272 BCE – A Terminus a Quo

  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

Everybody knows what a pyrrhic victory is, but nobody knows Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus, king of Epirus (319–272 bce), was a famous Greek general belonging to the generation after Alexander the Great, who was later mostly remembered for the costly victories over the Romans in 280 and 279 bce. He evidently was a highly regarded general in antiquity, who almost sixty years before Hannibal brought the war to the gates of Rome. He lost his life in street fighting in Argos in 272 bce.

The main source regarding his life we are in possession of today is his biography in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, opposing the highly regarded Roman general Marius. However, Plutarch (46–119 ce) did have older sources. Besides, Pyrrhus is well attested from coins carrying his portrait.

Today Pyrrhus is forgotten, or so it seems. In antiquity he never was, as Livy informs us in a famous anecdote about a meeting between Hannibal and Scipio Africanus some years after the Battle of Zama. Scipio asks Hannibal about the greatest generals. Hannibal’s answer: first Alexander, then Pyrrhus, and finally myself. Scipio then asks Hannibal: What if you beat me? and Hannibal answers: Then I am the greatest![1]

Of course this is a typical tale as they loved to narrate them in classical sources, but it was told again and again, by Plutarch,[2] and by Appian (95–165 ce).[3]

However, why should Pyrrhus be of interest in a biblical context? Maybe we shall better understand the reason when we read the report of his death in Plutarch’s Life of Pyrrhus:

The Death of Pyrrhus According to Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (34:1–6)

But Pyrrhus, seeing the stormy sea that surged about him, took off the coronal with which his helmet was distinguished, and gave it to one of his companions; then, relying on his horse, he plunged in among the enemy who were pursuing him.

   Here he was wounded by a spear which pierced his breastplate – not a mortal, nor even a severe wound – and turned upon the man who had struck him, who was an Argive, not of illustrious birth, but the son of a poor old woman. His mother, like the rest of the women, was at this moment watching the battle from the house-top, and when she saw that her son was engaged in conflict with Pyrrhus, she was filled with distress in view of the danger to him, and lifting up a tile with both her hands threw it at Pyrrhus. It fell upon his head below his helmet and crushed the vertebrae at the base of his neck, so that his sight was blurred and his hands dropped the reins. Then he sank down from his horse and fell near the tomb of Licymnius, unrecognised by most who saw him. But a certain Zopyrus, who was serving under Antigonus, and two or three others, ran up to him, saw who he was, and dragged him into a door-way just as he was beginning to recover from the blow. And when Zopyrus drew an Illyrian short-sword with which to cut off his head, Pyrrhus gave him a terrible look, so that Zopyrus was frightened; his hands trembled, and yet he essayed the deed; but being full of alarm and confusion his blow did not fall true, but along the mouth and chin, so that it was only slowly and with difficulty that he severed the head.

   Presently what had happened was known to many, and Alcyoneus, running to the spot, asked for the head as if he would see whose it was. But when he had got it he rode away to his father, and cast it down before him as he sat among his friends. Antigonus, however, when he saw and recognised the head, drove his son away, smiting him with his staff and calling him impious and barbarous; then, covering his face with his cloak he burst into tears, calling to mind

   Antigonus his grandfather and Demetrius his father, who were examples in his own family of a reversal of fortune. The head and body of Pyrrhus, then, Antigonus caused to be adorned for burial and burned; and when Alcyoneus found Helenus in an abject state and wearing a paltry cloak, and spoke to him kindly and brought him into the presence of his father, Antigonus was pleased with his conduct, and said: “This is better, my son, than what thou didst before; but not even now hast thou done well in allowing this clothing to remain, which is a disgrace the rather to us who are held to be the victors.” Then, after showing kindness to Helenus and adorning his person, he sent him back to Epeirus, and he dealt mildly with the friends of Pyrrhus when he became master of their camp and of their whole force.

(Plutarch. Delphi Complete Works of Plutarch (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 13. Kindle Edition)'

As we know from the Book of Judges 9:50–55, Pyrrhus was evidently not the only general who lost his life under such circumstances. In Judges, the unlucky hero is Abimelech:

Then went Abimelech to Thebez, and encamped against Thebez, and took it. But there was a strong tower within the city, and thither fled all the men and women, and all they of the city, and shut it to them, and gat them up to the top of the tower. And Abimelech came unto the tower, and fought against it, and went hard unto the door of the tower to burn it with fire. And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech's head, and all to brake his skull. Then he called hastily unto the young man his armourbearer, and said unto him, Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A woman slew him. And his young man thrust him through, and he died. And when the men of Israel saw that Abimelech was dead, they departed every man unto his place.

Evidently it is the same narrative, with several deviations as far as the details are concerned. But is it also the same act? If we assume that the biblical account of Abimelech’s death has been inspired by the story of Pyrrhus’ death, we have the first absolute terminus a quo for the composition of at least the literature to which the Book of Judges belongs, i.e. 272 bce. However, before we jump to that conclusion we have to discuss whether there is any escape from such a conclusion. After all, street fighting was a common part of ancient warfare, and Pyrrhus and Abimelech were most likely not the only warriors to die in this way.

