers to their criticisms. Therefore, I have decided to repost my own defences of the Hellenistic hypothesis here in a series of posts.

I must add that I could not help but find myself at times in disagreement with some of Russell’s lesser points. These differences arose from our different ways of approaching historical sources. I seem to recall, for example, that Russell did not date “all” of the biblical books in the Hellenistic era. He placed one or two of them in the Persian period. I disagree, as I did on some other issues with Russell. But I believe the core of my argument in defence of the Hellenistic thesis remains solid. At least until others can demonstrate its flaws in method, logic and evidence.

Why the Hellenistic era for ALL “Old Testament” books should be taken seriously

When we apply the fundamentals of historical methods as practised by historians in fields other than biblical studies we quickly see logical flaws at the heart of the conventional understanding that the sources for various biblical books (in particular the stories in Genesis and Exodus) go back as far as the times of David and Solomon.

Multiple sources and circularity

Several times I have engaged in EarlyWritings on the question of the Documentary Hypothesis and every time, it seems to me, the argument submitted to “prove” the validity of the DH has been a point by point demonstration of how multiple sources were combined to create a new single story: e.g. how two different narratives were combined to compose the story of the great flood in Genesis. Each time I have attempted to make it clear that I have no doubt that different sources were mixed to create the Genesis Flood account, but a pre-Hellenistic antiquity of the biblical flood story does not logically follow from the fact of such a mix.

Biblical scholars, it is no secret to anyone, not even to themselves on the whole, do have interests that go beyond pure historical research. Even Julius Wellhausen, to whom we tend to attribute the modern notion of the “Documentary Hypothesis”, has been criticized for allowing his Protestant (anti-legalistic) bias to subconsciously influence his model of the “Documentary Hypothesis”. (The criticism has been directed at the notion of “legalistic” texts being a latecomer addition to the original narratives found in the biblical canon.)

When hypotheses become facts

So much in biblical studies that pass for facts are actually hypotheses. But they are repeated so often it is hard to notice that they have no basis in the hard evidence. Look at this passage from Wellhausen:

With regard to the Jehovistic document, all are happily agreed that, substantially at all events, in language, horizon, and other features, it dates from the golden age of Hebrew literature, to which the finest parts of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and the oldest extant prophetical writings also belong,the period of the kings and prophets which preceded the dissolution of the two Israelite kingdoms by the Assyrians. About the origin of Deuteronomy there is still less dispute; in all circles where appreciation of scientific results can be looked for at all, it is recognised that it was composed in the same age as that in which it was discovered, and that it was made the rule of Josiah’s reformation, which took place about a generation before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans.

That’s from Wellhausen, Julius. Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel. His assertion of relative dating is grounded entirely in scholarly consensus, not in the evidence itself.

The Documentary Hypothesis, it has been pointed out by at least one scholar in the biblical field, might well never had got off the ground had the Elephantine remains — indicating that Persian era Jews knew nothing of the Pentateuch — been discovered earlier and had more time to gain traction and wider and more focused attention than it had before the time of Wellhausen’s work.

None of this is to say that biblical scholars are unprofessionally “biased” or “unscholarly”. Of course they are scholarly and their biases are generally known and admitted and taken into account. But their work tends to be picked up by others and over time taken for granted as fact.

Independent evidence is critical

The fact remains that there is no independent evidence that the OT was composed prior to the Hellenistic era. That datum alone does not prove it was a Hellenistic product. But it does at least allow for the theoretical possibility that it was created in the Hellenistic era, and given that our earliest independent evidence for a knowledge of the Pentateuch is situated in the Hellenistic era, it is entirely reasonable to begin with that era when searching for the Pentateuch’s origins.

It also is a fact that scholarship has only cursorily (by comparison) considered assessing the evidence within the Pentateuch itself with Hellenistic literature and thought. Those are facts. Another fact is that Documentary Hypothesis is not without its inconsistencies and problems.

Those facts do not prove that the Pentateuch was created in the Hellenistic era. But they do at least make it possible to ask the question. It makes it all the more necessary for anyone proposing an earlier date to ground their reasons in supporting independent evidence of some kind.

The meaning of “Hellenistic”

The Hellenistic provenance of the Pentateuch does not deny any use of pre-Hellenistic literature or sayings or concepts. Hellenization even means a uniting of Greek and Asian cultures, not a replacement of one by the other. So one should expect in any Hellenistic era hypothesis for the creation of the Pentateuch clear allusions to non-Greek (i.e. local Canaanite and Syrian) sources. Merely pointing to evident instances of Ugaritic or Syrian influence in the OT does not, per se, contradict a Hellenistic origin for the OT.

