From Reader Russ:
Me thinks Plato borrowed some from Sumerian, Babylonian and Egyptian too..
Routledge Press (New York–London)- Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible, as part of the Copenhagen International Seminar series. Its abstract reads as follows:
Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible compares the ancient law collections of the Ancient Near East, the Greeks and the Pentateuch to determine the legal antecedents for the biblical laws. Constitutional features in biblical law are shown to contain striking agreement with those found at Athens and described in Plato’s Laws of ca. 350 BCE. Similarly,biblical statutes contain many striking parallels with Athenian laws, and specifically with those found in Plato’s Laws.The literary structure and legal force of biblical law collections are also shown to correspond closely with Greek rather than Ancient Near Eastern law collections. The Pentateuchal presentation of legal content within a narrative context is also found in a variety of Greek literary forms, especially Greek foundation stories, which closely conform in outline to the biblical story of the exodus,wilderness wanderings, and conquest of the Promised land under Moses and Joshua. The legal and narrative content of the Pentateuch thus reflect substantial Greek influences, especially from Plato’s Laws. Finally, this book argues that the creation of the Hebrew Bible took place according to the program for creating a national ethical literature found in Plato's Laws,reinforcing the importance of this specific text to the authors of the Tora hand Hebrew Bible in the early Hellenistic Era.
Although the book concludes that the Hebrew Bible is largely a product of Greek legal and literary influences in the early Hellenistic Era, readers on this list may find much of interest that is relevant to Ancient Near Eastern studies, highlighted below.
Chapter 1 (Introduction) argues that, since the first external evidence for the Hebrew Bible appears in the Hellenistic Era, it is appropriate to take both Greek and Ancient Near Eastern laws fully into account in seeking to identify the antecedents for biblical legal materials.
Although Chapter 2 (Athenian and Pentateuchal Legal Institutions) is primarily concerned with extensive parallels between Greek constitutions and Pentateuchal governmental institutions and other sometimes explicitly constitutional content, it has an important discussion on the complete absence of the genre of constitutional law in the Ancient Near East down to the end of the Persian Era.
Chapter 3 (Biblical,Ancient Near Eastern and Greek Laws) contains the first systematic comparison of biblical, Greek and Ancient Near Eastern laws, including laws on homicide,assault, theft, marriage, inheritance, sexual offenses, slavery, economic relief, livestock, property crimes, commerce, the military, magic, treason,religion, and ethics. While a few Pentateuchal laws derive from Old Babylonian and Assyrian collections, many have striking parallels with Greek and Athenian laws, and especially with Plato’s Laws.
Chapter 4 (Greek and Ancient Near Eastern Law Collections) compares Ancient Near Eastern, Greek and biblical law collections as literary forms. It is shown that the biblical law collections correspond to Greek law collections rather than either Ancient Near Eastern law collections or the Vassal Treaty of Esarhaddon with respect to sources,purpose, framing structure, divine promulgation, public recitation,ratification, educational utility and prescriptive force.
Chapter 5 (Greek and Biblical Legal Narratives) discusses the integration of legal content with narrative found in both the Pentateuch and Greek writings, but not in the Ancient Near East.
Chapter 6 (The Creation of the Hebrew Bible) argues that the closest comparison to the Hebrew Bible is the approved ethical national literature proposed in Plato’s Laws of ca. 350 bce, and that both the Torah and the earliest Hebrew Bible were created in ca. 270 bcein accordance with the literary program laid out in Plato’s Laws. The model of literary production by educated elites under governmental sponsorship, direction and authorization as found in Plato’s Laws contrasts with the usual Ancient Near Eastern model of the organic growth of the Hebrew Bible in palace,temple and hypothetical prophetic scribal circles. The upshot is that the Tora hand Hebrew Bible are substantially Greek in their conception and major literaryinfluences, a conclusion that is likely to impact Ancient Near Eastern studies inthe future vis a vis the biblical text.
A separate abstract for each chapter may be found at http://russellgmirkin.com/newest-plato-book ,and Chapter 1 may be found either online on the Routledge site or downloadable( with permission from Routledge) at my page on Academia.edu.