Standing alone, there is perhaps no special reason to argue that the story of Abimelech’s death echoes the death of Pyrrhus. Two warriors killed in the same fashion would not be a problem. However, the story of Abimelech does not stand alone. After Abimelech follows Jephtah with the story in Judges 11 about Jephtah’s daughter whom Jephtah is forced to sacrifice because of a vow he had made to Yahweh.

Now, it is common among commentators to look for similarity between this legend and the Greek legend of Agamemnon who had to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia at Aulis to soothe the goddess Artemis whom he had offended. Otherwise, the goddess would have prevented him from sailing to Troy with the Greek army. The similarity is bvious insofar as it is about the sacrifice of a young woman.[4] However, the motif of the sacrifice of the girl is very different from the biblical one. A much closer parallel is the Greek story preserved by Apollodoros (c. 180–120 bce)[5] of the son of the king of Crete Idomeneus who had vowed to sacrifice the first living being he would encounter if Poseidon allowed him to return from Troy to his homeland. This first living being happened to be his son.[6]

Again, taken in isolation there might be no literary or even traditional connection between the stories of the sacrifices of, respectively, Jephtah’s daughter, and Iphigenia the daughter of King Agamemnon, and certainly both a historical one if someone will insist on the historicity of either event. Abimelech’s death and Iphigeneia’s sacrifice – if they stood isolated – would only provide a possibility, but not a fact. However, since these stories appear almost side by side in the Book of Judges, we can safely exclude the possibility that it is only due to coincidence that they appear together. As Lady Bracknell expresses it in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest:

“To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

To claim that either case is a coincidence is out of the question because they both point in the same direction, depending on loans from the Greek world. We might go even further and say that the whole character of Abimelech is modelled on Pyrrhus, who began his military career at a very early age, and continued fighting until his death. The girl Iphigenia is of course a mythological figure; a spin off from the arsenal of tales about the war against Troy and an example of how literature was created and elaborated founded on the basis of the central story of the war against Troy.

However, if readers are still not satisfied then we move on to the next section of the Book of Judges: The stories about the superhero Samson. Again, we are dealing with a mythological figure and do not need to worry about historical details because there are none. Samson’s first proof of his strength is his bravery when he tears a lion apart with his own hands (Judges 14:5–6). However, in spite of his bravery and strength, he ends up being the victim of a treacherous woman when Delilah delivers him powerless to the Philistines. Samson ends his life with an act of bravado when he kills himself smashing the temple of Dagon in Gaza and crushing all the Philistines inside the temple (Judges 16:25–30).

Again, the similarity of the figure of Samson to the Greek superhero Heracles is so obvious that few will doubt a relation between them, which includes as its major elements the tearing of the lion and the contribution of a woman to the downfall of the hero.

All of this indicates that in the Book of Judges – probably in its entirety – we are safely within the sphere of Greek tradition. The biblical stories represent rewritten Greek tradition and the narrators have felt absolutely free to present their versions in a form that suited the authors’ purposes. But there can be no doubt about the origin of these stories.

Since one of these parallel figures is a historical person, Abimelech alias Pyrrhus, we have a terminus a quo for the composition of probably not only the Book of Judges but of the composition of so-called historical literature in the Old Testament. Philippe Wajdenbaum’s project is thus vindicated.[7] The biblical historical literature does not go back to some unknown past. It belongs to the third and maybe even the second centuries bce.

Russell Gmirkin has, in his works on the Hellenistic tradition in the Bible, argued in favor of a terminus a quo for the composition of the Pentateuch around or even shortly before 270 bce.[8] He is right. The terminus ante quem will be later than 270 bce and, as I argued back in my article from 1993 on the Old Testament as a Hellenistic Book, the terminus ad quem is the appearance of most biblical books in some form or the other among the Dead Sea scrolls.[9] In the case of Exodus, the tragedy by Ezekiel the Tragedian from c. 200 may serve as an earlier terminus ante quem.[10]

The year 272 BCE will place the emergence of the historical literature in the Old Testament within exactly the same period, and serves as another argument in favor of an original Enneateuch, including all the books from Genesis to Second Kings as one continuous work.[11]

In this way, if we look at these termini we still have about 150 years to play with. It should be enough of a span of time to produce the literature of the rather limited in size Old Testament’s historical books.

Kratz, R,G, 2000. Die Komposition der erzählende Bücher des Alten Testaments: Grundwissen der Bibelkritik. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Gmirkin, R.E. 2006. Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch. Copenhagen International Series, 15. Library of the Hebrew Bible Old Testament Studies, 433. New York and London: t & t clark.

----------- 2017. Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible. Copenhagen International Seminar. London: Routledge.

----------- 2022. Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts: Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in the Primordial History. Copenhagen International Seminar. London: Routledge

Lemche, Niels Peter, 1993a. ‘The Old Testament-A Hellenistic Book? Scandi­navian Journal of the Old Testament 7, pp. 163-93.

Wajdenbaum, P. 2011. Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible. Copenhagen International Seminar: London: Equinox.