When was the Old Testament created?

Somerville said:

Multiple artifacts indicate that the Hebrews were not as monotheistic as the Old Testament claims.

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The Old Testament makes it clear that the early Jews fell into the worship of other gods quite often, so I'm not sure where the confusion is there.

Fishking said:

The Old Testament makes it clear that the early Jews fell into the worship of other gods quite often, so I'm not sure where the confusion is there.

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The Old Testament does not match up very well with the archaeological evidence presently available.

I don't see how in the world it could've originated after the dead sea scrolls, and how it could have been written in such a brief span. Given the obvious grammar and linguistic differences, multiple authors seems most likely. All 3 of the major hypotheses that this guy disregards simply because they can't be easily solved agree that these texts were combined over centuries. Genesis and Exodus most clearly fall into this category and were clearly combined after the fact

Somerville said:

Though some of the words found in the Old Testament (Tanakh) were definitely written prior to the dates suggested by Gmirkin, I believe his argument is to the effect that the text as we know it was not complete or compiled until the 4th Century BCE, that the Hebrew text was put together only shortly before the creation of the Septuagint.

Archaeology conducted by scholars who don't have a Bible in one hand as they dig has failed to find any evidence of the kingdoms described in the Tanakh.

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That's like saying the NT wasn't compiled until 400s AD, but obviously some (in reality almost all) of it was written before. That doesn't get to the heart of the matter any more than the hypotheses he criticizes. Further, he contrasts his theory sharply with the JEDP, so it's more than an issue of just not complete. He's saying the alexandrian scholars did a lot more than P has been accused of - basically taking these works he was fond of and adding to it with his own fantasy

I would like to see specifically the inspirational root of those writers that this guy believes is responsible for the OT. What exactly in the platonic laws would've been so compelling to them? His observation that a theocracy and what passes for ethical texts could allow priests to rule forever? What do you call ancient egypt and mesopotamia? That could've been the motivation behind different parts of the OT hundreds of years before it was "compiled" by whoever

I'm pretty sure modern christians/jews/muslims would **** a brick at the idea of the ancient greeks inspiring leviticus. As CA pointed out, it borrows so heavily from oral myth and cultural prohibitions that, at most, i could see the library around 250 BC being used to create an anthology of existing texts that were already individually fairly widely distributed

spud_meister said:

Considering how many times the text would have been written down, compiled and edited since the Jews discovered literacy, it wouldn't surprise me if it picked up influences from the predominant cultures of the near east. Of course, there's also the chance the author has causality backwards, and Plato was influenced by the Bible.

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I don't think it could've been backwards. From the near east, only the Phoenicians really could've influenced the ancient Greek writers, and they didn't add much of anything to the OT. But the most damning evidence to either side of the coin is the writings from the two cultures just have nothing in common. You have to really twist things to arrive at the conclusion that one influenced the other more than the longstanding fables and legal traditions of their own culture

But it is interesting to me how the supposed Priestly writer of the OT that Gmirkin sweeps aside, if he did make his 'contribution' around 250 BC, might have been influenced by the immediacy and accessibility of Plato's laws. But he would've had to take a simple observation about the power of theocratic literature and promoted it in the most whacked out cruel way possible (all that "put to death" crap). The specific prohibitions would've had nothing to do with ancient Greeks

Somerville said:

Multiple artifacts indicate that the Hebrews were not as monotheistic as the Old Testament claims.

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Of course not, this is blatantly obvious. Just look at the wording of the Second of the Ten Commandments:

You will put no other gods before me.

This all by itself clearly shows that they believed in multiple gods, it is a far cry from what Muhammad later taught, "There is no God but God". And early on in the Hebrew theology (roughly 10th century BCE) there was a female Goddess, commonly known as Asherah. Some of that even made it into the writings of the Scriptures, such as in Jeremiah 7:16-18:

pray thou not for this people . . . The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead [their] dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke me to anger." - KJB

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And later, in Jeremiah 44:15-18:

Then all the men who knew that their wives were burning incense to other gods, along with all the women who were present—a large assembly—and all the people living in Lower and Upper Egypt, said to Jeremiah, "We will not listen to the message you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD! We will certainly do everything we said we would: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our fathers, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and were well off and suffered no harm. But ever since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have had nothing and have been perishing by sword and famine. - KJB

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The difference is that even in those early days, there were only 2 deities, depicted as husband and wife, King and Queen of Heaven. This is a far cry from the pantheon of deities that every other culture had at the time (as a wise man once said about the Roman Pantheon, "But we Romans are rich. We've got a lot of gods. We've got a god for everything. The only thing we don't have a god for is premature ejaculation... but I hear that's coming quickly.")

And no, anybody who has studied the Scriptures will attest that as I said they were oral history, written around the time of the Babylonian Exile. The scriptures reek of the influence of Babylon in their writings, specifically the story of Utnapishtim.

RAMOSS said:

From what I gather, even though monotheism was pushed by the Priestly class, it wasn't until around the 3rd or 4th century bce that a lot of the worship of other gods was stamped out.. for example Ashereah worship. There are indications that went on to maybe as late as the 2nd century BCE.

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The ancient Hebrews were never truly "Monotheistic" in the sense we know today. Rather they often believed in many gods, they simply believed their God was the most powerful of all and they had to worship Him before any others.