The fateful year of 1992

My own understanding of the history of the scholarship in this area tells me that the floodgates to a more widespread acceptability towards questioning the “deep antiquity” (pre Persian era) origin of any of the OT books were opened by Philip R. Davies in 1992 with his publication of In Search of Ancient Israel. The irony was that Davies was only collating various criticisms and doubts about the conventional wisdom of “biblical Israel” and its “bible” that had been available to scholars for some decades. But by bringing these questions and doubts all together in one short publication (only about 150 pages of discussion) Davies’ work started something of an academic “kerfuffle”. Davies himself argued at length for a Persian era provenance of many of the OT books, but those who followed the evidence he set out could see that the way was also open for an even later period. Some scholars identified stronger links between the Pentateuch and Primary History (Genesis to 2 Kings) and Hellenistic literature than to anything earlier. One French scholar has even argued that the entire Primary History was composed by a priest in the Hasmonean era.

Davies certainly established the circularity of the arguments that much of the OT literature was composed in the times of King Josiah and the Babylonian captivity. He also brought together the archaeological evidence not just for the absence of a united kingdom of Israel but the archaeological evidence that indicates the very notion of “biblical Israel” is as fanciful as King Arthur and Camelot.

The basics of historical inquiry

I opened this post with a reference to the methods of historians in non-biblical fields. In short, those methods are nothing other than any journalistic or forensic or “common sense” method of trying to find out “what happened” — minus the theological provenance from which the quest is embarked upon. Start with what we know to be the most secure “facts” on the basis of collating independent evidence and working from there. Unfortunately, our cultural heritage has taught us too well that certain narratives about the past are “facts” (or at least based on facts) so that we find it very difficult to remove these from our minds when trying to see clearly the material evidence before our eyes.

Change is very often a generational thing. It happens as the new ideas are embraced by the new students who are less emotionally and intellectually committed to the old ideas.

by neilgodfrey » Sun Feb 18, 2024 6:58 pm
(images were not part of the original)

The above post met with some criticism and I will post that along with my response next time.

2025-07-22

Russell Gmirkin

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

by Neil Godfrey

By now many of you will have learned of Russell Gmirkin’s sudden passing. I am still trying to process the shock. I was privileged to have had frequent communications with him in the past few years and he was on my short list of people I had hoped to meet in person. His website: https://russellgmirkin.com/

His work dug more deeply into the thesis that the Hebrew Bible was a product of Hellenistic times. He was highly respected by other pioneering academics like Thomas L. Thompson and Niels Peter Lemche. I covered his some of his main published ideas here:

He had just completed a manuscript for a new work that many of us are looking forward to engaging with.

There is a tribute to Russell on youtube. I have not watched it yet. I am still trying to process my own grief before I do.

There is also a gofundme page to assist Russell’s wife, Carolyn Tracy.

This post is unfortunately a belated response, I know. I was away in far north Queensland when a notice sent to inform me never arrived. It took me some days for bizarre communications breakdowns to be rectified.

2023-11-01

Archaeological Support for Gmirkin’s Thesis on Plato and the Hebrew Bible

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

by Neil Godfrey

Neils Peter Lemche (link is to my posts referencing NPL) has reviewed archaeologist Yonatan Adler’s The Origins of Judaism (link is to my post on Adler’s book) and related its evidence and argument to the work of Russell Gmirkin’s Plato and the Hebrew Bible. — on which I have posted in depth here.

Lemche’s review is available on the website of the Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament but Yonatan Adler has made it available to all through his academia.edu page.

The key takeaways in the review, I think, are:

This book is not written by a traditional biblical scholar but by an archaeologist having his background not in biblical studies but in Judaistic studies. . . . His task is accordingly not to trace the development of the Torah as if it is something given from Israel’s very beginnings but to find out when its commandments were understood to be normative.

And the “trick” is to follow the normative methods of historical research as it is practised (as far as I am aware) in most fields outside biblical studies:

. . . Adler’s trick: Not to assume in advance what the Bible tells us about the institutions of ancient Israel but to trace the time when the commandments behind these institutions are operative.

And further — what I have found to be so outrageously controversial among so many with an interest in “biblical studies”:

Adler’s methodology is impeccable and indeed factual. His basis assumption is like Occam’s razor: If there is no trace of something, there is no reason to assume that this something existed.

