Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature

Writing on the Tablet of the Heart

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Writing on the Tablet of the Heart Origins of Scripture and Literature

david m. carr

1 2005

1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright 䉷 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Carr, David McLain, 1961– Writing on the tablet of the heart: origins of Scripture and literature / David M. Carr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN-13 978-0-19-517297-3 ISBN 0-19-517297-3 1. Bible. O.T.—Social scientific criticism. 2. Literature and society— Mediterranean Region. 3. Literature, Ancient—History and criticism. 4. Socialization—Mediterranean Region—History—To 1500. I. Title. BS1182.6.C37 2004 221.6'6—dc22 2004005441

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Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

To my parents, John and Adrienne Carr, educators, par excellence, my first and most influential teachers.

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Preface

This book started out as introductory material for a new study of the formation of the Pentateuch, building on some earlier work I had written on Genesis and the Moses story.1 Impressed by some overviews of comparative material by scholars like Joseph Blenkinsopp and prodded by some personal correspondence from and subsequent work by Susan Niditch, I felt it important to look afresh at the models I was using for textual development in ancient Israel.2 I wished to understand more concretely how a given scribe might have modified or combined earlier materials. Soon I found myself led far afield into modes of textual transmission that I had not anticipated. As will be evident by the end of this book, the model at which I arrived has led me to reassess my own assumptions about the development of the literature of Israel, where this took place, and the feasibility of detailed reconstruction of the transmission history of a text like the Pentateuch. 1. David M. Carr, “The Politics of Textual Subversion: A Diachronic Perspective on the Garden of Eden Story,” JBL 112 (1993): 577–95; Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary Approaches (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1996); “Controversy and Convergence in Recent Studies of the Formation of the Pentateuch,” Religious Studies Review 23 (1997): 22–31; “Biblos Geneseo¯s Revisited: A Synchronic Analysis of Patterns in Genesis as Part of the Torah (parts 1 and 2),” ZAW 110 (1998): 159–72, 327–47; “Method in Determination of Direction of Dependence: An Empirical Test of Criteria Applied to Exodus 34, 11–26 and Its Parallels,” in Gottes Volk am Sinai: Untersuchungen zu Ex 32–34 und Dtn 9–10, vol. 18, ed. Matthias Ko¨ckert and Erhard Blum, Vero¨ffentlichungen der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft fu¨r Theologie (Gu¨tersloh: Kaiser, Gu¨tersloher Verlagshaus, 2001), 107–40; “Genesis in Relation to the Moses Story: Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives,” in Studies in the Book of Genesis, ed. A. We´nin (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2001), 273–95. 2. Joseph Blenkinsopp, The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible, AB Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1992); Susan Niditch, Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature, Library of Ancient Israel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1996).

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As the project expanded, the limits of what is doable have become ever more clear. This book does not pretend to be a final statement on the topic but a proposal attempting to illustrate the productivity of mining a particular vein of material, a line of approach. The time is now past in study of the ancient world where one person could write a seemingly definitive work covering the range of areas discussed here. The increasingly developed state of scholarship in each of the areas simply does not allow it. But this book is written with the understanding that there may be some virtue in an attempt by one person to point out the potential productivity of an idea across multiple areas, an attempt that can then be extended and corrected by others with other competencies in the relevant areas. Knowing the book might well have readers from outside the various areas covered, I have tried to include some explanations along the way that would be superfluous to specialists. Some may argue I should have been more thoroughgoing in this, others less. But this aim explains certain comments that would be commonplaces to those in the field but might not be known by all readers. In general, I have followed the conventions of the SBL Handbook of Style for citations of the primary and secondary resources used here.3 Nevertheless, I have used transliteration for foreign words, including a simplified transliteration of Greek and Hebrew words, for two reasons: both to keep the cost of this book from being higher than it is and because I hope for readers with various backgrounds to benefit from this work. Where versification of the English translation of the Old Testament diverges from the verses of the Hebrew, I have given the citation of the original as the primary citation but included the English verses in parentheses with the designation “ET.” Unless otherwise indicated, the translations of primary texts are my own. Following broader scholarly conventions, I use an asterisk to indicate where I have cited a broader stretch of material, but only used part of that material (e.g. Gen 2:4b–24*). In addition, I indicate citation of parallel texts through the use of the double slash marker (e.g. 2 Kgs 22:3–13//2 Chr 34:8–21). I have used footnotes to point the reader to work I have benefited from and recommend for direct consultation. This means that the notes focus on materials previously unfamiliar to me, while some works central to my own discipline have not been mentioned or mentioned as much as they should have been. This is particularly true of the writings of those teachers and mentors whose scholarship has been “written on my heart.” I have tried to correct for this problem, but I am aware that my dependence on others extends beyond the citations included in this work. There is much literature that I consulted but did not have occasion to cite in this book. In general, I have tried to cite a range of classic and recent discussions; the latter can provide citations of a broader range of literature in a given area.

3. Patrick Alexander et al., eds., The SBL Handbook of Style: For Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian Studies (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999).

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I have drawn liberally on the help of many near and far to make this work better than I could have made it on my own. First, this work has been supported by the stimulating intellectual environment of excellent colleagues and students at Union Theological Seminary and at neighboring institutions in the New York area. In addition, I have been greatly aided in this project by the immense library resources in Manhattan, especially the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, along with the libraries at Columbia University, Barnard College, Jewish Theological Seminary, and General Theological Seminary. I am grateful to the staffs of all those libraries for their generous aid during this project. I was helped in the last six months of this project by a Theological Scholars Grant from the Lilly Foundation, for which I am very grateful. That grant made possible the hiring of Nathan Larsen, now a Ph.D. student at Columbia University, to help in compiling massive lists of items to track down, gathering them, and processing those materials. Steed Davidson, a Ph.D. student here at Union, also provided informal aid in locating some materials on the concept of hybridity in postcolonial theory, and Jennifer Heckart (another Ph.D. student) helped with expert final proofing. My wife, Colleen Conway, a New Testament professor at Seton Hall University, has been my constant conversation partner through this work, as always. She remains one of my best critics, editors, and nearby experts on issues pertaining to the New Testament. Several wider circles of people have contributed to this work as I have tried out ideas from it on virtually anyone willing to listen. This started with presentations of parts of this work at the Social-Science Section at the 2001 Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting, a research report at the 2002 Catholic Biblical Association meeting, multiple presentations to colleagues and students at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America Bible lunch, a keynote address at the 2003 Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting of the SBL, parts of two presentations at the 2003 AAR/SBL annual meeting, and a presentation at a combined meeting of the Columbia University Hebrew Bible Seminar and Ancient Near Eastern Seminar. Many at those occasions and afterward provided invaluable critiques and suggestions. Along the way several colleagues have been gracious in sharing prepublication versions of their works in progress, including John Baines, Michael Fox, Emanuel Tov, Armin Lange, Torleif Elgvin, Steven Fraade, Werner Kelber, and William Schniedewind. In addition, I am indebted to Niek Veldhuis, Lynn Meskell, and David Trobisch (among others) for suggestions of bibliography and other resources for this study. One way I have attempted to balance my shortcomings in writing a work of this scope is to ask others to read drafts of my work, especially of parts that lay outside my areas of expertise. So here I have a list of people, many of whom gave generously of their time despite the lack of a prior connection to me, and provided extraordinarily helpful feedback, corrections, bibliography, and so on. For reasons of space I merely list them in alphabetical order, but each one deserves a paragraph of thanks to himself or herself: Jan Assmann, John Baines, John Collins, Colleen Conway, James Crenshaw, Raffaella Cribiore, Daniel Fleming, Michael V. Fox, William Hallo, Sharon Keller, Andre´ Lemaire, David Marcus, Teresa Morgan, Martti Nissinen, Simo Parpola, James A. San-

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ders, William Schniedewind, Seth Schwartz, Alan Segal, Marvin Sweeney, Eugene Ulrich, Marc van de Mieroop, Wyn Wright, and the anonymous reviewers for Oxford University Press. I asked these colleagues to read parts of this study because of my respect for their work. Those who know that work will know they do not always agree with each other, and I certainly do not pretend they agree with all that is here. I can say that this book is far stronger thanks to their critiques and suggestions. Whatever errors remain in this final version are mine. It would be tempting to prolong this preface with various qualifications recognizing this work’s limitations. I would just propose that it is all too easy to find gaps, imbalances, and missteps in a work of this range. An alternative would be to mine this book for potentially productive ideas, texts, and bibliography. My prayer is for a lot of the latter sort of readers.

Contents

List of Abbreviations, xiii 1. Textuality, Orality, and the Shaping of the Ancient Mind, 3 PART I Early Examples of Textuality and Education in the Near East and Mediterranean 2. Ancient Mesopotamia: The Earliest and Best-Documented Textual/Educational System, 17 3. The Influence of Mesopotamia, 47 4. Egyptian Education and Textuality, 63 5. Alphabetically Based Textuality and Education in Ancient Greece, 91 6. Textuality and Education in Ancient Israel, 111 PART II Textuality and Education in the Eastern Hellenistic World 7. Education and Textuality in the Hellenistic World: Egypt and Other Examples of Hellenistic Hybridity, 177 8. Temple- and Priest-Centered Textuality and Education in Hellenistic Judaism, 201

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9. Qumran as a Window into Early Jewish Education and Textuality, 215 10. Synagogue, Sabbath, and Scripture: New Forms of Hellenistic Jewish Textuality and Education Beyond the Temple, 241 11. The Origins of Scripture as a Hellenistic-Style Anti-Hellenistic Curriculum, 253 12. Concluding Reflections on the Hellenistic Shaping of Jewish Scripture: From Temple to Synagogue and Church, 273 13. Conclusion, 287 Appendix: The Relation of This Study to Earlier Research, 299 Select Bibliography, 307 Index of Citations of Primary Text, 319 Index of Select Subjects, 329

List of Abbreviations

AB ABD AOAT BA BASOR BETL BRev BZAW CANE CBQ CIJ DSD HUCA IEJ JAOS JBL JCS JJS JQR JSJ JSOT JSOTSup JSPSup

Anchor Bible Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by D. N. Freedman. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992. Alter Orient und Altes Testament Biblical Archaeologist Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium Bible Review Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fu¨r die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. Edited by Victor Sasson et al., New York: Charles Scribner, 1995. Catholic Biblical Quarterly Corpus inscriptionum judaicarum Dead Sea Discoveries Hebrew Union College Annual Israel Exploration Journal Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Cuniform Studies Journal of Jewish Studies Jewish Quarterly Review Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Periods Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal for the Study of Old Testament: Supplement Series Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha: Supplement Series

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list of abbreviations ¨ LA

LCL MDP OBO OTL RA RB RevQ SAOC SBLDS SBLMS SDB TRE VT VTSup WMANT WUNT ZA ¨S ZA ZAW

¨ gyptologie. Edited by Wolfgang Helck and Eberhard Lexikon der A Otto. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1973–. Loeb Classical Library Me´moires de la Mission arche´ologique de Perse Orbis biblicus et orientalis Old Testament Library Revue d’assyriologie et d’arche´ologie orientale Revue Biblique Revue de Qumran Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilizations Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series Supple´ment au dictionnaire de la bible. Edited by Louis Pirot and F. Vigouroux. Paris: Letouzay et Ane´, 1928–. Theologische Realenzyklopadie. Edited by G. Krause and G. Mu¨ller. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977–. Vetus Testamentum Vetus Tetsamentum Supplements Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Zeitschrift fu¨r Assyriologie Zeitschrift fu¨r a¨gyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde Zeitschrift fu¨r die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

Writing on the Tablet of the Heart

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1 Textuality, Orality, and the Shaping of the Ancient Mind

In her book Oral World and Written Word, Susan Niditch vividly illustrates the problems with contemporary assumptions about ancient textuality, as she outlines the picture many biblical scholars often assume in their discussions of biblical formation. Critiquing the traditional documentary hypothesis (J, E, D, P), she says: At the heart of documentary hypothesis [sic] . . . is the cut-andpaste image of an individual pictured like Emperor Claudius of the PBS series, having his various written sources laid out before him as he chooses this verse or that, includes this tale not that, edits, elaborates, all in a library setting. . . . If the texts are leather, they may be heavy and need to be unrolled. . . . If texts are papyrus, they are read held in the arm, one hand clasping or “supporting” the “bulk” of the scroll, while the other unrolls. Did the redactor need three colleagues to hold J, E, and P for him? Did each read the text out loud, and did he ask them to pause until he jotted down his selections, working like a secretary with three tapes dictated by the boss?1 Niditch poses the question in a striking way, but she is not the first to wonder about these matters. For example, in a programmatic essay published over forty years ago, William Hallo asked the sorts of questions that drive this book: What was the appearance of a biblical book? How was it conceived, edited, published? How was it transmitted from age to

1. Susan Niditch, Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature. Library of Ancient Israel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 113.

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writing on the tablet of the heart age, and by what manner of means was it changed in the course of that transmission? These are questions which ought to occupy the presentation of biblical exegesis, for anything less than certainty on these points renders any theory as to the history of a specific biblical text doubly tenuous. In fact, however, they are questions that, at least outside Israel, are largely disregarded.2

In his essay Hallo was primarily concerned about the formation of Mesopotamian literature, but his work and that of others will be key in reconstructing the formation and function of ancient literature in general, with a special focus on such literature in ancient Israel. This book develops an alternative picture of how people in the ancient world produced and worked with texts. I ask: what can we plausibly suppose about how texts—particularly texts used over long periods of time—were produced, collected, revised, and used? How might we avoid imposing anachronistic models of textual production and reception on ancient texts? The alternative picture developed here not only illuminates the formation of the Bible but also provides insight into the nature of education in general and the use of writing as a major cultural-religious medium.

The Oral-Written Interface and the Shaping of the Mind One starting point for this alternative picture is the fact that many ancient texts were not written in such a way that they could be read easily by someone who did not already know them well. Indeed, classicists long ago noted that the oldest Greek manuscripts, written as they are all in capitals and without word separation or other marks, were constructed for reading by people who had already mastered the relevant text. It was only in the Hellenistic period, a time of broader education and increase in silent reading, that we first see the initial creation of some more reader-friendly teaching texts with word-separation and other helps, all in the context of early education.3 As we will see, most manuscripts in the Greek context were not designed to provide a first-time introduction to a given textual tradition but instead stood as a permanent reference point for an ongoing process of largely oral recitation. Though someone might have such a text before him or her in order to dictate to others or even perform the text, it would function more the way a musical score does for a musician who already knows the piece than like a book the reader has never encountered before. Certainly some masters of the tradition could sight-read such texts, but most—like many musicians—would have had to already know the tradition in order to be able to fluidly “read” it from the highly reader-unfriendly manuscript.4

2. William W. Hallo, “New Viewpoints on Cuneiform Literature,” IEJ 12 (1962): 13. 3. Rosalind Thomas, Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 91–92; Jocelyn Penny Small, Wax Tablets of the Mind: Cognitive Studies of Memory and Literacy in Classical Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1997), 11–25. 4. An example of earlier use of this example of musical performance is John Barton, The Spirit and the

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This kind of textual preknowledge is presupposed in other traditions as well. Most readers, not at the top of mastery of the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform system, could not rapidly read a text without having a prior familiarity with it (or close parallels to it).5 Only then would the reader quickly know the value of a given sign in context. The hieratic writing system of ancient Egyptian texts likewise requires someone already highly knowledgeable about the given text in order to decipher rapidly the contents of a given passage.6 Even alphabetic systems like those found at Ugarit, Phoenicia, Syria, and Israel lacked vocalic marks that could aid rapid reading. One early manuscript for the Hebrew prophets does not even record the complete words of each verse. Instead, only the first word is given, along with the first letter of each succeeding word.7 Indeed, the alphabetic system of Israel and other societies is more similar to its cuneiform and hieratic/hieroglyphic precursors than many realize. Though early readers may sound out individual words, any reader who has progressed to the point of fluently reading a book like this (or a biblical manuscript) already can instantly recognize a store of thousands of words (and phrases) as wholes. This mastery of “word images” by a person literate in an alphabetic system would encompass easily as many units as the separate word and syllabic images controlled by the average master of cuneiform or hieratic.8 And the difficulty of reading alphabetic texts only escalates more when they are transmitted—as they often were in the ancient world—in manuscripts without word dividers. I will look at both similarities and differences between these different culture areas later. The main point here is that this element of visual presentation of texts is but one indicator of the distinctive function of written copies of longduration texts like the Bible, Gilgamesh, or Homer’s works. The visual presentation of such texts presupposed that the reader already knew the given text and had probably memorized it to some extent. In this book I will argue further that such written copies were a subsidiary part of a much broader literate matrix, where the focus was as much or more on the transmission of texts from mind to mind as on transmission of texts in written form. Both writing and oral performance fed into the process of indoctrination/education/enculturation.

¨ ffne den Tafelbeha¨lter Letter: Studies in Biblical Canon (London: SPCK, 1997), 129. Beate Pomgratz-Leisten, “ ‘O und lies . . . ’ Neue Ansa¨tze zum Versta¨ndnis des Literatur Konzeptes in Mesopotamie,” Welt des Orients 27 (1996): 85–86, argues that oral performance actually aids the decoding of manuscripts otherwise difficult to decipher. 5. Bendt Alster, “Interaction of Oral and Written Poetry in Early Mesopotamian Literature,” in Mesopotamian Epic Literature: Oral or Aural? ed. M. Vogelzang and H.L.J. Vanstiphout (Lewiston, NY: Mellon, 1991), 24– 26. 6. Christopher Eyre and John Baines, “Interactions Between Orality and Literacy in Ancient Egypt,” in Literacy and Society, ed. Karen Schousboe and Mogens Trolle Larsen (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1989), 100–103. 7. Ernst Wu¨rthwein, The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica, rev. ed., trans. E. Rhodes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996 [orig. 1988]), 170–71 (Oxford Ms Heb e 30). I am indebted to Alan Cooper for this reference. 8. Eyre and Baines, “Interactions,” 101–2.

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Thus, the mind stood at the center of the often discussed oral-written interface. The focus was on inscribing a culture’s most precious traditions on the insides of people. Within this context, copies of texts served as solidified reference points for recitation and memorization of the tradition, demonstrations of mastery of the tradition, and gifts from the gods.9 But they were not for the uninitiated. Few of the literate would have progressed to the point where they would have been able or motivated to use such texts to access traditions they did not already know.10 Past studies of the oral and the written have been plagued by a frequent tendency to juxtapose orality and memory with written textuality.11 Perhaps the preeminent example in contemporary studies of ancient texts is the Parry-Lord school of oral-traditional composition. In his classic formulation of the hypothesis, Albert Lord built on ethnographic parallels from early twentiethcentury Serbia in arguing that the Homeric epic was composed in an exclusively oral context, and the product was an epic that displayed multiple signs of its oral background. In this context he asserted the absolute incompatibility of oral and written modes of composition: The written technique, on the other hand, is not compatible with the oral technique, and the two could not possibly combine, to form another, a third, a “transitional” technique. It is conceivable that a man might be an oral poet in his younger years and a written poet later in life, but it is not possible that he be both an oral and a written poet at any given time in his career. The two by their very nature are mutually exclusive.12 Lord goes on to argue that the arrival of writing in a society has an inevitably corrosive effect on oral tradition. Though he later granted the possibility of the existence of some “transitional texts” in societies on the way from orality to textuality, he tried to locate such texts either primarily in the oral or in the written realm, and he denied the possibility that Homer’s epics could be such transitional texts.13 For him, and for many others, there was a decisive shift when a society moved from orality to literacy. From then on, it has been argued,

9. For useful summary of these aspects of the reference character of texts see William A. Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 60. 10. This kind of insight into the oral-written interface is commonplace in work by medievalists on early vernacular literatures in German, French, and English. For references see Alger N. Doane, “The Ethnography of Scribal Writing and Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Scribe as Performer,” Oral Tradition 9 (1994): 420–39. 11. As Egbert Bakker notes (“How Oral is Oral Composition?” in Signs of Orality: The Oral Tradition and Its Influence in the Greek and Roman World, ed. E. Anne MacKay [Leiden: Brill, 1999], 31–32), even the terminology of “orality” and “oral” often leads to false dichotomies. For useful cultural history on the use of oral-written dichotomies, especially in biblical scholarship see Michael H. Floyd, “ ‘Write the Revelation!’ (Hab 2:2): Reimagining the Cultural History of Prophecy,” in Writings and Speech in Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy, ed. Ehud Ben Zvi and Michael Floyd (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 2000), 103–43. At the outset of chapter 4 I present a discussion of memory and literacy by Plato that may lie behind much of this often assumed juxtaposition. 12. Albert Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 129. 13. Albert Lord, The Singer Resumes the Tale (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 212–37.

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written texts display decisively different dynamics from their oral counterparts. There is an “oral-written continuum,” but orality (and memory) is on one end and textuality is on the other.14 This study, however, builds on a stream of scholarship that emphasizes ways societies with writing often have an intricate interplay of orality and textuality, where written texts are intensely oral, while even exclusively oral texts are deeply affected by written culture.15 Later I will return to the former proposition. But I will note here that many of the supposedly “oral techniques” cited by Lord and others for oral composition may be as much or more characteristic of societies with writing as they are of purely nonliterate societies. For, as Jan Assmann (building on Eric Havelock) has pointed out, the onset of writing actually allows people to recognize when different performances of their cultural tradition vary from one another.16 Moreover, Jack Goody has documented how fully oral cultures often have intense variation in their oral reproduction of oral tradition, despite frequent claims of verbatim fidelity to ancient traditions.17 This matches with findings by cognitive psychologists that the human mind generally cannot remember more than fifty lines without written aids for accurate recall.18 But once writing (or recording equipment) becomes part of the picture, audiences and reciters can recognize variation between different versions of the tradition. In response, cultures interested in preserving the integrity of the tradition can use a variety of means to preserve it, including both different uses of writing and intense implementation of older means of aiding recall—formulae, rhyming, link of text to music and movement, use of overarching themes, memory techniques, and so on. Orality and writing technology are joint means for accomplishing a common goal: accurate recall of the treasured tradition.

14. Cf. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, Visible Song: Transitional Literacy in Old English Verse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 13. Niditch, quoted at the outset of this chapter (Oral World and Written Word), uses this concept throughout. For discussion of the transition period between orality and literacy see Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Routledge, 1982), 111–16. 15. Such insights into what is often termed the “oral-written interface” are increasingly common across a wide range of studies. For a review of the major debates see Peter Probst, “Die Macht der Schrift: Zum ethnologischen Diskurs u¨ber eine popula¨re Denkfigur,” Anthropos 87 (1992): 167–82; John Halverson, “Goody and the Implosion of the Literacy Thesis,” Man (n.s.) 27 (1992): 301–17; and J. Collins, “Literacy and Literacies,” Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1995): 75–93. For more study of the interface of oral and written dimensions of textuality see also Ruth Finnegan, Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance, and Social Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), esp. 16–24, 160–68; “What Is Orality—If Anything?” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 14 (1990): esp. 86–163; Jack Goody, The Interface Between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979); Doane, “Scribe as Performer,” and a statement by one of the foremost exponents of the Parry-Lord approach, John Miles Foley, “What’s in a Sign?” in MacKay, Signs of Orality, 1–27. 16. Jan Assmann, “Kulturelle und literarische Texte,” in Ancient Egyptian Literature: History and Forms, ed. A. Loprieno (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 76–77. 17. Goody, Interface, 86–105. 18. I. M. L. Hunter, “Lengthy Verbatim Recall (LVR) and the Myth and Gift of Tape-Recorder Memory,” in Psychology in the 1990’s, ed. P. Niemi (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1984), 425–40; “Lengthy Verbatim Recall: The Role of Text,” in Psychology of Language, ed. A. Ellis (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1985), vol. 1, 207–35; David Rubin, Memory in Oral Traditions: The Cognitive Psychology of Epic, Ballads, and Counting-Out Rhymes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 6–7.

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Thus, writing does not necessarily eliminate orality in cultures where it is introduced. But it does bring a new dynamic to cultural transmission—a heightened level of anxiety about change. In response, various means often are employed to preserve the tradition, to harden it, over against the now-visible process of cultural variation across time. As a result, formulae and other features of “oral” communication may actually be used more intensively with the onset of writing than with nonliterate composition, transmission, and performance. Even in cases like that of Parry and Lord’s Serbian bards, where a given epic tradition might be composed and transmitted/performed in an exclusively oral way, the conceptuality surrounding the process and the various means for composition and transmission often are shaped by the presence of writing elsewhere in the culture. Certainly this is true of every one of the ancient examples cited by Parry, Lord, and others in the oral-traditional school: Homeric epic, Beowulf, and so on. They were recorded in cultures with writing, and we only have access to such traditions by way of written manuscripts.

Ancient Education and the Production of Scriptures Building on these and other insights, this book looks at how ancient written traditions like the Bible are actually part of a much broader process, a process by which such traditions were learned in the first place and transmitted to succeeding generations. The fundamental idea is the following: as we look at how key texts like the Bible and other classic literature functioned in ancient cultures, what was primary was not how such texts were inscribed on clay, parchment, or papyri. Rather, what was truly crucial was how those written media were part of a cultural project of incising key cultural-religious traditions—word for word—on people’s minds. Cultures like those in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Israel put a high value on preservation of ancient traditions, and they invested heavily in ensuring continuity across generations. One way of doing this was to use written texts as part of a larger educational project of ensuring stable transmission of key traditions across time. This is expressed in an Egyptian satirical description of an educated scribe, to which I will return later: “You are, of course, a skilled scribe at the head of his fellows, and the teaching of every book is incised on your heart.”19 This scribe contained in his head/heart not only the knowledge of writing, but the memory of key texts in the Egyptian tradition. Especially in Egypt, many of these texts would have been what many now would call “wisdom” texts. Nevertheless, this scribe’s store of texts might also have included—depending on his specialty— religious ritual texts, prayers, narratives, and model administrative documents. And within other cultures, such as those in Mesopotamia, Israel, or even ancient Greece, there would be an even broader group of texts—narrative,

19. The “Satirical Letter” or (with Fischer-Elfert) “Satirical Polemic,” 11.2–3. This is an English rendering ¨ bersetof the translation in Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert, Die satirische Streitschrift des Papyrus Anastasi I, vol. 1, U ¨ gyptische Abhandlungen (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1986), 94. zung und Kommentar, A

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historical, poetic, divinatory—that would be incised on the minds of a new generation. Scribal recollection of early traditions was ensured partly through teaching students to read and reproduce written copies of the key traditions. Nevertheless, the aim of the educational process was ultimately the scribe’s memorization of the cultural tradition and cultivation of his (or occasionally her) ability to perform it. To use a metaphor from computers, the main point in ancient cultures was not the written texts. They were the floppy disks. The point was using such texts, such “disks,” to transfer the software—key cultural traditions—from one generation of scribal administrators and elite leaders to another.20 I will show how this educational system of memorization and recitation of standard texts shaped the minds of students. To some extent, this shaping of students’ minds was intertwined with movement toward political consolidation and centralization. The earliest system of elementary writing lists well preceded the emergence of early empires in Mesopotamia, but the higher level curriculum of hymns and epics is intricately connected to the first series of empires that dominated and united Mesopotamia: the early kingdom of Akkad, along with the Ur-III and Old Babylonian empires.21 Though educational processes are attested in early Egypt as well, the central curriculum and widespread attestation of the classic educational system likewise emerges in the transition toward centralization in the First Intermediate to Middle Kingdom periods.22 And I will argue that even smaller kingdoms like Israel came to use a similar educational system to shape future scribal administrators by having them memorize and recite a curriculum of standard texts—day after day, year after year. This mode of textual education could be a way of maintaining and extending power over subjects—whether in a small country like Israel or vast empires like those of Mesopotamia and Egypt.23 Yet I will also argue that such educational systems were never limited to such political ends and often moved far beyond whatever their original political connections might have been. For example, I will suggest that the people of Israel came to use a similar educational system as a means of resistance. In the early centuries of the common era (c.e. ⫽ ad), there was a struggle over the increasing prominence of Greek education, where a select few were groomed for leadership by memorizing the Greek classics—Homer, Euripides,

20. Assmann, “Texte,” 79. 21. The details of this curriculum and references to relevant studies are given in chapter 2. 22. In addition to the classic study by H. Brunner (Alta¨gyptische Erziehung [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1957]) see in particular the comments in Jan Assmann, “Kulturelles Geda¨chtnis als normative Erinnerung: Das ¨ gyptens und Israels,” in Memoria als Kultur, ed. Otto Gerhard Oexle Prinzip ‘Kanon’ in der Erinnerungskultur A (Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1995), 99, and the study of this crucial transition time by L. Morenz, ¨ gypten und Altes Testament Beitra¨ge zur Schriftlichkeitskultur im Mittleren Reich und in der 2. Zwischenzeit, A (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996). 23. For broader reflections on how the decontextualization involved in writing can be linked to the formation of broader political entities see Peter Denny, “Rational Thought in Oral Culture and Literate Decontextualization,” in Literacy and Orality, ed. David R. Olsen and Nancy Torrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 66–89, esp. 72.

