I’ve just completed the section of The Hidden Bones Apocalypse that analyzes the question: When were the special marker phrases that define that Apocalypse inserted into the biblical text?
The initial time window is defined on the early end by the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek. I’ve used a date of 250 BCE for that, although some would say it might be as early as 275 BCE.
The latest date of insertion is 111 BCE, defined based on the current dating of the destruction of the Samaritan temple by John Hyrcanus. A date of 128 BCE was the consensus for that event for quite some time but new archeological information – mainly coins found in excavations of the area – has convinced some scholars that the later date is preferable.
The early date is then adjusted in several steps:
1. Septuagint translations of Joshua and Ezekiel do not appear to have been completed until around 200 BCE and the marker phrase is not refelected in any way in those translations. So I’d conclude that it was added after 200 BCE.
2. Until the hereditary Zadokite high priestly succession was ended in 175 BCE, control of the temple administrative establishment, includinbg the scribal functions, was almost certainly too tight to allow a scribe to make such substantial alterations to the biblical text. Until that time there had been no threat to the religious lives and practices of the Jews that would suggest the need to hide such a message for future discovery.
3. Until the anti-religious edicts of Antiochus IV were published in 167 BCE, even though the high priesthood had been essentially sold, first to Jason in 175 BCE and then to Menelaus three years later, neither seems to have exerted any real influence on temple affairs. It seems likely that the adminsitrative bureaucracy of the temple would have continued little changed except for those individuals who turned enthusiastically toward the Hellenization project that both Jason and Menelaus favored. It is more likely that the marker phrase was inserted between 175 and 167 BCE than at any earlier time but that is not the most likely timing.
In 167 BCE the practice of the Jewish religion was banned by Antiochus IV. Included in the edicts was the order that all books of the law be destroyed and anyone found in possession of any books be executed. The edicts applied to the Samaritan community and its temple as well as the Judean community and the temple in Jerusalem. We cannot know how thorough the destruction of texts was – it certainly was not complete. Some did survive but in what condition we cannot tell.
4. In 164 BCE the edicts were rescinded and the Jews were given leave to resume their religious practices. The record finds Judas Maccabeus collecting surviving scrolls of the law at that time. There must have been at that time a need to restore damaged copies of the scrolls of the law and to replace those that had been destroyed. A major scribal enterprise would have been undertaken. The time within which our scribe was most likely able to do his work would begin.
Our earliest likely date, then, is 164 BCE.
We can also adjust our latest likely date in similar steps.
5. While the destruction of the Samaritan temple did not apparently occur until 111 BCE, there was an earlier event that might well have triggered an earlier cessation of cooperation between the two communities. Some time after Jonathan, the first Hasmonean high priest, took office, the Seleucid ruler Demetrius II granted him power over three districts in the southern terriroty of Samaria. Not only did the Samarian / Samaritan community lose that territory and its revenue but Demetrius also exempted from taxation those taking sacrifices to the temple in Jerusalem. No such exemption was available to those sacrificing at Mt. Gerizim. One account of the affair – by the historian Josephus – apparently gives a full monopoly on Yahwistic worship to the Jerusalem temple, suggesting that none would be allowed at Gerizim. That would certainly be cause for great tension between the two communities. That concession was granted about the year 145 BCE and so we could tighten the likely window of our scribe’s work to that latest date.
6. Jonathan became high priest in 152 BCE, the first of a line of Hasmonean high priests whose rule would extend for over a hundred years. Jonathan is not known for any specific high priestly actions during his ten year reign but he was a strong and competent leader. Prior to his accession the high priesthood had been vacant for seven years and it had been held for three years prior to that vacancy by Alcimus, who seems to have exerted no effective control over temple activities. Jonathan would likely have at least brought the temple administrative structure under control upon taking office.
But the beginning of the Hasmonean rule was about much more than administrative control. The substantial apocalyptic literature of the middle and later second century is very clearly anti-Hasmonean. The non-apocalyptic but sectarian literature is as well. For a variety of important reasons a sizeable segment of the Jewish population, and certainly of the priestly population, considered the Hasmoneans unqualified to hold the high priestly office. They considered the temple – and for some the entire city of Jerusalem – to have been made ritually impure. The calendar of the Hasmonean temple was the 354-day lunar calendar that, for those who held to the 364-day calendar of much apocalyptic and sectarian thinking, miscalculated the critical dates of the festivals.
Our scribe would have been among those who disapproved of the Hasmonean high priesthood for all of those reasons and more. He would almost certainly not have remained a part of the temple administrative structure – at least for long – after Jonathan took office.
A latest likely date of 152 BCE seems appropriate.
The answer, then, to the question of when, is:
164 BCE to 152 BCE
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