And the point that I have posted about so often here:

The conclusion is that when we move backwards beyond the Hasmonean Period we have no evidence of the [biblical] commandment being followed.

Conclusion:

There is simply no evidence in the written or in the archaeological material that the rules of the Torah were ever followed before in the 2nd century BCE at the earliest.

I’m glad he introduced the Mesopotamian law codes that too many have casually assumed lie behind the biblical laws:He notes correctly that the very concept of a written law was unknown in the ancient Near East — the famous Babylonian law codices were scholarly or academic literature as generally accepted today. Never do we find a reference to the Codex Hammurabi in the thousands and thousands of documents of court decisions which have survived.

And then we move close to where Russell Gmirkin’s research has taken us:

However, the idea of the Torah as a written law to be followed by any person accepting its jurisdiction, is something different, and Adler looks to Greece for seeing this function of the law as a written document.

and it follows that Adler’s research . . . .

only supports the assumption that the Hebrew Bible originated within a context which was definitely impressed by Greek ideas.

Sadly Niels Peter Lemche finds it advisable to warn Yonatan Adler of a hostile reaction that many of us who have attempted to discuss these issues dispassionately with so many biblical scholars have come to expect:

But he should be prepared for what may be sent in his way in so far as his study is of the utmost importance for the present reorientation of the study of the origins of the Bible.

2023-03-02

Plato and the Biblical Creation Accounts (Gmirkin)

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

by Neil Godfrey

1. Biblical Creation Accounts and Plato – 1 2022-09-25

In his opening chapter RG

- - explains how he will go about identifying the sources behind the Primordial History
  - gives an overview of the history of the scholarly views of Genesis 1-11 and where his own research fits(hint: it all started with the Copenhagen school of biblical criticism and includes reference to “the Elephant(ine) in the room”).

–o–

2. Genesis 1 “Amazing” “Unique” — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus – 2] 2022-09-30

Shows how unlike other Near Eastern creation accounts Genesis 1 is.

–o–

3. Genesis = Science + Myth + Theology — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus – 3a] 2022-10-02

Overview of Greek scientific ideas and the appearance of Greek cosmogonies that were a blend of science, myth and theology.

–o–

4. Why Genesis 1-3 is Different from Other Myths — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus – 3b] 2022-10-03

If the authors of Genesis were inspired by Plato’s discourse on the origins of the cosmos in Timaeus how can one explain the obvious contrast between Plato’s lengthy scientific and philosophical reasoning and the simple narrative in Genesis 1:1-2:3?

–o–

5. Genesis 1 as Philosophy — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus – 4] 2022-10-14

Demonstrates the extent and depth of the influence of Plato’s Timaeus into the Hellenistic era and beyond.

–o–

6. In the Beginning: Genesis 1 as Science — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus – 5a] 2022-10-26

In this chapter RG begins a verse by verse commentary on how the previous discussions are relevant to each part of Genesis 1.

–o–

7. In Six Days: Genesis 1 as Science — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus – 5b] 2022-11-11

Continuing the detailed analysis, noting how Genesis 1 is not a science text. It s primarily a theological myth but it is theology and myth wrapped around a contemporary scientific understanding of how the earth and heavens came into existence.

–o–

8. When God Created Humans, then Retired: Genesis 1 as Science — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus – 5c] 2022-11-19

Examines what it means, “Let us create man in our image” in the context of Greek thought. Also a study of what it means for God to have “rested the seventh day” — also in the Greek context.

–o–

9. The Second Creation Story in Genesis — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus – 6] 2023-01-03

Genesis 2 is generally seen as a “second creation account” yet this also coheres closely with Plato’s thought and Greek myth.

I have added a detour with observations of another scholar on the relationship between the Garden of Eden temptation story and Plato’s Symposium.

Includes a table of parallels between Timaeus and Genesis 2-3. (I add a sidebar note with a summary of RG’s view that our modern notion of God (formless, eternal, beyond space and time) originated with Plato.)

–o–

10. The Garden of Eden — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – 7a] 2023-01-08

RG compares the Genesis narrative from Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden with both Plato’s thought and Greek myth as found in Homer, Hesiod and Pindar.

–o–

— “Garden of Eden” : Mesopotamian Perspectives 2023-01-09

— The Ambiguity of the Serpent: Greek versus Biblical 2023-01-12

In the above posts I digress from RG’s discussion to look a little more closely for contrast and comparison at other myths, Mesopotamian and Greek.

