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Saturday, June 24, 2023

Review of Gmirkin, Plato's Timaeus and the Biblical creation accounts

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical creation accounts.
Russell E. Gmirkin, Plato's Timaeus and the Biblical creation accounts: cosmic monotheism and terrestrial polytheism in the primordial history. Copenhagen international seminar. Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2022. Pp. xv, 344. ISBN 9781032020822

Review by
Nicholas Banner, Independent scholar. nicholasbanner@gmail.com

... Gmirkin’s arguments are welcome in that they remind the reader of this, and remind us of the shakiness of the edifice upon which the accepted scholarly certainties of the field are sometimes established. However, to this reviewer’s mind, Gmirkin’s take on his own Hellenistic composition hypothesis is itself rather too ‘maximalist’: much that is found in this book would be welcome as intriguing parallels suggesting the need for more research, but fails to convince as an open-and-shut case for widespread Platonic and other Greek borrowing in Genesis. ...

I noted the publication of the book here, with links to earlier posts on Gmirkin's work and some comments of my own.

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