From Plato to Moses: Genesis-Kings as a Platonic Epic
Article from Biblical Interpretation Beyond Historicity (Routledge, 2016).
By Philippe Wajdenbaum
University of Brussels
April 2016
Click here for article.
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Article from Biblical Interpretation Beyond Historicity (Routledge, 2016).
By Philippe Wajdenbaum
University of Brussels
April 2016
Click here for article.
Thank you for your question. According to me, this hypothesis that counts Homer, Herodotus and Plato, among others, as direct sources of inspiration for Genesis-Kings is incompatible with the JEDP documentary hypothesis. For instance, several biblical laws that are considered by the documentary hypothesis to originate from the E, D, and P sources are also found in Plato’s Laws. The comparison with Plato’s Laws makes it quite probable that this text was the source for the biblical laws. This hypothesis is verifiable, as the texts of Plato are still available, whereas the JEDP model proposes sources that cannot be verified, as those sources are thought to have been lost.
However, this Greek-influenced model functions in a rather similar way than the documentary hypothesis, as it does identify documents of various dates that present different theologies – but they happen to be Greek texts. For instance, Homer and Hesiod were criticized by Plato for their descriptions of the gods, which marks an evolution in Greek theology. It seems that the biblical author(s) applied Plato’s criticism of traditional Greek poetry from books II and III of the Republic in order to create many biblical narratives: They rewrote Greek myths, some of them found in Homer and Hesiod, in accordance with Plato’s criteria.
Moreover, this hypothesis tends to demonstrate the literary unity of Genesis-Kings, which I consider, along with Thomas L. Brodie and Jan-Wim Wesselius, to be the work of a single author. This idea of a single author for Genesis-Kings was already posited by Spinoza in the eighth chapter of the Theological and Political Treatise. Spinoza thought that this single author, whom he identified as Ezra, would have used “documents”. The subsequent documentary hypothesis has tried to identify those documents based notably on the changes of divine names and alleged different theologies, but seems to have disregarded Spinoza’s original idea of Genesis-Kings as a literary unit. Wesselius (“Towards a New History of Israel”, Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, 3, 2001) has proposed a hypothesis that explains the apparent divergences (including the changes of divine names) in the doubled narratives of Genesis-Kings as an intentional technique of its author – rather than the assembling of previous texts –, aiming to give the impression to its readers that the text is based on ancient traditions, while it is in fact based on Greek sources. Wesselius calls this technique a “linear literary dossier”.
Most of the cultic practices in Genesis-Kings are of Jewish and/or Samaritan origins, and do not find direct echoes in Plato’s Laws, since this text allows the keeping of local religious traditions in its legislative program for a twelve-tribe ideal State. The annals of the kings of Israel and Judah, cited in Kings, demonstrate that its author used reliable historical sources. Therefore, the model of Greek sources of inspiration does leave room for the use of local sources by the author(s) of Genesis-Kings, but in my opinion the JEDP model is obsolete and it is time to consider the verifiable data available in the Greek texts.
Philippe Wajdenbaum