–o–

11. Primeval History from Cain to Noah — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – 7b] 2023-01-23

The expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden read in the light of Hesiod’s Works and Days

The expulsion of Cain from the land of Eden read against Greek and Mesopotamian tropes

The genealogy of Genesis 5 (including inventors) is set against the work of Berossus

The pre-Flood state of the world (ethnic groups, sons of gods) compared with Plato’s narrative in Critias, the sequel to Timaeus.

–o–

12. Demigods, Violence and Flood in Plato and Genesis — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – 7c] 2023-01-25

There is no question about the Genesis Flood narrative being influenced by the famous Mesopotamian myth. But equally there is no doubt that there are significant differences of episodic detail, motivations, and theological messages. RG studies these against Plato’s myth of Atlantis.

–o–

13. Sons of God, Daughters of Men … and “Giants” — Why are they in the Bible? 2023-02-03

Compares the pre-historical age where gods mated with mortals, heroes with great renown emerged, violence spread in both the world of Genesis and that of Plato and Hesiod.

–o–

14. Table of Nations and other Post Flood events — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – 7d] 2023-02-09

How Greek ideas throw light on Genesis 10’s table of (70) nations, Araham at war, and the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah.

–o–

15. When Yahweh was at Peace with Other Gods — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – 7e] 2023-02-11

A study of the several different names of a/the deity acknowledged in the Patriarchal narratives of Genesis and their relationship with early pre-biblical gods, but noting in particular how Yahweh worship was compatible with these practices. RG argues that the authors of Genesis were closer to Plato’s ideal principles than the authors of Exodus-Joshua.

I include a map from another scholar showing the diffuse extent of Yahweh worship in pre-biblical times. Yahweh, we know from archaeological finds, was originally part of a larger pantheon and even had a wife.

–o–

16. Two Covenants: Israel and Atlantis — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – 7f] 2023-02-12

RG expands on an observation first presented by Philippe Wajdenbaum in Argonauts of the Desert that there are striking similarities between the covenant ceremony depicted in Exodus and that of the leaders with their god Poseidon in Critias.

–o–

17. Where Did the God of the Bible Come From? – [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – 8] 2023-02-20

RG explains how monotheism did not gradually evolve but was introduced “full born” from the mind of Plato into the ancient world of natural philosophy and then to theology. But the God of Exodus, a jealous god, is definitely not like Plato’s perfect and good God. RG compares the ideas found in Genesis with those in Exodus-Joshua to show that the authors of the latter failed to welcome the ideals that Plato had expressed. By combining their idea of a local jealous Yahweh with the perfectly good creator deity of Genesis 1 they created the “God of the Bible” with whom we are familiar.

–o–

— Could Plato Really have Influenced Judaism and the Bible? 2023-02-21

This post is an addendum, having completed the series addressing RG’s analysis of Genesis with Greek thought, and selects extracts from the work of a classicist that illustrates the extent of Plato’s influence in the governments and societies of the world down to Hellenistic and Roman times.

–o–

2022-03-07

Paradigm Shifts in Religious Studies (Part 3)

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

by Tim Widowfield

In a comment to the previous post, Russell Gmirkin took issue with my explanation of Kuhn’s definition of a paradigm and my conclusion that fields of study outside of natural sciences don’t have Kuhnian paradigms, and hence no “paradigm shifts.”

He quoted from his forthcoming book, as follows:

One may define an academic paradigm as an implicit or explicit theoretical and factual framework that is agreed upon by consensus by a body of professionals within a discipline. (Gmirkin 2022)

As I’ve said before, if you want to propose your own definition of a paradigm, I have no quarrel with it. However, having done so, you will have left the Kuhnian universe of ideas. And once again, I protest not because Kuhn was right in all things, but simply because he had a particular structure in mind, and to appropriate his conclusions based on terminology antithetical to that structure is wrong.

Unright

I apparently must now apologize for calling someone or something wrong, since Mr. Dabrowski has informed me that I am displaying “animus.” Let us say instead that it is unright. Perhaps even double-plus unright.