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writing on the tablet of the heart

Isocrates, and so on. As such, the Old Testament is a countercurriculum to that of Hellenistic education. Texts that originally had been formed for a scribal curriculum came to serve a broader purpose in shaping the minds and hearts of Israelite males in general. In focusing on education, we must not ignore the fact that texts were used for a wide variety of other purposes in the ancient world: recording of transactions, display and intimidation, administration, “magic,” continual offering to a deity. Within a largely oral world and even in oral-literate contexts, texts had a numinous power that we in the twenty-first century all too often forget. Writing made mute tombstones talk, statues pray to a deity around the clock, and so on. In this sense, the earlier analogy of computer disks is inaccurate because it minimizes the almost magical importance of the materiality of texts in an oral culture. Moreover, it fails to look at how such material textual objects might function in nuanced ways in specific institutional settings, often wholly unconnected to the ability of participants to read such texts. Indeed, written texts often proved uniquely suited to “institutionalizing unintelligibility” (as Richard Gordon puts it), serving in certain loci or certain stages of education to preserve expressions that were not understood, half-understood, or highly counterintuitive. We fail to grasp a crucial aspect of the ancient function of texts if we focus exclusively on their contents.24 There is another important characteristic of the writing of transgenerational, long-duration texts like the Bible: unlike people, writing is immortal. Writing makes language permanent, depersonalizes language, decontextualizes expression, and adds normativity. Writing formalizes, generalizes, and perpetuates features and intentions of language—cutting it loose from momentary and context-bound utterance. This characteristic—the potential immortality and permanence of writing—will be a key focus in this book.25 In a broader study, one might investigate the production of limited-duration administrative documents across these cultures. Nevertheless, the emphasis here is on how nondocumentary, long-duration texts of the sort found in the Bible were created as part of a broader use of texts to achieve cultural continuity in elite classes across space and time. In this sense, this study links with past ones that have focused on the broader uses of “cultural memory” to form groups and subgroups in societies.

24. The importance of context and materiality of texts as images is emphasized by Marc Van de Mieroop, Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History (London: Routledge, 1999), 58–59. The expression from Gordon appears in Richard Gordon, “From Republic to Principate: Priesthood, Religion and Ideology,” in Pagan Priests, ed. Mary Beard and John North (London: Duckworth, 1990), 189. The foregoing comments are based on the following surveys of older scholarship on the numinous perception of texts in various cultural contexts (including literate and oral-literate contexts) and the social uses to which such perceptions are put: Graham, Beyond the Written, 61–62; Michael Harbsmeier, “Inventions of Writing,” in State and Society: The Emergence and Development of Social Hierarchy and Political Centralization, ed. John Gledhill and Barbara Bender (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 253–59; Bengt Holbek, “What the Illiterate Think of Writing,” in Literacy and Society, ed. Karen Schousboe and Mogens Trolle Larsen (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1989), 183–96; Gordon, “From Republic to Principate,” 188–91; Ilkka Pyysia¨inen, “Holy Book: A Treasury of the Incomprehensible,” Numen 46 (1999): 278–82. 25. The word “potential” is added here because writing in these ancient cultures was done sometimes on media, like waxed boards, that did not permanently preserve writing.

textuality, orality, and shaping of the ancient mind

11

Such “cultural memory” consists of a body of recollections transmitted in organized ways to participants in a given group, recollections of values and views that shape each individual into a member of the group. Though such cultural memory often consists in large part of recollection of various narratives in the group’s past, it can also include behavioral norms and visions of the future. Within the ancient world, however, such behavioral norms and visions usually are embedded in memories of the distant past, with this past having powerful associations of goodness and normativity. Indeed, that past is never “past” in the way we might conceive it but stands in the ancient world as a potentially realizable “present” to which each generation seeks to return.26 Writing in the ancient world, given its ability to preserve language, even unintelligible or strange language, comes to serve an important role as a link to this “past”/ potential present. Education in such writing and mastery of core writings marks one as an insider among insiders in cultures that treasure such inscribed cultural memory. Such ancient insiders were the ones who wrote the texts that are our sole written access to pictures of the ancient world. This book will work critically with these pictures, recognizing that their images of literati with libraries in their heads may stand as ideal constructs amid societies where such mastery of the core textual tradition was achieved by only a few, while the majority mastered only fragments of the tradition, were exposed to the tradition through public readings by others, or did not know it at all. At this point, several definitions and qualifications should set this study in context. First, it must be clear from the outset that the educational systems under discussion here appear to have been primarily oriented toward the shaping of men for performance of leadership roles. That is not to say that women played no role in education, textual production, or performance. On the contrary, in certain periods and contexts, certain women appear to have played very important roles. Significant studies have been done by A. Lemaire, Betsy Bryan, S. A. Meier, S. Cole, and Raffaella Cribiore (among others) of various ways women did play a role in education in the ancient Near East and Greece.27

26. The foregoing formulation is dependent particularly on Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Geda¨chtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung, und politische Identita¨t in fru¨hen Hochkulturen (Munich: Beck, 1992), who cites earlier literature. For illuminating earlier discussions of ancient construals of the past see also F. R. Kraus, Vom mesopotamischen Menschen und seiner Welt: Eine Reihe Vorlesungen (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1973), 133–34; Nadav Na
aman, “Essays in History: Historiography, the Fashioning of the Collective Memory, and the Establishment of Historical Consciousness in Israel in the Late Monarchal Period [Heb.],” Zion 60 (1995): 449–72, and Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 193. This general construal of the distant past as good in ancient societies contrasts with more ambivalent attitudes in the contemporary world. See, particularly, David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). On the creation of contemporary concepts of the past see Anthony Kemp, The Estrangement of the Past: A Study in the Origins of Modern Historical Consciousness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 27. Andre´ Lemaire, Les E´coles et la formation de la Bible dans l’ancien Israe¨l, OBO (Fribourg: E´ditions Universitaires, 1981), 58–59; S. Cole, “Could Greek Women Read and Write?” in Reflections of Women in Antiquity, ed. H. Foley (New York: Gordon and Breach Science, 1981), 219–45; Betsy Bryan, “Evidence for Female Literacy from Theban Tombs of the New Kingdom,” Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar 6 (1984), 17–32; S. A. Meier, “Women and Communication in the Ancient Near East,” JAOS 111 (1991): 540–47; Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 31, 74–101.

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writing on the tablet of the heart

Generally, however, women are the exception rather than the rule in ancient education and textual production. Therefore, though I use gender-neutral language where possible, I occasionally revert to male pronouns in characterizing broadly androcentric educational systems, and I have not, in this context, been able to execute my own gender-critical study of these systems. Throughout my discussion, I often speak of “education-enculturation” as a pair, or “education and ongoing enculturation.” This addition of the word “enculturation” does two things here. First, the word helps expand the notion of person formation beyond the content of what is taught in a given educational system. Second, especially when combined with “ongoing,” the term “enculturation” affirms a variety of other institutions that reinforce, unfold, and further inscribe a given set of textual traditions on the hearts and minds of a given group. For example, I will show how educational practices in ancient Greece led into and were reinforced by textual performance in certain meal settings and larger scale performances of texts in community gatherings. Elsewhere we see such reinforcement in interactions often labeled as “liturgy.” The pair “education-enculturation” encompasses these and other cultural practices that inscribe and reinscribe texts on the hearts/minds of members of cultures or subgroups in them. Some other terms that play a major role in the following discussion are “textuality” and “curriculum.” Many good arguments have been made for extending the words “text” and “textuality” to encompass “texts” that are never written but just remembered, transmitted, and performed over time.28 In this study, however, I use the term “textuality” as shorthand for “written textuality.” I will use the term “curriculum” in a similar qualified sense. In the city where I live, New York, the public school has a “curriculum” that strictly specifies each step of the teaching process and all forms of materials to be used. There is no such minutely structured “curriculum” in the educational/enculturational examples I will discuss here, however structured each one is. Therefore, when I use the word “curriculum” in this study, it is meant as a general designation for educational materials in a given culture, more or less defined and sequenced, depending on the culture and time. In turn, for reasons I elaborate in the final chapter, I have avoided the use of the term “canon” for the “curricula” discussed in this study, having decided that the term “canon” obscures more than it illuminates. Another qualification pertains to the debate about “schools” in the ancient world. Though I will occasionally use the term “school” where it appears appropriate for ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, this work is not primarily about “schools.” I do not think that ancient Israel had many “schools” of the sort we would recognize as such. Instead, I maintain that most “schools,” when they did exist, were probably conducted in an apprenticeship model at the home of

28. Konrad Ehlich, “Text und sprachliches Handeln: Die Entstehung von Texten aus dem Bedu¨rfnis nach ¨ berlieferung,” in Schrift und Geda¨chtnis: Beitra¨ge zur Archa¨ologie der literarischen Kommunikation, ed. Jan AssU mann, Aleida Assmann, and Christoph Hardmeier (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1983), 24–43.

textuality, orality, and shaping of the ancient mind

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the master/teacher, a master/teacher who might or might not be the biological father of the student. Further discussion of the character of such education and its distribution is a separate matter and will be treated later in relation to specific times and cultural contexts. Nevertheless, this initial qualification is important because some past proposals similar to this one have been criticized for assuming an anachronistic picture of education.29 Finally, a word should be said about the loaded concept of “literacy.” The history of both historical and anthropological scholarship has demonstrated how prone scholars are to assume that the concept of “literacy” refers to a basic ability to read and write documents.30 Yet this concept of basic literacy, so selfevident to many today, has its own historical context in the recent past—a past where a general public has been educated into low-level literacy as part of a broader set of social and cultural developments.31 Certainly there were analogous concepts of basic literacy in the ancient world as well. Nevertheless, I will show that—however much such basic literacy rose or fell at various times and places—the literacy that most counted in these ancient societies often was not a basic ability to read and write. Rather it was an oral-written mastery of a body of texts. Moreover, this “literacy” was something that separated the members of an elite from their contemporaries. Such mastery of written texts, then, was not widespread. For it to perform its social function, it had to be a limited competency used to mark off a cultural and (often) social elite.32 In this sense, the often voiced distinctions between esoteric “scribal” cultures (for example, Mesopotamia, Egypt) and supposedly broadly “literate” cultures (for example, Greece or Israel) prove less helpful than they seem. Not only are past assumptions about universal literacy in “alphabetic” cultures probably wrong, but they often miss the fact that higher forms of literacy played a more important role in social organization and interaction. Even in alphabetic cultures, such higher forms of literacy were limited to those few who had the leisure for intense study, despite the occasionally voiced ideal that all become educated.33

29. I will not review those and other studies similar to this book in this context. Scholars with an immediate interest in the antecedents to this work are urged to consult the appendix. 30. For a survey and critique of such approaches see Collins, “Literacy and Literacies.” 31. For survey and discussion of this process see M. T. Clanchy, “Looking Back from the Invention of Printing,” in Literacy in Historical Perspective, ed. Daniel P. Resnick (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1983), 7–22; Harvey J. Graff, “Literacy, Jobs and Industrialization: The Nineteenth Century,” in Literacy and Social Development in the West: A Reader, ed. Harvey J. Graff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 232–60; The Legacies of Literacy: Continuities and Contradictions in Western Culture and Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); and the more popular discussion in Robert Pattison, On Literacy: The Politics of the Word from Homer to the Age of Rock (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). 32. On this I am influenced particularly by Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984 [orig. 1979]), but see also the broader survey of relations between education and class formation in David Hogan, “Education and Class Formation: The Peculiarities of the Americas,” in Cultural and Economic Reproduction through Education: Essays on Class, Ideology and the State, ed. Michael Apple (London: Routledge, 1982), 32–78. To be sure, our sources are often produced by those literati who are most interested in depicting their knowledge as constituting a claim to elite status (hence the addition of “often” in parentheses). This observation needs to be nuanced as we investigate each context further. 33. “Higher form of literacy” here is shorthand for forms of literacy that involved extensive mastery of textual corpora. I discuss levels of literacy later in this book in the chapters related to each culture.

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writing on the tablet of the heart

We can only develop better pictures of literacy, education, and textuality through a review of multiple cultures in the ancient Near East, including Israel. To be sure, Israel is different from its neighbors in significant ways. They are different from each other! But, following the lead of Hallo and others, the aim here will be a contextually sensitive comparative approach that focuses on both differences and similarities among multiple cultures considered over time. After all, Israel is not completely different from its cultural surroundings. Close study of nearby cultures may uncover some specific ways the textual/educational matrix of those cultures influenced that matrix in ancient Israel. In addition, even where such influence cannot be established, models of textuality and education developed through a careful comparative approach are much more likely to be helpful than the anachronistic models of textuality and reading we often unconsciously presuppose on the basis of contemporary experiences. I will now explore how several ancient cultures inscribed texts both on written media and on the minds and hearts of their future generations.

part i

Early Examples of Textuality and Education in the Near East and Mediterranean

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2 Ancient Mesopotamia The Earliest and Best-Documented Textual/ Educational System

Master god who (shapes) humanity, you are my god! You have opened my eyes as though I were a puppy; you have formed humanity within me. —Address by a Sumerian student to his teacher

The Scribal Text/Education Matrix The starting point for study of textuality in the Near East necessarily must be Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is likely the earliest origin point for writing in the Near East. Moreover, Mesopotamia developed one of the earliest and most influential educational systems. It is in Mesopotamia that we see the first possible attempt to systematically collect texts into a library. And, most important of all, the literary remains of Mesopotamia are better preserved than those of any other—thanks to the custom of writing so many types of documents on clay tablets that have withstood the test of time. As Klaas Veenhof in his helpful survey of relative preservation of archives in the Near East points out, sites elsewhere in the Near East (and in later Mesopotamia) often feature large finds of clay bullae and other wrappers of now destroyed papyrus and parchment—signs of a huge range of texts now lost to scholarly inquiry. Yet the older sites of Mesopotamia preserve a remarkable number of library/archives and dumps of discarded educational texts, caches of texts that allow

Epigraph: Cyril John Gadd, Teachers and Students in the Oldest Schools (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), 15.

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us an unparalleled glimpse into an ancient process of textual production and scribal education.1 The key point that emerges, for the purposes of this study, from investigations by Assyriologists is the following: especially from the Old Babylonian period forward, we should not talk of a “library” or “literary canon” (if the term “canon” can even be used) in isolation.2 Instead, we must conceptualize textual production as part of a broader scribal matrix, a matrix where—in addition to writing administrative documents—scribe/teachers (ummia) collected and updated a limited corpus of standard texts, inscribed those texts on stable media, and inscribed those texts on the minds of students for recitation and socialization. Both sorts of inscription—inscription on humans and tablets—were key parts of the scribal task. There is no separate word in Sumerian for “teacher.”3 In the case of Mesopotamia, we have an unusually rich variety of data on which to draw in researching this scribal matrix. First and foremost, tens of thousands of student exercises have been preserved, mostly from the Old Babylonian period. These range from very rough, oblong copies of lexical lists and small literary excerpts to larger copies of parts or all of major Mesopotamian compositions.4 Their clay form allowed them to be preserved, even though many such tablets were discarded by their original users. From the same period we have various satirical educational dialogues, both disputes between plants or animals and recreations of school debates. Though the often satirical form of these compositions and their educational function make them imperfect windows to ancient education, they provide some insight into what their writers considered a credible picture of such education. Finally, we have catalogues of literary works that may have been used to give an overview of the curricula of some educational contexts5 and a handful of references to education in hymns

1. Klaas R. Veenhof, “Cuneiform Archives: An Introduction,” in Cuneiform Archives and Libraries: Papers Read at the 30e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Leiden, 4–8, July 1983, ed. Klaas R. Veenhof (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 1986), 1–3. 2. For a recent overview of past debates over the use of the word for Sumero-Akkadian works see Victor Hurowitz, “Canon and Canonization in Mesopotamia,” in Proceedings of the Twelfth World Congress of Jewish Studies: Division A—The Bible and Its World, ed. Ron Margolin (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1997), 1–12; cf. William W. Hallo, “The Concept of Canonicity in Cuneiform and Biblical Literature: A Comparative Appraisal,” in The Biblical Canon in Comparative Perspective, ed. K. L. Younger, W. W. Hallo, and B. F. Batto (Lewiston, NY: Mellon, 1991), 1–19. 3. There is reference in Sumerian texts to an upper-level apprentice who aids in teaching, the sˇesˇ-gal (“big brother”; thanks to Professor Hallo for this observation) and some late references in Akkadian texts to a mulammidu (“teacher”; thanks to Daniel Fleming for this point), though these latter are probably not teachers of writing. 4. A. W. Sjo¨berg, “The Old Babylonian Edubba,” in Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen, ed. S. Liebermann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 176–78; Petra D. Gesche, Schulunterricht in Babylonien im ersten Jahrtausend v. Chr., AOAT (Mu¨nster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2001), 9–24. 5. Hallo, “New Viewpoints on Cuneiform Literature,” 23–24; P. Michalowski, “A New Sumerian ‘Catalogue’ from Nippur,” Oriens Antiquus 19 (1980): 265; William W. Hallo, “Notes from the Babylonian Collection II: Old Babylonian HAR-ra,” JCS 34 (1982): 81–93; P. Michalowski, “Observations on a Sumerian Literary Catalogue from Ur,” JCS 36 (1984): 91; D. Charpin, Le clerge´ d’Ur au sie`cle d’Hammurabi (XIXe–XVIIIe sie`cles av. J.-C.), Hautes e´tudes orientales (Geneva: Droz, 1986), 438–85; H.L.J. Vanstiphout, “On the Old Edubba Education,” in Centres of Learning: Learning and Location in Pre-Modern Europe and the Near East, ed. J. W. Drijvers and A. A. MacDonald (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 9–10.

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and other literature.6 Though this data is most plentiful for the Old Babylonian period (particularly the eighteenth century b.c.e.), educational exercises and references to education allow us to extend our picture to other periods of Mesopotamian history as well.7 With the possible exception of a royal collection like Ashurbanipal’s, most collections of texts mix what we might separately classify as “archival” and “library” texts.8 On the one hand, we see a preponderance of documentary texts in virtually all deposits of texts: letters, contracts, receipts, usually recent ones probably created during the tenure of the scribe who had the archive. On the other hand, many such scribal archives also include a sizable group of the nondocumentary, nonadministrative texts that are the focus here. Often the majority are student copies of texts. Some are so full of mistakes that much expertise is required to identify the text being copied. Others appear to be highly advanced school copies or reference copies of a given text. In either case, these texts appear across a number of locations and across numerous periods. Unlike the documentary texts, their significance was not limited to the generation who produced them. Instead, these were copies of what could be termed “longduration texts,” that is, texts that were consciously transmitted from generation to generation. These nondocumentary, long-duration texts were reference points for a broader process of education by which nascent scribes were taught both cultural values and literacy at the same time. They played a key role in an overall project of ensuring cultural continuity from age to age and place to place. Some texts may have originated in some documentary form—letter, inscription, and so on—only to be appropriated and adapted to serve as part of the education and socialization of the young. But once such texts were so adapted, they were multiplied in a radically new way within the context of education. Indeed, if it were not for the presence of school copies of Sumerian and Akkadian literature, we would have a much more restricted sense of its scope and character.9 Because the project of education was so central to the creation and transmission of such long-duration texts (and vice versa), I focus in this chapter on summarizing what is known about ancient Mesopotamian education before discussing text production. In chapter 3 I will look at how this system was dispersed widely.

6. Hallo, “New Viewpoints on Cuneiform Literature,” 23–24; Hallo, “Notes II”; Michalowski, “Observations,” 91; Andre´ Lemaire, “Ecritures et langues du Moyen-Orient ancien,” in Ecrits de l’Orient ancien et sources bibliques, ed. A. Barucq (Paris: Decle´e, 1986), 36; Charpin, Le clerge´ d’Ur, 438–85. 7. For a useful overview of the concentrations of evidence see Van De Mieroop, Cuneiform Texts, 11, table 2. 8. This contra M. Haran, “Archives, Libraries, and the Order of the Biblical Books,” Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University 22 (1993): 51–61. Though there is some distinction of “library” in the time of Ashurbanipal (Simo Parpola, “The Royal Archives of Niniveh,” in Veenhof, Cuneiform Archives and Libraries, 231–34; noting the boundary even here as “fluid”), the more widespread evidence suggests that textual collections did not clearly divide what would consider “archival” from “literary” and other texts. For an overview of the evidence see Olof Pederse´n, Archives and Libraries in the Ancient Near East, 1500–300 B.C. (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1998). 9. Charpin, Le clerge´ d’Ur, 422–23.

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Ancient Mesopotamian Education The Mesopotamian educational system is best documented in the Old Babylonian period, but it had earlier roots and continued in altered and various forms into later periods. The system focused on elite literacy—the training of youths to function in specific administrative and ritual capacities. Though there is ongoing debate—to which I will turn later—about the extent of literacy in ancient Greece and Israel, few would argue that literacy was widespread in ancient Mesopotamia. At some points there may have been a wider group of officials and others who mastered enough cuneiform to interpret basic documents and write them.10 Nevertheless, the educational system focused on the creation of an elite class of literate, enculturated people who then served as the key players in many cultural interactions: political, religious, and so on.11 Whether or not the cuneiform system itself was an impediment to widespread literacy,12 the social function of writing in society dictated that education be configured in such a way that limited it to a select group, an intellectual elite. Indeed, as I will show, it was configured in such a way that the learning of the complex cuneiform system was but one part of a much more comprehensive whole. In the Old Babylonian period, much of this education was quite small in scale and took place in the “edubba,” a Sumerian word for “school” that was later rendered by the Akkadian bı¯t-tfiuppi(m) “tablet house.”13 This edubba was presided over by the “ummia,” master scribe. It may well be that the “tablet house” was often the ummia’s own home.14 Since scribal office was often

10. Simo Parpola, “The Man Without a Scribe and the Question of Literacy in the Assyrian Empire,” in Beitra¨ge zu altorientalischen und mittelmeerischen Kulturen: Festschrift fu¨r Wolfgang Ro¨llig, ed. B. Pongratz-Leisten, H. Ku¨hne, and P. Xella (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1997), 315–24. 11. A. Leo Oppenheim, “A Note on the Scribes in Mesopotamia,” in Studies in Honor of Benno Landsberger on His Seventy-fifth Birthday, April 21, 1965, ed. T. H. Gu¨tebork and T. Jacobsen (Chicago: Oriental Institute Press, 1965), 253–56; P. Michalowski, “Charisma and Control: On Continuity and Change in Early Mesopotamian Bureaucratic Systems,” in The Organization of Power: Aspects of Bureaucracy in the Ancient Near East, ed. M. Gibson and R. D. Biggs (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1987), 47–57; Giuseppe Visicato, The Power and the Writing: The Early Scribes of Mesopotamia (Bethesda, MD: CDL, 2000). 12. There is significant debate about this. Most have assumed in the past that only a few could have learned the complex sign system in cuneiform, but others have called attention to the way cultures such as Japan and China, with similarly complex sign systems, have achieved levels of literacy that surpass those of many cultures with alphabetic systems. See Mogens Trolle Larsen, “What They Wrote on Clay,” in Literacy and Society, ed. Karen Schousboe and Mogens Trolle Larsen (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1989), 121–48. 13. For a discussion of translation issues attending the Sumerian term see Konrad Volk, “Edubba
a und Edubba
a-Literatur: Ra¨tsel und Lo¨sungen,” ZA 90 (2000): 2–3. For another proposal see William W. Hallo, “Nippur Originals,” in Dumu-e2-dub-ba-a: Studies in Honor of Ake W. Sjoberg, ed. H. Behrens, D. Loding, and M. T. Roth (Philadelphia: Babylonian Section, University Museum, 1989), 237. 14. H. Waetzoldt, “Keilschrift und Schulen in Mesoptoamien und Ebla,” in Erziehungs und Unterrichtsmethoden im historischen Wandel, ed. Lenz Kriss-Rettenbeck and Max Liedtke (Bad Heilbrunn: Linkhardt, 1986), 30; Charpin, Le clerge´ d’Ur, 432–34; Volk, “Edubba
a,” 5–8. For later periods see Waetzoldt, “Keilschrift und Schulen,” 39. For an illuminating study of one archaeological find, House F in Nippur, that is a particularly likely candidate for such a small-scale school, see Eleanor Robson, “The Tablet House: A Scribal School in Old Babylonian Nippur,” RA 95 (2001): 39–66. As Robson points out (p. 62), this find suggests that education occurred on a smaller scale than is usually presupposed.

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hereditary, the scribe’s students often may have been his own sons. Yet, in the analogous case of Egypt, it has been pointed out that about one half of those students educated as scribes would have died before being able to act as scribes.15 Within this ancient world of limited life expectancy—especially when combined with occasional expansions in the need for trained scribes—it often was not enough merely to train one’s own sons as scribes. Other students needed to be accepted into the educational process. That said, this was familystyled education. Whether or not students were the biological children of a given scribe, the educational roles in this setting were framed as family roles, and the number of students probably was quite small.16 The teacher was either the student’s real father or took on that role.17 The student was the “son.”18 “Older brothers” (sing. sˇesˇ-gal) also seem to have played an important role.19 Together this scribal “family” socialized young people—usually men20— into the scribal vocation, teaching them not only the methods of writing but also an entire system of values and perspectives, including value for their own profession, cherishing of tradition, and loyalty to the king.21 Most indicators suggest a process of instruction much resembling that of an apprenticeship, but not an apprenticeship that focused exclusively on producing practical documents.22 Rather, students who progressed were inducted into the scribal “family’s” project of memorizing and performing—whether orally or through production of written copies—their heritage of ancient standard texts. Indeed, as Nick Veldhuis in particular has stressed, students learned far more Sumerian than they needed for the performance of bureaucratic or commercial duties, and too little Akkadian.23 Even subjects like mathematics often focused on highly theoretical problems, such as how to lay siege to a city with an unfinished ramp.24 Ultimately, this education by “family” apprenticeship encompassed both 15. John Baines and Christopher Eyre, “Four Notes on Literacy,” Go¨ttinger Miszellen 61 (1983): 72–73. 16. H. Waetzoldt, “Der Schreiber als Lehrer in Mesopotamien,” in Schreiber, Magister, Lehrer: Zur Geschichte und Funktion eines Berufsstandes, ed. Johann Georg Prinz von Hohenzollern and Max Liedtke (Bad Heilbrunn: Julius Klinkhardt, 1989), 39. As Van de Mieroop points out, these family terms should not be taken too literally (The Ancient Mesopotamian City [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997], 220–21. 17. Gesche, Schulunterricht, 4, 214–16. 18. Often the “son of the tablet house” but also, as in Examtext A, just the “son.” 19. Older treatments often had a longer list of personnel, often depending on misinterpretation of data from the lexical lists. On the data and problem see Niek Veldhuis, Elementary Education at Nippur: The Lists of Trees and Wooden Objects (Groningen: Styx, 1997), 24–26. 20. For an excellent survey of the evidence for education of girls and women see Meier, “Women.” 21. Gesche, Schulunterricht, 147–52, locates the loyalty to the king for first millennium education, particularly in the first level of education. 22. See esp. Aage Westenholz, “Old Akkadian School Texts: Some Goals of Sargonic Scribal Education,” Archiv fu¨r Orientforschung 25 (1974): 106–7; Michalowski, “Charisma and Control,” 63; Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 82, 142–46; H.L.J. Vanstiphout, “ ‘I Can Put Anything in Its Right Place’: Generic and Typological Studies as Strategies for the Analysis and Evaluation of Mankind’s Oldest Literature,” in Aspects of Genre and Type in Pre-Modern Literary Cultures, vol.1, ed. Bert Roest and Herman Vanstiphout (Groningen: Styx, 1999), 90– 91; Gesche, Schulunterricht, 212 (see also 19 on practical exercises). Cf. Waetzoldt, “Keilschrift und Schulen,” 41. 23. Michalowski, “Charisma and Control,” 63; Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 80–82, 140–46; cf. Waetzoldt, “Keilschrift und Schulen,” 41. 24. J. Høyrup, In Measure, Number, and Weight : Studies in Mathematics and Culture (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994), 65–66.

