Throughout my academic career I’ve encountered and dealt with a concept I call deliberate archaization. There seems to be a pervasive notion that the older something is, the more authentic it is. Possibly the most famous example of this is ascribing the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, to Moses. The Torah itself never does so, and for many centuries now the realization has come that such an attribution is impossible. That story is well told by Richard Elliott Friedman in one of the best books ever written about the subject, Who Wrote the Bible. As we now know, the Torah was written by many different authors and over a period of several centuries, probably reaching something close to its current form in the mid-third century BCE–about a thousand years after the period of Moses.
Several other biblical books are commonly said to have been written long before that was possible. The book of Isaiah, for example, is an example of a complex editorial process. Some of the material in the first 37 chapters of the book as we now have it could be as ancient as the historical prophet–late 8th century BCE. Those 37 chapters are followed by three written in an entirely different voice, and written in prose rather than poetry. They tell of historical events and far more resemble the historical writings found in Kings than the prophetic writings. And if you’re wondering, Kings could not have been completed as a literary work before the early 6th century since it concludes with the exile of Jehoiakin (ca 597 BCE). Beginning with the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, poetic prophesy resumes, but in a voice distinct from that of the first part of the book. And not long after that, we find, “Thus said the LORD to Cyrus, His anointed one — Whose right hand He has grasped, Treading down nations before him, Ungirding the loins of kings, Opening doors before him And letting no gate stay shut: (Isa. 45:1 TNK). Who is this Cyrus? He is the ruler of Perisa ascending that throne in 559 BCE. But the original prophet Isaiah was already dead for more than century before this–so how could he have mentioned Cyrus? So far we have an original Isaiah who lived in the eighth century BCE, some sort of third party editor who may have lived in the sixth, another prophet never named who knew of Cyrus–usually termed Second Isaiah. To make things even more complex, the last six chapters of Isaiah are written in such different style from earlier chapters that many biblical scholars refer to them as Third Isaiah.
Some in religious communities have responded to this challenge by noting that Isaiah was a prophet, and therefore predicting Cyrus could be seen as his prophetic ability. But such an explanation actually betrays a lack of understanding of the role of the biblical prophet. People like Isaiah were not soothsayers or fortune tellers, they are the bearers of God’s message to people who were failing to live up to the religious and moral standards demanded by their understanding of the Israelite faith. The book of Jonah well captures the explanation of the role of a prophet. And Jonah, by the way, is another example of deliberate archaization as it claims to be story from the era of the Assyrian Empire, but must have been written centuries afterward.
Returning to my original point, all this demonstrates a desire among many to archaize, to declare the current form of Isaiah some sort of unified book composed by an actual single person living in the eighth century BCE.
There is good evidence that the books of the Torah were known in much the form we now have them by the middle of the third century BCE. That evidence is provided by a Greek translation of the Torah which was undertaken by the substantial and wealthy community of Judeans living in Alexandria, Egypt. That community was engaged in a lengthy battle for recognition as citizens of their city and the Ptolemaic empire. One way they tried to establish this was by asserting that Ptolemy himself ordered the the translation of the Torah so that he could include it in his Library in Alexandria. The tale is told in the letter of Aristeas that Ptolemy installed 72 translators, all isolated from each other for the project. When it was completed, it was found that all the translations were identical, confirming their sacred authority. This translation became known as the Septuagint, or “The Seventy” commemorating the large number of translators supposedly involved.
In this simple story, we find at least two examples of archaization. The first is that for reasons too detailed for this blog, the king could not have been Ptolemy I. In fact, even one of the later Ptolemies probably had little or nothing to do with the composition, rather it was almost certainly a production of the Alexandrian Judean community, and probably a century or so after the time of Ptolemy I. The second example of archaization is the Letter of Aristeas itself. Many early scholars, accepting arguments about the antiquity of the translation, also accepted the notion stated in the letter that it was written by a person living about 250 BCE. More recently, careful analysis has shown that such a date is impossible. A majority of historians now place it around 130 BCE, with one significant voice (M. Hadas) saying it should be 90 BCE.