Gmirkin continues:

Paradigms are typically perpetuated within academic institutions of learning in preparation for professional life within that field. As an axiomatic intellectual framework enforced by revered teachers and respected peers, paradigms tend to be conservatively preserved and are difficult to change except in the face of both deconstruction by new facts that run counter to the accepted paradigm and the construction of a competing paradigm with greater explanatory power (Kuhn 1996) (Gmirkin 2022)

I understand his point. As we discussed in previous posts, anomalies arise when new data arrives that calls the entire prevailing framework into question. The resulting crisis can engender a great deal of backlash. For example, the discovery of X-rays sent shock waves through the scientific community. One might wonder why this should be so, since the prevailing paradigm didn’t exclude the possibility of their existence. Continue reading “Paradigm Shifts in Religious Studies (Part 3)”

2019-09-08

Plato and the Hebrew Bible (Gmirkin)

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

by Neil Godfrey

1. Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible (2016-10-16)

Russell Gmirkin in his new book, Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible draws attention to striking similarities between the Pentateuch (the first five books of the “Old Testament”) on the one hand and Plato’s last work, Laws, and features of the Athenian constitution on the other. . . . . The key to this close linkage is the Great Library of Alexandria.

The main stimulus for Gmirkin’s new study is a desire to examine more closely some of the parallels presented by Philippe Wajdenbaum in Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible. (Again, see earlier Vridar posts on Argonauts.) According to the Acknowledgements in Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible it was Thomas L. Thompson who suggested this study to Russell Gmirkin, and Gmirkin explains that his focus was on Wajdenbaum’s discussion of the parallels between Plato’s Laws and the Pentateuchal laws as the most persuasive section of his book.

–o–

2. The Pentateuch’s Debt to Greek Laws and Constitutions — A New Look (2016-10-16)

Compares Greek and Judean constitutions and governing institutions as documented in their respective literature. Examines the specific interests within this distinctive Greek form of literature with the topics of interest in the Pentateuchal law codes as well as the sorts of narratives in which they were embedded. Table format for easy comparison.

–o–

3. David, an Ideal Greek Hero — and other Military Matters in Ancient Israel (2016-11-12)

Compares the attributes of David with those set out for an ideal Athenian. In table format sets out striking similarities between tribal and military organization of as per the Greek and Hebrew literature, as well as specific details of soldiering and battles.

–o–

4. Some preliminaries before resuming Gmirkin’s Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible (2016-12-15)

A discussion on how circular reasoning and naive assumptions can close our minds to the possibility that the Hebrew Bible could possibly be a later Hellenistic work. References are made to Dale C. Allison, Philip R. Davies, Niels Peter Lemche.

–o–

5. The Tribes of Israel modeled on the Athenian and Ideal Greek Tribes? (2016-12-16)

Demonstates that the biblical tribal structure of Israel is unknown elsewhere in the ancient Near East but does reflect the Greek tribal system.

–o–

6. The Bible’s Assemblies and Offices Based on Greek Institutions? (2017-1-22)

A table setting out comparisons between Greek and Biblical councils and assemblies, their memberships and responsibilities.

–o–

7. Similarities between Biblical and Greek Judicial Systems (2017-1-28)

A table comparing Greek and Biblical judicial systems from local through to “national” levels.

–o–

8. The Inspiration for Israel’s Law of the Ideal King (2017-02-09)

The Law of Moses placed limitations on the king that are “without parallel in the ancient Near East.” The limitations are found in Greek literature and customs.

–o–

9. Bible’s Priests and Prophets – With Touches of Greek (2017-02-22)

Evidence that the Bible’s account of priests and prophets contains hints of borrowing from the Greek world. (Not that those Hellenistic features mean we have to jettison entirely sources and influences closer to the Levant.)

–o–

10. Primitive Democracy in Ancient Israel (2017-04-04)

This post addresses an objection from a Vridar reader to Gmirkin’s argument for Greek institutions being the model of the Bible’s assemblies and offices. I bring in support for the Gmirkin’s case from other publications by Thorkild Jacobsen, Abraham Malamat, Yves Schlemiel and M.L. West, with particular reference to the Epic of Gilgamesh.

–o–

11. Mosaic Laws: from Classical Greece or the Ancient Near East? (2017-06-02)

If the Pentateuch was authored at the Great Library of Alexandria, then we would have a ready explanation for the international setting of Deuteronomy 4:6-8. All the law codes and discussions of constitutions and principles of the framing of ideal laws were housed there. It is not unreasonable to argue that the Mosaic laws were composed in dialogue with this literature. Greek influence was conceivably mediated most easily through Egypt’s centres of learning and Great Library.

–o–

12. Plato and the Hebrew Bible: Homicide Laws (2017-06-05)

Compares biblical homicide laws with those in Near East codes and principles set out by Plato. Specifics covered:

- state of mind,
- exile,
- pollution of the land,
- duty of relatives,
- temple sanctuary,
- stoning,
- the goring ox.

