Made in Alexandria: The Origin of the Yahweh Cult

[Aractus]

As educated people know, the oldest copy or oldest reference to the material is used to date ancient works. It is not necessary to have a copy to date material. Of course the exact content is open to question. Clearly the idea of canonical did not exist prior to the 3rd c. AD. For example Josephus says Jews have only 22 sacred books and unfortunately does not name them.

They STILL have the 22 "books" (ie scrolls). How do you not comprehend this? Do you intentionally ignore the lunacy of your arguments. I can prove it to you with a single verse of the Bible:

• Luke 24:44: Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the [1] Law of Moses and the [2] Prophets and the [3] Psalms must be fulfilled.”

Find me a Septuigant manuscript that's arranged this way. You can't, because none of them are. Only the hebrew manuscripts are arranged Law - Prophets - Writings/Psalms. All the Septuigant manuscripts are arranged: Pentateuch, Historical Books, Wisdom Books, Prophets.

It is not necessary to have a copy to date material. Of course the exact content is open to question. Clearly the idea of canonical did not exist prior to the 3rd c. AD.

1. You clearly don't extend the same philosophy to the Masoretic Text. 2. Try again. You don't know about the Jamnia Council in 90AD held by the Jews. The discussion was limited to certain books, but the canon of 22 scrolls was upheld unchanged.

As to earliest reference to the Septuagint Josephus towards the end of the 1st c. AD quotes from the forgery called the Letter of Aristeas, which dates to at least the early 1st c. AD. Thus the Septuagint clearly existed as this forgery was created to give it authenticity. That knocks more than two centuries off of your 245 AD Hexapla claim which is not debatable. There is less clear evidence which is debatable dating the letter and therefore the substance of the letter to the mid-late 2nd c. BC. We can go into that if you like but I doubt you will.

Wrong. Totally. You keep saying "the Septuagint". All the Letter of Aristeas "attests" to is a translation of the Torah, that's all. You have no evidence, at all, that that translation is the same one as found in the Hexapla which is where we get "the Septuagint" that we know. The oldest copies we have are 4th century AD, and all have "Theodatian version" books in them, none are complete. All the other Greek translations in the Hexapla are believed to come from the mid-late 2nd century AD (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion). Your claim is that the fifth column comes from 3rd/2d century BC, yet you can't establish any evidence for this, you don't know where it came from, because by the time Origen gets his hands on it, in the 3rd century there are now multiple Greek versions about. What we do know is that this version got "special treatment" and Origen modified it substantially. This fully explains the parallelism with the NT on quoted verses without the need for it to exist in or before the 1st century AD. Origen is single-handedly responsible for making this version, instead of the other 3, popular. If he had preferred the 4th column and given that special treatment, then the "Symmachus" version would be the one copied and preserved in other codices like Vaticanus.

Where Daniel is found is immaterial as is the Cinderella story of Ester.

Your theory also totally fails to explain why Daniel goes from Aramaic to Hebrew and back to Aramaic.

There is no evidence Hebrew was ever a spoken language.

Holy fuck you're dumb. How about the Masoretic vowel points? How about extensive Greek transliteration? How about the Aramaic language??

The wag can simply say if the Septuagint were the translation there would be no need for a forgery to "authenticate" it.

If you really believe the bullshit you're telling me (and I smell a Poe) then explain Isaiah 7:14 to me.

Now go and practise falling down.