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narrower technical competencies (particularly in mastery of the SumeroAkkadian writing system) and broader enculturation. On the one hand, students gradually learned how to prepare documents, including some vaguely practical model letters and contracts toward the end of their elementary education.25 Some even progressed to the point where their own advanced work as apprentices was, at the same time, reference material for future students. On the other hand, much of the curriculum focused on documents and competencies that were not directly pertinent to their work as scribes, but still foundational enough to their identity to be included in the scribal curriculum for centuries.26 The early outlines of this scribal curriculum emerge in the Old Babylonian period, where finds of educational texts are most plentiful and where we first see the school dialogues that are among our primary data for education in ancient Mesopotamia. This is when we find a set of remarkably similar higher level educational texts—texts beyond the lexical and sign-list stage—across southern Mesopotamia at sites such as Nippur, Uruk, Ur, Kish, Sippar, and Larsa.27 And this is when the monarchies of Ur-III kings like Shulgi and Old Babylonian kings like Hammurabi begin to achieve a kind of centralization of disparate city states that had not been achieved before.28 Eventually, toward the end of the elementary stage of Old Babylonian education, the student learned some basic model documents—model letters, hymns, treaties, and certain classical documents.29 Apparently certain proverbial collections were among the first texts to be learned, both for their content and for instruction in elementary Sumerian grammar. Nevertheless, this gnomic material was only a small proportion of teaching material and did not make up a clearly defined group of special “wisdom” texts.30 At least one 25. F. R. Kraus, “Briefschreibu¨bungen im altbabylonischen Schulunterricht,” Jaarbericht van het vooraziatisch-egyptisch gezelschap 16 (1964): 16–39; William W. Hallo, “Individual Prayer in Sumerian: The Continuity of a Tradition,” JAOS 88 (1968): 76; P. Michalowski, “Review of Luigi Cagni, Briefe aus dem Iraq Museum. Altbabylonische Briefe 8 [Leiden 1980],” JCS 35 (1983): 227; Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 41–63. Gesche, Schulunterricht, 169–71, notes that—in the first millennium—the issue of practicality appears to have been more prominent in nonstandardized materials. 26. On this see especially Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 80–82, 140–46, and Gesche, Schulunterricht, 3–8, 72, 121. 27. A. W. Sjo¨berg, “The Old Babylonian Eduba,” in Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen on His Seventieth Birthday, June 7 1974, ed. S. J. Lieberman, et al. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975) 176– 78; Waetzoldt, “Keilschrift und Schulen,” 39; Michalowski, “Charisma and Control,” 57–67; cf. Van De Mieroop, Cuneiform Texts, 58, on the problem of too exclusive a focus on issues of power. Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 27–28, notes that the lexical tradition was actually more stable in the period prior to the Old Babylonian era, when most would locate the standardization of the curriculum. In this sense, Sjo¨berg’s and others’ analyzes need to be nuanced. At the same time, the higher level standard epic and hymnic texts first emerge to prominence during the time of empires under discussion. For studies of pre-Ur-III education see Westenholz, “Old Akkadian School Texts”; Benjamin R. Foster, “Education of a Bureaucrat in Sargonic Sumer,” Archive Orienta´lnı´ 50 (1982): 238–41 (both of whom discuss some examples of use of royal narratives in education). 28. For an illuminating brief discussion of the shift from Ur-III to the Old Babylonian period see Niek Veldhuis, “Mesopotamian Canons,” in Homer, the Bible and Beyond: Literary and Religious Canons in the Ancient World, ed. Margarit Finkelberg and Guy G. Strousma (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 13–14. 29. Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 60–62. 30. Niek Veldhuis, “Sumerian Proverbs in Their Curricular Context,” JAOS 120 (2000): 385–87. On the

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hymnic text, Lipit-Ishtar hymn B, appears to have been widely used because it combined instruction in basic values concerning royalty with progressive introduction of basic Sumerian grammar.31 In addition, a recent study has suggested that three other hymns—Iddin-Dagan B, Enlil-bani A, and Nisaba hymn A—likewise formed part of the conclusion of the elementary curriculum during the Old Babylonian period, expanding on forms and grammar learned in Lipit-Ishtar B.32 Students appear to have moved through two main stages in this early curriculum. The first stage focused on teaching the students the rudiments of ancient Sumerian language and Sumerian values through memorizing and copying short excerpts of a fairly circumscribed group of lexical and other texts. The student started by learning how to produce the basic signs of the cuneiform system. We have a few examples of small clay tablets from the very outset of education where the young student practiced basic cuneiform wedges repeatedly. Soon the student started memorizing Sumerian sign lists: learning basic and more advanced signs, names and then long lists of words, signs that rendered multiple Sumerian words, and so on.33 By the Old Babylonian period, some lists of this sort included pronunciations in Akkadian, one among several indications that these students were learning Sumerian as a second language. Most exercises in the most elementary stages were short, often with the “big brother” (sˇesˇ-gal) or “father” (ummia/master) copying a couple of lines on a rounded tablet, and the student copying them below. Sometimes these lines would be a brief proverb or excerpt from a prayer. Far more often it would be a section from a standard lexical or sign list. In either case, most exercises at this stage included a fairly narrow range of texts. After learning to work with clay tablets and writing implements, students would start with the 100- to 200line “Syllable Alphabet B” that walked the student through elementary cuneiform signs and combinations of signs. Many would then move on to the 116item TU-TA-TI overview of syllable combinations, then a list of names, and parts of the famous ur5-ra-H 6 UBULLU list of 3,000 to 3,500 Sumerian nouns, organized by subject. Advanced students would learn lists like Proto-Ea, which gave an overview of all possible (and a few impossible) values for cuneiform signs and sign combinations.34

problems of applying the “wisdom” category to Mesopotamian gnomic and other material see W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), 1–2. 31. H.L.J. Vanstiphout, “Lipit-Esthar’s Praise in the Edubba,” JCS 30 (1978): 33–39; H.L.J. Vanstiphout, “How Did They Learn Sumerian?” JCS 31 (1979): 118–26. 32. Steve Tinney, “On the Curricular Setting of Sumerian Literature,” Iraq 61 (1999): 159–68. For a comparison of Tinney’s results with the finds in House F in Nippur (a probable school) see Robson, “Tablet House,” 51, 53. 33. The standard treatment of this is now Veldhuis, Elementary Education, esp. 40–63. Another recent overview is Vanstiphout, “Right Place,” 83. See Robson, “Tablet House,” 47–50, for comparison of Veldhuis’s results with the distribution of texts in House F of Nippur. 34. The decisive work on this was done in Veldhuis, Elementary Education, esp. 41–58. For a briefer overview see Niek Veldhuis, “Continuity and Change in the Mesopotamian Lexical Tradition,” in Roest and Vanstiphout, Aspects of Genre and Type in Pre-Modern Literary Cultures, vol.1, 103–8.

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The mastery of these and other lists required feats of memorization not typical of much present day education, and this is reflected in some of the data for Mesopotamian education. A student in one dialogue boasts he “can give the 600 LU2 entries in their correct order” and “My teacher had to show me a sign only once, and I could add several from memory.”35 This includes at least a bit of exaggeration, since the LU2⫽sˇu list does not include six hundred entries.36 Nevertheless, it suggests at least the ideal of memorizing large numbers of signs in their correct order. Waetzoldt mentions finding a pair of student copies of a shorter, 123-line section of a list. One of these lists was completed fully, ostensibly from memory. In the other case, the list dissolves around line 72 into confused lines, with the student apparently required to copy 8 lines perfectly on the other side as punishment.37 Another indication of the difficulty of the memorization task is a letter translated by Miguel Civil emphasizing the impossibility of learning the scribal arts anywhere but Nippur: “They cannot learn the scribal art. One cannot recite twenty or thirty times the lexical entries, one cannot interpret the songs ten or twenty times.”38 At some point the student appears to have moved into a second stage, one involving increasing autonomy and mastery of a broadening range of continuous texts.39 He (or occasionally she) branched out into other subjects and longer extracts from a more diverse group of standard texts. Such students continued to master the lexical lists and studied math, surveying, music, and various administrative procedures.40 They drew up model administrative and legal documents and copied classical royal inscriptions by famous kings. Students also copied a number of longer mythic and proverbial texts. As in the case of the lexical lists, the result was a remarkable level of recall of the given texts. For example, Hartmut Waetzoldt mentions a postcard-sized tablet holding five compositions minutely written on it, a total of 639 lines. Because of space limitations, the scribe often included only the first part of a given line, presumably being able to complete the rest through oral recall.41 Although the Sumerian kingdoms that are the focus of many of these texts had died out, the Old Babylonian curriculum focused on Sumerian hymns and epics, particularly a series of ten texts that are featured in varying orders across 35. H.L.J. Vanstiphout, “The Dialogue Between an Examiner and a Student,” in The Context of Scripture 1: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World, ed. William W. Hallo and K. L. Younger (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 592 (lines 19–20 and 34–35). 36. Vanstiphout, “Dialogue,” 592, n. 5. 37. Waetzoldt, “Schreiber als Lehrer,” 35. 38. Miguel Civil, “From the Epistolary of the Edubba,” in Wisdom, Gods and Literature: Studies in Assyriology in Honour of W. G. Lambert, ed. A. R. George and Irving Finkel (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 106–7. 39. Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 40; “A Late Old Babylonian Proto-Kagal/Nigga Text and the Nature of the Acrographic Lexical Series,” Acta Sumerologica 20 (1998): 208–10. 40. Karen R. Nemet-Nejat, “Systems for Learning Mathematics in Mesopotamian Scribal Schools,” Journal for Near Eastern Studies 54 (1995): 241–60; Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998), 57–58. 41. Waetzoldt, “Schreiber als Lehrer,” 36. For other arguments regarding the probable importance of orality and memory see Veldhuis, “Continuity and Change,” 109; Gesche, Schulunterricht, 70–72 (the latter with a focus on later education).

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a range of catalogues: for example, Lipit-Isˇtar A, song of the Hoe, Enki’s journey to Nippur, Gilgamesh, and Huwawa.42 Yet the curriculum now also included Akkadian translation-adaptations of older Sumerian works, such as the Gilgamesh epic (a radical adaptation of earlier Sumerian tales) and the Atrahasis epic.43 Overall, the curriculum included myths about the beginning of time, stories surrounding Agade (one of the first unified kingdoms of Mesopotamia), royal prayers and songs of praise to the king, standard hymns, laments over the destruction of ancient Sumerian cities, love poetry revolving around the cult of Inanna and Dumuzi, educational dialogues and fables about disputations between parts of the natural world, and proverbial and reflective wisdom. This body of literature was sometimes surveyed in ancient catalogues of standard works, but it also emerges clearly through the selectivity of the educational texts that were preserved across diverse sites in ancient Mesopotamia. Though the range of literature included was quite broad, it also excluded a large number of texts, such as texts of a specifically ritual character and detailed allusions to the court.44 Thus, these catalogues do not appear to be lists of the contents of any actual library/archive but overviews of literature that young scribes were supposed to master. This Old Babylonian curriculum, particularly the sign and lexical lists, continued into later periods, though there were also significant variations across space and time.45 Its core was systematized during the Kassite period immediately following the Old Babylonian one, and this was a significant move toward the written standardization of these traditions achieved in the first millennium. As Veldhuis in particular has stressed, we see a significant shift in the character and treatment of classic educational texts in the first millennium. Old Sumero-Akkadian materials were significantly adapted as they traveled ever further from the Sumerian period. Several lists—like ur5-ra-H 6 UBULLU

42. Tinney, “Curricular Setting,” 168–70, and see the comparison of his conclusions with the finds in House F and other loci in Nippur in Robson, “Tablet House,” 51–59 (who finds an additional grouping of fourteen compositions prominently featured there). For reflections on how these Sumerian works may have been sifted and adapted according to how much they could be applied to diverse circumstances see William W. Hallo, “Toward a History of Sumerian Literature,” in Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen, ed. S. Lieberman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 183–201. 43. Aside from some model letters, the (Old Babylonian) Gilgamesh epic is the only piece of Akkadian literature in the House F school text find (Robson, “Tablet House,” 60). This is a testimony to a prominence that I will show in the unusually widespread use of the Gilgamesh tradition in peripheral versions of this educational system. 44. J.J.A. van Dijk, La sagesse sume´ro-accadienne, Recherches sur les genres litteraires des textes sapientiaux (Leiden: Brill, 1953), 23; Adam Falkenstein, “Die babylonische Schule,” Saeculum 4 (1953): 131–32; Sjo¨berg, “Edubba,” 162–72; Charpin, Le clerge´ d’Ur, 422–23; Samuel Noah Kramer, “The Sage in Sumerian Literature: A Composite Portrait,” in The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed. John G. Gammie and Leo G. Perdue (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 36–37; P. Michalowski, “The Torch and the Censer,” in The Tablet and the Scroll: Near Eastern Studies in Honor of William W. Hallo, ed. M. E. Cohen, D. C. Snell, and D. B. Weisberg (Bethesda, MD: CDL, 1993), 159–60; Vanstiphout, “Edubba Education,” 3–16. Vanstiphout, “Lipit-Esthar’s Praise,” 126, posits yet a third level of education where students copied texts for their own sake but acknowledges that this level “one can only speculate.” By that point student mastery was such that school copies cannot be distinguished from reference copies. 45. Laurie E. Pearce, “The Scribes and Scholars of Ancient Mesopotamia,” in CANE, 2271–72.

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and Proto-Ea—expanded to cover tens of tablets. Moreover, the key mode of transmission ceased to be the master scribe’s mind and became a written reference copy.46 Memorization still played a prominent role as the text was standardized in written form, but we also see the growing prominence of scholarly commentary literature to clarify and explicate an increasingly fixed and archaic body of tradition.47 The resulting corpus, especially the list traditions, formed the basis for scribal education in Mesopotamia and beyond. Despite substantial changes in both society and the scribal office, prospective scribes still progressed through a remarkably continuous bilingual curriculum, including many of the same short exercises in cuneiform and language, along with a similar list of standardized works from an ever more distant past.48 To be sure, Sumerian, aside from the standard lists, radically diminished in importance. Still, it did not fade away immediately, despite the fact that it had died out as a living language centuries before.49 Overall, there is less evidence regarding advanced study in later Mesopotamian history because advanced exercises appear to have been done on perishable materials (wax-covered boards, papyrus, and parchment) rather than the durable clay of earlier times.50 Nevertheless, the data suggests that students still learned the standard sign and lexical lists, along with a varying array of key standard works: the Gilgamesh epic, Atrahasis epic, code of Hammurabi, and so on.51 Within Mesopotamia, education underwent some significant shifts in the first millennium. Some older lists dropped out of usage, and the firstmillennium versions of the lists that survived functioned alongside an array of nonstandard lists.52 Some pieces of literature, particularly those connected with Babylon, became more prominent, such as the Enuma Elish, Shamash hymn, and letters to Marduk.53 In addition, because of increased focus in the first millennium on magic and divination, various scholarly specialists would memorize and copy various specific bodies of literature, such as omen and spell lists.54 Thus, according to Petra Gesche, two tracks characterized first-

46. On various adaptations of the lists in the first millennium see Gesche, Schulunterricht, 66–80. For the shifts in treatment of these texts see Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 132–36; “Mesopotamian Canons.” 47. On memorization in the first millennium see Gesche, Schulunterricht, 70–72. On commentaries and other signs of a new form of (written) text-based intertextuality see Veldhuis, “Mesopotamian Canons,” 18–27. 48. For a critique of past arguments that education radically changed or declined in the first millenium see Van De Mieroop, Cuneiform Texts, 220–21. 49. Veldhuis traces the gradual diminishment of the use of Sumerian in Kassite exercises (“Kassite Exercises: Literary and Lexical Extracts,” JCS 52 [2000]: 67–94; see also Veldhuis, “Mesopotamian Canons,” 19). Gesche notes that though Sumerian proverbs were removed from the first stage of student study, they were still featured in more advanced levels (Schulunterricht, 150–52). 50. Miguel Civil, “Education,” in ABD, vol.2, 305. 51. On the use of Hammurapi (a new item in the foregoing list) see Victor Hurowitz, “Spanning the Generations: Aspects of Oral and Written Transmission in the Bible and Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Freedom and Responsibility, ed. R. M. Geffen and M. B. Edelman (New York: KTAV, 1999), 16; Gesche, Schulunterricht, 217– 18. 52. Gesche, Schulunterricht, 81–152. 53. Gesche, Schulunterricht, 174–83. 54. Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 134–36; “Kassite Exercises,” 71–82; Gesche, Schulunterricht, 212–20.

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millennium education. All students underwent a similar education in the science of cuneiform writing and ideological texts promoting king and temple, while only those scribes destined for a scholarly or temple career progressed to spells and the mastery of a yet higher and more esoteric science of writing: the gods’ “celestial writing” of signs of the future on dreams, stars, omens, livers, and so on.55 Yet even these written works used in education were but the tip of a largely oral iceberg. The point of education was not mastery of written texts per se. Rather, these written texts served as crucial media to facilitate the oral learning of Sumerian and the memorization and performance of standard Sumerian and Akkadian works. Numerous aspects of the lexical lists and educational exercises point to a largely oral process of instruction. Early sign and lexical lists lack a pronunciation column, and many key linguistic rules are omitted from all teaching materials. Nevertheless, this information was apparently communicated orally, often to find its way into later standard teaching works. For example, some early educational texts have one sign copied several times in one column, with the other column still blank for the student to fill in the various values he had learned for the given sign. In addition, many of the copies of standard lists exhibit the kinds of errors that would be typical of oral dictation, including places where students inadvertently substituted the Babylonian translation of a given term where they were supposed to write the Sumerian. One Old Babylonian list is cited by a bilingual opening line, even though our extant copies are all unilingual in Sumerian. As Civil puts it, these “lexical lists are only a skeleton, the flesh of the oral teaching is gone forever.”56 In addition, the school dialogues describe an educational process where oral dictation and accurate oral performance were central.57 Though students often learned early writing skills through copying short literary excerpts written by a teacher, more advanced students appear to have learned through a process of dictation and recitation. The teacher tells the student in one dialogue, “repeat it to me, say everything to me exactly.”58 Another dialogue has a student say,

55. For summary of this approach to Mesopotamian divination and relevant literarture see Veldhuis, “Mesopotamian Canons,” 113–14. 56. Miguel Civil, “Lexicography,” in Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen, ed. S. Liebermann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 130–31. Several of the foregoing arguments come from Veldhuis, “Continuity and Change,” 109. On this point cf. the earlier expression of the opposite opinion in Benno Landsberger, “Scribal Concepts of Education,” in The City Invincible, ed. Carl H. Kraeling and Robert M. Adams (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 116. See also Civil, “Education,” 305; Gesche, Schulunterricht,70–71, 168–69. 57. For a summary of the data see Gesche, Schulunterricht, 169. See also Waetzoldt, “Keilschrift und Schulen,” 41–42, and Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 55. Other important discussions include Bendt Alster, Dumuzi’s Dream: Aspects of Oral Poetry in a Sumerian Myth, Mesopotamia (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1972), esp. 26, 126–32; “Lugalbanda and the Early Epic Tradition in Mesopotamia,” in Lingering over Words: Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Literature in Honor of William L. Moran, ed. Tzvi Abusch et al. (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990), 63–64; “Oral and Written Poetry,” esp. 24; Jerrold Cooper, “Babbling on About Recovering Mesopotamian Orality,” in Mesopotamian Epic Literature: Oral or Aural?, ed. H.L.J. Vanstiphout and M. Vogelzang (Lewiston, NY: Mellon, 1991), esp. 119–21. 58. A. W. Sjo¨berg, “Der Vater und sein missratener Sohn,” JCS 25 (1973): 115.

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“I explained my exercise-tablets to my father, recited my tablet to him, and he was delighted.”59 Eventually, students not only had to memorize individual elements of standard works but also be able to place the texts that they had memorized into the correct order. I mentioned earlier a depiction of a student claiming to have memorized six hundred LU2 entries in their correct sequence. We see another reference to this process in the following description of the goal of education. If you have learned the scribal art, you have recited all of it, the different lines, chosen from the scribal art, (the names of ) the animals living in the steppe to (the names of ) artisans you have written (but) after that you hate (writing). Another dialogue says “you may recite from the scribal art, but you cannot place it in its right place”; yet another: “the whole vocabulary of the scribal art I will recite for you, I know it much better than you.”60 Much of the instruction in oral performance was probably itself oral, but we find scattered written indications of the oral-musical dimensions in the texts themselves.61 For example, Anne Kilmer shows how the Atrahasis epic is saturated with indications of design for oral-musical performance: structures of repetition, musical directions, and so on.62 Such musical structure, along with rhythmic parallelism and other structures often connected with “orality,” would have aided a student in memorizing the written texts at the heart of the scribal curriculum.63 And this oral-musical dimension is not only attested in such early texts. Wilfred G. Lambert discusses a first-millennium text, a late Babylonian Sumero-Akkadian liturgy to Nabu, that includes a variety of additional notes indicating how it should be pronounced and sung.64 We see similar indications of performance in older copies of lamentations, and these indications of oral performance and liturgical context are also found in the dedications of first-millennium educational texts and library deposit copies to Nabu and other gods.65 To be sure, competence in oral performance was not enough. It had to be

59. Nemet-Nejat, Daily Life, 58–59. For additional discussion of the oral dimension of early education and textuality see especially Alster, “Oral and Written Poetry,” and Cooper, “Mesopotamian Orality.” 60. Sjo¨berg, “Edubba,” 163–64. See Gesche, Schulunterricht, 169, for additional indicators of oral pedagogy. 61. For general discussions see Cooper, “Mesopotamian Orality,” 114–17, and Alster, “Oral and Written Poetry,” 45–46. 62. A. Kilmer, “Fugal Features of Atrahasis: The Birth Theme,” in Mesopotamian Poetic Language: Sumerian and Akkadian, ed. M. Vogelzang and H.L.J. Vanstiphout (Groningen: Styx, 1996), 127–36. 63. For a very helpful survey of empirical study of textual structures and memorization see Rubin, Memory in Old Traditions, 15–193. 64. W. G. Lambert, “The Converse Tablet: A Litany with Musical Instructions,” in Near Eastern Studies in Honor of William Foxwell Albright, ed. Hans Goedicke (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), 337– 39. This liturgy also is interesting in relation to the foregoing discussion of memorization, because it shows the transferal of motifs from older Ninurta liturgies to the Nabu cult that was so important in the first millennium. 65. Vanstiphout, “Right Place,” 91–92; Gesche, Schulunterricht, 157–58.

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combined with proficiency in the Sumero-Akkadian writing system. As a result, one measure of a student’s success was whether his writing “hand” matched the proficiency of his “mouth.” For example, one dialogue proclaims “a scribe (whose) hand rivals (his) mouth, he is indeed a scribe,” while another has one scribe criticize another, saying “your hand may be fair, but . . . your hand does not rival (your) mouth.”66 With the first millennium, we see increasing attestation—alongside continued mention of oral transmission—of a focus on accurate visual copying of texts, matching hand now to eye.67 As always, this need not be a written textuality that is opposed to orality. For example, the Instruction of Shuruppak combines an introductory scene of Shuruppak orally instructing his son (lines 1–8) with a concluding section that depicts the text as the written deposit of this oral teaching for future generations (lines 280–281). It was a teaching that in turn was used in the late stages of Sumerian oral-written elementary education.68 And Victor Hurowitz has surveyed a range of examples of Mesopotamian compositions that call for their (written) teaching to be memorized and “put in the mouth” of subsequent generations: Shulgi hymns B and E, the Prologue and Epilogue of Hammurapi, two hymns attributed to Assurbanipal, the Enuma Elish and Erra epics, and even the Bel-etfiir satire on such elevated literature.69 Ultimately, the goal was for the successful scribe to be able to both write down and accurately recite—probably musically in some cases—the lists and standard literary works that were the foundation of his scribal education.70 This included sign lists and lexical works, name lists, model treaties, hymns and epics, royal hymns, educational dialogues, and so on. It even included historical traditions, often in prose form, though perhaps poeticized through canting.71 The total may well have run into tens of thousands of lines (or the equivalent) for some students.72 This educational corpus was marked off in several ways from ordinary speech. In the Kassite period and later, colophons on some mythic texts identified them as divine words and/or attributed them to the Apkallu, a group of semidivine sages who lived before the flood. The “ummias,” master scribes,

66. Sjo¨berg, “Edubba,” 170–71. 67. Vanstiphout, “Right Place,” 112. 68. I am indebted for this reference to Michael Fox, who includes it in “Wisdom and the Self-Presentation of Wisdom Literature,” in Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of David J. A. Clines, ed. J. Cheryl Exum and H.G.M. Williamson (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 162. For the function of instructions like Shuruppak in the broader educational system see particularly Veldhuis, “Sumerian Proverbs,” 383–87. 69. Hurowitz, “Aspects,” 14–20. 70. On the musical dimension see particularly A. Kilmer and Miguel Civil, “Old Babylonian Musical Instructions Relating to Hymnody,” JCS 38 (1986): 94–97; A. Kilmer, “Musical Practice in Nippur,” in Nippur at the Centennial, ed. Maria de Jong Ellis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 101–12; “Fugal Features of Atrahasis: The Birth Theme.” 71. For discussion of variants in historical traditions and evidence that such traditions were used in Old Babylonian education see Charpin, Le clerge´ d’Ur, 425–26. This usage apparently continued into the first millenium. See Gesche, Schulunterricht, 210–11. 72. See the estimates for Sumerian and other literatures in William W. Hallo, “Sumerian Literature: Background to the Bible,” BRev 4, 3 (1988): 30, 38.

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are depicted as the descendants of these mythical Apkallus. In this way, the standard curriculum that these scribes taught was identified as from a longdistant past and (later) as semidivine.73 In addition, the written character of these texts was important. Writing has a numinous character in predominantly oral societies. In the case of the Mesopotamian standard curriculum, writing gave an added credibility to the claim that these texts were accurately transmitted from a long bygone age. Finally, the language of these texts marked them as special. Many were written in the dead language of Sumerian, a language that had dropped out of ordinary usage by the Old Babylonian period and was exclusively preserved in the school and temple. Even those in Akkadian were written in a dialect that would have been somewhat foreign to students after the Old Babylonian period. Moreover, insofar as these texts featured special poetic forms—parallelism, rhythm, and so on—and/or were performed in a special (e.g. musical) way, these elements of language likewise marked the words of these texts as special speech. Occasionally, the texts themselves contain claims, usually toward their conclusion, about their divine origin and the blessings that will come to the one who memorizes and performs them. From the Old Babylonian period the Atrahasis epic concludes with a claim that it was commissioned and approved by the gods (III viii 9–16), and an Ishtar hymn identifies itself as “Ea’s own words” and then wishes a blessing on the king (xiv).74 From the Kassite period, the Enuma Elish enjoins the father/teacher to “repeat and make the son/student understand” the revelation of Marduk represented by his song (VII 145).75 The early first-millenium Erra epic likewise claims divine authorship and approval, and proclaims that “the scribe who memorizes it shall be spared in the enemy country and honored in his own land” (V 54–55).”76 And later Ashurbanipal asks a blessing from Shamash on anyone who memorizes his hymn to Shamash and performs it (21–25).77 In these texts spanning a broad range of Akkadian tradition, we see affirmation of the worth of memorizing and performing ancient, divinely authored or authorized written traditions.78

73. Gadd, Teachers and Students, 13–14; E. Reiner, “The Etiological Myth of the Seven Sages,” Orientalia 30 (1961): 1–11; W. G. Lambert, “A Catalogue of Texts and Authors,” JCS 16 (1962): esp. 73–77; Kramer, “The Sage in Sumerian Literature,” 31; William W. Hallo, “Information from Before the Flood: Antediluvian Notes from Babylon and Israel,” Maarav 7 (1991): 173–76; Benjamin R. Foster, Archaic, Classical, Mature, vol. 1 of Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, 2nd ed. (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1996), 20–21. Note also the catalogue published in Irving L. Finkel, “On Late Babylonian Medical Training,” in Wisdom, Gods and Literature: Studies in Assyriology in Honour of W. G. Lambert, ed. A. R. George and I. L. Finkel (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 148–49. 74. Translation from Foster, Before the Muses, 1:70. 75. Foster, Before the Muses, 1:399. 76. Translation is slightly adapted from Benjamin R. Foster, Mature, Late, vol. 2 of Before the Muses, 788, following Cagni’s rendering of ih6 -h6 a-zu3 (ah6 a¯zu) as “manda a memoria” / “imparare a memoria”—“learn by heart” (following CAD A/1 177–178); Luigi Cagni, L’epopea di erra, Studi semitici (Rome: Instituto di studi del vincino oriente, 1969), 128–29, 257. 77. Translated in Foster, Before the Muses, vol. 2, 711. 78. Given these citations, along with some broader claims for Mesopotamian literature in some colophons, I find implausible the arguments of some that the Old Babylonian corpus was a relatively nontheological “literary” canon. Cf. Hurowitz, “Canon,” 8; Veldhuis, “Mesopotamian Canons,” 17–18.

