Philology and epigraphy of the ancient Near East · Redating of biblical texts to the first century BCE · Dichotomous dating method
This document presents the scholarly profile of Din d'Arya, an independent researcher working at the intersection of philology, historiography, and cryptanalysis as applied to biblical and parabiblical texts. It sets out the theoretical framework within which his work is situated, particularly the legacy of the Celtic School, as well as the dichotomous dating method he develops in order to propose strictly argued datings of texts. The document also describes a methodology of philological cryptanalysis applied to ancient corpora, before mapping the author's publication ecosystem and academic identifiers. It is intended simultaneously as an author profile, a methodological statement, and an entry point into a body of work currently being disseminated.
Din d'Arya is an independent researcher in biblical studies, philology, and the historiography of the ancient Levant. His work focuses primarily on the rereading and redating of biblical and parabiblical texts — especially Jeremiah, the Wisdom of Solomon, and the Psalms of Solomon — through an approach that combines close linguistic analysis, critical examination of inherited dating traditions, and reconstruction of implicit historical contexts. His perspective is deliberately interdisciplinary, situated at the junction of philology, intellectual history, textual criticism, and historical methodology.
His scholarly position is characterized by a determination to break with chronological and narrative frameworks treated as established when they do not rest on rigorous demonstration. He gives priority to explicit, reproducible, and falsifiable criteria grounded in the language, concepts, institutional structures, and political horizons that the texts allow to be discerned.
Within this framework, Din d'Arya develops and formalizes a dichotomous dating method, articulated with a practice of philological cryptanalysis. The aim is to provide methodological tools capable of overcoming the impasses created by circular datings, confessional presuppositions, or fragile historiographical reconstructions, while restoring to the text itself a central role in determining its own historical horizon.
The Celtic School is, within the ancient Greek tradition, a school of thought comparable to the Aristotelian, Peripatetic, or Platonic schools.
It designates a philological and historical current stemming from the primordial Celtic traditions of Western Europe, subsequent to the flood of the Age of Taurus (3300 BCE). The Celts were conscious of the fragility of life, of the ephemeral character of human existence, and of the importance of transmission and of welcoming life. They possessed an acute awareness of time, of the Earth situated within its cosmic cycle, of deep time, of the precession of the equinoxes, and of the nineteen-year Metonic cycles, which synchronize the Moon and the Sun and would later be rediscovered by Meton around 430 BCE. To understand the Celtic School, one must appropriate the following maxim:
"The eternal is in the instant; then the instant becomes eternal."
This is why the Celts did not fear death: they knew that everything is cyclical, that time itself is cyclical, and that all things are in rotation. The Celts maintained a cultic relation to the serpent-bearing constellation known as Ophiuchus, the thirteenth constellation effaced by the Romans and by their Julian calendar. The Celts knew writing, but they feared it as a prison of life, for they held that life, time, and the cycles of existence should not be immobilized. They wrote on beech bark, deliberately using a medium they intended to be perishable. Celtic commitments were undertaken between lineages, from seal to seal, from word to word.
The beech — Buch in German, book in English — gave rise to the word livre in French. The supreme humiliation, sometimes warranting death or rejection, was to defile the word of one's lineage and seal. The Word, once given, is inscribed in time, not merely on a piece of bark. This is the Celtic spirit and the Celtic School: to be both within time and outside time, wholly at the service of the eternal within the instant, without any intermediary between the eternal and the instant.
It is within this methodological inheritance that Din d'Arya's work is situated. He transposes to the study of biblical and parabiblical texts certain principles of the Celtic School: the primacy of the text over theological or doctrinal reconstructions, attention to lexical and syntactic detail, and the refusal of datings based on authority rather than argumentation.
Dichotomous dating is a method for dating ancient texts that begins from the following postulates:
The dichotomous method begins with a document without any dating presupposition. The proposed dating is then progressively narrowed until it becomes possible to date a text to the year, or even to the month.
When the text is cited or named by another source of any kind, that source provides the upper chronological boundary of the dating.
The study of themes, grammar, and turns of phrase often indicates geographical origin and narrows the temporal and spatial frame.
Within the temporal, geographical, and philological frame, the method searches for a historical context and for the interests served by the writing of the text — the classical cui bono. This is the most difficult stage, since it requires the examination of dozens of hypotheses, like pieces of a puzzle within the temporal frame, before a coherent solution can be found.
Historical study makes it possible to recover who acted, why, where, when, how, and for what purpose. It marks the completion of the inquiry.
Dichotomous dating first rests on the establishment of an upper boundary, or terminus ante quem, grounded in philological criteria. The aim is to determine from what point onward a text becomes possible, taking into account its lexicon, syntax, borrowings, concepts, and cultural references. The analysis focuses in particular on the emergence of technical terms, legal or philosophical notions, linguistic calques, literary topoi, or discursive structures attested only from a given period onward.
The second boundary, or terminus post quem, is established on the basis of historical, political, and institutional criteria. It consists in identifying elements in the text that presuppose a particular state of the world: geopolitical configuration, structures of power, institutional forms, ideological debates, or situations of crisis and domination. By confronting these elements with the available historical data, it becomes possible to determine the point beyond which the text can no longer be situated without contradicting the facts.
The scientific value of dichotomous dating lies in the fact that it rests on two independent sets of criteria — one philological, the other historical — which converge to define a dating interval. This method avoids circular datings and reconstructions based on confessional traditions or undemonstrated disciplinary consensuses. It is explicit, reproducible, and falsifiable: other researchers can discuss the proposed boundaries, refine them, or contest them, always on the basis of identifiable criteria.
Philological cryptanalysis, as practised by Din d'Arya, consists in applying to ancient texts analytical procedures inspired simultaneously by textual criticism, historical linguistics, and cryptanalysis in the strict sense. It seeks to detect regularities, anomalies, repetitive structures, or displacements that may indicate rewritings, insertions, concealments, or intentional codings.
In practical terms, this methodology combines close analysis of textual variants, the study of symmetries and formal structures, the serial arrangement of motifs and lexemes, and confrontation with precise historical contexts. Its objective is to reconstruct editorial strata, distinguish levels of discourse, and, where appropriate, bring to light intentions of concealment or ideological reconfiguration. Philological cryptanalysis thus complements dichotomous dating.
This author profile aims to present in a concise yet structured manner the scholarly approach of Din d'Arya, its inscription within a demanding philological inheritance, the methodological tools he develops — dichotomous dating and philological cryptanalysis — and the dissemination ecosystem of his work. It is intended both as an entry point for readers discovering his research and as a reference document for situating his contributions within the field of studies on the ancient Levant and biblical texts. By proposing explicit, discussable, and reproducible methods, the author seeks to contribute to a reworking of chronologies and interpretive frameworks, restoring to the text and to its linguistic materiality a central role in historical reconstruction.