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Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible By Russell Gmirkin New York–London: Routledge, 2016 Abstract Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible compares the ancient law collections of the Ancient Near East, the Greeks and the Pentateuch to determine the legal antecedents for the biblical laws. Constitutional features in biblical law are shown to contain striking agreement with those found at Athens and described in Plato’s Laws of ca. 350 BCE. Similarly, biblical statutes contain many striking parallels with Athenian laws, and specifically with those found in Plato’s Laws. The literary structure and legal force of biblical law collections are also shown to correspond closely with Greek rather than Ancient Near Eastern law collections. The Pentateuchal presentation of legal content within a narrative context is also found in a variety of Greek literary forms, especially Greek foundation stories, which closely conform in outline to the biblical story of the exodus, wilderness wanderings, and conquest of the Promised land under Moses and Joshua. The legal and narrative content of the Pentateuch thus reflect substantial Greek influences, especially from Plato’s Laws. Finally, this book argues that the creation of the Hebrew Bible took place according to the program for creating a national ethical literature found in Plato's Laws, reinforcing the importance of this specific text to the authors of the Torah and Hebrew Bible in the early Hellenistic Era. Chapter Contents Chapter 1 (Introduction) surveys modern theories that sought to account for apparent Greek legal and literary influences on biblical writings, such as Greek mercenaries or Phoenician merchants as cultural intermediaries, or a hypothesized common East Mediterranean legal culture in pre-Hellenistic times. Such models overlook the possibility of the biblical authors having had direct access to Greek literature, including legal treatises, in the Hellenistic Era, when the first external evidence of biblical writings appeared. The current study will accordingly take both Greek and Ancient Near Eastern laws fully into account in seeking to identify the antecedents for biblical legal materials. Chapter 2 (Athenian and Pentateuchal Legal Institutions) examines influences from Athens and from Plato’s Laws on governmental institutions in the Pentateuch, such as: the genre of constitutional law, unknown in the Ancient Near East; similar citizenship requirements and enrollment procedures; military organization into ten
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or twelve civic tribes, brotherhoods, clans and households; land distribution by allotment into tribal territories; identical function of kinship groups in inheritance, levirate marriage, and blood vengeance; deliberative bodies with comparable executive and judicial responsibilities; similar civil and religious magistrates; and similar procedures for the citizen selection, scrutiny and audit of magistrates (including king). Chapter 3 (Biblical, Ancient Near Eastern and Greek Laws) compares Ancient Near Eastern and Greek influences on Pentateuchal laws, including laws on homicide, assault, theft, marriage, inheritance, sexual offenses, slavery, economic relief, livestock, property crimes, commerce, the military, magic, treason, religion, and ethics. While some Pentateuchal laws derive from Old Babylonian and Assyrian collections, many have striking parallels with Greek and Athenian laws, and especially with Plato’s Laws. These include the prosecution and execution of dangerous animals; slaying a night thief; exile for unintentional homicide; blood avengers; sacrilege as political subversion; military exemptions; commandments on ethics, and others. Chapter 4 (Greek and Ancient Near Eastern Law Collections) compares Ancient Near Eastern, Greek and biblical law collections as literary forms. It is shown that the biblical law collections correspond to Greek rather than Ancient Near Eastern law collections with respect to sources, purpose, framing structure, divine promulgation, public recitation, ratification, educational utility and prescriptive force. Greek literary antecedents are identified for the Decalogue (the Commandments of the Seven Sages) and for Deuteronomy (Plato’s Laws). The Pentateuch also implemented such innovations from Plato’s Laws as the idea of law as education (“torah” or “teaching”) and the use of persuasive legal introductions (motive clauses). Chapter 5 (Greek and Biblical Legal Narratives) discusses the integration of legal content with narrative found in both the Pentateuch and Greek writings, but not in the Ancient Near East. Discussions of constitutions and laws appeared in Greek historical narratives, panegyrics, origin and foundation stories, ethnographies, biographies, constitutional histories and philosophical dialogues. The story of Moses closely conforms to the Greek foundation story, in which the expedition leader also created the new colony’s constitution and laws. The changes from patriarchy to constitutional democracy to monarchy and tyranny in Genesis–Kings appear to echo themes in Greek constitutional histories.
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Russell Gmirkin
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Chapter 6 (The Creation of the Hebrew Bible) first discusses Plato’s innovative ideas for a divinely authorized law code and national literature. Plato’s Laws gave detailed instructions for collecting, editing, revising and approving texts under the supervision of the “legislators of the arts” and soliciting new works by storytellers, poets, priests and prose-writers. The Hebrew Bible, it is argued, was created in accordance with the literary program laid out in Plato’s Laws. Plato’s strategies for convincing the citizens their laws and literature were ancient and divine appear to have worked brilliantly in Hellenistic Judea, where the biblical laws and literature of ca. 270 BC were soon enshrined as the ancient ancestral texts of the Jews, a perception that has continued virtually unchallenged down into modern times.