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The Goal of Scribal Education: A Higher (Sumerian) Humanity Overall, the educational process worked on multiple levels to create a certain kind of personhood in the prospective scribe, to “open [his] eyes.”79 For example, a riddle used in some educational texts describes the edubba as follows. A house based on a foundation like the skies, A house one has covered with a veil like a (secret) tablet box, A house set on a base like a “goose,” With eyes closed one enters it, With opened eyes one comes out, Riddle answer: the Edubba.80 These “opened eyes” marked the achievement of what these traditions describe as “humanity.” As the epigram at the outset of the chapter suggests, prospective students were to understand their process of education as gaining “humanity” at the hands of their “gods,” their master teachers. Master god who (shapes) humanity, you are my god! You have opened my eyes as though I were a puppy; you have formed humanity within me. In yet another text, a scribe boasts of being “more human” than his master.81 In other texts educational competence is equated with being “Sumerian.” A student in one text claims his intellectual superiority to another in the following way: “you can’t be like me, I am a Sumerian.”82 Thus, the project of Mesopotamian education was not just the formation of a particular scribal class. Rather it was focused on the perpetuation of humanity in general, humanity as defined by Sumero-Akkadian culture.83 It ensured that “humanity,” as shaped initially by the Sumerians, would not die out. This “humanity” was integrally connected with the monarchy, particularly the person of the king. Many key texts in the standard curriculum were created in the context of scribal education under royal sponsorship, and they celebrated the king as the preeminent sage. According to texts produced during the UrIII and Old Babylonian periods, it was the king, not the scribe, who embodied the fullest ideal of humanity in the Sumero-Akkadian world. He was the one who exhibited and preserved me (Sumerian “order”) and sustained the cosmos.84 One central goal of such scribal education was to inculcate in prospective scribes a portion of the wisdom of the king, to whom they in turn were to

79. Volk, “Edubba
a,” 1, 11. 80. This translation mainly follows Miguel Civil, “Sumerian Riddles: A Corpus,” Aula Orientalis 5 (1987): 20, with the main shift being a more literal translation of the final lines that follows Volk, “Edubba
a,” 1. 81. Van Dijk, Sagesse sume´ro-accadienne, 26. 82. Gadd, Teachers and Students, 18. 83. For more examples of this idea of “humanity” as the goal of education see now Volk, “Edubba
a,” 25–26. 84. Kramer, “Sage in Sumerian Literature.”

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be devoted.85 Yet this focus was not confined to the origins of Mesopotamian education. Insofar as the first stage of first-millennium Babylonian education featured texts outside of the standard lists, it tended to focus on texts that celebrated the king and his kingdom, while criticizing past attempts at rebellion.86 Thus, the “humanity” formed in the scribal system often was a humanity that orbited around the sun of the king. This should not be very surprising, given the origins of the standard curriculum in the time of the emergence of the national monarchies of the Ur-III and Old Babylonian periods. Nevertheless, this link of educational process with national and subculture formation is a key theme that will emerge again at several other points of this discussion. On one level, such formation happened through students learning both the means of writing and appropriating the values and perspectives of the texts they memorized. On another level, there was the implicit curriculum of corporeal punishment and enforced learning of archaic material. This implicit curriculum taught students to attend first and foremost to the needs and values of their superiors—their master teachers (first of all) and the king. Educational texts frequently describe how students were physically punished for failure to follow their assignments or excel in them. Yet this only served as part of a broader project of subjecting students’ minds to a curriculum of often impractical language and verbal knowledge. As Teresa Morgan points out in her study of a similar process of memorization in the Hellenistic world, such education turns the student into a “reciter of nonsenses.”87 There is little initial focus in this system on the student actually learning the foreign language (Sumerian in this case). In addition, despite the curriculum’s inclusion of some model texts, it contained huge amounts of impractical information: terms that no longer occurred in any transactions, ancient texts whose referents had long since passed away, and so on.88 Eventually a student might learn to “speak Sumerian,” as one text has it.89 But in the meantime, he also learned to be an obedient part of a broader community. This was not just a matter of appropriating the values of the texts in the standard curriculum. It was also a matter of learning, day by day and year by year, to be intellectually subservient to a tradition that was initially senseless to him. Only at an advanced and largely untraceable stage were the most successful scribes called on to create new texts, texts that drew heavily on the tradition while also transforming it in important ways.90

85. Ronald F. G. Sweet, “The Sage in Mesopotamian Palaces and Royal Courts,” in Gammie and Perdue, Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, 99–107. 86. Gesche, Schulunterricht, 148–49. 87. Teresa Morgan, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds, Cambridge Classical Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 103. 88. Gesche, Schulunterricht, 212. 89. William W. Hallo and K. L. Younger, eds., The Context of Scripture, vol. 1, Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 593 (Vanstiphout trans. of dialogue). 90. Waetzoldt, “Keilschrift und Schulen,” 42; Vanstiphout, “Edubba Education,” 7–8.

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This is quite a contrast to some of our contemporary models for education that aim to help a child pursue his or her own interests, questions, and best competencies. Instead, one of the key competencies nurtured in Mesopotamian education—particularly in its early and middle stages—was an ability to leave one’s own culture and passions behind in the process of memorizing a vast amount of standard textual material. As Michalowski puts it: The school was an ideological molder of minds, the place where future members of the bureaucracy were socialized, where they received a common stock of ideas and attitudes which bound them together as a class and in many ways separated them from their original backgrounds.91 Day after day, year after year spent mastering profoundly foreign texts shaped the successful student in both obvious and more subtle ways. Precisely in focusing on that which was esoteric and often impractical, scribes—particularly the elite ones—were marked off from the rest of society preoccupied with more mundane concerns.92 Their virtuosity in mastery of an arcane writing system and ancient literature was precisely what marked them off as more “human” than their compatriots.93 Indeed, historians and theoreticians of education have long supposed that the highest levels of education are often marked by their distance from the practical, isolating a small group of those who can afford specialization and irrelevance from the mass of those relegated to “vocational” or other forms of purely professional training.94 If ultimately successful, the student himself would become a master scribe, an ummia (or Akkadian tupsˇarru)—merged with the tradition and subsumed in it. This had significant cultural implications, since scribes played a key role in virtually every level of ancient Mesopotamian society. They were, in many ways, the glue that held the empire together.95 Moreover, as masters of the ancient sacred tradition, they integrated others in the elite class into a broader communal body. As Kramer puts it: All of these [the standard texts] the students were to inculcate, in one way or another, in the minds and hearts of kings and courtiers, of priests and temple administrators, once they had graduated from the edubba and risen to high office in temple or palace.96

91. Michalowski, “Charisma and Control,” 63. 92. See especially Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 142–46. 93. Høyrup, Studies in Mathematics and Culture, 65–66. See also Cooper’s comments on how restricted the audience for such literature would have been, Cooper, “Mesopotamian Orality,” 117–19. 94. See especially M.F.D. Young, “An Approach to the Study of Curricula as Social Organized Knowledge,” in Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education, ed. M.F.D. Young (London: CollierMacMillan, 1971), 19–46. 95. Michalowski, “Charisma and Control.”; W. H. van Soldt, “Babylonian Lexical, Religious and Literary Texts,” in Ugarit: Ein ostmediterraneas Kulturzentum im alten Orient: Ergebnisse und Perspektiven der Forschung, ed. M. Dietrich and O. Loretz (Mu¨nster: Ugarit Verlag, 1995), 233; Visicato, The Power and the Writing. 96. Kramer, “Sage in Sumerian Literature,” 37.

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Thus, the educational texts portray this scribe with “open eyes,” this “human being,” as shaped for an important societal role. Trained by the educational system to subject his mind to an ancient and largely foreign tradition, taught basic values of loyalty to king and temple, this scribe stood apart from the general populace. The scribes’ own traditions depicted them as connected in a special way to the connective tissue of the cosmos and social order. I will now take a brief look at how they themselves worked with those traditions.

Textual Production and Collection in Ancient Mesopotamia Evolving Forms of Textual Creativity The educational focus on copying and recital of texts did not necessarily mean that scribes reproduced traditions exactly as they found them. To be sure, at the introductory levels, everything depended on accurate recitation of the older tradition. Nevertheless, we have numerous documented cases of textual revision, growth, and appropriation. Generally, such literary creativity was probably exercised most by those higher up in the scribal/educational hierarchy. For example, first-millennium colophons attribute key compositions to upper-level scribes with ancient pedigrees.97 We see literary creativity at every stage of Mesopotamian history. The question, however, is how this creativity is expressed. In the earliest stages, scribes tended to adapt and create traditions freely, while in the later stages scribes tended to recombine and translate older traditions, sometimes creating new material but retrojecting it backward. Often we cannot reconstruct details. The processes took place too long ago to access, the data is sketchy. Nevertheless, as in the case of education, we still have more data about Mesopotamia than we do about other cultures who used more perishable written media. Thanks to the Mesopotamians’ writing on clay, we can trace a number of specific instances of textual growth across centuries and extrapolate from them. According to Hallo, during the Ur-III period much textual production focused on the creation of classic Sumerian works out of more particularized historical texts. For example, the king Gudea commissioned an epic that was based on his own historical inscriptions, an epic probably originally revolving around the Lagashite god Ningirsu. This epic, with the Nippurian Ninurta substituted for the Lagashite Ningirsu, later became a part of the standard Old Babylonian curriculum, and it is still found in the royal libraries of the first millennium. Kings like Gudea commissioned a wide variety of hymns, often including a specific or oblique reference to the king. And these hymns, especially the ones that could be separated from their more specific historical circumstances, then found their way into the royal-focused scribal tradition of later centuries. For example, the aforementioned hymn B to Lipit-Ishtar, king of Isin (c. 1934–1924 b.c.e.), appears extremely frequently in the Old Babylo-

97. W. G. Lambert, “Ancestors, Authors and Canonicity,” JCS 11 (1957): 1–14; Lambert, “Catalogue.”

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nian period as an educational text, not just because of its royal focus but perhaps also because of its usefulness in teaching Sumerian grammatical forms.98 Other texts were adapted in the Neo-Sumerian period, only to fade away in later centuries. For example, it appears that a cycle of hymns to Inanna possibly composed in the Sargonid period (by the priestess Enheduanna) may have been expanded to include Neo-Sumerian sites during the Ur-III period, only to disappear from the scribal scene after the Old Babylonian period.99 The Old Babylonian period was as key for text production as it was for education. Scribal education appears to have focused, in large part, on learning and transmission of Sumerian works, many of which had been created in the Ur-III or Old Babylonian periods. A few new Sumerian works were written as well. Nevertheless, scribes also created new Akkadian texts, often adapting earlier Sumerian archetypes. Sometimes this is subtle, as in the case of the Old Babylonian transmission of a “historical” inscription by Naram-Sin (c. 2254–2218). In actuality, a comparison of the copies transmitted in the Old Babylonian scribal matrix with earlier versions of the inscription reveals that the standard Old Babylonian versions deviate significantly from the earlier ones. For example, in accordance with Old Babylonian royal ideology, the later versions of the inscription separate King Naram-Sin from the gods and otherwise modify the earlier inscription so that it makes more general points about kingship.100 At other points the Old Babylonian scribes created a radical new whole out of earlier materials. Our best-attested example is the creation of the Akkadian Gilgamesh epic. Here scribes appear to have built the classic Akkadian epic through appropriation and transformation of Sumerian tales about Gilgamesh that were current in the earlier scribal tradition. It appears that such Old Babylonian scribes felt particularly free to create something new out of older traditions when they were making a switch from a Sumerian tradition to a new Akkadian presentation of the tradition.101 For example, the Akkadian Enuma Elish epic draws freely on chunks of Sumerian compositions about Enlil, Enki, and Ninurta. The Akkadian Sargon epic draws on Sumerian tales about Gilgamesh, along with assorted inscriptions from the time of Sargon and his grandson Naram-Sin. And there are a variety of ways in which Sumerian texts in the advanced curriculum build on and reinforce lexical lists that occurred earlier.102 As Herman Vanstiphout, Piotr Michalowski, and others have pointed out, 98. Vanstiphout, “Lipit-Esthar’s Praise”; Vanstiphout, “Sumerian.” 99. Hallo, “Sumerian Literature,” 186–87. 100. Steve Tinney, “A New Look at Naram-Sin and the ‘Great Rebellion,’ ” JCS 47 (1995): 1–14. See also the illuminating reflections by Michaelowski (“Commemoration, Writing, and Genre in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in The Limits of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts, ed. Christina Shuttleworth Kraus [Leiden: Brill, 1999], 69–90) on the complex intertextual relations between Naram-Sin and other literature before and after it, along with helpful questioning of traditional historiographic categories used to analyze this literature. 101. See especially Jeffrey Tigay, The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982). 102. See Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 126–28, for an overview and discussion of the issue of direction of dependency. Cf. H.L.J. Vanstiphout, “Memory and Literacy in Ancient Western Asia,” in CANE, 2193–94.

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the educational matrix encouraged a rich form of intertextuality in which earlier compositions were created partly out of a tissue of memorized quotations of earlier works.103 To take just one example, in Hallo’s introduction to The Context of Scripture, he discusses how an early Sumerian form of the Sargon legend parodies key lines from the educationally central Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta.104 Such intertextual links helped establish a continuity of one new composition with its precursors, even as the new composition might innovate in crucial respects. The impact of memory is indicated by the fact that the materials incorporated often are not incorporated precisely. Though the scribe may well have had virtually total recall of the tradition, he (or she) was not consulting one tablet after another in order to copy various parts into the new composition. Rather he was composing a new work out of a store of older works that constitute the authorized building blocks of the new. He was not “exegeting” or “citing” older works in the way a later biblical interpreter might do. Rather, the scribe was trained from the outset to think by means of blocks of tradition and express himself through those tools. Put another way, the shape of the educational system did not just teach the master scribe-author a set of cuneiform signs and rules of grammar. It also gave him (or occasionally her) a set of broader textual chunks, templates, and motifs. When a scribe reached a high level of mastery of the tradition, he could then use this memorized compositional lexicon to create new works. Such use of previous tradition meant that these new works were not just new but were continuous enough with the scribal tradition to become a part of it. In sum, a master scribe was not just taught an actual second language, Sumerian, but also an overlay second “language” of standard texts, words, and motifs/themes from them.105 In this and other cultures to be studied later in this book, the student often absorbed such motifs and themes atomistically. He would learn enough in order to keep items in correct sequence, but often elements of the cultural tradition could be radically recombined when such a scholar started writing in this “language” made up of phrases and motifs from works he had mastered. Literary context and even meaning were often completely lost. Commentary and higher level exegesis was reserved here—as in other instances—for a minority of high-level students and scribal masters.106 Memorization of atomized bits of this literary “language” was the first and primary focus for most students. In addition, this type of training in memorization and writing may have 103. H.L.J. Vanstiphout, “Some Remarks on Cuneiform e´critures,” in Scripta Signa Vocis: Studies About Scripts, Scriptures, Scribes, and Languages in the Near East, Presented to J. H. Hosper, ed. H.L.J. Vanstiphout et al. (Groningen: Forsten, 1986), 221; “Memory and Literacy,” 2193–95; Michalowski, “Commemoration, Writing and Genre.” 104. Hallo and Younger, The Context of Scripture, vol. 1, xxvi–xxvii. In another context, Hallo surveys examples of the incorporation of proverbial material—often used in early education—into later writings (William W. Hallo, “Proverbs Quoted in Epic,” in Abusch et al., Lingering over Words, 203–17). The phenomenon of such appropriation is so widespread that a full survey of examples here is impossible. 105. The language-like character of the rules for memorized literature is stressed by Rubin, Memory in Old Traditions, 136–37. 106. Gesche, Schulunterricht, 197.

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influenced the shape of the works on yet another level: the way many works echo themselves in a wide variety of ways. Vanstiphout and others have chronicled how ancient Sumerian compositions often feature passages later in a composition that answer earlier ones and where the format of a section is given, or reversed, in later contexts. In the past, such elements of “repetition” have sometimes been used as an indicator of the oral character of a given composition.107 That is true to some extent, insofar as the Mesopotamian educational process trained prospective scribes to memorize key elements of the tradition for oral recitation. Nevertheless, the addition of a written element to this memorizing process added a certain reliable precision to it that is not typical of oral processes of transmission.108 Scribes who had been trained—partly by using writing—to recall verbatim a range of standard works and incorporate them into their compositions were also well prepared to recall earlier sections of their own compositions and echo, reverse, and otherwise appropriate elements of their own writing in the process of producing documents that had a rich network of links both within themselves and outside themselves to other texts in the standard curriculum. Texts that stayed in the scribal matrix tended to become relatively fixed. To be sure, this cannot be represented as a purely linear process, since some traditions—like the lexical lists—were standardized early on before becoming diverse again during the early second millennium.109 Nevertheless, from the Old Babylonian period onward, the educational curriculum appears to have been increasingly standardized. Old Babylonian scribes expanded much of a postulated Ur-III corpus of Sumerian literature in the process of forming several local variants of the scribal curriculum. And Kassite scribes of the latter part of the second millennium appear to have played a key role in categorizing and standardizing works in the Old Babylonian corpus. Not only did they produce “editions” that appear to have served as prototypes for subsequent copies, but they also played a key role in framing the standard works of the Sumero-Akkadian corpus as a special body of works, semidivine words deriving from the Apkallus and passed down through a hallowed group of scribal masters. The word “editions” here is put in quotation marks to highlight the fact that such a word can be applied to these and many other ancient texts only in a highly qualified sense. In contrast to modern editors attempting to produce an authoritative redaction of ancient traditions for print distribution, the an107. See, for example, the influential discussion in Lord, Singer of Tales. Some attempts to critically appropriate the Parry-Lord approach for Mesopotamian literature include Alster, Dumuzi’s Dream; V. Afanasjeva, “Mu¨ndlich u¨berlieferte Dichtung (‘Oral Poetry’) und schriftliche Literature in Mesopotamien,” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 22 (1974): 121–35; G. Komoro´czy, “ ‘Folklore,’ ‘Literatur,’ ‘Folkloristik’ in der ¨ berlieferung,” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 22 (1974): 113–20; T. Jacobsen, sumerischen U “Oral to Written,” in Societies and Languages of the Ancient Near East, ed. M. A. Dandamayev (Warminster, England: Aries and Phillips, 1982), 129–37. 108. Jack Goody, The Myth of the Bagre (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972); Une Re´citation du Bagre´ (Paris: A. Colin, 1981); “Canonization in Oral and Literate Cultures,” in Canonization and Decanonization, ed. A. Van der Kooij and K. Van der Toorn (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 9–11. 109. Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 18–19.

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cient scribes often chose an earlier written version made by others as the authoritative version to be used as a reference point for subsequent transmission. Thus, most “editions” in Mesopotamia and other cultures discussed in this book were as much a product of the communities that endorsed them as of tradents responsible for producing a given version.110 At some point between the Old Babylonian period and the first millennium, the role of the written text changed. Already central educational texts, such as the Shulgi B hymn, represent the writing of texts as a way of preserving and transmitting an evanescent oral performance.111 Yet in the early stages, writing appears to have played a supporting role alongside other modes of textual performance and transmission, serving as a support for acquisition of unfamiliar traditions and a concrete marker of a student’s successful learning. Nevertheless, by the first millennium, texts increasingly serve another role as well: as authoritative reference points for the checking of scribal memory.112 Moreover, we see ever more colophons that assert that a given text had been copied accurately from an earlier Vorlage. Though some texts continue to be transmitted as part of an oral-written process of education, there is an increasing, almost antiquarian interest in the accurate copying and storage of ancient texts. We already see reflections of this in Old Babylonian colophons, where the scribe often notes the number of lines in the composition—an ancient method of making sure that copies did not have added or divergent material. As we move into the latter half of the second millennium, colophons regularly refer to the proofreader of the tablet (IGI.KAR) and to the fact that it was carefully checked (bari; sometimes also sana¯qi), often against the old copies (gabaruˆ labiru).113 Such vocabulary attests to increasing use of visual and other technical methods (e.g., line counting) to solidify the tradition. By the time of the first millennium royal libraries, we see that such visual checking and collating is standard. Nevertheless, such techniques did not mean the end of oral performance of the tradition. Take, for example, the following colophon for a list.114 Sum [of the lines] is 1200, reaching to An ⫽ Anum, . . . there was much room therefore, I wrote together. A later person should not 110. Here I am informed by John Van Seters’s recent work on the intellectual genealogy of the word field surrounding “edition,” “editor,” and “recension.” For a preliminary, article-length discussion (a book is in process) see his “The Redactor in Biblical Studies: A Nineteenth-Century Anachronism,” Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 29 (2003): 1–19. As he points out, there are some ancient analogies to the modern project of “editing,” particularly in the Hellenistic world and later Jewish scribal practices based on Hellenistic antecedents. In contrast to Van Seters, however, I still follow the scholarly convention of speaking of “editions,” while attempting clarity on the difference between most ancient “editions” and modern ones. The communities who endorsed particular written versions of a given tradition often marked such traditions off from others by transmitting them on certain media and using various scripts, scribal notations, and graphic practices. In this highly qualified sense, even they consciously produced “editions” of the older textual tradition they endorsed. Nevertheless, as Van Seters shows, this is a different sense of “edition” than that developed in the nineteenth century. 111. Jacobsen, “Oral to Written.” 112. Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 129–36. 113. For a selection of such colophons see Hermann Hunger, Babylonische und assyrische Kolophone, AOAT (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1968), 125–45. 114. CT 24, 46a 1–11 according to the rendering in Hunger, Kolophone, 32.

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treat it badly. He should recite it according to its series. According to the words of an old copy, Kidin-Sin, the scribe, the son of Sutuˆ, the royal scribe, wrote it and checked it. The more such standardization took place, the more the character of creativity shifted. Rather than subtly modifying earlier traditions or creating radical new wholes in a new language, scribes might innovate by commenting on traditions or by recombining such traditions and reframing them. For example, after the creation of the first edition of the Gilgamesh epic in the first millennium, someone inserted the Atrahasis flood story into it. This kind of recombination both honors the traditions being combined and modifies them through their juxtaposition. At another point, the creators of the standard Babylonian version of the Gilgamesh epic appear to have conflated two dream episodes found in the older versions, this time recombining elements of the Gilgamesh tradition itself.115 Yet scribes did not always limit their work to such manipulation of earlier traditions. For example, later Babylonian and Assyrian versions of the Gilgamesh epic also included a new, wisdom-oriented prologue, perhaps added with an eye toward its function as a key text from the earliest stages of the scribal curriculum.116 This kind of modification of a text around its edges—through the addition of a prologue or epilogue—is also characteristic of the later stages of textual modification. That said, we still see creativity after the Old Babylonian period, though with significant shifts in both technique and focus. Though scribes had to flee the famous scribal centers of Nippur and Babylonia, some still produced new literature, often texts that consciously imitated the old. This is most clearly seen in the phenomenon of the late creation of Sumerian texts thousands of years after Sumerian had died out as a living language. The language of these late Sumerian texts is quite different, often reflecting the native Akkadian speech of the scribes. There is an ever more pronounced religious and cultic focus. In addition, many texts appear to deliberately imitate older texts, long after the original occasions for such texts were lost. One probable example is a Neo-Babylonian, Sumerian lament for Tammuz dating from the Hellenistic period that mourns the destruction of cities in Sumer two thousand years previously.117 Such texts represent a major shift from the Sumerian curriculum prominent up through the Old Babylonian period. Nevertheless, they appear to have been the core of the Sumerian curriculum that survived in the temple scribal workshops of the Hellenistic periods.118

115. Jerrold Cooper, “Gilgamesh Dreams of Enkidu: the Evolution and Dilution of Narrative,” in Essays on the Ancient Near East in Memory of Jacob Joel Finkelstein, ed. Maria Ellis (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1977), 39–44. 116. Gesche, Schulunterricht, 148–49, 210–11. See also Michalowski, “Commemoration, Writing and Genre,” 77–80. 117. Hallo and Younger, The Context of Scripture, 1: 419. 118. See for this whole phenomenon Hallo, “Sumerian Literature,” 199–201.

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Modes of Textual Production Looking back on these various forms of scribal creativity, we must first be clear that most scribal authors of the Sumero-Akkadian corpus certainly did not cut and paste texts in front of them—to go back to Niditch’s example from I Claudius mentioned in the last chapter. These authors did not “edit” as one might conceive later European book producers doing, and they certainly did not add layer on layer of material as one might with contemporary word processors. Instead, given the picture that has emerged of the Sumero-Akkadian educational system, it is far more likely that these ancient Mesopotamian scribes had memorized these earlier hymns or epics and thus could use those earlier texts as mental prototypes, reusing them, recombining them, and adapting them in the process of creating new texts. Though they were capable of reading and copying an ancient tablet, they did not need to. Rather—at least during the earlier periods of composition of these texts—the primary mode of existence of such texts was not written tablets but the minds of well-trained scribes.119 Such scribes had appropriated the standard tradition and were thus able to more or less freely incorporate such traditions into new compositions, depending on the status of the older traditions and the function of the new. They did not need to juggle tablets in the process of combining traditions. Perhaps this phenomenon would help explain why we do not have (as far as I can determine) a single artistic image of a Mesopotamian scribe working with more than one text. This gap may be due to the standardization of artistic images of scribes in Mesopotamian art, but it may also be due to the fact that a master scribe could have combined two texts—word for word—without having copies of either in front of him. With this kind of memorized corpus in mind, a scribe in the Ur-III period could fluidly add names of temples of his own period to a cycle of templefocused older hymns to Inanna. Old Babylonian scribes could represent an UrIII “Ningirsu” epic as a “Ninurta” epic, recast an authoritative Naram-Sin inscription in terms of contemporary royal imperatives, create a new Gilgamesh epic out of memorized strands of older Sumerian Gilgamesh tales and a new Enuma Elish partly out of older Sumerian myths, insert the Assyrian god Asshur in place of the Babylonian Marduk into later versions of the Enuma Elish,120 and insert a section from a standard lexical list into the epic of Enmerkar. Still later scribes could create a longer form of the Maqluˆ ritual central to upper-level Babylonian education out of a shorter ritual, which in turn may have been created out of two earlier sets of incantations.121 As mentioned earlier, some scribes—particularly in later periods—stayed close to the tradition. In some cases, traditions appear to be preserved almost 119. This is an expansion of Veldhuis’s point regarding Old Babylonian versions of the lexical tradition. Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 132. 120. W. G. Lambert, “Zum Forschungsstand der sumerisch-babylonischen Literaturgeschichte,” in XIX deutscher Orientalistentag (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1977), 69–72. 121. Tzvi Abusch, “An Early Form of the Witchcraft Ritual Maqluˆ and the Origin of a Babylonian Magical Ceremony,” in Abusch et al., Lingering over Words, 1–57.

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unchanged across centuries, and colophons attest to scribes’ efforts to accurately reproduce and proof originals. At other points, scribes would preserve the wording of a tradition, but insert new material as well. For example, later modifications of the Gilgamesh epic preserve its basic material, but conflate some parts and include new elements like the prologue and preexisting flood story. At other times, particularly in making a transition from Sumerian to Akkadian, they used the tradition more freely. Nevertheless, especially in the case of traditions that were modified, it is likely that the modified traditions often had been memorized already by the scribes. Such scribes had little investment in modifying texts that played no role in the ongoing educational process. Rather it was texts like Gilgamesh that played a key educational role (and were memorized) that merited ongoing scribal revision and supplementation. As mentioned earlier, such texts often reached a point where only certain types of modification were permitted, if any. Nevertheless, insofar as scribes did modify texts, it appears that they concentrated their efforts on those texts that were playing a continuing role in the project of scribal education and socialization. The more we consider this process, the more clear it becomes that we must consciously move away from models of text production that are based on the implicit assumptions of a print culture. As Widman pointed out almost forty years ago in a survey of Greco-Roman book production, the dynamics of ancient textual copying meant that every manuscript needs to be considered, in at least some sense, eine Einheit fu¨r sich (a unity in itself ).122 The idiosyncrasies and scribal practices of a given scribe always meant that a given manuscript was distinct in some respects from any other. To be sure, some textual traditions are more stable than others, and there is a general movement toward use of visual checking and other techniques to standardize the tradition. We have seen this already in the case of Mesopotamia. Nevertheless, every text copy is at least microscopically different. Indeed, these differences are often far more than microscopic. We have seen how scribes reproducing the tradition often liberally revised earlier traditions in the process of passing them on to the next generation. Especially when the textual tradition was relatively fluid, the scribe might not have understood himself to be revising an earlier tradition. Instead, he was merely performing it in a new way for his particular audience and context. Sometimes, like an accomplished musician playing Mozart, he might produce a fairly exact reproduction. At other points, a scribe might perform a given text more like a jazz musician, using the framework of an older piece in the process of producing something radically new.123 Scholars of Anglo-Saxon poetry have noticed similar dynamics in their

122. H. Widman, “Herstellung und Vertrieb des Buches in der griechisch-ro¨mischen Welt,” Archiv fu¨r die Geschichte des Buchwesens 8 (1967): 580. 123. For an evocative discussion of how different styles of contemporary music model different modes of interaction of composer, performer, text, audience, and rehearsal see Ruth Finnegan, Literacy and Orality: Studies in the Technology of Communication (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 123–38.

