spin

So you can see that your use of pseudepigraphic writings is of no help to your claims.

Why not accept that the OP was trying to work through something and that something isn't helped by your terse response regarding the torah especially when that response doesn't seem helpful or accurate.

You misunderstand my lack of acceptance of your employment of those texts somehow as dating tools for the torah for a problem accepting the fact that pseudepigraphic texts were held as authentic by ancient Jews.

Or maybe you should be prepared to go on with what you started.

The OP posed a relatively interesting question regarding the passover. How can one date it? It is exceptionally poorly represented outside the torah, once only in the prophets, a few times in Ezra, references in 2 Kgs for Josiah (23:22 & 23) and a more expanded account in 2 Chr (including stuff on Hezekiah celebrating it, not supported by 2 Kgs), not even once in the psalms.

We are coming out of a long period of blind acceptance that Moses wrote the torah, so the cultural habit of assuming an early date for it is still strongly ingrained. However, despite the rationalizations that have been going around for a century, there is no way to date the torah and the latest possible date is the date of the earliest exemplars from Qumran. The reference regarding ships going back to Egypt is a pointer to a late dating because it appears to be a reference to no earlier than the Ptolemaic times. There is a current in torah studies that sees the (technicolor coat) Joseph story as a Greek novella, which puts it into the late Greek era. The torah is quite out of touch with the history that can be gleaned of the earlier times, eg it seems to think that the Philistines were always in the Levant; places mentioned didn't exist, the "city" of Pithom was constructed under Necho II circa 600 BCE. Unless one has some sort of a priori commitment to an early torah, the question of its dating is problematic.

So, when the OP asked about the passover, there is some historical analysis behind it that rendered your response to it questionable with its assumption that there was no problem dating the whole torah before the time of Josiah. How much of the Josiah material is a reflection of the Hasmonean king John Hyrcanus, who wanted to centralize the religion on Jerusalem and was responsible for destroying cult centers elsewhere, so-called "high places"?


spin

Nihilus

I referenced pseudepigraphal texts largely to suggest approximated dating. I don't believe that accurate dating can be done with the torah itself, and any attempt to accurately and conclusively date the torah is ultimately a futile exercise. This is because the original texts were lost, and one only has copies of copies of copies available for dating purposes. And these copies have been commonly tweaked by scribes along the way. As also is likely with the torah.

I gathered that the OP was trying to work through something. I'm just not persuaded that any dating attempts whatsoever will be ultimately accurate. The originals haven't been preserved. We have only copies to work with. In other words, why try to accurately date what can't be accurately dated? Please understand that I'm not assuming that Josiah's torah was infallibly accurate.

Well, if one has already predetermined to rule out pseudepigraphal texts, then the torah is perhaps the only tool that can be used to approximately date itself, even if such a dating attempt is not ultimately verifiable or conclusive.

One time when I was a teenager (about 25 years ago), just for fun I had attempted to construct a timeline from Adam to the end of the Old Testament, using the Old Testament geneaologies and reign periods of the kings, etc. The result placed the story of Adam and Eve at about 6000 years ago. Outside of an individual's propensity to reject miraculous claims within the texts, I don't see a reason to disqualify the torah as an approximated dating tool. No, this won't be completely accurate, nor am I suggesting that the data within the text is infallibly accurate.

I personally don't believe that Moses wrote the torah, but such books were perhaps the most concise historical records of those times, as much as they fall short of today's standards.

The torah pretty much dates itself, unless it is presupposed to be illegitimate in and of itself.

Or, as is quite common with ancient texts, small portions may have been modified over the generations by scribes. This doesn't necessarily render the entire text as fallacious, but simply may call into question some of it's finer details. For example, the earliest known copies of the torah may represent the original lost texts with 95% (hypothetical) accuracy.

Again, that could be a more recent modification of an original text that is several millennia old. The more recent copies may have been tweaked. It may be virtually impossible to ascertain when the singular lost original was written, when dealing only with tweaked copies of copies of copies.

We are perhaps assuming here that dating interpretations of archaeological excavations are conclusively accurate.