–o–

13. Plato and the Hebrew Bible: Law-Giving Narratives as Greek-Inspired Literature (2017-070-26)

Gmirkin gives the most attention in his comparative discussion of historical narrative backgrounds to the institution of law codes and political institutions to Hecataeus but I am interested in exploring how well other material also relates to his central thesis, so bring in Plutarch’s narrative of Theseus for comparison.

–o–

14. Plato and the Hebrew Bible: Legal Narratives (esp. Panegyrics), continued (2017-07-26)

Demonstrations of narrative background to lawgivers found in the literature of Thucydides, Herodotus, Isocrates and Aristotle and their similarities with the biblical narratives.

–o–

15. Plato and the Hebrew Bible: Legal Narratives continued . . . Solon and Atlantis (2017-07-27)

I compare a section in Plato’s Timaeus and its relevance to Gmirkin’s thesis.

–o–

16. Plato and the Hebrew Bible: Greek Foundation Stories and the Bible (2017-07-28)

Identifies the common elements of Greek (and Roman) foundation stories (Cyrene, Heraclidae) and notes their occurence in the biblical foundation myths as well as in a Judean foundation myth independent of the biblical account (Hecataeus of Abdera).

–o–

17. Comparing the Rome’s and Israel’s Foundation Stories, Aeneas and Abraham (2017-07-29)

With reference to Moshe Weinfeld’s The Promise of the Land: The Inheritance of the Land of Canaan by the Israelites we extend Gmirkin’s comparison to Roman foundation stories. Weinfeld explains the relevance of the comparison by noting that the Roman myth originated centuries prior to its more famous versions in the Augustan age.

–o–

18. Postscript on Rome’s and Israel’s foundation stories (2017-07-31)

Quotations from Moshe Weinfeld’s book (see #17 above) that explain his justification for his comparisons.

–o–

19. Plato and the Hebrew Bible: Political Evolution in Literature (2017-08-05)

Looks at one more type of narrative that is found in common between Greek literature and Primary History (Genesis to 2 Kings). The point is that the same type of story is said to be alien to Near Eastern literature so apparently the only known model for the biblical narratives is found in the Greek writings of Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle.

–o–

20. The argument so far: Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible (2017-08-11)

Outlines the main arguments of the first five chapters.

–o–

21. Ten Commandments: Where Did they Really Come From? (2017-08-30)

Comparing the ten commandments with sayings of Greek sages and the commandments of Delphi.

–o–

22. Table Comparing Homicide Laws: Biblical, Mesopotamian and Greek (2017-09-06)

As per the title: a table making it easy to see the similarities and differences among Biblical, Greek and Mesopotamian laws concerning

- homicide
- and the goring ox.

–o–

23. Biblical assault and theft laws compared with Mesopotamian and Greek counterparts (2017-09-07)

Another table setting out clearly the similarities and differences among Biblical, Greek and Mesopotamian laws, this time focusing on

- assault,
- two men fighting who injure a pregnant woman nearby,
- and theft.

–o–

24. Comparing Biblical Laws on Marriage, Inheritance and Sexual Relations with Other Ancient Codes (2017-09-07)

Tables marking similarities and differences among Biblical, Greek and Mesopotamian laws concerning

- marriage and inheritance
- permitted sexual relations
- prohibited sexual relations

–o–

25. Slavery and Social Welfare (if any) Legislation in the Biblical and Neighbouring Worlds (2017-09-11)

Tables comparing the laws from the three provenances concerning

- slavery
- debt and freeborn slaves
- chattel slaves
- social welfare legislation

–o–

26. Plato’s Influence on the Bible’s Property and Agricultural Laws (2017-09-12)

Table comparisons (Bible, Greece, Mesopotamia) of laws on

- trespassing
- passers-by eating from the fields
- boundary stones

–o–

27. Deuteronomy’s Military Law — So Very Greek (2017-09-13)

This post delves into a secondary source used by Gmirkin in his discussion of military law as set out in Deuteronomy. The extracts are from Anselm C. Hagedorn’s Between Moses and Plato: Individual and Society in Deuteronomy and Ancient Greek Law.

–o–

28. The Law of Moses, a Reflection of the Law that Condemned Socrates and Other Greek Philosophers (2018-01-09)

Even the biblical laws relating to impiety, sorcery, blasphemy, that many of us associate with religious barbarism find their counterparts in “more enlightened” and “philosophical” Greek literature.

