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| Samaritan high priest with and Old Pentateuch, 1905 |
Supplementary Materials VA
Sectional Outline
Section 1 - Before the Bible: Orality, Memory, and the Earliest Forms of Sacred Tradition
The Hebrew Bible, as a collection of written books, is the final stage of a much longer process of cultural remembering. Before a single verse was written, Israel’s earliest traditions lived in the breath of storytellers, the rhythms of song and poetry, the liturgies of shrines, and the memories of tribes. The world in which the Bible began was not a literary world. It was primarily oral - dynamic, fluid, flexible, and communal.
Israel’s earliest ancestors lived in a culture where history, identity, and theology were preserved not on scrolls but in ritual performance and spoken narrative. What would later become Scripture began as:
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ancestral stories told around hearths and campfires
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tribal genealogies recited to maintain kinship and land claims
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cultic liturgies sung at local shrines
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victory hymns celebrating battles
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legal customs and taboos preserved through repetition
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poetic blessings and curses marking life’s transitions
In this early period at the end of the late Bronze Age Collapse and beginning of the Iron Age (c. 1200–1000 BCE) - also known as Israel's Golden Age as it had reached its largest geographical size - writing existed, but its use was limited. Literacy was confined mostly to scribes employed by palaces, temples, and administrative centers. The populations that would later become “Israel” lived in the highlands during a time of social decentralization; they preserved their religious identity through memory rather than manuscripts.
Poetry is often the oldest layer of this tradition. Biblical scholars frequently note that the Song of Deborah (Judges 5), the Blessing of Jacob (Genesis 49), and the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15) bear hallmarks of archaic Hebrew. Their language is rougher, their imagery more primal, their syntax more ancient. These compositions likely predate the formation of Israelite prose narrative and represent the earliest crystallization of Israel’s sacred memory.
In oral cultures, traditions do not remain static. They are adapted, expanded, abbreviated, and reinterpreted as they pass from generation to generation. The stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Exodus, and Sinai - before being written - were living traditions, shaped by their tellers and by the needs of the communities who cherished them. Orality allows for variation, and this variation is not a flaw but a sign of vitality. Ancient Israelites did not seek “verbatim accuracy”; they sought meaning, identity, and the presence of God in their collective memory.
Thus, the Hebrew Bible begins its life not as scripture but as storytelling, song, ritual, and cultural memory. It emerges from the same oral world that shaped the epics of Mesopotamia, the myths of Ugarit, and the liturgies of Egypt. In this earliest phase, Israel’s sacred tradition stands shoulder to shoulder with its neighbors, participating in the wider ANE oral matrix while gradually developing a distinctive voice.
The movement from orality to writing would begin only with the rise of monarchy and the establishment of centralized institutions dependent upon cultural memory - but even then, the written word would serve to stabilize, not replace, the living voice of the tradition.
This is the threshold where the Bible’s written history begins.
II. The First Written Traditions: Inscriptions, Scribes, and the Early Formation of Text (1000-722 BCE)
The transition from orality to writing in ancient Israel was gradual, uneven, and deeply tied to the rise of political institutions. Before the monarchy, writing played a limited role in Israelite society. But with the establishment of royal courts under David and Solomon, and the growth of administrative complexity through the 10th-8th centuries BCE, writing began to serve new functions: taxation, diplomacy, legal codification, historical memory, and eventually theological reflection.
Writing did not replace oral tradition; it stabilized, organized, and selected elements from a vast living reservoir of stories and laws. What we call “biblical literature” emerges through this interplay: oral tradition gave the content, written tradition gave the shape, and later editors supplied the theological coherence.
This period is crucial - not because we already have the “Bible,” but because the conditions that would one day produce the Bible first took root.
II.A. The Archaeological Footprint: Early Hebrew Inscriptions
The earliest evidence for Hebrew writing appears not in biblical manuscripts but in short inscriptions carved on pottery, walls, and arrowheads. These inscriptions, though fragmentary, show that writing was known and used in daily life.
Some of the most important examples include:
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The Gezer Calendar (10th century BCE) - a simple agricultural schedule, possibly a school exercise, written in early Hebrew script.
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The Tel Zayit Abecedary (10th century BCE) - showing that scribal training existed in small highland towns.
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The Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon (early 10th century BCE) - a proto-Israelite inscription with moral and legal language that anticipates later biblical themes.
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The Kuntillet ‘Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom inscriptions (8th century BCE) - blessing formulas mentioning “Yahweh and his Asherah,” demonstrating diversity in early Israelite religion.
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Samaria Ostraca (8th century BCE) - administrative receipts that indicate a functioning bureaucratic scribal apparatus.
These inscriptions reveal a society where writing was becoming increasingly important, but still limited in scope. It was used more for administration and cultic formulae than for extended narrative.
Long literary texts would come much later, preserved not in stone or pottery, but in perishable scrolls held in royal, temple, or prophetic archives.
II.B. The Rise of Scribes: Literacy as Specialized Craft
In Iron Age Israel, literacy was not widespread. Scribes formed a professional class, trained in the arts of writing, calculation, legal formulation, and archival preservation. Their skill was parallel to, though less extensive than, the scribal elites of Egypt and Mesopotamia.
