gentleexit

In the 2nd century bc, Alexandrians like Aristarchus commented and edited to get to "the real Homer" from the rash of official and popular editions around in their day.

When did Judaism' famous commentary and scholarship start? Did it post or pre date the work of Homer's grammarians? Did the formal work on Homer influence how Jews read scripture? Visa-versa?

avi

The more famous, Aristarchus of Samos was, of course, the astronomer who correctly identified heliocentrism as the mechanism accounting for the planets' relationship to the sun. His calculations met with near universal disfavor, because their conclusion refuted the classic, traditional view of geocentrism held by Plato and Aristotle.
If he had not ALSO been the head librarian in Alexandria, albeit a century earlier, there may not have been so much confusion, by this post.
I think this may be the Aristarchus to whom you refer.

gentleexit

Let me add ...

Jewish culture was their books. For the Greeks, Homer was "the Poet", "the theological poet" etc and his poems were read and performed everywhere.

In the second century bc, in Alexandria, Pergamum, anywhere with a "library", scholars made elaborate commentaries on the many different versions of Homer to give us his "real poems".

Their techniques - word meaning, consistency etc - seem to be the same ones used by the Jews on their books. A book was used to explain itself: "Homer explains himself" was an old saw. Today, the bible owns such study. The word "bible" never seems to leave the word "exegesis" alone.

What I wonder is which culture started this sort of examination. Effectively who started Textual criticism? Did the work of one culture influence the other?

Toto

Have you looked into Hellenistic Judaism?

gentleexit

I suppose I'm questioning the following statement made there ...

When did the Jews start to obsess over a "correct" set of their books? What got in, what to exclude? When did they start debating what wordings were "correct", deem them so by some accepted rules of consistency. Did this concept and its application pre or post date the Homeric grammarians? Or were they the first mavens of correctness?

We take the notion of a definitive edition for granted but that notion had an origin. Did the first correct(ed) books belong to Homer?

bacht

I'm no expert, but I thought the consensus was that the scriptures underwent analysis and redaction during and after the Babylonian captivity (6th C).

The prevalence of Aramaic as the common language of the region by Persian times would have forced Hebrew scholars of the time to at least provide explication/translation for the laity I would guess.

gentleexit

Crudely, there seems to be three "editing moments" for Jewish scripture. As you say in or after Babylon which is long before the work on Homer. Then after Homer's done, Philo and other Hellenistic Jews comment on their scriptures in Greek. Finally, in the second century AD, Judaism puts Greek aside and books were picked and rejected as the Rabbi's remade their nation. Two efforts in a Greek milieu. One before.

I wonder how formal the first endeavour was? Are there any ancient descriptions of great men pouring over alternatives, matching and mixing way back then OR do we just surmise such work based on modern textual analysis? What are the grounds for saying that there was a definitive set of scriptures, its words nailed down, books laid out, before the first century BC?

(BTW, this isn't rhetorical. I find the Greek Grammarians interesting and the work of the Jews on their works is their best parallel. I'm not out to find one discipline better or more original than the other. Just want to know what we know).

gentleexit

One more go :-) The core Jewish stories and the poems of Homer are alike in that both began as oral works. Presumably they morphed as they were told and retold. Then they were written down (in different places?). Presumably there were different versions. At some point, some worthy pedants decided what was "real" and what to cast aside.

Were the Greeks the first pedants or did the Jews get down before them? When did the "inerrant" bible arise? Was this before or after the "inerrant" Homer?

Roger Pearse

I think that you are confusing several different things in this, and making a number of presumptions which may or may not be true. May I unpack what I see in this?

Firstly, I think that you're asking when the canon of the Old Testament was determined.

Secondly you are asserting that all the content of the OT was originally oral. This seems unlikely to me; are you sure?

Thirdly you are suggesting that the Alexandrian scholars working on the text of Homer made arbitrary changes; this is not how they worked.

Fourthly you are suggesting that during the 3-1st centuries BC in Alexandria the text of the OT underwent similar changes. But of course the Hebrew text is not the same as the Greek translation of the Septuagint, composed in that period. What is it that you are asking about?

Fifthly your queries seen to be mixing together text critical work with composition and large-scale editing of content. This is a category confusion; the two have no connection with each other.

I would have a think, and rethink the question, I suggest. Too many disparate issues all mixed in here, I suspect, to get an answer.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

bacht

I think it could be argued that the Greeks started challenging Homeric mythology in the 6th C, when sages like Pythagoras and Thales were inventing Natural Science. By the late 5th C there was open skepticism (up to a point) expressed by sophists and playwrights. I believe Plato had some things to say about Homer too.

As I understand it there were differing versions of several myths, which the Alexandrians noted.