The stories existed though. We have fragments of the Greek version which was written a century earlier. I suspect what we are dealing with are oral traditions that Greek scholars wrote down. Recall that the "Jews" were put in place by the Persians who followed Zoroaster. There were no written scriptures in Zoroastrianism until the Sassanids commanded they be written out well over 7 centuries after Cyrus. Knowledge was reserved for the priests and their students.
The one thing that always troubled me about the minimalist idea that all this shit was written directly after the end of the so-called "exile" was that if it had been written by one hand it would have been better done. The duplications and contradictions we see are more indicative of someone scraping up various traditions and cobbling them together. Of course, oral tales are easily changed. Embellishment follows.
The one thing that always troubled me about the minimalist idea that all this shit was written directly after the end of the so-called "exile" was that if it had been written by one hand it would have been better done. The duplications and contradictions we see are more indicative of someone scraping up various traditions and cobbling them together. Of course, oral tales are easily changed. Embellishment follows.