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study of the manuscript traditions of early English poems. For example, Alger Doane shows that a number of early manuscripts in Anglo-Saxon show a number of “nonsignificant variants,” that is, variants that represent virtually synonymous words or phrases. In one manuscript, a scribe will use one word for a given feature, while in another, a scribe—likely working from memory— gives a word with the same semantic content in the same context. Doane suggests that rather than conceiving of such scribes as copying earlier traditions, we should reconceive their work in a predominantly oral context as a performance. The old English traditions with which they are working are already largely oral in origin, and these scribes continue that element in freely reproducing older manuscript traditions in their new copies. Notably, this freer mode of transmission of Anglo-Saxon texts contrasts with the more accurate transmission of key Latin texts, texts that Doane suggests were more fixed because they were recited in the context of regular liturgies.124 We see similar occurrence of nonsignificant variants in transmission of some early Mesopotamian literature. I will diverge for a moment to a specific example: the variant versions of the Akkadian epic of the descent of Ishtar. This epic is particularly interesting because it is a poetic text that has been transmitted in a mix of divergent recensions and verbatim quotes found in the Gilgamesh epic and the related story of Nergal and Erishkigal. Moreover, key parts of the story repeat themselves, thus displaying the kind of verbatim repetition within a work that was discussed earlier as a common characteristic of literature transmitted by memory as well as written media. Thus, this epic displays multiple levels of repetition and divergence: within itself, in divergent versions of the same manuscript, and in verbatim citations of the work by scribes authoring and reproducing other works. As we look at the variants amid the recensions, we see the very phenomenon of nonsignificant variants discussed before by Doane and others as a sign of a work that is transmitted at least in part by memory. Most of the variants are not the sort that would be caused by visual errors, such as confusion of similar signs or skipping or duplicating lines. For example, the recensions (and quotations) of the descent of Ishtar often diverge in how a given word is written, with the different versions using different cuneiform signs to represent the same word: for example, ta-pat-ta-a in the Niniveh recension (line 16) where ta-pa-ta-a occurs in the Asshur recension (line 14).125 Just as frequent, if not more so, are occasions where one version will write a word with a logogram, while another will write the same word syllabically. For example,

124. Doane, “Scribe as Performer.” The classic earlier statement on this phenomenon in medieval literature is Paul Zumthor, Essai de poe´tique me´die´vale (Paris: E´ditions du Seuil, 1972), 65–72. See also O’Keefe, Visible Song, and (for application to biblical literature) Raymond F. Person, “The Ancient Israelite Scribe as Performer,” JBL 117 (1998): 601–9; The Deuteronomic School: History, Social Setting, and Literature, Studies in Biblical Literature (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), 83–101. 125. Throughout this discussion the textual data is drawn from Rykle Borger, Babylonisch-Assyrische Lesestu¨cke, vol. 1, Die Texte im Umschrift, 2nd rev. ed., Analecta Orientalia (Rome: Pontifical Institute, 1979). Cases of

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the Asshur version of Ishtar line 7 uses the Sumerian logogram SAH 6 AR.MESˇ to render epru (“dust”) where the Niniveh version spells it out ep-ru (line 11).126 There are some writing errors, but most are not attributable to visual mistakes.127 The shifts could be caused by dictation or by memory but would not be caused by visual confusion of the signs. But there are some other shifts that would not result from dictation. For example, at one point the Niniveh recension uses one formula to introduce a speech (a-ma-tum iz-zak-kar, line 13), where the Asshur recension uses another (pi-i-sˇa ip-pu-u´-sˇu i-qab-bı´). For the tradents of the epic, these two formulae were essentially the “same” word. No one would confuse the two formulae if they were seen or heard. Rather, at some point in the transmission of the epic, one scribe recalled one formula for speech at this location, while another recalled another. We see a similar phenomenon in the different renderings of Ishtar’s threat to the gatekeeper (including Niniveh 20 and citation of it in Gilgamesh and Ereshkigal), use of different words for speaking (iz-zak-ka-ra/iq-ta-bı´ in Niniveh 25 and parallels), use of different prepositions (ana/ina muh6 h6 i in Niniveh 35 and parallels), and reordering of words (e.g., Niniveh 15, 41, and parallels). Not every text is preserved in such an array of versions, so that the character of its transmission can be checked. Nevertheless, we see similar phenomena in other texts, such as early versions of the ur5-ra⫽H 6 UBULLU lexical list, tablet 11 of the later recensions of the Gilgamesh epic, and variant versions of Mesopotamian historical traditions.128

such different spellings are too numerous to list comprehensively. Examples can be found in the following lines of the Niniveh recension (and parallels): 5 (la-a/la), 9 (ina/i-na), 23 (i-zi-zi/i-ziz-zi and la/la-a), 27 (m[u]-kil-tu/ mu-ki-il-tu), 29 (ni-kis/ni-ki-is), 30 (sˇa´-pat/sˇa-ba-at and ku-ni-ni/ku-ni-i-ni), 31 (mi-na-a/mi-i-na-a). Note also other minor divergences, as in the presence or absence of the enclitic ma, as seen in parallels to the following lines of the Niniveh recension: 18 (si-ip-pu-ma/si-ip-pa), 21 (i-pu-usˇ-ma/i-pu-sˇu), 25 (e-ru-um-ma/e-ru-ub), 31 (ub-la-an-ni/ ub-la-an-ni-ma). Also ba-a-bu (Niniveh 16) versus ba-a-ba-am (Asshur 14), and the inclusion of the poetic particle me (me-e) in line 26 of the Niniveh recension (cf. Asshur, line 25). Because of the textual focus of this discussion, all forms are given in transliterated, not normalized, forms. 126. The same phenomenon is found in quotes of the descent of Ishtar in the Gilgamesh epic, e.g. in Niniveh 8//ep-ru/r[i] in Gilgamesh VIII, iv, 37. Especially when such quotations are included, the examples are quite numerous. Some can be found in the following lines of the Niniveh recension and parallels: 10 (GIM/kima and isfi-sfiu-ri/MUSˇEN(MESˇ), 11 (gisˇSAG.KUL/sik-ku-ri), 14 (ba-ab-ka/KA´; see also lines 37 and 39); 19 (mi-tu-ti/ ´ Sˇ.MESˇ/U ´ Sˇ.MESˇ-ma and GU7.MESˇ/[i]k-ka-lu/ik-kal-l[u]), 20 (UGU/el), 21 (pa-a-sˇu/KA-i-sˇu), 22 (GAL-ti/dBa-laU te), 23 (be-el-ti/NIN), 24 (MU-ki/si-qir-ki), 29 ((gisˇ ) bi-[n]i/[g]isˇSˇINIG; also ki-ma/ki-i/GIM; on the latter see similarly ´ .DU8.Aki/Ku-tu-u´), 42 (1-en/[isˇ]-teline 30); 33 (IM/tfii-itfi-tfia), 36 (lu´TUR/sˇe`r-ri), 38 (GARZA.MESˇ/pa´r-sfii-ka), 40 (GU na). Note also the presence/absence of determinatives, e.g. lu´I.DU8/I.DU8 in Niniveh 25/Asshur 24 and Niniveh 39/Asshur 41. 127. E.g., in line 26 (Asshur error a-h6 a-at-ki where a-h6 a-ta-ki is found in the Niniveh version) or 29 (Niniveh mistake of e-ru where e-ri-qu is found in Asshur). 128. Though not as many recensions are given in Borger’s collation, similar phenomena to those described earlier for the Descent of Ishtar obtain for the Gilgamesh epic (Borger, Lesestu¨cke, 105–11). See, for example, lines ´ [E]), 116 (ma-li-ti [B]/ki-ma a-lit-ti [A], 119 (pu-h6 ur [D]/ma-h6 ar 63 (am-h6 as-si [D]/am-[h6 ]asfi [B]), 88 (KA´-ka [B]/gisˇMA [B]; also in 120), 147 (i-tu-ram-ma [B]/i-pi-ra-am-[ma] [A, G]), and so on. Readings and sigla are from Borger, Lesestu¨cke. For study of different forms of transmission of the ur5-ra⫽h6 ubullu lexical list see Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 68–80. An excellent overview of variants in the historical traditions (including many nonsignificant variants) can be found in J. A. Brinkman, “The Babylonian Chronicle Revisited,” in Abusch et al., Lingering over Words (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990), 78–99; see also Charpin, Le clerge´ d’Ur, 425–26.

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In cases like these, the Mesopotamian scribes were not always pouring over earlier manuscripts to make sure they had written each word and phrase exactly correctly (though they did occasionally claim to have done so).129 Rather, the textual data suggests that in crucial cases they reproduced texts from memory, with startling, though not exact, verbal accuracy.130 And, as in the case of musical performance, each scribal reproduction of the text is unique, while being recognized by native speakers and audiences as “the same.”131 Depending on the level of standardization, the reproduction of texts may vary more or less from a single norm. Nevertheless, this complex oral-written matrix, where scribes were taught not just to copy but to memorize and produce texts, meant that every manuscript was truly an “Einheit fu¨r sich,” a new scribal performance of an authoritative, sacred tradition. Sometimes the idiosyncrasies of a manuscript would derive just from faulty copying, but often they derived from the fact that a given scribe—at some point—had reproduced the text from a memorized prototype. This has important implications for contemporary production of critical editions of ancient texts, where one attempts to establish, through the textcritical use of multiple manuscript traditions, a single authoritative text for a given scribal tradition.132 As Doane points out, as long as this phenomenon of variable scribal “performance” of texts continues, it is virtually impossible to get a text-critical fix on an ur-tradition that preceded all others. This can only come when a given text reaches a level of standardization typical of later periods in the Sumero-Akkadian tradition. Up to that point, the textual tradition being transmitted through the minds of the scribes is too much of a moving target. As a result, the modern attempt to produce a scholarly edition of those ancient texts that were transmitted primarily in the mind ends up producing a figment of the scholarly imagination: a “standard text” with “variants.”133 Such a reconstruction ignores an important aspect of the transmission of oral-written traditions: scribal performances of traditions would have been corrected as often from parallel performances within a network of scribal masters as from consultation of a written version of a tradition.134

129. One key example would be the visual copying of a letter. For an example of such copying, with exact sign correspondence; see Jack M. Sasson, “The Burden of Scribes,” in Riches Hidden in Secret Places: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Memory of Thorkild Jacobsen, ed. Tzvi Abusch et al., (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 220. 130. Additional examples are discussed in works such as Alster, Dumuzi’s Dream, esp. 26, 126–32; C. Wilcke, “Die Emar Version von ‘Dattelpalm und Tamarisk’: Ein Rekonstruktionsversuch,” ZA 79 (1989): 169; P. Michalowski, The Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1989). 131. Veldhuis, Elementary Education, 27. 132. Zumthor’s and others’ work has already been brought into relation with text criticism of Mesopotamian traditions in works such as Michalowski, Lamentation, 21–24. 133. Veldhuis makes this point with regard to Old Babylonian versions of the lexical traditions: Elementary Education, 136, 141. Similar points have been made as well by scholars in the Parry-Lord oral-traditional school about attempting to establish an authoritative text of the earliest Homer, Beowulf, and so on. (Lord, Singer of Tales; John Miles Foley, “Editing Oral Epic Texts: Theory and Practice,” Text 1 [1981]: 77–78; Traditional Oral Epic: The Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Serbo-Croatian Return Song [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990]). 134. See Rubin (Memory in Old Traditions, 132–36) for discussion of how “networks” of “conduits”—groups of scribes in this case—reinforce and standardize the transmission of traditions.

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Finally, one can only speculate on how a given revision of tradition supplanted earlier ones. There are no explicit data to help us here, and sometimes the later tradition did not supplant the earlier one. Sometimes the earlier and later version were transmitted side by side. This was particularly true in the case of Akkadian translations and adaptations of Sumerian traditions. We also see some instances of divergent editions of a given text in different contexts, for example, recensions of the Gilgamesh epic in different locales. As we move beyond the Old Babylonian period, however, we see a standardization of the curriculum, particularly its elementary, list-focused stages. The sequence and text of standard works solidifies, and there is remarkably little development that can be traced from Middle Babylonian fragments to the copies collected in the Assyrian royal libraries of the first millennium.135 Lambert, in his classic studies of colophons and other discussions of these texts, argued compellingly that this standardization could be traced to a line of Kassite scribes in the latter half of the second millennium. These scribes are named in colophons as the architects of the standard curriculum, passing on from the Apkallus the works that were the mainstay of the scribal educational matrix.136 Certainly, the Kassite scribes did not standardize a completely fluid tradition. We already see in the Old Babylonian period a solidification of the curriculum of standard works, based largely in the central schools of Nippur and (later) Babylon. Nevertheless, after the Old Babylonian period the number of scribes diminished somewhat, particularly on the level of the elite who mastered the Sumero-Akkadian corpus. It may be that single scribal masters in key schools may have had considerable power to modify, arrange, and standardize those traditions that would be passed on to the next generation. As we have seen, this often took the form of authorizing a certain standard text, establishing an authoritative sequence, and attaching to these texts standard attributions to ancient times and scribal lines. But we have also seen how certain works, such as the Gilgamesh epic, were issued in revised versions that supplanted earlier ones. Apparently in these cases, the scribal master—perhaps the head scribe of the royal scribal matrix—authorized such versions of standard texts, which in turn became the ones used in education throughout the realm. This meant not only that some reference copies needed to be discarded and new ones created but, even more important, that a new version also needed to be recited and taught in the relevant scribal workshops. This produces a characteristic paradox in transmission that we will see continuing through to the rabbinic period. On the one hand, the scribal matrix in these traditional cultures strongly emphasizes its faithful continuity with earlier ages. According to the rhetoric of the tradition-bearers, master scribes of an authoritative scribal line were training student apprentices to reproduce standard works accurately. On the other hand, change still happened. These

135. Hallo, “Concept of Canonicity.” 136. Lambert, “Ancestors.”

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master scribes—working out of the heart of a tradition they had memorized better than their contemporaries—sometimes innovated vis-a`-vis the tradition they represented. Standing as the primary masters of the tradition in their age, these scribes had power at some times to produce new traditions and new versions of old traditions. Recognized as successors of authoritative scribes, the master scribes of a given period had memorized enough of the tradition to be credible embodiments of it. Their new production of a given standard work—whether in the form of a new scribal copy or (more likely) new recitation—took precedence over whatever written copies were already in circulation. Later, when both Sumerian and (later) Akkadian works had been so standardized that even the master scribes could not revise them significantly, we see them innovate in yet another way. They produced archaizing new works up through the Hellenistic period, some of which in turn were added to the temple curriculum that predominated at that point.

Beyond the Scribal Matrix Ultimately, both the texts and the scribal matrix that transmitted them were only a strategy for the enforcement of a standardized consciousness across broader stretches of society. Within the scribal matrix, material texts were both a numinous token of ancient tradition and a means of adherence to it. Students who had mastered them—whether by copying, receiving by dictation, or memorizing and reproducing (orally and in written form)—were equipped to be a force of cultural continuity in the society at large. The size and character of the scribal class apparently evolved, becoming smaller, with different groups ever more specialized in focus. Nevertheless, the system was remarkably resilient, continuing in some form across three millennia of history in Mesopotamia. Indeed, as I will show in the next chapter, the system was influential not just in Mesopotamia but also beyond its borders. This powerful cultural innovation did not just help unify ancient Mesopotamian kingdoms and form scribal administrators there. Both the specific texts and the general methods of the Mesopotamian scribal matrix decisively influenced cultures far distant from the cities of Sumer and Babylon where the curriculum originated.

3 The Influence of Mesopotamia

The picture of scribal education and textual production in the previous chapter becomes particularly significant when we consider how influential these practices were across the Near Eastern area surrounding Mesopotamia. Forty years ago, William F. Albright observed: I do not think we can overestimate the importance of the SumeroAkkadian educational system for the development not only of Akkadian higher culture, but also of higher culture in the surrounding countries, especially in Syria and Palestine, where linguistic differences were comparatively minor.1 Subsequent years of finds and publications have strengthened and nuanced this thesis. There were other major cultural centers in the Near East, to be sure. None, however, had the extensive and documentable influence on other cultures that the Sumero-Akkadian educational system did. In what follows, I survey the distribution of this system in areas surrounding Israel, before narrowing to take a look at how this system is reflected in Ugarit, Canaan, and later Israel as well. Overall the initial survey moves in rough chronological order while also following movement from East to West.

The Sumero-Akkadian System Outside Mesopotamia, Ugarit, and Israel Our journey starts to the east of Mesopotamia in ancient Persia, particularly Elam. This ancient region, located in what is now Iran, pre1. This comment by Albright is recorded as part of the discussion section in Landsberger, “Scribal Concepts,” 105–6.

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serves some of the earliest educational texts available to us. They are dated to the early part of the Old Babylonian period. Scheil, one of the earliest publishers of such Elamite educational texts, suggests that the scribes who created them had apprenticed in Ur or Sippar. One text is a large three-column list of objects that appears to be a reference copy of a list somewhat resembling those that are later standardized in the Old Babylonian schools.2 Other texts are the smaller round school copies of short pericopes.3 Both types of texts show clear relations to the Mesopotamian educational curriculum of the third millennium. Civil locates both sets of texts in his “period II,” a time just preceding the formation of the Old Babylonian educational tradition.4 More recently, a cache of Bronze Age educational texts was found in Kabnak (Haft Tepe) in the southwestern portion of Iran.5 Together, these finds show how the Mesopotamian educational tradition had already influenced a major culture to the east of its origination point. Indeed, this influence was persistent. Elam was one of the few areas outside Mesopotamia to still be using the cuneiform system to write its own language in the first millennium.6 The ancient Syrian city of Ebla (Tel Mardikh) provides another early example of Mesopotamian influence. Existing in the latter half of the third millennium, this city appears to have creatively adapted the Sumerian cuneiform system to its own administrative needs. One part of this process of adaptation was the use of sign and lexical lists like those in Mesopotamia. Dozens of lists following Mesopotamian prototypes have been found, along with a number of other distinctively Eblaite sign lists on the Mesopotamian model and apparently derived primarily from the northern (Sumerian) scribal center at Kish. They are generally large, carefully baked tablets, not the smaller school copies typical of the Old Babylonian schools of Nippur. In addition, a number of other texts central to the Mesopotamian educational tradition have been found at Ebla, including treaties, hymns, prayers, and incantations.7 These documents, along with the cuneiform documents found at Tell Beydar near Hassake, testify to the existence of vital educational/scribal centers in early Syria, centers that interacted with, influenced, and were influenced by the Sumero-Akkadian system. Already in the late third millennium, some scribes in Syria were learning both their own language and a form of Sumerian using a mix of Mesopotamian and distinctively Eblaite sign lists. Moreover, at least some scribes in these ancient Syrian cities were mastering classic Meso-

2. V. Scheil, “Vocabulaire practique,” RA 18 (1921): 49–78. 3. V. Scheil, “Quelques particularite´s du Sume´rien en Elam,” RA 22 (1925): 45–53. For other educational texts see William W. Hallo, “The Expansion of Cuneiform Literature,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 46–47 (1980): 310. 4. Civil, “Lexicography,” 127–28. 5. For initial discussion and some drawings see P. Herrero and J. J. Glassner, “Haft-Tepe: Choix de textes IV,” Iranica Antiqua 31 (1996): 51–82. Pederse´n discusses the find itself (Archives and Libraries, 120–23). 6. Jerrold Cooper, “Cuneiform,” in ABD, vol. 1, 1216. 7. Alphonso Archi, “Transmission of the Mesopotamian Lexical and Literary Texts from Ebla,” in Literature and Literary Language at Ebla, ed. Pelio Fronzaroli (Florence: Universita` di Firenze, 1992).

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potamian works like Gilgamesh that were central to the Mesopotamian curriculum. We likewise find evidence for Mesopotamian influence in the Syrian city of Mari (Tel Hariri). The archives found there, most of which date from the eighteenth-century reign of King Zimri-Lim, are written in Akkadian or Sumerian (with Akkadian translation) using the Mesopotamian cuneiform system. Among them are school texts in the Mesopotamian tradition, though the bulk of them have not yet been published.8 At one point, excavators thought they had found the actual site of a school there, but much recent discussion has questioned that idea.9 The most that can be said right now is that Mari is yet another bit of evidence of the early influence of the Sumero-Akkadian tradition on urban centers of Syria.10 A bit later we do see Mesopotamian educational texts in the largely Hurrian towns Nuzi (Yorghun Tepe) and Alalakh (Tel Atchana). Nuzi, which flourished in the 1400s b.c.e., lies north and east of the Assyrian center and appears to have been dominated through most of its period by the Hurrian state of Mittani. Though the native language of the rulers and most of the native population was a form of Hurrian, we again see Mesopotamian educational texts at Nuzi: oblong-rectangular copies of early forms of Mesopotamian educational lists, several copies of the predominant ur5-ra⫽H 6 UBULLU list, a list of professions, and some other similar texts.11 Similar educational copies have been found at Alalakh, a city far to the west but likewise part of the Mittani Empire (as capital of the Hurrian kingdom of Mukish). There we again find copies of the word list ur5-ra⫽H 6 UBULLU that show the influence of the Mesopotamian educational system, as well as other cuneiform texts. Here the demonstrable influence is largely limited to lists that were the focus of elementary education. These finds at Alalakh and Nuzi are our primary direct data for textuality in the far-flung Hurrian empire of Mittani that dominated northern Syria and Mesopotamia toward the middle of the second millennium. Indeed, Hurrian dominance of this area is so significant that Egyptian texts apply the name “Hurri” to Palestine and Syria during the eighteenth dynasty (1539–1292).12 Given this, it is striking that these two key witnesses to ancient Hurrian culture show that this cultural realm, like Ebla before it, was significantly influenced

8. Veldhuis surveys the few publications (Elementary Education, 26). See, in particular, the discussions in J. Oelsner, “Zu einer Schu¨lertafel aus Mari,” Nouvelles Assyriologiques Bre`ves et Utilitaires 33 (1989): 22–23; H. Waetzoldt, “Zu einer Schu¨lertafel aus Mari,” Nouvelles Assyriologiques Bre´ves et Utilitaires 97 (1990). William W. Hallo notes the promise of a few more texts in “The Syrian Contribution to Cuneiform Literature and Learning,” in New Horizons in the Study of Ancient Syria, ed. Mark W. Chavalas and John L. Hayes (Malibu, CA: Undena, 1998), 77. 9. Waetzoldt, “Keilschrift und Schulen,” 39; Volk, “Edubba
a,” 5. 10. Falkenstein, “Babylonische Schule,” 137; D. J. Wiseman, “Israel’s Literary Neighbors in the ThirteenthCentury BC,” Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 5 (1977): 77–78; Charpin, Le clerge´ d’Ur, 485–86. 11. E.-R. Lacheman, “Nuziana I: Tablettes scolaires,” RA 36 (1939): 81–95. 12. Gernot Wilhelm, “The Kingdom of Mittani,” in CANE, 1233–54.

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by the standard texts and educational processes of the Mesopotamian scribal system. Both Nuzi to the east and Alalakh to the west show the pervasiveness of both the Mesopotamian writing system and at least parts of the educational curriculum—particularly lists—that were used to teach it. Sumero-Akkadian influence is more extensively documented in the literary remains of the ancient Hittite empire based in the city of Hattusha (Bogazko¨y). This empire based in Anatolia (modern Turkey) flourished in the latter half of the second millennium, eventually taking over what were once the western parts of the Hurrian empire while appropriating many of its traditions. The extensive archives discovered there have revealed an elaborate scribal system drawing deeply on the Sumero-Akkadian tradition, both through direct influence and through the mediation of the Hurrian culture that the Hittites overtook.13 Tens of copies of standard Babylonian lists have been found there, along with many texts featured as standard parts of the Sumero-Akkadian curriculum: for example, numerous traditions surrounding King Sargon (usually in Hittite translation), the Atrahasis creation to flood epic, the Gilgamesh epic in both Akkadian original and Hittite translations, an Akkadian precursor to the Adad hymn, wisdom literature, and many other Sumero-Akkadian hymns, incantations, and divinatory texts.14 Specialists have estimated that Hittite scribes gained considerable expertise in both Akkadian and Hurrian, while achieving much more limited competence in Sumerian. Moreover, a Hittite letter provides the only reference so far outside Mesopotamia to the “Edubba” that was so prominent in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia.15 Meanwhile, the Hittites developed their own extensive educational-enculturational material (some influenced by Sumero-Akkadian materials),16 including a significant amount of nuanced historical writing—complete with addresses to the audience and teaching episodes—that was apparently used to educate and enculturate future Hittite leaders.17 The Syrian city of Emar (Tell Meskene) provides yet additional evidence of the spread of the Sumero-Akkadian culture, this time late into the thirteenth and twelfth centuries. There an archive, apparently part of a temple,18 included a large number of Hittite and Hurrian texts, indicating a similar cultural mix to that found elsewhere in the Hittite empire. Nevertheless, far more interesting for our purposes, are the range of Sumero-Akkadian educational texts found at Emar, including representatives of most of the central sign and lexical

13. G. Beckman, “Mesopotamians and Mesopotamian Learning at Hattusˇa,” JCS 35 (1983): 97–114. 14. H. Gu¨terbock, “Textes Scolaires,” in Catalogue des Textes Hittites, vol. 75, ed. E. Laroche, E´tudes et commentaires (Paris: E´ditions Klincksieck, 1971), 47–54; W. Von Soden and H. Otten, Das akkadische-hethitische Vokabular KBo I 44 ⫹ Kbo XIII 1, Studien zu den Bogazko¨y Texten (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1968); Beckman, “Learning at Hattusˇa,” 97–101. 15. L. Rost, “Die außerhalb von Bogazko¨y gefundenen hethitischen Briefe,” Mitteilungen des Instituts fu¨r Orientforschung 4 (1956): 349. 16. Hallo, “Expansion,” 311. 17. On this see especially Hubert Cancik, Grundzu¨ge der hethitischen und alttestamentlichen Geschichtsschreibung, Abhandlungen des Deutschen Pala¨stinavereins (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1976), 53–64. 18. See Pederse´n, Archives and Libraries, 61–64, for discussion of the context of the main find.

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lists used in the Sumero-Akkadian tradition, along with some isolated higher level texts such as the Gilgamesh epic and the Palm and the Tamarisk.19 The same scribal family at Emar appears to have copied both external SumeroAkkadian texts and local legal documents.20 Indeed, in key instances, they appear to have adapted the Sumero-Akkadian materials, adding elements of local color.21 Otherwise, these texts show many resemblances to educational texts found at Ugarit that I will discuss later. Together, they bear witness to the development of late second-millennium versions of the Sumero-Akkadian curriculum in lands to the west of Mesopotamia.22 These versions shared a particularly consistent focus on the sign and lexical lists that played a prominent role in the elementary stages of the Sumero-Akkadian curriculum, but they also featured a varying and more isolated array of higher level texts from that curriculum, such as Gilgamesh. The Mesopotamian system was influential even further west. Apparently there are some as-yet-unpublished early Mesopotamian-style lexical lists that have been found in Cappadocia, in central Anatolia.23 Much more important for our purposes is extensive evidence that there were scribes in Egypt who had undergone training in at least the Akkadian side of the Sumero-Akkadian system. Egypt, of course, had a developed scribal matrix focusing on specifically Egyptian literature. Nevertheless, Akkadian was the lingua franca across the Near East in the late Bronze age, including and particularly those parts dominated by the Hurrian and then Hittite empires or peoples connected to them. The Amarna archive shows that Egyptian bureaucrats used Akkadian to correspond with vassals and other rulers throughout the Syro-Palestinian area in the Late Bronze age. Furthermore, a few copies of standard Mesopotamian sign and word lists have been found there,24 as well as higher level texts, such as the Adapa epic, and a highly abbreviated form of the Akkadian Nergal and Ereshkigal epic, both apparently part of a triad of Mesopotamian texts deriving from Mesopotamia and used for educating Egyptian scribes in a subpart of Mesopotamian lore.25 Most significant, this latter subcorpus has additional red points that were used in the Egyptian system to guide oral performance of

19. For initial publication of the texts see D. Arnaud, Recherches au pays d’Asˇtata: Textes de la bibliothe`que: Transcriptions et traductions: Emar (Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1987), 1–194, 383–97. For discussion of the lexical lists see Miguel Civil, “The Texts from Meskene-Emar,” Aula Orientalis 7 (1989): 5–25. 20. Daniel E. Fleming, Time at Emar: The Cultic Calendar and the Rituals from the Diviner’s House (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 34–35. 21. Hallo, “Syrian Contribution,” 83–86. 22. W. H. van Soldt, “The Ugarit Version of Harra-hubbulu 20–21a: A New Source,” in Mesopotamica— Ugaritica—Biblica: Festschrift fu¨r Kurt Bergerhof zur Vollendung seines 70. Lebensjahres am 7. Mai 1992, ed. M. Dietrich and O. Loretz (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1993), 440–41; Niek Veldhuis, “The Ugarit Lexical Text RS 13.53 (PRU III, Plance X),” Welt des Orients 27 (1996): 29. 23. Civil, “Lexicography,” 128. 24. D. O. Edzard, “Amarna: Die literarischen Texte,” in Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies (1988), 27–33; P. Artzi, “Studies in the Library of the Amarna Archive,” in Bar-Ilan Studies in Assyriology dedicated to Pinhfi as Artzi (1990), 139–56; Shlomo Izre’el, “The Amarna Letters from Canaan,” in CANE, 2418; The Amarna Scholarly Tablets, Cuneiform Monographs (Groningen: Styx, 1997). 25. P. Artzi, “Observations on the ‘Library’ of the Amarna Archives,” in Veenhof, Cuneiform Archives and Libraries, 212; Izre
el, Amarna Tablets, 12.