Again and again, we find a need to ascribe a work to a period much earlier than possible or even likely.
The last example I’ll provide for this sort of thing is the date for the establishment of rabbinic religious authority. Many handbooks, even today, ascribe this notion to a declaration attributed to Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, and a date is provided as 90 CE, some twenty years after the destruction of the Hasmonean/Herodian Temple. Ben Zakkai is credited with a number of enactments designed to allow the surviving Judeans to conduct their religious lives without Temple or priests.
The problem is that we do not have any contemporary record of the statements of ben Zakkai. The earliest source for these statements are the Tanaitic corpora which were not completed before the mid-third-century CE, and many are from sources far later than that. A general rule of thumb of modern scholarship is that if you want to know the origin of any given idea, look to the era in which it was written. It was in the mid-third century CE that we see groups of Judeans vying for religious, social and political authority, and it is towards the end of that century that we first witness a strong Christian challenge to authority based on the Hebrew Bible and promoting the sanctity of Christian books. The real story of ben Zakkai belongs, in my opinion, not to the first century, but to the third. But by claiming the earlier date, rabbinic Jews set their claims in Antiquity.
The older the better.
4 Responses
Neil, your response is better than my article deserved!
Thanks again … I AM thinking of cognitive issues about what is and is not “real” and what adaptive needs are met by more-or-less belief. (you can ask Terri about the function of the fusiform gyrus). I don’t think this is merely a matter of the logical fallacy I learned at Uni (“argumentum ad antiquitatem”) but perhaps there should be accommodation for the environment at the time the belief became consolidated as more true than not. (like the Arian challenge at the time of Nicaea). You are right on target with “look to the era in which it was written.” I’ll go with Kazantzakis: “Is there anything truer than truth? Yes, legend. This gives eternal meaning to ephemeral truth” …or with a child’s intuitive understanding of fairy tales that ‘while unreal, they are not untrue.’ It’s a beautiful summer day in Knoxville. Thinking about truth is much more fun than possessing it.
Dear Neil, thanks so much for your interest. As a scientist, I have a very strong suspicion you know more about this than I do. What I’m willing to venture is that the topic deserves some expansion. I’m sure there are shades and meanings withing meanings. Did the authors of these archaizations write their fictions to deceive? I would bet that many of them knew that their contemporaries would see the stories as stories, and not be concerned about historical accuracy. Perhaps this example trivializes the issue, but let’s take it out of the biblical realm by mentioning the famous story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree. While it’s not impossible that Parson Weems learned it from someone in Washington’s life (although he didn’t include it until six years after he initially published his biography of Washington), the verdict of the National Park Service is, “The official answer from both Ferry Farm, Washington’s childhood home where it would have occurred, and Mount Vernon, is no, it’s only a story. But, really, does it matter?” They point out that Parson Weems was more interested in teaching morality than history. When you think about it, fiction often serves this sort of purpose, doesn’t it?
So there are many wrinkles for a historian. Did a given event really happen? And whether it did or didn’t, what was the motivation in telling the story?
Thanks Jack – very interesting. “Archaization” a great idea and its causes and consequences are worth a think, but is it necessary “deliberate”? … I mean, how or why has a the collecting of views “by many different authors and over a period of several centuries…” (“consensus-seeking?) slow down or stop? Were there events like The Council of Nicaea where the bishops affirmed various beliefs in order to heal(?) schisms & consolidate doctrine (& presumably political control)? (the Alexandrian/Ptoleic Septuagint project?) It feels like the impulse is more to push the authorizing events further back in time in order to discourage efforts at validation … swaddling them in the impenetrable mists of prehistory. Might a waxing and waning of Judaic Process theology be a factor? As a scientist my intuition is biased by Baysian reasoning –is it fair to expect that of Midrash, rather than just a continuing search for “deeper” meaning … OK, now I’m just rambling … thanks for bearing with me.