Learning to be a Biblical Scribe: Examples from the Letter Writing Genre

Abstract

The paper illustrates how scribal education shaped and influenced biblical literature. It discusses how educational curriculum can be reconstructed from Hebrew inscriptions and comparative examples in cuneiform literature. The Hebrew educational curriculum was adapted from cuneiform models in the 12th century BCE. These models were known in Canaan, and then used by early alphabetic scribes. The best repository of ancient Hebrew scribal practice comes from the desert fortress of Kuntillet ʿAjrud where all the categories of elementary scribal education are known. Perhaps the most important of these was letter writing, which was a basic part of a scribe’s everyday duties. Not surprisingly, letter writing was also one of the foundations of scribal education, and it was adapted and used for writing biblical literature in ways both mundane and profound. This included both the structuring of biblical narrative and the genre of writing prophets.

Keywords

• scribes. education. letters prophecy. biblical narrative.