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texts, suggesting that such texts were read aloud in the Egyptian version of the Sumero-Akkadian scribal system.26 Some have speculated that the Egyptians received this scribal system from the Hittites, with whom they had intensive contact during this period.27 Be that as it may, this evidence from Amarna shows the extent to which Near Eastern cultures of the second millennium could adopt Mesopotamian models even alongside highly developed indigenous processes of education and textual production. This would have been no small means of cultural influence. As Beckman points out in an overview and analysis of the Sumero-Akkadian tradition in Hatti: It must be stressed that the adoption of cuneiform implied the borrowing of an entire cultural tradition, and that conversely, scribal education was the means by which that tradition was transmitted, both to the native Mesopotamian and to the foreigner.28 I turn now to look at another locus where the Sumero-Akkadian educational system coexisted with and potentially influenced an indigenous system: Ugarit.

Ugarit The Phoenician city of Ugarit (Ras Shamra) provides another example of education in both an indigenous tongue and Sumero-Akkadian literature, one even more important for our purposes than the limited evidence of Akkadian education from Egypt. This city shares much in common with examples discussed earlier. The archives of the city derive from the late Bronze Age levels of the city and thus are very roughly similar in age to the finds at Emar. Like those of Alalakh and Nuzi, much of the population of Ugarit was Hurrian (or at least bore Hurrian names), and the importance of Hurrian culture is indicated by the prominence of the Hurrian language in a variety of texts found at Ugarit. And, as mentioned earlier, the educational texts found at Ugarit have particular resemblances to those found at Emar. Particularly important for our purposes is the fact that Ugarit, like the sites discussed earlier, has preserved extensive evidence of the Mesopotamian textual-educational system and an indigenous educational system revolving around its own cuneiform sign system and literature.29 Moreover, because Ugarit was excavated using scientific archaeological methods, we have more data regarding the context of these educational texts. The data confirm the picture given in the previous chapter of education in ancient Mesopotamia: virtually

26. Izre
el, Amarna Tablets, 11. This system of red points is discussed further in chapter 4. 27. H.W.L. Saggs, Civilization Before Greece and Rome (London: Batsford, 1989), 104; Beckman, “Learning at Hattusˇa,” 112–13. 28. Beckman, “Learning at Hattusˇa,” 97–98. 29. This importance is stressed in Hallo, “Expansion,” 312.

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all educational texts were found in private dwellings, mostly those of priests and other cultic professions. Only a handful of such educational texts were found in the palace or in a temple context.30 These educational texts included hundreds of Ugaritic copies of SumeroAkkadian sign and word lists, about 21 percent of the total number of SumeroAkkadian texts overall.31 In addition, Ugarit preserved a number of texts that were standard parts of the Mesopotamian curriculum, including the Atrahasis story (creation and flood), a letter of Ludingira to his mother, a composition resembling the wisdom text Ludlul bel nemeqi, the ancient wisdom instruction of Shuruppak, various hymns, and a text associated with Gilgamesh’s youth.32 As in the case of Emar, the Ugaritic versions of Sumero-Akkadian texts reflect some significant adaptations: omission of lines that might be considered impious, addition of epithets for Marduk, and so on.33 As elsewhere in the ancient Near East, scribal education went beyond what a scribe needed to function and included immersion in a world of standard long-duration texts that socialized him into a new and separate administrative persona.34 Still, we should be clear that “long duration” here does not mean that the text copies themselves were preserved for a long time. Rather, as in Mesopotamia, the primary locus of transmission was the mind-heart of the master scribe. Educational texts, of whatever level, do not appear to have been put in long-term storage.35 Apparently by this point at Ugarit the Sumero-Akkadian tradition was mediated through the Hurrian culture realm surveyed earlier. This is suggested not only by the unique quadrilingual lexical lists but also by the strong influence of the Hurrian language on the lists in general.36 This may be part of a broader phenomenon, by this point, of transmission of the Mesopotamian scribal matrix by more local sources in the late Bronze Age. We see similar dynamics evident in Amarna Egypt, where the scribal tradition resembled Hittite precursors, and the letters exchanged with Canaanite rulers reflected mixed

30. See the detailed reconstruction of archaelogical contexts of the finds in W. H. van Soldt, Studies in the Akkadian of Ugarit: Dating and Grammar, AOAT (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1991), 47–231 and 520. 31. For a recent overview see van Soldt, Akkadian of Ugarit, particularly 747–48. He gives a sketch of the curricular order on 750–51. 32. A. F. Rainey, “Two Cuneiform Fragments from Tel Aphek,” Tel Aviv 2 (1976): 130–31; Loren R. MackFisher, “A Survey and Reading Guide to the Didactic Literature of Ugarit: Prolegomenon to a Study on the Sage,” in Gammie and Perdue, Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, 69–70; van Soldt, “Religious and Literary Texts,” 177. 33. M. Dietrich, “Aspects of the Babylonian Impact on Ugaritic Literature and Religion,” in Ugarit, Religion and Culture: Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Ugarit, Religion and Culture, Edinburgh, July 1994, ed. N. Wyatt et al. (Mu¨nster: Ugarit Verlag, 1996), 41–44. It is not possible in these instances to determine at what stage such modifications occurred, whether before or after the traditions reached Ugarit. 34. J. Krecher, “Schreiberschulung in Ugarit: Die Tradition von Listen und sumerischen Texten,” Ugarit Forschung 1 (1969): 132. 35. On this see van Soldt, Akkadian of Ugarit, 521, who observes that only copies of juridical texts were preserved over long periods. 36. Krecher, “Schreiberschulung in Ugarit,” 132. See also Gesche, Schulunterricht, 26, n. 121, citing a lecture by Van Soldt that makes the same affirmation.

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forms of Akkadian produced by local variants of the Mesopotamian educational system.37 Moreover, as mentioned earlier, the Ugaritic and Emar educational texts, though different in crucial respects, show special resemblances to each other. By this point, the Sumero-Akkadian system is not transmitted via direct contact with late Bronze Age Mesopotamian cultures (though there appear to be a few specifically Mesopotamian texts at Ugarit),38 but it has developed a life of its own in areas to the north and west of Mesopotamia. Key Mesopotamian standard texts are still prominent, but they are being taught and adapted by scribes in local environments that are ever more distant from the heartland where such texts were originally created.39 Moreover, there is no standard Sumero-Akkadian curriculum that is attested in these varied sites. Rather, we see relative consistency in attestation of the elementary lists from the SumeroAkkadian tradition combined with much more irregular and varied attestation of higher level works like Gilgamesh or Atrahasis. Ugarit is distinguished from the cultures discussed earlier insofar as it developed a parallel scribal system based on a cuneiform alphabet resembling the Mesopotamian system in being made out of wedges in clay but consisting of radically fewer signs—thirty in all.40 Though Ugaritic archives tended to be separate from Sumero-Akkadian ones,41 the educational system attested in them followed many elements of the Mesopotamian model. Apparently, prospective scribes worked their way through Ugaritic alphabetic and name lists, much as others mastered Sumero-Akkadian (-Hurrian) lists.42 Generally, they started with short excerpts and elementary alphabetic lists before progressing to elementary grammar exercises and name lists.43 They also learned certain standard Ugaritic texts, such as god lists, magical texts, an Ugaritic wisdom instruction, and items like the poem to Aqhat.44 Loren Mack-Fisher has argued that much of this standard literature revolves around a veneration of ancient sages like that seen in the Sumero-Akkadian tradition, veneration of both pre-

37. Izre
el, “Amarna Letters,” 2418. 38. Van Soldt, Akkadian of Ugarit, 522–23. Dietrich argues that all of the Sumero-Akkadian texts are of foreign origin (“Impact”). 39. For a summary of types of adaptation see Hallo, “Syrian Contribution,” 87–88. 40. Apparently this was a melding of a somewhat older Canaanite alphabetic concept with the cuneiform form of lettering. For discussion of the long and short Northwest Semitic alphabets and their relation with noncuneiform alphabetic precursors see J. D. Hawkins, “The Origin and Dissemination of Writing in Western Asia,” in The Origins of Civilization, ed. R. S. Moorey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 159–62; A. Millard, “The Ugaritic and Canaanite Alphabets: Some Notes,” Ugarit Forschungen 11 (1979): 613–16; and Dietrich, “Impact,” 34–37. 41. Van Soldt, Akkadian of Ugarit, 749. 42. A. F. Rainey, “The Scribe at Ugarit: His Position and Influence,” Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities 3 (1969): 131–32; Mack-Fisher, “A Survey and Reading Guide to the Didactic Literature of Ugarit: Prolegomenon to a Study on the Sage,” in The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed. John G. Gammie and Leo G. Perdue (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990),” 71; I. Marquez-Rowe, “Syllabic and Alphabet Texts,” Ugarit Forschung 28 (1996): 457–62 43. Van Soldt, Akkadian of Ugarit, 749. 44. Mack-Fisher, “Survey and Reading Guide,” 71–72.

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flood sages of the sort focused on in that tradition (e.g., Shuruppak) and postflood sages like Daniel.45 Moreover, there may be some ways in which scribal mastery of the Sumero-Akkadian tradition was reflected in elements of the Ugaritic texts. For example, Otto Eissfeldt points out how the wording of the conclusion of the flood in the Gilgamesh epic (11, 142–145) may be reflected in similar wording in the Ugaritic Kirtu epic (1, 106–109), and Gregorio del Olmo Lete argues that the lunar cult of Ugarit is influenced by SumeroAkkadian traditions.46 In addition, much of this Ugaritic curriculum resembles its Mesopotamian counterpart in orientation toward socialization of the scribe for loyalty to tradition and the throne. Just as the Sumero-Akkadian standard curriculum socialized prospective scribes by having them master texts focused on often bygone deities, so also the standard Ugaritic texts focus on a set of deities that diverges from those present in other witnesses to ritual at Ugarit. Moreover, just as the Sumero-Akkadian curriculum featured standard texts that celebrated the ancient founders of the first Mesopotamian empires, so also standard Ugaritic texts like Kirtu focus on ancient kings, the issue of heirship, and divine blessing on their lines.47 Part of the point of an education focusing on such texts was precisely their antiquated character. Insofar as Ugaritic scribes thoroughly learned such texts, they were being formed into future administrators by an educational process that went far beyond the requirements of mere technical competence to read and write documents.48 As Anson Rainey points out, both educational and standard texts were found in the same “library of the high priest,” thus suggesting that this area—as in the case of the scribal dwellings in Nippur—was the place where a master of the tradition preserved texts both in written form and in the minds and hearts of his students, his lmdm (Ugaritic for “students”), his “sons.”49 The Ugaritic case is particularly important here for several reasons. Not only is it one of the latest examples of the Sumero-Akkadian scribal matrix outside Mesopotamia, but it is also the main example of the occurrence of the Sumero-Akkadian scribal matrix alongside a parallel and analogous system of alphabetic education. Some who have considered the issue of education within ancient Israel have argued that Israel would not have had an educational system like that of ancient Mesopotamia because its simpler alphabet did not require

45. Mack-Fisher, “Survey and Reading Guide,” 79–80. 46. Otto Eissfeldt, “Mesopotamische Elemente in den alphabetischen Texten aus Ugarit,” Syria 39 (1962): 39; G. del Olmo Lete, “Yarhu y Nikkalu. La Mitologia lunar sumeria en Ugarit,” Aula Orientalis 9 (1991): 67–75; cf. Dietrich, “Impact” (though he also notes ways Marduk plays a circumscribed yet documented role in the Ugaritic pantheon; “Marduk in Ugarit,” Studi epigrafici e linguistici sul Vicino Oriente antico 5 [1988]: 79–101). 47. Mack-Fisher, “Survey and Reading Guide,” 76–80. 48. As Karel Van der Toorn points out, students in the Ugaritic system appear to have ended up in royal administration (“Cuneiform Documents from Syria-Palestine: Texts, Scribes and Schools,” Zeitschrift der deutschen Pala¨stina-Vereins 116 [2000]: 105). 49. Rainey, “Scribe at Ugarit,” 127–28.

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such an extensive educational process. But Ugarit and other sites show that the project of education in the Mesopotamian system was about far more than mere education in literacy. Moreover, it featured mastery of a standard curriculum of ancient texts that went well beyond word lists, grammar exercises, or even texts that might be more narrowly defined as “wisdom.” Ugarit is unique in providing an example of a culture, relatively close to Israel geographically and chronologically, that developed an alphabetic educational system along lines similar to the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform system that had dominated education in the area up to that point. At Ugarit, education in SumeroAkkadian cuneiform and the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet occurred side by side, although a smaller number of scribes probably engaged in the former than the latter. Scribes at Ugarit learned standard Ugaritic texts like the Kirtu epic, while some learned standard Akkadian texts like the Atrahasis creation and flood epic as well. Alphabetic education did not completely replace the Sumero-Akkadian tradition at Ugarit. Alphabetic education at Ugarit was not done on a substantially different model. Rather it used similar means to its Mesopotamian counterpart and was directed at similar broad ends: both training in the techniques and textual templates of the scribal tradition and socialization into the—now specifically Ugaritic—scribal office. Ugarit is distinctive in one other way from other examples to be discussed in the rest of this book: it is an example of a culture that developed an alphabetic cuneiform that was recorded on durable clay tablets. Other societies like Israel, Moab, and Phoenicia recorded most of their alphabetic writings on more perishable materials, generally papyrus and leather, perhaps wooden or wax boards in some cases. As a result, virtually no educational exercises have survived from these cultures, except for the most elementary alphabetic exercises that tended to be recorded on ostraca, which, like their baked-tablet counterparts, are a type of ceramic material that preserves well. Aside from these, our only written texts from such cultures are those written by more accomplished scribes in the process of their work: letters, administrative receipts and contracts, monumental inscriptions, and those literary remains, principally the Bible, that were passed down by subsequent generations. We cannot reconstruct the intervening alphabetic educational process without recourse to the analogy of better documented examples like those of Ugarit or Mesopotamia. I turn now to the first part of that task, considering in a preliminary way how the Mesopotamian and Ugaritic examples might be instructive in exploration of ancient Israelite education and textuality.

Cuneiform Scribal Systems and Ancient Israel The first thing to note is how the Mesopotamian scribal-textual system is attested in Bronze Age Canaan and Phoenicia, much as it was in Ebla, Elam, Haft-Tepe, Alalakh, Nuzi, Hatti, Emar, Amarna, Ugarit, and so on. I have already considered the discovery at Amarna of Akkadian letters written to Egypt

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by rulers in Syro-Palestine. These even include some letters from Abdikheba, the ruler of Jerusalem, apparently written by a scribe with affinities to the Syrian Akkadian tradition.50 Letters like these were composed by local scribes who had received at least a rudimentary education using ancient Mesopotamian methods and materials, even if this scribal system was (1) mediated by way of the Hurrians and/or Hittites; (2) involved a form of hybrid Canaanized Akkadian that reflects isolation from Sumero-Akkadian tradition streams and heavy influence by local languages;51 and (3) shows many local variations in scribal practices among themselves.52 Still, these letters show that Ugarit was not the only location in Syro-Phoenicia where such local forms of the Mesopotamian scribal educational system were continuing. This is supported by instances where cuneiform educational tablets have been found in Bronze Age sites in ancient Canaan, part of a broader phenomenon of widespread use of Akkadian for various purposes at sites like Hazor, Keisan, Jericho, Hesi, and Megiddo.53 Early Bronze Age Sumero-Akkadian educational materials have been found at Hazor, Gezer, Ta
anak, and (possibly) Shechem.54 In addition, several late Bronze Age lexicographic cuneiform tablets were found in the Phoenician city of Aphek. None of the Aphek lists have Mesopotamian analogues, but all feature Sumerian signs with Akkadian translations, following the broader analogy of the Mesopotamian educational list.55 We have already seen local variants and expansions of the Mesopotamian list tradition, from the early, distinctively Eblaite sign lists to the unique developments at Ugarit of quadrilingual forms of the standard Sumero-Akkadian lists and brand-new alphabetic sign and word lists in the Ugaritic tradition. These Sumero-Akkadian lists found in ancient Canaan are part of a similar phenomenon. Another fragmentary bit of evidence is the discovery at Megiddo of a

50. W. Moran, “Syrian Scribe of the Jerusalem Letters,” in Unity and Diversity: Essays on the History, Literature and Religion of the Ancient Near East, ed. H. Goedicke and J.J.M. Roberts (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 146–66. 51. P. Artzi, “Response,” in Biblical Archaeology Today, ed. J. Amitai (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1985), 270–71; Izre
el, “Amarna Letters,” 2412–18; Shlomo Izre
el, “The Amarna Glosses: Who Wrote What for Whom? Some Sociolinguistic Considerations,” in Language and Culture in the Near East, ed. Shlomo Izre
el and Rina Drory (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 101–3. 52. D. O. Edzard, “Amarna und die Archive: Seiner Korrespondenten zwischen Ugarit und Gaza,” in Biblical Archaeology Today, ed. J. Amitai (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1985), 253–54. 53. As Hallo points out, with the exception of Hebron, virtually all sites from this period feature educational texts (Origins: The Ancient Near Eastern Background of Some Modern Western Institutions, Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East [Leiden: Brill, 1996], 161). 54. For discussions of the educational materials see A. E. Glock, “Texts and Archaeology at Tell Ta
anek,” Berytus 31 (1983): 57–66; A. Demsky, “The Education of Canaanite Scribes in the Mesopotamian Cuneiform Tradition,” in Bar-Ilan Studies in Assyriology Dedicated to Pinhfi as Artzi, ed. Jacob Klein and Aaron Skaist (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1990), 158–62; Cooper, “Cuneiform,” 1217, and van der Toorn, “Cuneiform Documents,” 98–99. For an overview of eighty-nine cuneiform inscriptions from the broader area see now Wayne Horowitz, Takayoshi Oshima, and Seth Sanders, “A Bibliographical List of Cuneiform Inscriptions from Canaan, Palestine/Philistia, and the Land of Israel,” JAOS 122 (2002): 753–66. 55. A. F. Rainey, “A Tri-Lingual Cuneiform Fragment from Tel Aphek,” Tel Aviv 3 (1976): 137–40; Rainey, “A Fragment from Tel Aphek.”

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fourteenth-century fragment of the epic of Gilgamesh, one that anticipates some aspects of later Canaanite Akkadian documents found at Amarna.56 As we have seen, Gilgamesh was one of the few nonlist texts from the SumeroAkkadian tradition to be found at multiple loci outside of Mesopotamia. Within Mesopotamia proper, it was part of the early stages of scribal education, with short excerpts copied by some first-stage students just mastering the initial sign and word lists.57 Perhaps its link to early education explains why Gilgamesh is found so frequently outside Mesopotamia, at Hatti, Emar, Ugarit, and Megiddo—all loci where the main other educational material attested is the list tradition characteristic of the early stages of the Sumero-Akkadian curriculum.58 Thus, the discovery of a copy of a portion of this standard educational text at Megiddo is additional evidence that some students in Bronze Age Canaan underwent a local form of the Mesopotamian curriculum. Indeed, this evidence suggests in particular that they not only learned cuneiform Akkadian through use of standard or nonstandard sign and word lists but also learned some of the standard Akkadian texts, like Gilgamesh, that were central to that curriculum, particularly its earlier stages. All of the evidence considered so far, however, shows the existence and influence of the Mesopotamian curriculum in the Bronze Age, not the Iron Age, which is so central for the formation of the Bible.59 Indeed, part of the problem is that—though about eighteen first-millennium cuneiform texts have been found in Philistia/Canaan/Phoenicia (approximately 25 percent of the total)—there are nowhere near as many finds of specifically educational texts for the Iron Age as there are for the preceding Bronze Age.60 This lack of preservation of first-millennium educational texts is a problem even in Mesopotamia, where it appears that many of the more advanced educational exercises were written on wax tablets, papyrus, and leather strips—all of which are far more perishable than the older clay tablets. Some individual exemplars of these exercises have been preserved, but the existence of others can only be inferred.61 Most scholars insist that Mesopotamia still had an educational system during these later periods, even as they recognize that it is less well documented, was less extensive, and probably took place exclusively within a master-apprentice model, rather than a “school model” more easily recognized as educational to modern eyes. In addition, Akkadian was used as a lingua franca through the first half of the first millennium b.c.e. As the Assyrians conquered Aramean kingdoms, they began to use Aramaic alongside Akkadian for official business. Nevertheless, we still see Akkadian treaties and other documents used in international

56. Wiseman, “Israel’s Literary Neighbors,” 81. On the Canaanite elements of the Akkadian see Artzi, “Response,” 270. 57. Gesche, Schulunterricht, 148–49, 172–73, 210–11. 58. This is noted already by Speiser in his comments in response to Landsberger, now to be found in Landsberger, “Scribal Concepts,” 120, and is also noted in Wiseman, “Israel’s Literary Neighbors,” 81. 59. Hallo, “Expansion,” 313; van der Toorn, “Cuneiform Documents,” 99. 60. This number comes from the listing in Horowitz, Oshima, and Sanders, “List.” 61. Civil, “Education,” 302.

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diplomacy. Many of the artistic representations of writing in first-millennium Mesopotamia feature a Sumero-Akkadian scribe with a tablet working alongside an Aramaic scribe writing on parchment. A useful example of both types of scribalism in the same text is the bilingual Akkadian-Aramaic Tell Fekheriye inscription from the Aramean kingdom of Sikan in upper Mesopotamia. This inscription was written by a governor of Sikan in upper Mesopotamia, either a native who took on an Assyrian name or an Assyrian appointee. Stock phrases throughout the Assyrian version of the inscription show that it was written by a scribe thoroughly versed in standard legal phraseology. Indeed, the inscription partakes even more of the language of contracts and treaties than it does of typical royal stelae.62 It must also be recognized that the use of Akkadian outside Mesopotamia shifted in the twelfth century b.c.e. This can be seen in the evidence from the Syro-Phoenician area. On the one hand, the evidence from Ugarit and Emar actually shows the influence of the Sumero-Akkadian educational system increasing in the thirteenth century, as Assyria extended its influence westward under kings like Adad-nirari I and Shalmaneser I. On the other hand, with the collapse of the late Bronze Age states, we also see a several-century gap in cuneiform evidence outside Mesopotamia. Evidence does not reappear in Palestine and Phoenicia until the early first millennium. Fragments of two cuneiform stelae have been found at Ashdod and Samaria, along with a handful of cuneiform legal and administrative documents at Gezer, Keisan, and Samaria. Nevertheless, no school texts have been found so far from that period, suggesting that Akkadian was more exclusively the language of the conquerors in the Israelite area by this point.63 Some scholars have nevertheless maintained that later Israel was specifically influenced by the Sumero-Akkadian school tradition. Albright suggested that Hebrew
oman (“teacher”) might be a Hebrew version of the SumeroAkkadian terms for master scribe/teacher, ummia/ummaˆnu.64 Speiser proposed that the Hebrew term for school, bet sepher (“house of the scroll”) might be a Hebrew calque of the Sumerian edubba (now more likely) Akkadian bı¯tfituppı¯sˇu (“house of the tablet”), though this particular argument is hampered by the late attestation of the Hebrew term.65 Finally, Rainey and others have pointed out how the Ugaritic term for students, lmdm, is paralleled by several oft-cited mentions of limmudim (“ones taught”) in Isaiah. The most famous is the one in which Isaiah quotes God telling him to preserve his prophecy in the following way.

62. A. Millard, “Aramaeans and Assyrians,” Iraq 45 (1983): 105. 63. Cooper, “Cuneiform,” 1217. Again, note the survey of almost twenty administrative, votive, and legal first- millennium cuneiform documents given in Horowitz, Oshima, and Sanders, “List.” 64. The comments are in the discussion section of Landsberger, “Scribal Concepts,” 105–6. See now Paul Mankowski’s argument that this borrowing of the Sumerian term came by way of Akkadian, Paul V. Mankowski, Akkadian Loan Words in Biblical Hebrew, Harvard Semitic Studies (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 33– 34. 65. Comment recorded in Landsberger, “Scribal Concepts,” 106–8.

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early examples of textuality and education Bind up the witness, Seal the teaching (torah) in my students (limmuday; Isa 8:16)

Here the prophet appears to be describing God’s divine command to perpetuate his teaching, not in a text but in a group of people whom he teaches. This would parallel conceptions found in the Mesopotamian system that the master scribe perpetuates the ancient tradition not just through incising texts on tablets or other media but also on people’s minds. Previously this passage was used to buttress now unpopular ideas of an Isaianic “school,” but these past efforts were hampered by anachronistic and imprecise models for such an ancient “school.” For the time being it is enough to note that the biblical Hebrew terms for the three main components of education—teacher, student, and (possibly) school—all have potential analogues in the Sumero-Akkadian educational system. The other main bit of data suggesting that the Mesopotamian educational system had a significant influence on ancient Israel is the apparent reflection of standard Mesopotamian works in Israelite texts. For example, scholars often have pointed to remarkably specific parallels between Mesopotamian and Israelite legal and treaty traditions.66 So also, there are many analogies between primeval traditions in Genesis and texts like Atrahasis, Gilgamesh, and Enuma Elish that were prominent in the Sumero-Akkadian educational tradition.67 The Moses story shows possible specific links with the (first-millennium) Sargon epic,68 and there are some close parallels between the biblical narratives of covenant and the zukru festival attested at Emar.69 Sometimes motifs from Mesopotamian educational texts appear in relatively late Israelite literature, as in the case of the remarkably exact correspondence between the call of Siduri, the alewife, to Gilgamesh to enjoy food, good clothes, and his spouse (OB version; tablet X iii, 6–14) and Qohelet’s call for his students to do a similar list of things (e.g. Qoh 9:7–10).70 We even see a possible reflection of central values of the Mesopotamian curriculum in the Garden of Eden creation story. As I and others have pointed out before, this text is saturated with terminology

66. R. Frankena, “The Vassal Treaties of Essarhaddon and the Dating of Deuteronomy,” Oudtestamentische Studien 14 (1965): 122–54; Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 59–157. For specific suggestions of influence at both the early level (indirect, by way of the SumeroAkkadian educational tradition) and later (first-millenium adoption of specific treaty formulae) see Eckart Otto, “Town and Rural Countryside in Ancient Israelite Law: Reception and Redaction in Cuneiform Israelite Law,” JSOT 57 (1993): 21. 67. The observations are summarized in Carr, Reading the Fractures, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 241–46. 68. On the dating see Brian Lewis, The Sargon Legend: A Study of the Akkadian Text and the Tale of the Hero Who Was Exposed at Birth, ASOR Dissertation Series (Cambridge, MA: ASOR, 1980), 101–7; Van De Mieroop, Cuneiform Texts, 76–83. On use of the text in first-millennium education see Gesche, Schulunterricht, 148–49. For thorough argument for specific connections between the texts see Lewis, Sargon Legend, 211–67. 69. Daniel E. Fleming, “Emar: On the Road from Haran to Hebron,” in Mesopotamia and the Bible: Comparative Explorations, ed. Mark W. Chavalas and K. Lawson Younger (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 233–37. 70. James L. Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes: A Commentary, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1997), 51.