–o–

29. Socrates as Anti-Hero according to Biblical Law (2018-01-09)

Continuing directly on from the previous post this post covers the two most well-known Athenian trials that mirror the Pentateuchal laws against private and innovative religious practices and deities:

- against Alcibiades
- against Socrates

–o–

30. Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible – review (2018-10-05)

Looks at a review by Stéphanie Anthonioz of Russell Gmirkin’s Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible that was posted on The Bible and Interpretation. Anthonioz opens up an interesting discussion over different possible explanations for the clear and striking similarities between Plato and the Pentateuch that Russell Gmirkin has detailed.

–o–

31. Hebrew Bible of Hellenistic Origin – Gmirkin responds to Anthonioz’s review (2018-10-12)

As per the title: Gmirkin’s response to Anthonioz’s review.

–o–

32. Rome’s and Israel’s Ancestor Traditions: How Do We Explain the Similarities? (2018-10-26)

Again addressing Moshe Weinfeld’s The Promise of the Land: The Inheritance of the Land of Canaan by the Israelites. The post covers a typological comparison of the roles of the ancestors of Rome and Israel. I have tried to capture the main outline.

1. A Man Leaving a Great Civilization and Charged with a Universal Mission
2. Gap Between Migration of the Ancestor and the Actual Foundation
3. Promise at Stake
4. The Pious Ancestor
5. The Ancestral Gods
6. Burial Place of the Founder
7. Canaan versus Aram, Rome versus Carthage

–o–

33. Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible – Post #32 (2018-11-13)

A list of all the posts I have completed so far on Russell Gmirkin’s book, Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible. including a link to an extended abstract or chapter by chapter outline by Gmirkin himself on his academia.edu page.

–o–

34. How Plato Inspired Moses: Creation of the Hebrew Bible (2018-11-18)

After having demonstrated the many details, themes and values that the books of the Hebrew Bible share with Greek literature, practices and ideas, Russell Gmirkin concludes with a chapter examining how closely the biblical canon appears to match Plato’s recommendations for a national curriculum. There are certainly Canaanite and Mesopotamian fingerprints in the “Old Testament” but these Scriptures are unlike anything else produced in the ancient Near East. The Hellenistic heritage explains that difference.

–o–

35. Correction to my latest post on Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible (2018-11-20)

I have made a correction to a serious error in my recent post How Plato Inspired Moses: Creation of the Hebrew Bible. In that post I took credit for identifying many parallels between the Hebrew Bible and Plato’s Laws prior to reading Russell Gmirkin’s book. I should have acknowledged — and I have now made the correction — that my interest in Plato’s Laws was sparked by Philippe Wajdenbaum’s Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analsysis of the Hebrew Bible.

–o–

The following posts bring Russell Gmirkin’s thesis into engagement with a more mainstream view set out in other posts covering Seth Sanders’ From Adapa to Enoch:

36. Who Influenced Biblical and Second Temple Jewish Literature? (2019-09-02)

I have been posting on points of interest in Seth Sanders’ From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Culture and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon and have reached a point where I cannot help but bring in certain contrary perspectives from Russell Gmirkin’s Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible.

–o–

37. More Thoughts on Origins of Biblical and Pseudepigraphical Literature (2019-09-03)

Further comparisons between a conventional view of Mesopotamian-Biblical influence and the alternative view that the Greek world is a better explanation for the Biblical content.

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https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145080#p145080
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Editor, An English Edition of Bruno Bauer’s 1843 Christianity Exposed
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Neil Godfrey on Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 8: “Thanks, but the emphasis with both scholars is the Persian period. The Persian era as the matrix for the Hebrew…” Aug 9, 23:27
James Faubel on Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 8: “Neil, may I recommend a couple of other scholars who have been writing about the HB being written or put…” Aug 9, 20:20
Neil Godfrey on Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 2: “I’m from a pre-smiley generation when we didn’t have no fangled image options to post but we had to create…” Aug 9, 03:42
Neil Godfrey on Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 2: “Yes, there is much more to write about and follow through — and you mention two details that I need…” Aug 9, 03:39
Neil Godfrey on David, an Ideal Greek Hero — and other Military Matters in Ancient Israel: “We don’t have the earliest Greek accounts of the Gordian knot episode but in the second century accounts of Arrian…” Aug 8, 22:50
Scotlyn on Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 8: “Thank you! 🙂 It is good to be able to learn something new every day!” Aug 8, 19:16
Glenn Maillard on David, an Ideal Greek Hero — and other Military Matters in Ancient Israel: “Lifting the peg is still not solving the knot. It was still not un-tied. Cutting it was a more forceful…” Aug 8, 10:00
Glenn Maillard on David, an Ideal Greek Hero — and other Military Matters in Ancient Israel: “Your comments on the half baby study made me smile. I agree, the study is dumb when you think a…” Aug 8, 09:46
NIels Peter Lemche on Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 2: “In 1992, I attended a meeting with my students in Damaskus, where a “liberal” iman, just back from a Church…” Aug 8, 09:06

