A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is demonstrating that there may have been widespread literacy in the Holy Land region of Judah as long ago as 600 B.C., towards the end of the period of the First Temple.
This could shed new light especially on the period during which certain Torah books - including early versions of Deuteronomy through II Kings - were first written.
From an article on the new York Times website today:
Eliashib, the quartermaster of the remote desert fortress, received his instructions in writing — notes inscribed in ink on pottery asking for provisions to be sent to forces in the ancient kingdom of Judah.
The requests for wine, flour and oil read like mundane, if ancient, shopping lists. But a new analysis of the handwriting suggests that literacy may have been far more widespread than previously known in the Holy Land around 600 B.C., toward the end of the First Temple period. The findings, according to the researchers from Tel Aviv University, could have some bearing on a century-old debate about when the main body of biblical texts was composed.
“To Eliashib: And now, give the Kittiyim 3 baths of wine, and write the name of the day,” read one of the texts, composed in ancient Hebrew using the Aramaic alphabet, and apparently referring to a Greek mercenary unit in the area. Another said: “And a full homer of wine, bring tomorrow; don’t be late. And if there is vinegar, give it to them.”
The new study, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, combined archaeology, Jewish history and applied mathematics, and involved computerized image processing and the development of an algorithm to distinguish between the various authors issuing the commands.
Based on a statistical analysis of the results, and taking into account the content of the texts that were chosen for the sample, the researchers concluded that at least six different hands had written the 18 missives at around the same time. Even soldiers in the lower ranks of the Judahite army, it appears, could read and write.
[snip]
The study was based on a trove of about 100 letters inscribed in ink on pieces of pottery, known as ostracons, that were unearthed near the Dead Sea in an excavation of the Arad fort decades ago and dated from about 600 B.C. That was shortly before Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah, and the exile of its elite to Babylon — and before many scholars believe the major part of the biblical texts, including the five books of Moses, also known as the Pentateuch, were written down in any cohesive form.
The Arad citadel was small, far-flung and on an active front, close to the border with the rival kingdom of Edom. The fort itself was only about half an acre in size, and probably would have accommodated about 30 soldiers. The wealth of texts found there, recording troop movements, provisions and other daily activities, were created within a short time, making them a valuable sample for looking at how many different hands wrote them.
“To Eliashib, and now: Issue from the wine 3 baths,” another ostracon ordered, adding, “And Hananyahu has commanded you to Beersheba with 2 donkeys’ load and you shall wrap up the dough with them.”
One of the longstanding arguments for why the main body of biblical literature was not written down in anything like its present form until after the destruction and exile of 586 B.C. is that before then there was not enough literacy or enough scribes to support such a huge undertaking.
But if the literacy rates in the Arad fortress were repeated across the kingdom of Judah, which had about 100,000 people, there would have been hundreds of literate people, the Tel Aviv research team suggests.
That could have provided the infrastructure for the composition of biblical works that constitute the basis of Judahite history and theology including early versions of the books of Deuteronomy to II Kings, according to the researchers.
Since the 19th century, scholars have been debating “when was it written?” Professor Finkelstein said. “In real time or after,” he added, referring to the destruction and exile.
In the centuries after the destruction and exile, up until 200 B.C., Professor Finkelstein said, there is almost no archaeological evidence of inscriptions in Hebrew. He said he would have expected digs to reveal seal impressions and everyday writings on pottery, even if more important texts, like biblical ones, had been done on perishable materials such as parchment or papyrus.
Biblical texts written in the centuries after 586 B.C., he suggested, were likely to have been composed in Babylon.
Other scholars cautioned against drawing too many conclusions about when the first major part of the Bible was written based on extrapolations regarding ancient literacy rates.
“There is no such thing as consensus in biblical studies these days,” said Prof. Edward Greenstein of Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. “The process of transmission was much more complicated than scholars used to think.”
The process of composing the Torah, according to Professor Greenstein, appears to have involved layers of rewrites, supplements and revisions. Pointing to recent scholarship on biblical literature, he said that scribes may have recorded texts primarily as a memory aid in a world where they were still being transmitted orally.
“Biblical texts did not have to have been written by many people, or read by many people, to have been written down,” he said, adding that the texts would not have been widely circulated.
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A few years ago I was asked to lecture at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and went out to the Dead Sea caves where so many ancient scrolls have been discovered. What a forsaken place. I'd been there before with my parents, long ago, and was doubly impressed again by how evidence could be hidden, so to speak, for a couple thousand years. So to fasten on a translation like one of the King James versions when even the languages involved have had their vocabulary and grammar revised by discoveries, seems - as with some of our brethren who want to cite scriptural evidence for what has happened to the Craft in Tennessee and Georgia, to fly in the face of this kind of newly discovered texts. Literalism is confounded by archaeology and probably will be further challenged by some cave or crypt yet to be discovered -- and don't we learn that there is more to find in the Royal Arch.
ReplyDeleteThis message came today from a Brother who was unable to log into the Blogspot system to post it:
ReplyDelete"Again a stunner by Faigenbaum, Finkelstein & Co in Biblical Archaeology, as often before.
However, it is a finding which is not a real surprise for those who are ackquainted with scribal and calligraphic features of Iron Age West Semitic and Ancient Hebrew epigraphy. If there were an outstanding art of calligraphy in the Levant of early first millennium BCE– and there is no doubt that there was, at least in Phoenician and ancient Hebrew (and maybe less in Aramaic, which developed only a century later) – then it is also clear that knowledge of alphabetic writing was no esoteric art of some few men, but of many freelancer guild of scribes. It’s like the relation of high performance sport and popular sport. Without the latter the former would not be there.
Scholar like Josef Naveh or Frank Moore Cross have long ago claimed for a relative high rate of literacy in the early first millennium bce Levant. For calligraphic top performance a high rate of average output is needed – and sure there was scribal top performance in Israel even in the 9th century bce.
One may only wonder about the hype now only because some scientists prove or try to prove by ‘hard sciences’ what serious scholars of ancient Hebrew epigraphy know since many decades. There is no need to deduce from that any information about when the Bible or parts of the Bible were written."