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from specific “wisdom” texts in ancient Israel.71 Indeed, much of the story revolves around the decision of the first humans to eat from “the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” a clear reference to ancient wisdom. Moreover, the woman herself sees that the tree is good for gaining “insight” (lahaskil; Gen 3: 6). What is key for our purposes here is the language used to describe what happens to them when they eat from this wisdom tree: She took from its fruit and she ate, and then took also for her husband with her, and he ate. And the eyes of both of them were opened And they realized they were naked, and they made loincloths for themselves out of fig leaves. (Gen 3:6b–7) Just as the Mesopotamian student reached full humanity by graduating from the edubba and having his eyes “opened,” so this first human pair in the Bible reach full adulthood through eating of the tree of knowledge and having their eyes “opened.” Indeed, in clothing themselves, they parallel other major characters in the Sumero-Akkadian educational tradition, such as Enkidu of the Gilgamesh epic, who achieve full humanity by putting on clothes. Texts like this provide provocative pointers to possible influence of the Sumero-Akkadian tradition on texts written long after that tradition is attested in the Syro-Palestinian area.72 Yet it is quite unclear how such influence would have taken place or what kind of textual-educational system Israel itself had. Perhaps earliest Israel was influenced somewhat by the last remnants of the Sumero-Akkadian tradition in Canaan,73 and it is still possible that some later scribal circles in Israel were influenced by elements like treaty formulae that were most pertinent to the sorts of international diplomacy with Assyria in which they were engaged.74 The main focus here, however, is not to establish the specifics of whatever transmission process(es) of the Sumero-Akkadian enculturation system occurred in Canaan-Israel. Instead, it is to give some initial pointers to the idea that the Mesopotamian scribal educational tradition was important not just in Elam, Ebla, Hatti, Nuzi, Alalakh, Amarna, Ugarit, Hazor, Aphek, and Megiddo but also in Israel. I turn now to another culture that influenced Israel, a culture every bit as textually focused as Mesopotamia, a culture with its own educational-scribal system and indeed one that has de monstrable links to the emergence of an educational-scribal system in early Israel. That culture, of course, is Egypt.

71. David M. Carr, “The Politics of Textual Subversion: A Diachronic Perspective on the Garden of Eden Story,” JBL 112 (1993): 589–91. 72. For useful parallels see Hallo, “Sumerian Literature,” and Richard E. Averbeck, “Sumer, the Bible, and Comparative Method: Historiography and Temple Building,” in Chavalas and Younger, Mesopotamia and the Bible, esp. 90–91. 73. Lambert, “Forschungsstand,” 70–71; Hallo, “Expansion,” 312. 74. See earlier, note 66.

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4 Egyptian Education and Textuality

You are, of course, a skilled scribe at the head of his fellows, and the teaching of every book is incised on your heart. —“Satiric Letter” As we turn to Egypt, we find a culture that is, if anything, even more textually oriented than the cultures of ancient Mesopotamia. Where only isolated kings in Mesopotamia (e.g. Shulgi or Ashurbanipal) claimed ability to read, a number of royal inscriptions in Egypt claim a writing competence for pharaohs, and writing implements have been found in some of their tombs.1 Virtually all officials, whether they were required to write or not, went through the scribal educational process, and scribes maintained their prestige later in Egyptian history than in Mesopotamian history.2 Indeed, writing had immense prestige in Egypt. It was seen as a means of overcoming the faults of memory and as a tool from the gods.3

Epigraph: The “Satiric Letter” or (with Fischer-Elfert): “Satiric Polemic,” 11, 2–3. As in the first chapter, this is an English rendering of the translation in Hans Werner Fischer-Elfert, Die Lehre eines Mannes fu¨r seinen Sohn: Eine Etappe auf dem ‘Gottesweg’ des loyalen und solidarischen ¨ gyptologische Abhandlungen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), Beamten des Mittleren Reiches, A 94. 1. Baines and Eyre, “Four Notes,” 79–81; Saggs, Civilization, 98–99; K. Nordh, Aspects of Ancient Egyptian Curses and Blessings: Conceptual Background and Transmission, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis (Uppsala: Almquist and Wiksell, 1996), 32–33; Donald B. Redford, “Scribe and Speaker,” in Writings and Speech in Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy, ed. Ehud Ben Zvi and Michael H. Floyd (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 2000), 164–65. 2. Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 23. A. Schlott surveys a series of occasions where nonscri¨ gypten [Munich: Beck, bes had themselves represented as scribes (Schrift und Schreiber im Alten A 1989], 152–53). 3. Redford, “Scribe and Speaker,” 171–205.

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There is no Egyptian critique of writing, such as that found in Chinese or Greek philosophical systems. Indeed, other cultures, like Greece, saw Egypt as the prototypical written culture, occasionally lampooning Egyptian claims to textually based wisdom. A tale from Plato well illustrates many of these aspects of textuality in Egypt—valuing of writing, depiction of it as a gift from the gods, devaluation of oral memory—even as it illustrates Plato himself inserting his own perspective into an Egyptian mouth. In Phaedrus he describes the myth of the gift of writing to the Egyptians by “Theuth,” his name for the Egyptian god Thoth. In Plato’s version, Theuth proclaims about writing: Here, O king, is a branch of learning that will make the people of Egypt wiser and improve their memories; my discovery provides a recipe for memory and wisdom. (Phaedrus 274d)4 Plato goes on to have the Egyptian recipient assert that writing is a recipe not for memory but for forgetfulness. Nevertheless, Plato’s depiction of the Egyptian reveals more about his views than those of the Egyptians themselves. Egyptian sources stress the unreliability of oral memory, and, like Plato’s Theuth character, they stress the value of writing to overcome forgetfulness.5 Thus both internal and external sources testify to the unusually high regard in which writing and writers were held in ancient Egypt. Furthermore, what we know about education in Egypt suggests that it was intensely focused on mastery and memorization of key texts. The Egyptologist Jan Assmann has developed the concept of “cultural text” to articulate the centrality of texts in enculturation and education in ancient Egypt. He argues that much of what is termed Egyptian “literature” is in fact enculturation material, texts that were used in education for training in writing and—more important—for socialization into an elite class of tradents of these “cultural texts.” Prospective members of the ruling class were inducted into that class through having these cultural texts “in their heart.” Doing so made one, for the first time, into a full human being. As Assmann puts it, “the biological hardware says virtually nothing, only the cultural software makes the person into a human.”6 This cultural “software,” this Egyptian “literature,” is what Assmann terms a “cultural text.”7 Obviously this concept of “cultural text” has much in common with the

4. R. Hackforth, trans., Phaedrus, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. E. Hamilton and H. Cairns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 520. Plato’s Socrates then goes on (274e–275b) to insert his own critique of textuality in the Egyptian king’s mouth, to which Phaedrus agrees (275c). See Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 20. 5. Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 29; Redford, “Scribe and Speaker,” 171–205. 6. Assmann, “Texte,” 69–70. My translation. The German original had the italicized words as well, though probably because they were English-language words in a German language context. 7. For the broader statement see Assmann, “Texte.” For a critical response see John Baines, “Research on Egyptian Literature: Definitions, Backgrounds, Prospects,” in Egyptology at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: Proceedings of the Eight International Congress of Egyptologists (Cairo, 2000), vol. 3, ed. Zahi Hawass and Lyla Pinch Brock (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2003), 10–11.

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Sumero-Akkadian educational materials discussed in the preceding chapters. Nevertheless, before pursuing such parallels (and contrasts), I will give an overview here of the Egyptian textual matrix in itself. Building on research by Helmut Brunner, Ronald Williams, John Baines, Christopher Eyre, Jac Janssen, Jan Assmann, Ludwig Morenz, Gu¨nter Burkard, Andrea McDowell, and others, I will focus once again on education, though I will also look briefly at what is known about ancient Egyptian textual production and library storage. This then will prepare for a comparison and contrast with the Sumero-Akkadian system and a brief discussion of specific indicators that the Egyptian scribal matrix influenced the scribal matrix in Israel.

Ancient Egyptian Education Turning to look at Egypt’s educational system, we can see just how lucky we are with respect to cultures like Mesopotamia and Ugarit that used tablets so predominantly. Our evidence regarding the educational process in Egypt is more scanty. We have some cheap ostraca, almost exclusively from the New Kingdom at Deir el-Medina. Ostraca preserves well. And there are some reused papyri that contain educational texts from the same period. Otherwise, however, we lack widespread examples of upper-level educational texts, many of which were done on less preservable wooden boards and papyri. Overall we have lots of evidence of the presence and importance of Egyptian texts and education but only highly partial and selective access to the texts themselves. That said, Egyptologists have gathered several types of evidence for reconstruction of the Egyptian textual/educational matrix. First, there are the Egyptian instructions (sb^yt), texts that were used in the Egyptian system to simultaneously inculcate values—the silent tongue, the well-formed heart—and literacy. Such instructions included what we might now term “wisdom” instructions by a sage to his “son,” but they also included some other literature (e.g. Sinuhe) that came to be used as standard cultural texts in the educational system.8 Second, we have the educational practice texts enumerated earlier. Third, Egyptologists have been able to infer some elements of Egyptian education from hymns, autobiographical inscriptions, and other literature that was neither focused on education nor used for it. As in the case of the Sumero-Akkadian system, it is crucial to emphasize at the outset that only some education took place in any sort of separate institution. Rather, the earliest and most prominent forms of education appear to have involved the sort of family-styled or family-based learning that we have seen elsewhere. A literate father would train his son in the scribal craft and thus induct him into the elite class.9 Education and literacy were not general

8. Christopher Eyre, “The Semna Stelae: Quotation, Genre, and Functions of Literature,” in Studies in Egyptology Presented to Miriam Lichtheim, vol. 1, ed. Sarah Israelit-Groll (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990), 151. 9. John Baines, “Literacy and Ancient Egyptian Society,” Man 18 (1983): 580–81; A. McDowell, “Teachers

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phenomena but key elements of a hierarchical socialization process that separated different levels of elites from each other and from the general populace.10 Both the family relationships and one possible context of education is illustrated by the story of the scribe Amenwahsu and his family, as traced through a series of New Kingdom inscriptions spaced over several generations.11 Amenwahsu himself is multiply described in various inscriptions, half the time as a priest and half the time as a scribe. He worked in a “house of life,” which appears to have been a scribal workshop usually connected to a temple, though not in it. We have a number of inscriptions that speak of scribes located in this temple-connected scribal workshop, scribes who “frequent the house of life” or are “immersed in the annals . . . having scrutinized the writings of the house of life.”12 In this case, Amenwahsu was the son of a scribe, and he was able to leave two successors. His sons, Didia and Khaemopet, are likewise attested as scribes (as is Didia’s son). Thus Amenwahsu did not just leave one replacement for himself but two, a good thing in another ancient culture—like Mesopotamia—where up to half of those educated to be scribes would die before performing many duties.13 Unfortunately we do not have direct evidence about how Amenwahsu or his sons were educated. Nevertheless, given the evidence that education often happened in the house of life, there is a good chance that Amenwahsu was educated by his father and played a major, if not a fairly exclusive, role in the education and enculturation of these sons. Fathers may have educated their own sons, but we also have extensive documentation of ancient Egyptian education that extended beyond the biological family unit. Already the “Compendium”/Kemit instruction encourages its hearers and reciters to “open your papyrus scrolls and become a son who is educated in texts profitable from the start,”14 and a “students’ miscellany” in a Chester Beatty papyrus speaks of how “the children of others” are given to a

and Students at Deir el-Medina,” in Deir el-Medina in the Third Millennium AD: A Tribute to Jac. J. Janssen, ed. R. J. Demare´e and A. Egberts (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2000), 219–22. 10. The classic discussion is Baines and Eyre, “Four Notes,” a contribution that has been hotly debated. For a summary of the debate around literacy in ancient Egypt see Richard B. Parkinson, Poetry and Culture in Middle Kingdom Egypt: A Dark Side to Perfection, Athlone Publications in Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies (New York: Continuum, 2002), 67. ¨S 11. The following is drawn from A.M.A. Amer, “The Scholar-Scribe Amenwahsu and His Family,” ZA 127 (2000): 1–5. 12. Alan H. Gardiner, “The House of Life,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 24 (1938): 157–79; B. Van de Walle, La transmission des textes litte´raires e´gyptiens (Brussels: E´dition de la fondation Egyptologique reine Elisabeth, 1948), 13; Nicolas-Christophe Grimal, “Bibliothe`ques et propagande royale a` l’e´poque e´thiopienne,” in Livre du centenaire 1880–1980, Me´moires de l’Institut Franc¸ais d’Arche´ologie Orientale du Caire 104, ed. Jean Vercoutter (Cairo: L’Institut, 1980), 39–40; R. Williams, “The Sages in Ancient Egypt,” JAOS 101 (1981): 220–21; “The Sage in Egyptian Literature,” in Gammie and Perdue, Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, 26–27; Baines, “Literacy,” 581. For the centrality of the “house of life” for temple scribes, particularly in the later periods, see also E. Wente, ¨ gypten (Frankfurt: Campus, 1995), “The Scribes of Ancient Egypt,” in CANE, 2216; E. Feucht, Das Kind im alten A 228–29; A. Biedenkopf-Ziehner, “Kontinuita¨t a¨gyptischer Ausbildung und Bildung in paganer und christlicher Zeit,” Go¨ttinger Miszellen 173 (1999): 24. 13. Again, the work of Baines and Eyre (“Four Notes,” 72–73) is useful here. 14. The translation is from E. Wente, Letters from Ancient Egypt (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990), 15.

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scribe “to be heirs as [his] own children.”15 In this way the “family” relationship is extended beyond biological offspring to include others. And we have concrete data from the colophons on educational texts at Deir el-Medina that even literate parents might sometimes send their sons to study with higher prestige members of the community.16 Again, such expansion of education was important because many who were educated did not survive to use their education. Since many who were educated would die in their teens and twenties, it was good that some scribes took on extra students beyond their own children. By the time of the First Intermediate Period, we see the emergence of some organized schools, “houses of instruction,” alongside individualized education. Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize from the outset just how noninstitutionalized these schools were.17 As in Mesopotamia, such schools were not held in special structures. Rather education occurred in the home or scribal workshop of the master scribe.18 Moreover, it does not appear that there was a special job of “teacher.” Rather, higher level scribes would educate youths.19 The materials were simple: ostraca, reused papyri, wooden boards, whatever constituted cheap writing material. Once used, the exercises were discarded. Thus, for example, the bulk of educational texts found at Deir elMedina were in a garbage dump.20 We do see the emergence of different sorts of schools. On the one hand, there is mention during the Middle Kingdom of the “Kap,” a place where orphans and other children with low prospects might go and become trained for basic scribal and administrative duties.21 Later, in the New Kingdom, this school appears to have taken in students from outside Egypt.22 On the other hand, the introduction to the Kheti Instruction refers to a provincial official sending his son to study in a royal school in the Memphis area. This sort of school may have been a place where students from diverse parts of the Egyptian empire were socialized together with the king into a cohesive ruling class.23 An oft-quoted exhortation in the Instruction for King Merikare speaks of how he is to treat his former schoolmates: Do not kill a man whose excellence you know, with whom you used to chant the writings.24

15. The translation of Chester Beatty Verso 3,9 comes from Miriam Lichtheim, The New Kingdom, vol. 2 of Ancient Egyptian Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 177. 16. McDowell, “Teachers and Students,” 230. 17. Assmann, “Texte,” 72. 18. Jac J. Janssen and Rosalind M. Janssen, Growing Up in Ancient Egypt (London: Rubicon, 1990), 76; Assmann, “Texte,” 72. 19. Brunner, Erziehung, 32. 20. A. McDowell, “Student Exercises from Deir el-Medina: The Dates,” in Studies in Honor of William Kelly Simpson, ed. P. D. Manuelian (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1996), 219–22. 21. Brunner, Erziehung, 17. 22. Biedenkopf-Ziehner, “Continuita¨t,” 23. On earlier similar practices see Baines, “Literacy,” 581. 23. Brunner, Erziehung, 14. 24. Merikare 50–51 as rendered in Richard B. Parkinson, The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian

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Many have hypothesized that this educational system created a cohort of similarly enculturated administrators.25 The key point was not the writing per se but induction of diverse students along with the king into the select few, a group marked off from others in part by their mastery of ancient writings, Assmann’s “cultural texts.”

Emergence of the Middle Kingdom Educational Curriculum The aforementioned royal school develops as part of a broader move toward centralization that occurred—at the latest—in the First Intermediate and early Middle Kingdom periods.26 The Egypt of the time was emerging from the First Intermediate Period, a time of decentralization that was later taken as a typecase of the chaos to be avoided through proper maintenance of order. The Middle Kingdom writing-based system of enculturation-education was a key strategy for order maintenance on the other side of such (perceived) chaos.27 This is the period when we first see a consistent, core group of writings that were used for hundreds of years to ensure cultural and administrative continuity.28 Some may have preexisted the Middle Kingdom period, but many were given new written editions, editions that helped solidify structures of authority that were perceived to be in need of reinforcement.29 Jan Assmann uses the term “excarnation” to describe this process in ancient Egypt of “flesh becoming word,” where human forms of authority—now perceived as vulnerable to discontinuity—were partially externalized into texts.30 So we see the (re)creation of an Egyptian education-enculturation corpus similar to and yet different from its Sumero-Akkadian counterpart. Whereas the elementary Sumero-Akkadian system progressed through a series of sign and lexical lists, the classic Egyptian curriculum appears to have started fairly

Poems 1940–1640 BC (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 220. The word for “chant” used here—hfi sj—is typically used for the singing of spells along with some songs. For discussion of its use here see Parkinson, Poetry and Culture, 79, n. 20. 25. E.g., Brunner, Erziehung, 14, 151–52, and more recently Friedrich Junge, Die Lehre Ptahhoteps und die Tugenden der a¨gyptischen Welt, OBO (Freiburg: Universita¨tsverlag Freiburg, 2003), 150–54. 26. For suggestions that it may have been earlier see Baines, “Literacy,” 580–81, 594, nn. 18, 19, and John Baines, “Modelling Sources, Processes and Locations of Early Mortuary Texts,” in D’un monde a l’autre: Textes des Pyramides et Textes des Sarcophages, ed. Susanne Bickel and Bernard Mathieu, Bibliothe`que d’Etude (Cairo: Institut Franc¸ais d’Arche´ologie Orientale, in press). Already in the first intermediate period we have an inscription referring to a scribe “after he has gone to school” (Schlott, Schrift und Schreiber, 202–3). ¨ gypten,” in 27. Jan Assmann, “Schrift, Tod und Identita¨t: Das Grab als Vorschule der Literatur im alten A Assmann, Assmann, and Hardmeier, Schrift und Geda¨chtnis, 82–87. 28. Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 1–5. 29. G. Posener, “L’apport des textes litte´raires a` la connaissance de l’histoire e´gyptienne,” in Le fonti indirette dell storia egiziana, ed. Sergio Donadoni (Rome: Centro di studi semitici, 1963), 28–29. Note, here again, that the term “edition” must be used in a qualified sense to refer to particular written instanciations of tradition that were chosen by later communities as reference points for education and enculturation. For brief discussion of the problems associated with this term see pp. 37–38 and note 110 in chapter 2. 30. Jan Assmann, “Fu¨nf Stufen auf dem Wege zum Kanon. Tradition und Schriftkulture im alten Israel und fru¨hen Judentum,” in Religion und kulturelles Geda¨chtnis: Zehn Studien, ed. Jan Assmann (Munich: Beck, 2000), 87–89. See this source for citation of earlier coinage of the term by Aleida Assmann.

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early, with mastery of a series of basic texts dominated by instructions by great sages.31 Students learned whole words and textual templates, rather than learning to sound texts out as one might in the initial stages of alphabetic education.32 One widely attested elementary text was Kemit, an archaic early Middle Kingdom letter written with cursive hieroglyphics in the old vertical column format. It was not long, containing two pages of model introductory formulae for letters, a model letter, and a concluding section of example sentences from ideal biographies and instructions.33 Other core texts commonly used in early education included a satire on trades that praised the scribal profession above others (Kheti), the Hymn to the Inundation, Loyalist Instruction, Prophecy of Neferti, and wisdom instructions such as those attributed to Ptahhotep, Hardjedef, and especially Amenemhet.34 We do not know as much about the sequence for use of these texts as we do for those of Mesopotamia. Nevertheless, Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert has argued the following trio of interrelated texts were constructed to be part of a sequential curriculum for scribes in the royal residential school: (1) the praise of the scribal profession in Kheti; (2) basic instruction in the “divine way” in the Instruction of the Man for his Son; and (3) advanced instruction in the Loyalist Instruction.35 Overall, the classic Egyptian curriculum was more heavily weighted toward wisdom instructions than its Sumero-Akkadian counterpart, but included fewer epic traditions, historical chronicles, and royal hymns. Yet, like its Sumero-Akkadian counterpart, Egyptian education focused first on classics that taught more general values, along with giving the prospective scribe a grasp of writing and reading. Only afterward did the student focus more on more clearly practical documents like model letters and contracts.36 The curriculum did change slightly over hundreds of years of use. When one gets to the New Kingdom period, finds of educational texts demonstrate that things have evolved somewhat. We see increasing educational use of lexical and name lists (building on an ancient Egyptian tradition of lists), though of a different sort from the Mesopotamian educational lists that so dominate the Near Eastern world of the same time.37 Some classic texts, like the Instruction

31. Brunner, Erziehung, 66–73; U. Kaplony-Heckel, “Schu¨ler und Schulwesen in der a¨gyptischen Spa¨tzeit,” Studien zur alta¨gyptischen Kultur 1 (1974): 229–32. 32. Van de Walle, La transmission, 17–18; Brunner, Erziehung, 2; Eyre and Baines, “Interactions,” 96–101; Schlott, Schrift und Schreiber, 205–6. ¨ S 105 (1978): 33. See especially Brunner, Erziehung, 83–86; Winfried Barta, “Das Schulbuch Kemit,” ZA 6–14; Janssen and Janssen, Growing Up, 79; Parkinson, Poetry and Culture, 322–25. 34. Brunner, Erziehung, 83–86; R. Williams, “Education in Ancient Egypt,” JAOS 92 (1973): 217; A. Gasse, “Les ostraca hie´ratiques litte´raires de Deir el-Medina: Nouvelles orientations de la publication,” in Village Voices: Proceedings of the Symposium “Texts from Deir El-Medıˆna and Their Interpretation,’ ed. R. J. Demare´e and A. Egberts (Leiden: Center of Non-Western Studies, 1992), 52–53. Note also the indications of borrowing from Ptahhotep already in the Instruction of the Man for His Son, surveyed by Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert, Die Lehre eines Mannes ¨ gypfu¨r seinen Sohn: Eine Etappe auf dem ‘Gottesweg’ des loyalen und solidarischen Beamten des Mittleren Reiches, A tologische Abhandlungen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), 318–20. 35. Fischer-Elfert, Lehre eines Mannes, 334–416, 423–25. 36. Brunner, Erziehung, 15, 19; Eyre and Baines, “Interactions,” 94; Wente, “Scribes,” 2215; McDowell, “Teachers and Students,” 232. 37. Brunner, Erziehung, 78–81, 93–98; Williams, “Education in Egypt,” 219. For links to the Sumero-

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of Ptahhotep, are used less often.38 New Kingdom and still later Egyptian finds also show educational use of some texts not seen in earlier education, such as the older maxims of Any or the newer Satiric Letter.39 There is even a schooltext-like date on a love poem at Deir el-Medina, suggesting that such New Kingdom entertainment literature could be used for education.40 Generally, it appears that New Kingdom and later Egyptian education focused early education on a corpus of teachings now seen as particularly ancient, while texts in later, more contemporary forms of the written language were reserved for more advanced students. In addition to such broadly used texts, it appears that educators at Deir elMedina may have used some of their own local texts along with the more generally used classics. We see educational usage there of texts such as a locally authored wisdom instruction of Amennakht for Horimin, the son of his colleague, Hori, as well as an instruction written by Horimin for Amennakht’s son, Horicheri.41 Indeed, Amennakht appears to have authored a minicorpus of educational literature in addition to his instruction, a corpus including a poem about Thebes, a satirical poem, a hymn to Ramses IV, a hymn to Ramses IV or V, and a hymn to the god Ptah. These texts probably played a role in the education of several descendants of his who appear to have occupied prominent positions in the later community.42 Over time the more broadly used portions of the Egyptian curriculum were marked as special in ways both similar to and different from Sumero-Akkadian classic texts. As in the Sumero-Akkadian tradition, writing itself granted an aura of specialness to these texts. Writing is a semimagical technology within any culture of limited literacy like Egypt,43 yet Egypt went beyond many similar

Akkadian list tradition see Baines, “Literacy,” 96–97, but see John Baines, “An Abydos List of Gods and an Old Kingdom Use of Texts,” in Pyramid Studies and Other Essays Presented to I.E.S. Edwards, vol. 7, ed. John Baines et al., Occasional Publications (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1988), for discussion of the antiquity of the list tradition within Egypt itself. For treatment of still later, mostly Greco-Roman, Demotic grammatical exercises see Brunner, Erziehung, 78–81; Kaplony-Heckel, “Schu¨ler und Schulwesen,” 229–32; Edda Bresciani, Serio Pernigotti, and Maria Betro`, Ostraka demotici da Narmuti, vol. 1, Quaderni di Medinet Madi (Pisa: Giardini, 1983), and M. Tassier, “Greek and Demotic School Exercises,” in Life in a Multi-Cultural Society: Egypt from Cambyses to Constantine and Beyond, ed. Janet H. Johnson (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1992), 311–15. 38. Brunner, Erziehung, 88. 39. Brunner, Erziehung, 88–93; McDowell, “Teachers and Students,” 231. 40. McDowell, “Teachers and Students,” 232. 41. Susanne Bickel and Bernard Mathieu, “L’e´crivain Amennakht et son enseignement,” Bulletin de l’Institut Franc¸ais d’Arche´ologie Orientale 93 (1993): 49–51; McDowell, “Teachers and Students,” 232. 42. Bickel and Mathieu, “Amennakht,” 32–48. 43. There has been considerable debate about the extent of literacy since the publication of an article by Baines and Eyre that argued in detail for quite low levels of literacy in ancient Egypt: Baines and Eyre, “Four Notes.” Since then Baines and Eyre have developed their position and linked it to points about the structure of Egyptian society: Baines, “Literacy”; John Baines, “Literacy, Social Organization and the Archaeological Record: The Case of Early Egypt,” in State and Society: The Emergence and Development of Social Hierarchy and Political Centralization, ed. J. Gledhill, B. Bender, and Mogens Trolle Larsen (London: Unwin Hyman, 1984), 192–214; Eyre and Baines, “Interactions.” Some have critiqued their approach (e.g., Leonard H. Lesko, “Some Comments on Ancient Egyptian Literacy and Literati,” in Studies in Egyptology Presented to Miriam Lichtheim, vol. 2, ed. Sarah Israelit-Groll [Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990], 656–67; Jac Janssen, “Literacy and Letters at Deir El-Medıˆna,” in Demare´e and Egberts, Village Voices, 81–94), while others have offered mixed support (e.g., Redford, “Scribe and

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cultures in treasuring writing as a gift of the gods, a marker of permanency and memory. Indeed, the scrolls of the House of Life sometimes were designated “emanations of Re,” while those who mastered them were “the great knowers of the things learned in the emanations of Re.”44 Furthermore, the educational “cultural texts” in the Egyptian tradition were often described as very old, much as were the standard educational texts of the Sumero-Akkadian tradition.45 This was accompanied by an Egyptian counterpart to that tradition that attributed the classic cuneiform curriculum to prediluvian sages. In the New Kingdom period, fascination with and attachment to the past was expressed through the textual, visual, and ritual celebration of the fabled authors of Middle Kingdom instructions.46 By this time the Middle kingdom texts were also marked as special by their language. Such texts always had been written in a poetic mode that marked them as elevated speech, but now Middle Egyptian itself was less and less understandable to students.47 Errors in exercises suggest that students in the New Kingdom and later periods often did not understand the Middle Kingdom texts they were writing out.48 Finally, just as the prominence of key texts in the Sumero-Akkadian tradition is marked by frequent allusion to them in later literature, so also the specialness of key Egyptian texts is marked by echoes of them throughout later Egyptian literature as well.49

The Means and Goals of Egyptian Education As in the Sumero-Akkadian example, Egyptian education involved copying, memorization, and recitation of the core curriculum. As one of the most recent studies of educational texts at Deir el-Medina puts it: The method of instruction appears to have been the same in all cases, however; the teacher set short passages from the Kemyt and the Middle Egyptian classics for his pupil to copy out and, presuma-

Speaker,” 151 [including n. 22], 154–57 [but cf. 146–47 on Baines and Eyre]) or endorsed Baines and Eyre’s general estimate (e.g., Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 17 [including n. 68 on Lesko]). 44. Herman Te Velde, “Theology, Priests and Worship in Ancient Egypt,” in CANE, 1747–48. 45. Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 14–19, 191. 46. Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 27; Nili Shupak, “ ‘Canon’ and ‘Canonization’ in Ancient Egypt,” Bibliotheca Orientalis 58 (2001): 535–47; Parkinson, Poetry and Culture, 30–32. On the sages see also Saggs, Civilization, 98; Wente, “Scribes,” 2219–20; Redford, “Scribe and Speaker,” 167–68, 215–18. 47. Schlott, Schrift und Schreiber, 206–7; Christopher Eyre, “Why Was Egyptian Literature?” in Sesto congresso internazionale di egittologia: Atti. VI congresso internazionale di egittologia (Turin: International Association of Egyptologists, 1991), 115–20; Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 32; Nordh, Aspects, 148. 48. Brunner, Erziehung, 71–72; Kaplony-Heckel, “Schu¨ler und Schulwesen,” 240–41; Gu¨nter Burkard, ¨ gyptologische AbhanTextkritische Untersuchungen zu a¨gyptischen Weisheitslehren des alten und mittleren Reiches, A dlungen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1977), 244–45. For loss of language in the late Egyptian period (first millennium) and aids that were used to combat this see Ju¨rgen Osing, “La science sacerdotale,” in Le de´cret de Memphis: Colloque de la fondations Singer-Polignac a` l’occasion de la ce´le´bration du bicentenaire de la de´couverte de la Pierre de Rosette, ed. D. Valballe and Jean Leclant (Paris: De Boccard, 1999), 135–38. 49. Eyre, “Semna Stelae,” 154–57. Grimal, “Bibliothe`ques,” 140–44; Williams, “Sages,” 10–19; Eyre, “Semna Stelae,” 154–57; Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 14.

