272 BCE – A Terminus a QuoNope, not buying it.272 BCE is the first an until now only indisputable terminus a quo for the emergence of Old Testament literature. In 272 the Greek general Pyrrhus was killed during a street battle in the city of Argos, when a woman threw a tile from the roof of a house and hid Pyrrhus immobilizing him. Pyrrhus was eliminated by a bystander. Pyrrhus’ fate was undoubtedly the inspiration for the story in Judg 9, followed by the sacrifice of Jiphta’s daughter, so often likened to the fate of Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia, and the story of Samson, very easily identified as Heracles.
Chapter from If I Forget You, Jerusalem! Studies on the Old Testament (Equinox Publishing (May 15, 2024).
By Niels Lemche
University of Copenhagen April 2024
The three comparisons are very weak. They wrest stories from the Book of Judges and from widely varied places in Classical literature from their contexts, identify them on the basis of a few parallels, and claim that the argument constitutes a convincing cumulative case.
In context, the stories are very different. Abimelech is finished off with a spear by one of his own men at his own request whereas Pyrrhus is beheaded by an enemy. Prof. Lemche acknowledges the weakness of the comparison of Jephthah's daughter to Iphigenia, but still advances it as part of his argument. We can add that in the best-known version of the story, by Euripides, Iphigenia isn't even sacrificed. Unlike Samson, Heracles was deified through his own self-immolation. I could go on and on, but this illustrates my point.
Multiplying weak arguments does not add up to a cumulatively strong one.
I don't have a firm opinion about the composition date of the Book of Judges. The Hebrew looks more like epigraphic Iron Age II Hebrew than Qumran Hebrew, but it is somewhat different from both. And we don't have much in between. Judges seems to remember some old information (although cf. here), but that doesn't establish its date of composition. Neither does the argument advanced in this essay.
UPDATE (30 April): I see that Prof. Lemche has replied to this post in a comment to his essay. I have responded there.
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