On the History of Israelite Literature

L.M. Barre barre at c-zone.net
Sat May 1 04:39:50 EDT 1999


Dear List,

In my arguments against a Maccabean dating of Psalm 2, I am advancing evidence from Ben Sira.  I am afraid that I was in error on one point and so wish to restate my argument.  On the dating of this work and its translation I quote from the introductory notes of the New Jerusalem Bible:

"In a Forward, vv 1-35, the grandson of the author tells how he translated the book when he went to settle in Egypt in the 38th years of King Euergetes, v 27.  This can only be Ptolemy VII Euergetes (170-117), and the date corresponds to 132 BC.  Ben Sira himself presumably lived and wrote some sixty years before his grandson, about 190-180 BC.  A passage in the book confirms this date: Ben Sira's eulogy of the High Priest Simon, 50:1-21 is based on personal reminiscence.  This was Simon II, who died shortly after 200."

Since the grandson translator claims that his grandfather knew a tripartite division of Scripture, we have a terminus ad quem for the Law, the Prophets and "the others that followed them" (v. 1) also called "the other books" (v. 25).  An internal examination of Ben Sira's books shows that of the Writings he knew Proverbs, Job, Qoheleth and the Psalter.  A look at the cross references to the Psalms provided by the editors of the New Jerusalem Bible lists allusions to the following Psalms: 22, 37, 145, 131, 41, 12, 40, 33, 34, 139, 18, 104, 8, 147, 111, 51, 90, 141, 132, 19, 35, 7, 9, 31, 115, 1, 5, 63, 79, 68, 110, 21, 22, 89, 147, 29, 96, 16, 120, 103, 88, 25, 26, 4.  Clearly Ben Sira knew a completed Psalter, which of course would include Psalm 2.  Accordingly, Psalm 2 could not have been written during the Maccabean period.

If Ben Sira provides the ad quem for the existence of a tripartite scripture, we may look to for its ad quo from Ezra's Commonwealth, c. 400 BCE. Of Ezra we read that he "devoted himself to the study of the Law of Yahweh, to practicing  it and to teaching Israel its laws and customs" (7:10).  It is further stated that "This is a copy of the document which King Artaxerxes hand to Ezra, the priest-scribe, the scribe who was especially learned in the text of Yahweh's commandments and his laws relating to Israel: 'Artaxerxes, king of kings, to the priest Ezra, scribe of the Law of the God of heaven, perfect peace'" (7:11-12)  These data and others show that the process of canonization had began at least with Ezra, a process that produced the tripartite canon that Jesus Ben Sira knew no later than c. 200 BCE.  The midpoint between our ad quo and ad quem would be c. 300 BCE.  We also have the tradition that the LXX was commissioned around 250 BCE which seems entirely reasonable.  Ac!
cordingly, it is not possible to assign the composition of the most of our Old Testament to the third century or later.  Only an addition to the Writings can be permitted, such as the book of Daniel.  Internal evidence of the editing of smaller compositions that were incorporated into the Pentateuch, the Former Prophets, the Latter Prophets, the Proverbs, the Psalms and so on demand dating well into the pre-exilic period.  The contention of the Minimalists that the entire OT is post-exilic is, as I have said, impossible.  Thus, the fallacious "dichotomous data" methodology of the Minimalists has not surprisingly produced impossible results.

                                                    


L. M. Barre, Ph.D.

barre at c-zone.net
www.angelfire.com/ca2/AncientIsrael





More information about the b-hebrew mailing list