The biblical references to scribes (soferim) in royal courts suggest that by the 9th century BCE, Israel had developed:
- a system of scribal education
- access to writing materials (ink, papyrus, parchment)
- royal archives containing records, treaties, genealogies, and annals
- temple scribes responsible for ritual and legal texts
Writing in this period did not aim to create “Scripture.” It aimed to produce royal history, administrative records, legal precedents, and prophetic collections. Only later, during and after the Babylonia exile, 500-400 years later, would these writings become the foundation of sacred canon.
But the early scribes of the monarchic period are the first to turn Israel’s oral tradition into durable textual tradition.
II.C. Early Narrative Traditions: Court Histories and Tribal Memories
Many biblical books contain embedded literary units that likely originated as court documents, royal inscriptions, or tribal histories.
Examples include:
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The Court History of David (in 2 Samuel), a remarkably candid narrative that seems to reflect early royal archives.
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The Annals of the Kings of Israel and Judah, repeatedly referenced in Kings but now lost.
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The Song of the Sea (Exodus 15) and Song of Deborah (Judges 5), which early scribes likely copied down as prized cultural memory.
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Early cycle stories around Jacob, Joseph, and the Judges, preserved orally but first shaped into prose during the monarchic era.
These early texts are not yet part of a unified “Bible.” They exist as independent scrolls, copied and maintained in different locations --> Jerusalem for the southern kingdom, --> Samaria for the northern kingdom, and --> various local shrines.
The diversity of the Bible’s voices - its multiple styles, dialects, and theological perspectives - reflects this multiplicity of origins.
II.D. Deuteronomy and the First Wave of Literary Theologization
The 7th century BCE marks a watershed moment. Under King Josiah, a “book of the law” is discovered during temple renovations (2 Kings 22–23). Most scholars identify this text with an early version of Deuteronomy.
Why is this significant?
Because Deuteronomy represents the first attempt to interpret Israel’s entire history theologically through writing. It introduces themes that will dominate later biblical literature:
- exclusive worship of Yahweh (either henotheism or early monotheism)
- covenant fidelity (ditto)
- centralization of cult in Jerusalem
- historical interpretation of the covenantal blessings and curses
- concern for social ethics
Its composition marks the beginning of what scholars call the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy → Joshua → Judges → Samuel → Kings), a sweeping narrative that presents Israel’s past as a drama of covenant faithfulness and failure.
II.E. Prophetic Scrolls and the Beginnings of Scriptural Consciousness
From the 8th century onward, prophets such as Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah began to write or dictate scrolls of their speeches. These writings differ from administrative or court documents - they speak with the authority of divine message. Their preservation indicates a growing recognition that certain words, phrases, ideas or concepts, were not merely historical but sacred, carrying a significance beyond their moment.
Although the prophets themselves did not think they were writing “Bible,” the communities that preserved these scrolls already sensed that they held enduring (sacred) truth.
These prophetic texts would later become early core components of the Hebrew Bible - but only after centuries of compilation, editing, and reinterpretation.
II.F. The Northern Kingdom’s Fall and the Acceleration of Literary Preservation (722 BCE)
The Assyrian destruction of the northern kingdom in 722 BCE created a massive crisis of identity. Refugees fled to Judah, bringing with them:
- northern oral traditions
- early written narratives
- prophetic memories
- covenant traditions
- tribal genealogies
- liturgical practices
This influx likely stimulated a surge in literary activity in Judah, as scribes sought to preserve traditions now at risk of disappearing forever.
The blending of northern and southern traditions during this period would eventually give rise to:
- combined patriarchal narratives
- a composite Exodus story
- harmonized covenant traditions
- preserved prophetic schools
In short, the fall of the northern kingdom catalyzed the first major phase of the Hebrew Bible’s compilation - long before the exile, long before canonization.
- Part I - Foundations: The Birth of the Sacred
- Essay 1 - Animism and the Living Cosmos
- Essay 2 - From Tribe to Totem
- Part II - The Age of Gods
- Essay 3 - The Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent
- Essay 4 - Egypt, Indus, and Minoa Sacred Cultures
- Essay 5 - From Polytheism to Henotheism
- Part III - Axial Awakenings
- Essay 6 - Ancient Israel, Persia, and Monotheism
- Essay 7 - India
- Essay 8 - Greece and the Birth of Reason
- Part IV - The Sacred Made Universal
- Essay 9 - The Age of Universal Religions
- Essay 10 - Modernity and the Eclipse of the Sacred
- Essay 11 - The Rebirth of the Sacred
- Part V - Supplementary Materials
- I - The Ancient History of Mesopotamia
- II - The History of Language in Ancient Mesopotamia
- III - The Ancient History of the Hebrew Language
- IV(A-C) How the Ancient Near East Gave Shape to Israel's God
- Why the ANE is Essential for Israel's Received Theology (I-II)
- Affecting Cultic Syncretism Across the Ancient Near East (III-V)
- Cultural Identity Formation & the Rejection of Syncretism (VI-IX)
- V (A-C) The History & Compilation of the Hebrew Bible
- From Oral Memory to Proto-Canon (I-II)
- Exile, Redaction, and the Birth of Scripture (III)
- Second Temple Scribalization to Canonization (IV-V)
- VI - The Unhelpful Oxymorons of "Biblical Authority" & "Inerrancy"
- VII - The Evolution of Inerrancy: From Ancient Plurality to Modern Certainty
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