Biblical Hebrew Forum

["L.M. Barre" <barre AT c-zone.net>]

Dear List,

Actually, what I wrote to Professor Thompson was that in my polemics against 
"Minimalism," I never used his nor Professor Lemche's names.  But I do now:

1) The Historical Context.  My colleague, Niels Peter Lemche has taught us 
that the Old Testament, in both its Greek and Hebrew variants, is a 
Hellenistic book. Here we must learn to think not only of Daniel, the books 
of Maccabees, Qohelet, Chronicles and the like. Nor should we limit the 
Hellenistic contributions in the Torah and the so–called historical books to 
the final fixation of the chronologies, or to a few isolated editorial 
glosses and marginal changes. Rather, the bulk of the bible's composition 
belongs to this period: its collection as tradition, its redaction and its 
commitment to written forms — what had been piously attributed by the author 
of II Maccabees 2:14 to the efforts of Judas Maccabeus, as an attempt to 
recreate something of the legendary library of Nehemiah by preserving what 
had been lost and destroyed by the wars.

From "How Yahweh Became God: Exodus 3 and 6 and the Heart of the Pentateuch 
(1993)

Credibility?

QED and MATE

Mr. Barre (see point 4)

P.S. "When lovely woman stoops to folly and
         Paces about her room again, alone,
         She smooths her hair with automatic hand,
         And puts a record on the gramophone."
                                      
                                       "The Wasteland"
                                         T.S. Eliot




> ** Original Subject: SV: An Invitiation for Professors Thompson and Lemche
> ** Original Sender: "Thomas L. Thompson" <tlt AT teol.ku.dk>
> ** Original Date: Wed, 5 May 1999 10:26:48 +0200

> ** Original Message follows... 


> ** Original Subject: SV: An Invitiation for Professors Thompson and Lemche
> ** Original Sender: "Thomas L. Thompson" <tlt AT teol.ku.dk>
> ** Original Date: Wed, 5 May 1999 10:26:48 +0200

> ** Original Message follows... 




>
> Dear Colleagues,
>       Mr. Barre has written clearing up what has apparently been a
> misunderstanding and assures me that not only does he not include me among
> the minimalists but that the series of points he was criticising in the
> series "against minimalism" had nothing to do with any position I had taken.
> Perhaps now "minimalism" (= refracted ghosts of ideas that irritate whoever
> uses the term) might be blessed with its well deserved demise. It is an
> invidious term whose purpose is both to obfuscate and to   allow polemics
> without responsibility. It has nothing to do with any particular scholar or
> any particular scholarly program. The four pillars of "minimalism", full of
> straw as they are, may be happily abandoned to the winds of change.
> 
>       Now, to turn to the invitation to comment on Ecclesiasticus'
> prologue that attributes a collection of reflections gleaned from "Israel's"
> wisdom "given to us through the law, the prophets and others that followed
> them":
>       This discursive work is presented as a translation from the Hebrew
> of the writer's grandfather Jesus, whom the title identifies as ben Sirach.
> The "translater" or author of this prologue, speaking in the first person,
> refers to an event (?) or an opportunity when he first came to Egypt (in the
> 38th. year of Euergetes): "I found an opportunity for no little instruction"
> or (in some manuscripts): "I found a copy affording no little instruction".
> The author publishes the book "for those living abroad".
> 
>       This first person authorial voice presents himself as having begun
> his work in the time of Euergetes and as publishing it some (considerable?)
> time later. The 38th. year is a problem as Euergetes I ruled from 246-222
> and Euergetes II from 145-116. Nevertheless, the seeming precision of the
> dating functions well for its authorial purpose: to establish the text in an
> historical context that gives the work the legitimacy of antiquity.
> 
>       "For those living abroad" offers a minor nuance begging
> interpretation. "Abroad" from whose perspective? The purported translator's
> or the actual publisher's? 
> 
>       The variants "found a copy" and "found instruction" suggest the
> possibility of different understandings among the tradents of the text, not
> only offering a Josianic echo to the text but (alternatively) suggesting
> that the author is presenting a secondary tradition: an interpreted
> tradition.
> 
>       The attribution of the work to the grandfather also carries
> discursive overtones from a tradition of wisdom that goes back to Meri-ka-re
> and Amen-em-het's discourses left to their sons to publish. This at least
> requires us to consider a comparable prologue for the Book of Tobit, whose
> story is given in the context of a first person account of one who was
> exiled to Nineveh by the Assyrians.
> 
>       The references to the law, the prophets and other books of
> instruction from which one might learn the wisdom of Israel, presents this
> book as epitomizing "Jewish" wisdom and as belonging to the stream of
> learning understood as Israel's. It claims to take part in the philosophical
> discourse which created this wisdom as a written tradition. It knows the
> torah, as does I Ezdras and Psalm 1. It knows the prophets as a literary
> tradition, and it knows more . . . but it doesn't say it all.
> 
>       But that is enough for today.
> 
>       Thomas
> 
>       Thomas L. Thompson
>       Professor, University of Copenhagen
> 
> ---
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>** --------- End Original Message ----------- **

> 

L. M. Barre, Ph.D.

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