Again, my apologies for coming off that way. For all practical purposes, I might suggest that the original torah no longer exists. We have only modified copies to work with, which are not adequate for any historical dating purposes. This doesn't render our earliest copies altogether worthless, insofar as we still catch glimpses into the ancient world that were partially preserved in the altered texts. We must just read the torah with a grain of salt.

Again, it's quite likely that the original text was written several millennia ago, but later copies have been drastically altered to fit political agenda.

spin

Which came first, the story of the fall through Adam and Eve or the story of the fall through the intervention of the watchers? You are still seem to be pussyfooting with the mentioning of pseudepigrapha. You've shown no relation between any pseudepigraphic texts and the torah or dates for anything. You've merely assumed. Would you like to give some substance here?

You're simply assuming a complete torah for Josiah which is not only against the scholarly status quo, but without any substantiation on your part.

We've talked about the pentateuch here before in this forum and the problems dating it. Why rush in with the mere assumption of torah dating prior to Josiah before sounding out the forum's knowledge?

You are having difficulties of relevance. Who said anything about ruling out pseudepigrapha? Someone tried to question your apparently ill-advised mention of such texts. But if you don't think it was ill-advised, please show us why.

Would you rule out the History of the Britons by Geoffrey of Monmouth? How about the Augustan Histories? Scholarship works with what we can in some regard have evidence for. There is a great deal wrong with the historical information in the bible. One cannot simply dismiss the problems that arise and carry on as though there is no problem. We start by saying what we know. We know that the Egyptians had control of the Levant until the time of the Philistines, then they regained it under Shoshenq I. When the Assyrians arrived the Egyptians were again forced out, though when the Assyrians withdrew to other parts the Egyptians came back and exerted some force. These affairs do not fit well with the stories of the bible. The Egyptians had control of Palestine from the time of Tuthmosis II. That leaves little opportunity for the sorts of stories we find in Genesis. The exodus did not happen: it's merely a distant retelling of the ejection of the Hyksos from a very late perspective. The conquest didn't happen either, given the analysis of thousands of early iron age sites in Israel, which all show an uninterrupted continuity of occupation. The first history we come to is the conflict between Ahab and Damascus. The first Judean connection we get is an inscription which mentions Hezekiah's father (from memory).

It's fine as a kid to do timelines, but what happens when you grow up?

What makes you say that there's any history in them?

So do the stories of Monmouth's history. Self-dating doesn't mean much.

You are putting the cart before the horse. You cannot assume historicity. You have to fight for it. What makes you think any of these traditions are history? Answering that question might show some awareness of what must be done.

What it does is to show that you are being arbitrary: "ok, I'll discard the bits that I can't deal with, but I'll assume the rest is fine." Instead, the work is tarred with evidence of bits that are late. How do you know any of the writing isn't?

More arbitrary reaction. You try very hard to keep what you can, but do you have to? Why not sit back and ask why there are all these late signs and stop assuming early until proven?

So, you have no response at all, except, "well, ummm, you know, maybe the archaeology is wrong, though I have no reason to think so."

The archaeology isn't considered alone here. It's in concert with the historical evidence regarding what we know from other sources that have shown a tendency to represent real events.

This may be, but then what do you mean by the term "the original torah"? Is it not the first form that represents the whole text we have from the preserved ancient forms from Qumran and later? It is certainly a text that had a long evolution, as hundreds of scholars have argued regarding the documentary hypothesis. When was this "original torah"? Was it the time of the Jahwist (assuming there was a first writer of the whole Jahwist tradition)? Was it after Elohist materials were interwoven?

Is this helping you get back to your dating of the torah to wholly before Josiah?

This notion of drastic alteration seems to me to suggest that the torah as we know it was not complete by the time of Josiah (if any of it was actually written before then) and so is of no use in your original use of the torah as a response to the OP. Is this correct?


spin

semiopen

I made a horrible error by saying 700 BCE instead of 700 CE. Still it is pretty clear that at least some biblical passages are from before the Babylonian exile.

On the other hand, there are some new issues in Hebrew Linguistics.

Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts

I've posted this link recently in BCH.

It's not clear if this supports the idea that the dating of passages could be earlier than previously thought, it seems to me that this could work both ways. Understanding this area is important to understand dating the texts.