Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Walter Mattfeld" <mattfeld AT mail.pjsnet.com>]

Dear Tom,

My apologies for this late reply. I am focusing in on the Primary History,
Genesis-2Kings, rather than the whole of the Hebrew Bible. I am interested
in seeking clues for a text assembled in a Hellenistic setting, allowing
that data and traditions of earlier times, Pre-Exilic, Exilic and
Post-Exilic are present.

I ask questions and then seek answers. If the text was composed in a
Hellenistic environment what would be the clues ?  My interest in
archaeology as a dating tool for the texts, caused me to wonder why no
Hellenistic sites appear in this composition. I know authors make errors,
they are human, why no slips revealing a Hellenistic site ? Several places
are enumerated in Joshua, of the Negev, and we have several sites in that
area from Nabatean times, why weren't they listed in the Negev list ?  Why
weren't sites whose names were changed in Hellenistic times noted by the
author, as in Laish becoming later Dan ?

I must confess that I find my attempts to date the texts to be very
exasperating at times. The clues seem to be contradictory in some passages.

Jonathan Safren has noted no mention of Persia in the Table of Nations. If
the text was put together in a Hellenistic world, why leave Persia out ? It
certainly played an important part in restoring Judah and the Temple. Why no
mention of Cyrus, who is presented as God's "Messiah" by Deutero-Isaiah ?

I have suggested that Noah's blessing for Japheth is a blessing for Cyrus
and the Persians based on my research into the Athenian Greek Medus myth,
which makes the Persians, called Medes by the Greeks and Jews (cf. Daniel) a
Japhethic people.

Yet I have to acknowledge some problems. Statements attributed Moses in
Deuteronomy don't make sense to me in a composition written in a Post-Exilic
world. For instance, Moses predicts the Nation will go into Exile, but he
also predicts, that after the Nation REPENTS, God will restore them and
prosper them greater than their Pre-Exilic fathers. The books of Ezra and
Nehemiah reveal this didn't happen. The returnees still violated the Sabbath
and married foreign women. Times were so desperate the poor sold their
children into slavery to survive as noted by Nehemiah. Moses said God would
"circumcise" the hearts of his people upon their restoration, allowing them
to fear and obey Him. This didn't happen.
Why, if the Primary History is a Post-Exilic composition, does the author
have Moses saying all this -when it didn't come about ???

The statements attributed to Moses in Deuteronomy 30:1-10, look to me like
an Exilic composition. But this of course clashes with my understanding of
Japheth being Cyrus and the Persians. About the only way I can see my
Japheth=Cyrus notion being valid, is that the Exilic text was edited at a
later period in the 5th century (the so-called Priestly redactor).

All the best, Walter

Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld
Walldorf by Heidelberg
Baden-Wurttemburg, Germany
www.bibleorigins.net


----- Original Message -----
From: Thomas L. Thompson <tlt AT teol.ku.dk>
To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2001 9:50 AM
Subject: SV: The Case Against a Hellenistic Primary History


> Dear Walter,
> I am uncertain what the goal of your reflections are: particularly in what
> you mean by a "Hellenistic primary history". By "primary history" I assume
> you mean something related to the narratives of Genesis--> 2 Kings,
> understood somewhat as a single coherent work, but I don't know how you
> would understand such work's genre, and in particular its relationship to
a
> tradition of other compositions. Nor am I clear whether you allow for any
> history of redaction. And what do you mean by Hellenistic? Is it a
cultural,
> ideological or chronological term?
>
> I understand your question about the town names, but I am a little
uncertain
> how you are applying it. You are building a case "against" something, but
it
> is very unclear what that is.
> Thomas