I’m not sure why Stephen Goranson prefers the research of Camilla Recalcati to that of Jan Joosten. Camilla Recalcati is a student who has only recently gotten her PhD and is currently engaged in the study of Egyptianisms in the LXX as a post-PhD project at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This research has not yet been published, and as far as I can tell, she has at most a couple articles published in? submitted to? peer reviewed journals. Jan Joosten, by contrast, has had 8 books published as well as around 270 articles since the 1980s and is considered “one of the most highly regarded biblical scholars in the world” and a giant in the fields of textual criticism and Septuagint studies.
In 2020 Joosten was indeed expelled from Oxford for conviction of possession of unlawful sexual images, but I fail to see how that has any bearing on his past status as an expert in his field. This seems to be a classic argument ad hominem. An article found at https://retractionwatch.com/2021/08/04/ ... heir-work/ discusses the debate on Joosten’s status as a scholar subsequent to his conviction. I think the current consensus is conveyed in one of many quotes found in that article: “If the crimes are not related to their work, I do not think they have any bearing on the soundness or publication-worthiness of their research, whether that research was published before or after the crimes.” I find Joosten’s theories on the linguistic dating of the Hebrew Bible to be highly questionable, but his personal life, deplorable as it is, has no bearing on my evaluation nor should it.
Returning to the matter at hand, Stephen Goranson again shows his basic unfamiliarity with my published research and my methods in his characterization of my position on the LXX translation. I hold that the Pentateuch was published in both Hebrew and Greek (Septuagint) editions at Alexandria ca. 270 BCE, a position quite similar to that of Niels Peter Lemche and Gad Barnea, who differ mainly in suggesting the authors of the Pentateuch included Alexandrian Jews with access to the Great Library rather than Jewish and Samaritan scholars invited to Alexandria under Ptolemaic invitation as indicated by the Letter of Pseudo-Aristeas. Their arguments with respect to the authorial involvement of Alexandrian Jews are as yet unpublished, and so I reserve judgment, but I don’t believe some local participation is absolutely excluded and I am always willing to be swayed by new evidence (contra Goranson’s assertions): I just haven’t seen the evidence yet.
On a similar note, I don’t believe local participation in the translation project is absolutely excluded, although again I have yet to see the evidence. As I discuss in my 2022 book Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts (see especially 88-89), I find evidence for the direct involvement of the authors in the translation primarily in Genesis 1-2, where both the phraseology of the LXX translation and the underlying Hebrew are strongly influenced by concepts and terminology of Plato’s Timaeus. For the rest of the Pentateuch there exists no such “smoking gun” and I am quite comfortable with the possibility that the authors may have delegated part of the actual work of translation to others, if that is what new peer-reviewed published evidence suggests. Perhaps Stephen could usefully post a link to a published paper down the road when Recalcati’s work reaches that stage.
In 2020 Joosten was indeed expelled from Oxford for conviction of possession of unlawful sexual images, but I fail to see how that has any bearing on his past status as an expert in his field. This seems to be a classic argument ad hominem. An article found at https://retractionwatch.com/2021/08/04/ ... heir-work/ discusses the debate on Joosten’s status as a scholar subsequent to his conviction. I think the current consensus is conveyed in one of many quotes found in that article: “If the crimes are not related to their work, I do not think they have any bearing on the soundness or publication-worthiness of their research, whether that research was published before or after the crimes.” I find Joosten’s theories on the linguistic dating of the Hebrew Bible to be highly questionable, but his personal life, deplorable as it is, has no bearing on my evaluation nor should it.
Returning to the matter at hand, Stephen Goranson again shows his basic unfamiliarity with my published research and my methods in his characterization of my position on the LXX translation. I hold that the Pentateuch was published in both Hebrew and Greek (Septuagint) editions at Alexandria ca. 270 BCE, a position quite similar to that of Niels Peter Lemche and Gad Barnea, who differ mainly in suggesting the authors of the Pentateuch included Alexandrian Jews with access to the Great Library rather than Jewish and Samaritan scholars invited to Alexandria under Ptolemaic invitation as indicated by the Letter of Pseudo-Aristeas. Their arguments with respect to the authorial involvement of Alexandrian Jews are as yet unpublished, and so I reserve judgment, but I don’t believe some local participation is absolutely excluded and I am always willing to be swayed by new evidence (contra Goranson’s assertions): I just haven’t seen the evidence yet.
On a similar note, I don’t believe local participation in the translation project is absolutely excluded, although again I have yet to see the evidence. As I discuss in my 2022 book Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts (see especially 88-89), I find evidence for the direct involvement of the authors in the translation primarily in Genesis 1-2, where both the phraseology of the LXX translation and the underlying Hebrew are strongly influenced by concepts and terminology of Plato’s Timaeus. For the rest of the Pentateuch there exists no such “smoking gun” and I am quite comfortable with the possibility that the authors may have delegated part of the actual work of translation to others, if that is what new peer-reviewed published evidence suggests. Perhaps Stephen could usefully post a link to a published paper down the road when Recalcati’s work reaches that stage.
Statistics: Posted by Russell Gmirkin — Tue Dec 31, 2024 9:31 am