![]() ![]() Most people did not read the texts that would become parts of the Bible, but rather heard them. In truth, the oral/aural tradition continued to be the dominant means by which most people encountered “Scripture” throughout the biblical period and beyond. The education of scribes in ancient Israel was supported at least in part by the state and the Temple cult, although some scribal arts could have been taught within a small number of families.Įven after some of the earliest portions of what later became Scripture were committed to writing (perhaps in the eighth to seventh centuries B.C.E.), orality was still the primary means of transmitting the material that would eventually become the Hebrew Bible. would presumably have given rise to codified rules and principles of language that scribes would then have learned. But the eventual standardization of the Hebrew letter forms and writing system between the eighth and sixth centuries B.C.E. Modern scholars are divided concerning the existence of scribal schools in Israel during the Iron Age (1200–539 B.C.E.). Other scribes, such as the record-keepers, “historians,” and letter-writers in the royal palaces and urban administrative centers, were affiliated with the ancient equivalent of professional guilds. ![]() ![]() Some of them appear to have belonged to the priestly class, a landless tribe with the time and resources to engage in literary activities. It was these scribes who put their people’s oral traditions into writing, who edited independent stories into books, and who created new compositions. The scribes of ancient Israel were a tiny literate minority in an overwhelmingly illiterate and oral-based culture. ![]()
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