This is the third monograph-length study by G. on the issue of possible Greek influence on the Hebrew Bible. The current book continues and expands the theory first argued in his 2006 study Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch and reaffirmed in the 2017 monograph Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible. Both studies proposed that the Pentateuch in its Greek and Hebrew form was authored in Alexandria c. 270 bce. Such a date is necessary as G. bases most of his argument on the premise that Greek literature – and especially Plato – has significantly contributed to the shape of the Bible. This influence has seldom been doubted for later books of the Hebrew Bible (e.g. parts of Proverbs, Ben Sira and the Wisdom of Solomon), and modern scholarship tends to agree that the creation account of Genesis 1 may allude to concepts also known from Ionian philosophy, but whether these points of contact are a result of influence or simply signs of an Eastern Mediterranean koinê is highly debated.
On the basis of a preconceived conclusion, G. embarks on a detailed comparison of the biblical creation accounts with Plato's Timaeus and Critias. Especially the Timaeus has long been correlated with Genesis 1–3, and Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 1.22, 150:4) reports a saying of the Neo-Platonist Numenios: ‘For what is Plato, but Moses speaking in Attic Greek’. As a result, Plato's work is generally included in any discussion of ancient creation accounts (see most recently P. Schäfer, Die Schlange war klug: Antike Schöpfungsmythen und die Grundlage des westlichen Denkens [2022]). The main body of the work is devoted to a detailed analysis of Genesis 1–3 in the light of Greek cosmogony.
After an introductory chapter on methodology, G. begins by refuting the idea that Genesis 1 is an expression of ancient Near Eastern creation myths, and he rightly classifies the chapter as ‘a hybrid scientific-theological-mythological cosmogony in which a mythological structure is imposed on an underlying substructure of science’ (p. 43). To readers familiar with current biblical scholarship on the passage, this is not really surprising (see e.g. J.C Gertz, Das erste Buch Mose (Genesis): Die Urgeschichte Gen 1–11 [2018]). What is surprising is that G. choses to ignore almost all current continental scholarship of the biblical text under scrutiny; this decision sometimes yields results that are not as new as G. proposes. A third chapter offers a useful survey of Greek scientific cosmogonies from Thales of Milet to Zeno of Citium. Like Plato's works, G. proposes that Genesis 1 ‘should be understood as part of … a national literary enterprise under the direction of the ruling class elites’ (p. 75). The reason why biblical authors seem to ignore philosophy and detailed scientific argumentation is found by G. in the aim of the biblical authors ‘to promote simple orthodox belief in a supreme cosmic deity as benevolent creator of the kosmos among an intended audience of youths, and ordinary citizens of the community’ (p. 75). This prompts the question how elites and more ordinary citizens relate to each other and which (literary) strategies are employed to ensure such promotion. G. skirts the issue and simply states that ‘stories’ were the best mode of education.
In the following chapter G. turns to the question of the relationship between Genesis 1–3 and Plato's Timaeus. The chapter exemplifies several of the methodological problems that permeate the study based on the assumption that ‘the Pentateuch was authored at Alexandria ca. 270 bce by the same team of Jewish and Samaritan educated elites who produced the LXX translation for the Great Library’ (p. 85). While allusions to the Timaeus are noticeable in the Greek translation (and G. provides several useful charts tabling the parallels and allusions), Platonic influence on the Hebrew text is much more difficult to prove. Continuing to work from the assumption of influence, G. devotes the following chapters to a detailed comparison of Platonic parallels to Genesis 1–11. Since not all aspects of the biblical creation accounts are mirrored in Plato, G. is forced to supplement his argument with other Greek texts where Plato neglects certain aspects (such as the emergence of dry land, plants and animals): ‘The authors of Genesis 1 appear to have preferentially drawn on Zeno's writings on such scientific matters’ (p. 140). Again, one wonders whether the absence of several concepts from Plato are really best explained by the intended target audience. Maybe the noted absence of philosophy that features so prominently in Plato is simply due to the fact that Genesis 1–3 is part of an earlier intellectual tradition as the numerous parallels to Ionian thinkers appear to suggest. It seems that several (earlier) dialogues in literature – to use a term coined by J. Haubold – are at play in the Hebrew text. The penultimate chapter expands the textual basis and looks at possible influences of Critias on Genesis 2–11 before a final chapter argues that the attempt ‘to introduce Platonic philosophical notions of cosmic monotheism and benevolent terrestrial polytheism to the Jewish and Samaritan peoples’ (p. 246) was thwarted by proponents of a more aggressive expression of Yahwism that favoured monolatry. G. sees this development invariably as an intellectual decline as it prevented Judah from becoming the first nation under philosophical rule instead of a nation ruled by priests. Such a view of the development of Jewish monotheism reminds one sharply of the nineteenth-century paradigm that saw the development of Judaism as nothing but a fossilisation of the true prophetic religion of the pre-exilic period.
This is G.'s third monograph on the subject of Platonic influence on the Bible, and several of the reservations voiced by critics of his earlier works also apply to this study. One of the main problems of G.'s study is that he ties himself into the tight corset of postulated Platonic influence on the primeval history and supplements this with an exceptional late dating of the Hebrew Pentateuch. There is no doubt that we find Hellenistic influence in several passages from the Hebrew Bible and that several texts might have been composed after Alexander the Great, but whether these late texts are directly influenced by Greek sources is not as clear as G. suggests. The work suffers from a lack of distinction between analogical and genealogical comparisons between texts as G. seems to lump them both together by assuming direct influence. This presupposition robs the biblical text of its ability to partake fully in the intellectual milieu of the wider Eastern Mediterranean when the final product (i.e. the Pentateuch) is simply seen as an epigone to much more sophisticated Greek philosophy. Nevertheless, we have to thank G. for once again drawing detailed attention to the manifold parallels Greek literature can offer to the Hebrew Bible. How we explain these parallels remains a question still to be answered.
