Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Thomas L. Thompson" <tlt AT teol.ku.dk>]

Dear Jan,
sorry to be so slow in answering, but I am much preoccupied with exams right
now. I will only respond to the issue you see as foul play:
I find dating generally very fragile and often misleading when we rarely
have texts that are truly contemporary let alone written from a common
perspective. Nevertheless, Elephantine, though itself not surviving into the
Hellenistic period, offers us an interesting window into West Semitic
military colonies in Egypt: a social structure that is found at later
periods. The patterns of local synchronism and the effects of intermarriage
argue for the assumption of multiple forms of Judaism in the Egyptian
diaspora, and undermine automatic assumptions that Mediterranean Judaism is
of a single form. I would also say that this kind of Judaism can not be like
that of what you seem to assume is a more original mother Judaism of
Palestine. Samaritanism is fundamentally different from Jerusalem based
Judaism. These 'fundamentals' are not in creed or practice so much as in
location and tradition. I moreover doubt that there ever was a 'split' on
the basis that an original 'unity' is unlikely (see I.Hjelm, Samaritans,
Sheffield, just out). My Samaritan flavor is found in the Pentateuch, which
by the way is among the DSS!
The deposits at Qumran do seem to be 1st cent. BCE, but the composition of
the texts? The jury is still out on Doudna's chronology. Alexandrian Judaism
is not so hard to date and 2nd cent bce to Philo is not hard to defend; nor
is its distinction from what some think of as mainstream.
Thomas

        [Thomas L. Thompson]  Jan Hutchesson wrote: 
> I have to call foul when you mix your periods so freely. Although the
> Elephantine tradition a Yahwistic religion with a terminus of around 400
> BCE, an Alexandrian variety can only at best be inferred from certain
> Greek
> texts of dubious date some perhaps from the second century BCE. DSS come
> in
> at about the first century BCE. How can you date the Samarian flavour (if
> it is not found in the DSS)? You may as well include the Rabbinic
> religion.
> There is no synchronic data, so what value is there in these four flavours
> other than they existed without being able to relate them?
> 
> >This variety stands opposed to assumptions that there is a single center.
> 
> 
> This has not been substantiated. Elephantine gives indications that it was
> related to mother Palestine with indications that they were in contact
> with
> both Jerusalem and Samaria, but we cannot say what its relationship was,
> though it may have faithfully reflected one or the other or both. Though
> we
> don't have much of the religion we can see that its brand of polytheism
> seems similar to that indicated in the small shrines such as Kuntilat
> Ajrud. We have nothing to suggest that Elephantine was anything other than
> a reflection of a single centre, which later changed course, lashing out
> at
> the "Asherim".
> 
> Is there anything to indicate that the Samarian religion was different in
> any substantial way from that in Jerusalem prior to the split, whenever
> that was (post 2Mac6:2)? Was any difference anything but political?
> Separation does induce variation, but big variations usually need external
> inputs, as perhaps in the case of Alexandria. And I see nothing there to
> suggest that we don't have a religion transplanted from Palestine which
> adapted to its religious and philosophical environment.
> 
>