I have yet to come across a defining moment to cause the final redacting or putting together of the Pentateuch. Or at least one that matches the common idea that the Pentateuch was finished in the late Persian period.
I do think Onias iv had compelling reasons to write the Pentateuch. First, the High Priesthood had been divided into three, with his father Onias iii being murdered after fleeing to Syria. Second, the High priesthood fell into the hands of the ultra violent Maccabees, who killed all who disagreed with “their” version of Judean tradition.
We can point to the decree by Mattathias that Judeans could defend themselves on the Sabbath as motivation for writing the 7 day creation story. Genesis 1 simply reinforces the urgent need to maintain a tradition that stretched back into antiquity. Ptolemy I supposedly (according to several ancient historians) conquered Jerusalem 4 times. The fact that the people did not take up arms on the Sabbath was a deciding factor. So we know the tradition of the Sabbath was already important. Writing it into Judean antiquity by writing Genesis 1 would have been a retort to the Maccabean control of the High Priesthood and Judea as a whole.
At any rate, there seems to be a complete lack of motivation in the current various renditions of various (unevidenced) schools hashing out a holy scripture in the late Persian period.
I think the Septuagint brings it all together nicely, actually. There is a quote from the Babylonian Talmud 500 AD. “Rabbi Judah [bar Ilai, second century CE] said: When our teachers permitted Greek, they permitted it only for a scroll of the Torah.” (I got this from “Jewish Life and Thought Among Greeks and Romans”, I appears what is in parentheses above is added by the editors of the book.) Looking up Rabbi Judah, it appears he lived his life in Galilee, basically Judea. And the source, the Babylonian Talmud, would have no reason to prefer the Greek language.
Of course we have Philo, who was immersed in Greek culture. He gives an accounting of the translation of the Septuagint from the original Torah by the seventy scribes. He calls it a perfect translation. This is a similar positive recognition we find in the Letter of Aristeas.
So, we know about the importance of antiquity, and the desire to feign antiquity if there is no inherent antiquity from reading the likes of a Bart Ehrmann. I think I can look up a few more to back that up fairly easily. Clearly, the legend of the seventy two scribes from the letter of Aristeas is just that, a legend. Nothing in it looks to have happened, or to be attested to by the behavior of the Ptolemies in general, except perhaps that Alexandria did compile quite a library.
There seems to be no special relationship between Jerusalem and the Ptolemys until the Seleucids make a mess of things and end up with 3 different people claiming to be High Priest. The deposed Onias iii, Jason, and Menaleus. Onias iii fled originally to Egypt, where Josephus had him establishing Leontopolis and the Temple there. Jospehus in another text seems to indicate Onias iv was the founder of the Judean community at Leontopolis. The Ptolemys, in Onias iv, have the hereditary rightful High Priest. The relationship is so strong the sons of Onias iv are generals in Cleopatra’s army in the next generation.
At any rate, the stage is set. We have a high priest in exile, building what is in many ways a “New Jerusalem” near Alexandria in Egypt. He is the rightful heir to the High Preisthood that has a lineage going back 400 years, father to son. This is the perfect motivation to set the story straight. He explains himself to his Egyptian audience. (They may only care that he is leverage to regain Creole Syria, but they are an audience none the less.) He explains himself to the Judeans as the rightful heir of a covenant.
I think the important thing here is that there is no need to assume the underlying Hebrew Torah came first. He may have written the Torah in Greek first! He was of course an Aramaic speaker, and skilled in writing in Hebrew. He would have thought in terms of his Hebrew/Syrian culture, then wrote it down in Greek. But this would explain why the Pentateuch is a better name for the Torah than the term Torah itself. Genesis is not a law book. It clearly fits into a historical narrative much better. But Onias is not writing the Pentateuch to be a part of a larger book. He is writing the antiquity of the Judeans and of his own family. He is the guarantor of his and his progeny’s socioeconomic status in a city ruled by Macedonians and served by Egyptians and probably some Syrian slaves.
He is writing a prequel to Duetoronomy. In it he expands on the legends of Moses and Abraham and Israel. Either directly by writing the Letter of Aristeas or by spreading the rumor that inspired the Letter of Aristeas, Onias creates a collection of 5 books (using sources from Jerusalem, not out of whole cloth) that not only attest to his antiquity and thus place in society, but are from antiquity as well.
One last thing about the genius, intended or not, of creating the legend of the seventy two scribes. It had an air of perfection to it. If a Galileean leading Rabbi tells us the only time Greek was permitted was the Septuagint Torah, well, that tells you something of its overall acceptance to anyone Judean/Jewish. One may even wonder of its primacy.
In direct answer to the problem you propose, I propose that Onias stabilized the text for the first time as he wrote it in Greek.
I would ask you if you see any timeline problems with that. There seems to be this vague idea that a text needs to have time (to marinate?) before it can be accepted and quoted. I think Richard Carrier does a fine job showing how quickly things can become the new accepted reality.
Well it does completely change one’s perspective on everything. It completely changes the Jewish environment Jesus was born into as well.
My dream is to find a loophole to make Onias iv’s Greek name Sosates. This is the “Jewish Homer” hidden in plain sight written about by Shaye JD Cohen. Currently they are separated by at least one generation, I think. That is how research works right? You come to a conclusion then spend a lifetime pounding square pegs into round holes??
As I have obsessed with similarities of Joshua 10 and Genesis 14, the idea has occurred to me that Jeremiah fled to Egypt as well, and may have had the same Egyptian documents to inspire him that Onias had access to 400 years later. Perhaps the reason they were inspired in Egypt was the Book of the Righteous (Jasher) was an Egyptian source documenting various historical instances instead of Jasher being of Judahite tradition.
It would then have been written originally in demotic or even hieratic Egyptian, possibly accounting for the definite differences in otherwise unusual similarities in the use of Jasher.
Anyone know of a good translator for hieratic Egyptian that can go back and forth between hieratic and Greek as well as go back and forth between hieratic and Hebrew? hieratic software? 😛
crossposting this from the post of Genesis 14:8
Just another tidbit on Genesis 14. It calls Abram a Hebrew. All other references using the word Hebrew can be interpreted as being derogatory. Egyptians called Israelites Hebrews, Philistines called them Hebrews, and the Torah talks about what to do with Hebrew slaves. But Genesis 14 calls says Abram the Hebrew.
Consider as well that we really do not need an introduction to Abram here. We are well into his story. This may mean the writer is using an Egyptian source. The writer may consider himself an Isrealite, and may consider Abram a patriarch, but I think this shows the source material was Egyptian.
Robert said
I especially like the the part about Creole Syria, but the Septuagint written first by Onias IV and then translated into the Hebrew Torah, that boggles the mind. I’ve never taken LSD or other hallucinogenics, but perhaps it feels something like this.
So after reading Gmirking’s books where he posits the Septuagint written as the first edition, then later translated into Hebrew, get ready for a new world order, lol.
Seriously, I loved the book, but it seems to be getting no serious traction afaik.
As for this post, the motivation is partially answered by Gmirkin. The Torah is written as an answer to Babyloniaca and Eagyptiaca. Gmirkin thinks it was written shortly after these two books, and perhaps he is correct, though the manner he proposes is less than satisfying imho. I still like Onias iv’s ouster as a motivation for Aristoboulous who works in the Alexandrian library. Demetrius is a bit of a problem though with his chronologies.
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