Suppose Judges was late

A few weeks ago I noted that the book of Judges remained subject to interpolation into the LXX / Qumran period. Yesterday morn, scrolling through the University of Arizona's "The Bible and Interpretation" blog, I ran across Niels Lemche.

Lemche is, I reckon, the thinking-man's Gmirkin. The Baghistan has had more interest in Yonatan Adler. We'll take some time to evaluate Lemche, today.

Lemche has marshalled parallels between the Abimelech and Jephthah stories, and events in Greek history and myth (respectively). Myth of course has no copyright, as witness the vast Etruscan and then Roman takings from those Greeks. But myth can be written, and when it is written it takes on a standard.

Take Jephthah. There were many stories of the reluctant sacrifice of the king's own child. For Greeks, the story with the most pathos was that of Iphigenia which they're still telling. Lemche points out that Jephthah is not such a telling; Judges here tracks closer, instead, the Cretan story of Idomeneus (except that here the sacrifice was his son).

Lemche further thinks Samson is simply Heracles, like Milton thought. The killstroke in Lemche's eyes is that Abimelech ended his career in a streetfight just like Pyrrhus was killed, brained by some woman hurling tiles from a rooftop. (Even if Pyrrhus was wearing a helmet, by then he was very old, so this might have been one concussion too many.)

Lemche's approach is similar to the approach other scholars take toward "Judith". "Judith" seems versed in Seleucid military concepts, its heroine follows Hasmonaean-era halakha (and political-theory), and the narrative may even track Eupolemus. Given that "Judith" doesn't know Thing One about Rome and that the Greek Additions to Esther borrow from Greek Judith, "Judith" in its original (now lost) Hebrew is unanimously dated ~100 BC.

In favour of Lemche's thesis, Judges does not much get cited in later stories. Jezebel knows enough of her adopted people to throw the case of Zimri at usurping Jehu. The prophets and CBH-to-LBH psalms are always referring to patriarchs Ephraim and Jacob, and sometimes Sihon or Og. I don't see where opponents to the various kings - we'll start with northern prophets Amos and Hosea - refer to the Bible's most cromulent example of a Man Who Would Be King. Judges doesn't even get cited much in the Samaritan Chronicle which has much lore on Joshua then Eli, but little in between. Judges famously concentrates on the northern tribes, in between introducing that cypher Othniel and generally trashing Benjamin in its latter movements. The piyyuṭ genre seems not to have got around to Judges' heroes until ha-Qallir and Yanni in late-antiquity.

Against Lemche: the dialect of the prosaic portions of Judges, which the Samaritans (and Noth) would extend to 1 Reigns/Samuel 12, is CBH. Even some of the glosses therein look like they might better match Zionist use of Psalm 78, or precede it. By "Zionist" I mean the Joachim court's reaction to Jeremiah. Further, if Judith can be an observant Jew, and if 1 Maccabees and Esther (neither terribly religious) can talk about ancestral laws; how come none of the several villains of Judges are messing with the laws of Israel? The Hellenistic era was full of this ferment. It doesn't happen before the Persians, which - for most of us - points to a prePersian milieu for Judges. (Less-so Joshua perhaps.)

Lemche might counter that Joachim's court should have cited the Judges stories but did not. But then we don't really have this court's own words, like we have Nahum's own words and Isaiah 1-33 around Hezeqiah's court. In Jeremiah's book, we just have what scribe Baruch deigned tell us about that last independent court.