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Why the Hellenistic era …. Part 2a

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Why the Hellenistic era …. Part 2

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Demonstrating the Circularity at the Heart of the Documentary Hypothesis

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My response:

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Why the Hellenistic era for ALL “Old Testament” books should be taken seriously

Multiple sources and circularity

When hypotheses become facts

Independent evidence is critical

The meaning of “Hellenistic”

The fateful year of 1992

The basics of historical inquiry

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Unright

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1. Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible (2016-10-16)

2. The Pentateuch’s Debt to Greek Laws and Constitutions — A New Look (2016-10-16)

3. David, an Ideal Greek Hero — and other Military Matters in Ancient Israel (2016-11-12)

4. Some preliminaries before resuming Gmirkin’s Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible (2016-12-15)

5. The Tribes of Israel modeled on the Athenian and Ideal Greek Tribes? (2016-12-16)

6. The Bible’s Assemblies and Offices Based on Greek Institutions? (2017-1-22)

7. Similarities between Biblical and Greek Judicial Systems (2017-1-28)

8. The Inspiration for Israel’s Law of the Ideal King (2017-02-09)

9. Bible’s Priests and Prophets – With Touches of Greek (2017-02-22)

10. Primitive Democracy in Ancient Israel (2017-04-04)

11. Mosaic Laws: from Classical Greece or the Ancient Near East? (2017-06-02)

12. Plato and the Hebrew Bible: Homicide Laws (2017-06-05)

13. Plato and the Hebrew Bible: Law-Giving Narratives as Greek-Inspired Literature (2017-070-26)

14. Plato and the Hebrew Bible: Legal Narratives (esp. Panegyrics), continued (2017-07-26)

15. Plato and the Hebrew Bible: Legal Narratives continued . . . Solon and Atlantis (2017-07-27)

16. Plato and the Hebrew Bible: Greek Foundation Stories and the Bible (2017-07-28)

17. Comparing the Rome’s and Israel’s Foundation Stories, Aeneas and Abraham (2017-07-29)

18. Postscript on Rome’s and Israel’s foundation stories (2017-07-31)

19. Plato and the Hebrew Bible: Political Evolution in Literature (2017-08-05)

20. The argument so far: Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible (2017-08-11)

21. Ten Commandments: Where Did they Really Come From? (2017-08-30)

22. Table Comparing Homicide Laws: Biblical, Mesopotamian and Greek (2017-09-06)

23. Biblical assault and theft laws compared with Mesopotamian and Greek counterparts (2017-09-07)

24. Comparing Biblical Laws on Marriage, Inheritance and Sexual Relations with Other Ancient Codes (2017-09-07)

25. Slavery and Social Welfare (if any) Legislation in the Biblical and Neighbouring Worlds (2017-09-11)

26. Plato’s Influence on the Bible’s Property and Agricultural Laws (2017-09-12)

27. Deuteronomy’s Military Law — So Very Greek (2017-09-13)

28. The Law of Moses, a Reflection of the Law that Condemned Socrates and Other Greek Philosophers (2018-01-09)

29. Socrates as Anti-Hero according to Biblical Law (2018-01-09)

30. Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible – review (2018-10-05)

31. Hebrew Bible of Hellenistic Origin – Gmirkin responds to Anthonioz’s review (2018-10-12)

32. Rome’s and Israel’s Ancestor Traditions: How Do We Explain the Similarities? (2018-10-26)

33. Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible – Post #32 (2018-11-13)

34. How Plato Inspired Moses: Creation of the Hebrew Bible (2018-11-18)

35. Correction to my latest post on Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible (2018-11-20)

36. Who Influenced Biblical and Second Temple Jewish Literature? (2019-09-02)

37. More Thoughts on Origins of Biblical and Pseudepigraphical Literature (2019-09-03)

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