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early examples of textuality and education bly, to memorize, and gave him Miscellany-type texts to train him in the contemporary bureaucratic language and style.50

The goal of memorization is reflected in various ways in the Egyptian materials themselves.51 The Instruction of Ptahhotep concludes with an injunction to “listen” to the beautifully written sayings, including a promise that this memory will preserve the tradition: “Memory of (the teaching’s maxims) will [not] depart from the mouths of humankind, because of the perfection of their verses.”52 Similarly, the Instruction of Kagemeni concludes with a scene where the sage is described as calling on his students to “listen” to his sayings and “not go beyond what has been ordained,” on which his students “prostrated themselves and recited/read it as it was written.”53 Meanwhile, the Satiric Letter indicates that such memorization was not easy, particularly when it came to keeping the various sayings in order. In a text to be discussed shortly, a speaker criticizes another’s faulty knowledge of a saying he quoted, not knowing “which stanza is before it, which after it,”54 and manuscripts with variant orders of sayings testify to the possible rearrangement of items in tradents’ memories.55 As in the Sumero-Akkadian example, one key strategy used in this memorization-enculturation process was training the student to “sing” or “chant” the texts, much as the king and his compatriots did in the foregoing quotation from the instruction to Merikare. The word for “read” in Egyptian, ˇsdj, refers to oral performance—whether from memory or from a written text— of texts, and these cultural texts were not actualized until they had been voiced.56 Indeed, most of the core texts appear to have been composed for oral performance, with use of metrical, episodic, and repetitive structures that would cue a performer seeking oral mastery of the text.57 Moreover, the oral performance itself would have aided the process of memorization, since the performance element adds a crucial additional somatic and auditory dimension that aids recall.58 Notably, manuscripts of the texts used in education are dis-

50. McDowell, “Teachers and Students,” 230. On memorization see also Brunner, Erziehung, 65–66; Eyre and Baines, “Interactions,” 94; Assmann, “Texte,” 67–71. 51. On this in general see McDowell, “Teachers and Students,” 217–21. 52. This translation, with material in brackets and parentheses, is from Parkinson, Poetry and Culture, 51. 53. The translation is based on Parkinson, Egyptian Poems, 292, with the slight addition of “recited/read” because the verb used here, sˇdj, is ambiguous as to whether it refers to reading or recitation of memorized material (personal communication from John Baines). 54. This translation from Satiric Letter 11.1–2 comes from Parkinson, Poetry and Culture, 52. 55. Some examples are surveyed in Aksel Volten, Studien zum Weisheitsbuch des Anii, Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Historisk-filologiske Meddelelser (Copenhagen: Levin and Munksgaard, 1937), 49–51 (see also 32–35); Joachim F. Quack, Die Lehren des Ani: Ein neua¨gyptischer Weisheitstext in seinem kulturellen Umfeld, OBO (Freiburg: Universita¨tsverlag Freiburg, 1994), 18. 56. Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 43–52. For summary of iconographic and textual representations of reading situations see Jean-Luc Chappaz, “Quelques re´flexions sur les conteurs dans la litte´rature e´gyptienne ancienne,” in Hommages a` Franc¸ois Daumas (Montpellier: Institut d’e´gyptologie, 1986), 103–8; Parkinson, Poetry and Culture, 79. On the primarily oral context of early Egyptian textuality see Baines, “Mortuary Texts.” 57. Baines, “Literacy,” 578; Eyre, “Egyptian Literature”; Parkinson, Poetry and Culture, 114. E. Schott even ¨ gypten,” suggests that the colophons to the texts occasionally were recited (“Bu¨cher und Bibliotheken im alten A Go¨ttinger Miszellen 25 [1977]: 77). 58. Rubin, Memory in Old Traditions, 15–193.

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tinguished by their lack of illustration, another index that these texts were primarily for oral-aural, not visual, consumption.59 The manuscripts bear other marks of their oral context. Red marks are added to guide the oral performance. Memorizable sections are identified. Some poems include numbers or plays on names of numbers to aid the student in recalling stanzas in the correct order.60 Many exercises include the first line of the following section so that students memorizing individual pericopes can put them in the correct order.61 A previously quoted New Kingdom polemic against existing modes of education describes the process explicitly: You have come here loaded with great secrets. You have cited a verse from Hardjedef. You do not know, however, whether it is intended as good or bad, which stanza is before it, which after it. You are, of course, a skilled scribe at the head of his fellows, and the teaching of every book is incised on your heart.62 We see here many of the elements of Egyptian education discussed earlier. Textual mastery is depicted with a numinous glow, as being “loaded with great secrets.” This consists, in the first instance, of mastery of a snippet from the Middle Kingdom classic the Instruction of Hardjedef. The ideal being critiqued is this—the (mindless) incision of such cultural texts “on the heart.” The (fictional) addressee is chided for not yet having mastered either the meaning or the order of such classics. He is depicted as having incised individual pericopes from the classics on the mind, perhaps building on a catalogue of incipits, while not taking care to study and consider the texts themselves.63 As in other cases discussed thus far, such incision—however mindless— does not mean that such texts were purely oral. Rather, whatever the oral antecedents of these texts, ancient Egyptian teachers appear to have used the technology of writing, so sacred in the Egyptian tradition, to ensure the continuity and accuracy of ongoing memorization and oral performance.64 As Fox in particular argues, this intermixed oral-written environment is reflected in an emphasis on writing combined with orality in many of the Egyptian instruc¨ 3: 137–40; Parkinson, Poetry and Culture, 73. 59. Altenmu¨ller, “Illumination,” in LA 60. John F. Brug, “Biblical Acrostics and Their Relationship to Other Ancient Near Eastern Acrostics,” in The Bible in the Light of Cuneiform Literature: Scripture in Context III, ed. William W. Hallo et al. (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1990), 296–99. 61. Van de Walle, La transmission, 21; Brunner, Erziehung, 74–76. 62. Satirical Polemic 10/9–11/3. Here again, the English rendering follows the translation in Fischer-Elfert, Satirische Streitschrift (1), 94. 63. For discussion of this passage see especially Fischer-Elfert, Satirische Streitschrift (1), 95–98. For discussion of the broader purposes of the text see 281–90 of the same work. 64. For reflections on the context and purposes of the initial movement from oral to written see Posener, “L’histoire e´gyptienne,” 28–29; Burkard, Textkritische Untersuchungen, 243; Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 3–4, and John Baines, “Kingship Before Literature: The World of the King in the Old Kingdom,” in Selbstversta¨ndnis und Realita¨t: Akten des Symposiums zur a¨gyptischen Ko¨nigsideologie in Mainz 15.—17.6.1995, vol. 36, ed. Rolf ¨ gypten und Altes Testament (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997), 152–55. Gundlach and Christine Raedler, A

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tions themselves.65 Though students are often called on to “hear” a given teaching, the instructions themselves are written, and they occasionally—though not consistently—highlight the written character of wisdom through elements such as the call in Merikare to imitate ancestors whose words “remain in their writings” (line 35). Often the written and the oral are combined. For example, Kagemeni’s father gives an instruction in writing, but it is subsequently performed orally (2.4–5). The Instruction of Ptahhotep depicts itself as the written record of the instruction that Ptahhotep spoke to his son (line 51). Amenemope depicts his writings as oral when calling on his son to “hear” his instruction (III:9–10), and he uses metaphors for memorization such as “let them rest in the casket of your belly, may they be bolted in your heart” (III:13–14).66 Nevertheless, the instruction is written, and Amenemope calls on his son to “look at” his thirty chapters (XXVII:6).67 Similarly, the Instruction of Kheti is labeled as an instruction he composed (in writing) for his son, yet the instruction goes on to quote Kheti’s (oral) speech to him (3,9–4,1), a speech in turn that begins with a call to “set [his] heart on writings.”68 These fictional depictions of interplay of textuality and orality highlight the particular status of texts in a broader oral-written educational process. As Assmann puts it, a written text was a Zwischenspeicher—an “in-between storage device.”69 Eyre and Baines note that the writing system itself is not equivalent to speaking, that it originated as notation, not speech.70 Particularly within the educational system, written texts were a memory aid to (and symbol of ) a process that also was highly oral.71 Thus the oral and written dimensions were not separate in Egypt but integrally intertwined. This means that prospective leaders were inducted into the art of writing out the standard texts and reading them. There is some debate about how much of this process was done by dictation and how much by visual copying. Whereas earlier and some more recent studies point to manuscript errors that appear to result from oral mishearing,72 it now appears that such dictation was more typical of the earliest composition of written works.73 Later manuscript transmission, at least for the core educational texts, shows signs that the students either directly copied from written versions of the text or

65. Fox, Proverbs 1–9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 74–75. The following portion of the text is based on a fuller presentation of the argument, Fox, “SelfPresentation,” 160–65. 66. The translations here are from Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature 2, 149. 67. This translations and references in this paragraph come from Fox, “Self-Presentation,” 161–63. 68. The translation here is from Parkinson, Egyptian Poems, 275. 69. Assmann, “Texte,” 67–69. 70. Eyre and Baines, “Interactions,” 103. Note also Parkinson, Poetry and Culture, 35, 66–67, on how literary writing was a grapholect, a key cultural tool used to include some and exclude others. 71. Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 6–7; Redford, “Scribe and Speaker,” 205. 72. Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 52–55, cites the relevant older and newer studies. 73. The examples of dictation cited by Morenz (Schriftlichkeitskultur, 52–55) all involve the original composition of a written work. But cf. David P. Silverman, “Textual Criticism in the Coffin Texts,” in Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt, ed. William Kelly Simpson (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1989) and especially idem. “Epigraphic Evidence,” in Bersheh Reports: Report of the 1990 Field Season of the Joint Expedition of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, University Museum, University of Pennsylvania and University of Leiden, ed. David P. Silverman (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1992), 23, 26.

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memorized individual sections and wrote them down shortly afterward.74 At the very least, all would recognize that the learning of a visual system for language notation requires at least an initial visual stage of copying. The ultimate goal, however, was memorized mastery of the cultural tradition, not necessarily the production of textual experts. Apparently many trained as “scribes” would not have worked with scrolls on an everyday basis.75 Rather, at least in ideal, they carried them “incised on their minds” wherever they went. Especially in later periods, errors and other indicators in the texts suggest that students in this oral-written process, at least at beginning stages, performed or wrote the texts as meaningless sounds and symbols, rather than understanding and being shaped by the contents of the texts.76 This problem is thematized in references to writing and performance in the New Kingdom Instruction of Any. Early in the instruction, Any calls on his son to memorize written wisdom, to “study the writings, put them on your heart” (20.4–5).77 Yet the writing concludes with a debate between him and his son, in which his son, Khonsuhotep, points out that learning based on writings is incomplete for those who do not understand them, for “a son thinks poorly in himself when he (merely) recites sayings from books” (22.15–16). He goes on to make a contrast between truly internalized teachings and those that are merely mouthed on the basis of written books:78 When your words are pleasing in the heart, the heart inclines to receive them. [Then] the heart rejoices in the abundance of your virtues, and thoughts are lifted up to you. A boy cannot perform the moral teachings when the books are (merely) on his tongue. (22:16– 17) This saying points to the fact that, by the New Kingdom, some students underwent an instruction in classic writings that they did not understand. Like a contemporary student who has a patina of learning from being able to recite a Latin or Greek passage he or she cannot translate, these ancient Egyptian students had some sort of knowledge. They were distinguished from their peers by an ability to write or sound out archaic, ancient texts. Perhaps some, if not many, students went on to achieve a higher level of understanding of texts they earlier had written or performed without understanding. Yet, even if not, these students, like their Mesopotamian counterparts, were enculturated by subjecting their minds and bodies to a system of education in fundamentally alien traditions.

74. See especially Burkard, Textkritische Untersuchungen; supported by Williams, “Sages,” 5; Janssen and Janssen, Growing Up, 78, and McDowell, “Teachers and Students,” 221. Cf. Brunner, Erziehung, 71–72, and Saggs, Civilization, 103. 75. Janssen and Janssen, Growing Up, 67–68. 76. Here again see references in note 48. 77. Again the translation (this time of the pKairo CG 58042 version of Any) is from Fox, “SelfPresentation,” 161. See also Quack, Lehren des Ani, 107. 78. This rendering comes from Fox, “Self-Presentation,” 161–62. For discussion of the broader Egyptian discussion into which this debate fits see Quack, Lehren des Ani, 186–88.

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Thus, the process of Egyptian education went beyond the inculcation of textual knowledge or cultural values. As in the Sumero-Akkadian example, it shaped a docile mind. A good student was one who could hear and obey, one who had a “hearing heart,” as the Egyptians would put it.79 A bad student was either a “fool” who failed to apply himself to his studies or “one without a heart” who could not take advantage of such studies even if he tried.80 Everything focused on the training of the student’s “heart.” Through differing ratios of force and persuasion, the student’s heart was gradually subjected to the demands of an ancient, sacred tradition.81 That tradition, with its black-andwhite rules, guided the student into knowledge of right and wrong, a knowledge of the “way of life” amid a cosmic order represented by Maat. Through rote and repetition of writing whole words and works in hieratic (and cursive hieroglyphic), through memorization and recitation of writings, through gradual, often partial assimilation of a poetic and (in New Kingdom) archaic tongue, through bodily beatings and physical training, the student was inducted into the sacral-royal-bureaucratic elite. The goal was to create a reliable bureaucratic stratum made up of the kind of quiet, self-mastered man celebrated in the Egyptian book of the dead and other writings: one who obeys his superiors, is thoroughly versed in the ancient traditions, and looks after those weaker than himself.82 Ultimately there were probably important distinctions in the type of scribal training given to elites of different contexts and the methods used there. Though there was no aspect of Egyptian life absent of what we would define as religion, there must have been distinctions between the training given to state bureaucrats and that given to temple priests. Morenz suggests a hierarchy extending from the illiterate majority at the bottom up through bureaucrats specializing in hieratic in the middle, to lector priests who also knew hieroglyphic—termed in Egyptian the “words of the god” (mdw-nt4r)—and the secret texts used in temples. Yet he also acknowledges that the latter groups can be distinguished only in part, and our educational sources give us little information regarding substantial differences in their training.83 Most studies have supposed that a more general period of elementary education was followed by a higher level of study during a student’s apprenticeship in the scriptorium of his specific line of work.84 One pointer to this is a section of a tomb

79. Nordh, Aspects, 40–41. 80. Brunner, Erziehung, 110–12. 81. On the inner Egyptian debate about different modes of pedagogy see Williams, “Education in Egypt,” 221. 82. See Brunner, Erziehung, 110–52, especially 110–13 and 151–52. 83. Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 198–99. For a sophisticated discussion of the homologies of social hierarchies and hierarchies of restricted knowledge see John Baines, “Restricted Knowledge, Hierarchy and Decorum: Modern Perceptions and Ancient Institutions,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 27 (1990): 1–23, and the survey of the use and significance of different scripts in Egypt in Stephen Houston, John Baines, and Jerrold Cooper, “Last Writing: Script Obsolescence in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45 (2003): 439–43. 84. Brunner, Erziehung, 19; Wente, “Scribes,” 2215; Biedenkopf-Ziehner, “Continuita¨t,” 25–26. This would match the findings of McDowell at Deir el-Medina (“Teachers and Students,” 219–20), which show that many

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(auto)biography by a lector priest that adapts lines from the Instruction of Amenemhet.85 Though such a priest was trained in secret traditions of his priesthood, he had undergone a prior general education in instructional texts like Amenemhet as well. Across the first millennium the priesthood became an ever more central locus for such education. By the Hellenistic period, central administrative posts were held by “Greeks” who had been formed in an educational system that generally excluded Egyptians and focused on Greek classics. I will discuss that system later. Here we need to recognize that in Hellenistic Egypt, as in Hellenistic Mesopotamia, the scribal art continued to be taught in temples to priests. Knowledge of the script and written forms of the language began to deteriorate, and the priests who were trained played an increasingly peripheral role in society at large. Nevertheless, the classic curriculum outlined above continued in some form for over fifteen hundred years after it had first emerged in the Middle Kingdom.

Egyptian Textual Production, Reception, and Storage So far I have focused this discussion on the most important aspect of classic Egyptian texts: their use in a broader project of enculturation of the ruling elite in ancient Egypt. I will now examine some of the mechanics surrounding their use in this project: how texts were made, received, and stored. This will extend and reinforce our picture of the use of cultural texts in ancient Egypt, and it will prepare for later discussions of ways Egypt might illuminate similar processes in ancient Israel. As for production, we are primarily interested here in the production of the sorts of hieratic texts that were the focal point of ancient Egyptian education. Though written early on in vertical and other formats,86 by the middle of the Middle Kingdom such literary texts generally were written in lines from right to left.87 As indicated earlier, the written text was but an aid to memory and oral performance.88 This is reflected in numerous aspects of the material production of Egyptian educational texts. Such texts were broken into chunks for easy copying and memorization. Performable chunks of texts often were

exercises there were done not in school but outside of school in largely individualized instruction of student craftsmen under their parents or more senior scribal masters. 85. Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 178–79. 86. Kemit, an instruction often used early in education, continued to be written in such a format (perhaps for handwriting training and practice in cursive hieroglyphs), and Ptahhotep shows signs of having been originally written in that format. Williams, “Sages,” 8–9; Helmut Brunner, “Schrift und Unterrichtsmethoden im ¨ gypten,” in Erziehungs und Unterrichtsmethoden im historischen Wandel, ed. Lenz Kriss-Rettenbeck and Alten A Max Liedtke (Bad Heilbrunn: Linkhardt, 1986), 31; Eyre and Baines, “Interactions,” 95. 87. Eyre and Baines, “Interactions,” 92. There are some exceptions, such as the verticle format of Kemit, which also deviated from most other educational materials in being written in cursive hieroglyphic. Most hieratic materials, however, were written from right to left. On this see also Schlott, Schrift und Schreiber, 80. 88. Eyre and Baines, “Interactions,” 103; Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 6–7; Assmann, “Texte”; Redford, “Scribe and Speaker,” 205–14.

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marked by a red mark of separation prior to their beginning or by having their first few words written in red.89 Another mark of primary orality is the fact that only consonants were represented in the writing. Generally texts were vocalized according to the language of contemporary Egyptian.90 Any more ancient pronunciation was taught and remembered through oral tradition.91 Most such texts were written on papyrus, though ostraca and wooden boards also played an important role in education. Perhaps partly because such papyrus only rarely survives the test of time, we do not have the same level of documentation of growth of Egyptian texts that we do for ancient Mesopotamia. Often we have only one complete copy of a given Egyptian standard text, along with a handful of educational copies of various individual sections. Still, we see the gradual growth of Egyptian literature through two lenses: (1) reconstruction of the transmission history of successive editions of Egyptian works, and (2) tracing of lines of citation and allusion of earlier Egyptian works in later ones. Most of the work in the tracing of transmission history has been done by earlier generations of Egyptologists, and most such studies looked at thematic shifts, breaks, and doublets to argue that key educational texts were created out of multiple sources or underwent successive revisions.92 However, in some cases, like the complex relationships between the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, and Book of the Dead—along with their various recensions—we can use material evidence to trace a highly complex and variable process of textual transmission.93 Perhaps more interesting for our purposes is an educational text like Ptahhotep, where we have manuscript documentation of both earlier versions and later versions with added lines.94 Generally the textual tradition appears to have solidified as such a text entered the mainstream of the educational process. Even as Middle Kingdom instructions were being transmitted in stan-

89. G. Posener, “Sur l’emploi de l’encre rouge dans les manuscrits e´gyptiens,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 37 (1951): 77–78; Parkinson, Poetry and Culture, 21. ¨ gyptologische Abhandlungen (Wiesbaden: 90. See Ju¨rgen Osing, Der spa¨ta¨gyptische Papyrus BM 10808, A Harrassowitz, 1976). 91. Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 11. 92. For an overview of these studies see Williams, “Sages,” 6–9; “Sage,” 22–24. 93. See in particular a discussion of some specific cases in Silverman, “Textual Criticism.” For an overview of interrelationships between the three bodies of literature (with the Book of the Dead as the reference point) see T. G. Allen, The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day: Ideas of the Egyptians Concerning the Hereafter as Expressed in Their Own Terms, SAOC (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 225–41. Variation between various productions of these texts, even in the same spells, is clearly evident in publications and translations of these texts. See, for example, A. De Buck, The Egyptian Coffin Texts (Chicago: Oriental Institute Publications, 1938–61). A more recent discussion with an overview of different types of transmission (e.g., Assmann’s categories of “reproductiv” and “reproductiv”) and citation of earlier literature is Jochem Kahl, Siut—Theben: Zur ¨ gypten, Probleme der A ¨ gyptologie (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 37–43. Wertscha¨tzung von Traditionene im alten A 94. For a comparative edition see Z. Za´ba, Les Maximes des Ptah-hotep (Prague: Editions de l’Academie Tchecoslovaque des Sciences, 1956). For discussion see Burkard, Textkritische Untersuchungen, 230–43. Cf. also James Henry Breasted, The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, Oriental Institute Publications (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930), and Kent R. Weeks, “Studies of Papyrus Ebers,” Bulletin de l’Institut d’Egypte (1981): 58– 59, 292–99, for differing perspectives on the process of later preservation of much older material.

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dard editions during the New Kingdom, the order and inclusion of sayings in more recent instructions (e.g. Any) varied considerably.95 Most recent work has focused on showing how authors often linked with tradition by weaving their new works out of strands of allusions to older ones, sometimes attributing such works—if they were to function in an educational context—to more ancient sages. Eyre traces how the Semna stela quotes the instructions of Merikare and Ptahhotep, while the late Twelfth-Dynasty Sehotepibre stela adapts part of the Loyalist Instruction.96 Williams shows how texts from Ptahhotep to Amenemope are alluded to and quoted in texts just a bit later than them.97 In either case, whether through production of variant versions of old works or creation of new works, including quotation of older works from other genres, scribes in Egypt could work off the heritage they had memorized in their youth.98 Though there are some pointers to the idea that much early education and text production took place in the institutions of central administration (including the palace),99 much textual work—particularly in later periods—appears to have been particularly linked with temples. To be sure, some private libraries have been found.100 Nevertheless, much existing documentation for text production points to the “house of life” that was prominent in the foregoing discussion of education. This institution is particularly well attested in later periods of Egyptian history and appears often to have been connected to, though separate from, a temple. Colophons on late texts, like those of Amenwahsu, identify many copyists as working in houses of life. By this point the temple had become a primary place of preservation of Egyptian culture, especially amid Hellenization. Yet the link is not exclusively late. We find widespread evidence for “houses of books” and “houses of books of gods” in earlier texts and archaeological contexts.101 Certainly texts and inscriptions were produced elsewhere as well, including the royal school and Kap mentioned earlier. Nevertheless, much of our evidence for textual storage and production in Egypt is linked with temples. There is no known pre-Hellenistic royal counterpart in Egypt to the royal libraries of the Neo-Assyrian period.102

95. Williams, “Sages,” 8–9; Parkinson, Poetry and Culture, 52–53. For an excellent recent survey of the evidence see Quack, Lehren des Ani, 19–20. 96. Eyre, “Semna Stelae,” 157. 97. Williams, “Sages,” 10–19. 98. See also the older study by C. Kuentz, “Deux versions d’un pane´gyrique royal,” in Studies Presented to F. Ll. Griffith (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1932), 97–110. 99. Williams, “Education in Egypt,” 215–16. 100. Some recent surveys are P. W. Pestman, “Who Were the Owners, in the ‘Community of Workmen,’ of the Chester Beatty Papyri?” in Gleanings from Deir el Medina, ed. R. J. Demare´e and J. J. Janssen (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut Var Het Nabije Oosten, 1982), 155–72; Nordh, Aspects, 161–65, and Parkinson, Poetry and Culture, 70–73. ¨ gypten,” Bibliothek: Forschung und Praxis 4 (1980): 79–115. 101. Gu¨nter Burkard, “Bibliotheken im alten A 102. I postpone discussion of evidence regarding Hellenistic Egyptian temples for my treatment of education and textuality during the Hellenistic period. There is a much richer fund of evidence on which to draw

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Once texts were produced, there was a mystique about reading performance in ancient Egypt that has no exact counterpart in the Sumero-Akkadian world. Early Egyptian burial inscriptions attempt to get the reader to extend the life of the buried one through convincing the later reader to speak forth the inscription. Later texts draw an analogy between the speaking forth of sacred texts and the offering of incense. One spell in the Coffin text has the dead one say, “I am over the breath, the lord of the great smoke . . . I open the container of the god, I make the writings go up.”103 Ludwig Morenz argues that writings, like incense, are only potential realities until actualized. By themselves, the manuscripts themselves were but notations to aid a spoken performance. But when actualized by a reader, the words spoken forth from such sacred texts were “incense of the mouth.” As a result, the priestly speaker had to have a certain spiritual power to be able to voice forth such texts properly. One’s “mouth” must be pure. As one text says: When it is the wish of Thoth, to read this for Re, then should he purify himself with a ninefold purification for three days.104 Other texts speak of the need for Egyptian lector priests to purify their mouths with myrrh or incense.105 To be sure, most of this evidence comes from specifically cultic texts, not the sorts of educational texts that are the primary focus here.106 Nevertheless, the worlds of the educational text and cultic text were not completely separate. Educational texts were written using technical knowhow that originated with religious texts.107 Traditions speak about educational texts in ways analogous to religious texts and burial inscriptions.108 And, as we saw earlier, from the late New Kingdom onward the temple and its priesthood became a primary locus for both education and textual transmission. This increasing localization of education and textuality in the temple reinforced already existing homologies between educational and religious literature. A once sharper distinction between classical nonpriestly educational literature and more esoteric, secret religious literature of the priests blurred. As indicated earlier, the primary place of “storage” of such texts was in the minds and hearts of those who had mastered them. Nevertheless, we also have

during this period, and some of it may be applicable to earlier periods as well. Nevertheless, the evidence is focused enough in the Hellenistic period that it makes sense to treat it in context. 103. The reference comes from Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 48–49. I am indebted to John Baines (personal communication) for the translation. 104. My translation of the rendering of “the scroll of the heavenly cow” (261–264) by L. Morenz in Schriftlichkeitskultur, 51, with an addition from John Baines (personal communication). 105. Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 51. 106. Assmann, “Texte,” 71. 107. Posener, “L’encre rouge,” 77; Baines, “Literacy,” 579; Assmann, “Texte,” 66; Parkinson, Poetry and Culture, 116–17. 108. Assmann, “Schrift, Tod und Identita¨t,” 81–87.

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documentation that written texts were stored in various ways in ancient Egypt, in addition to being used for display, burial, and other purposes. In particular, we find various references to the idea of depositing or finding books in Egyptian temples, probably usually stored in wooden boxes.109 Egyptian sacred texts were typically memorized, with a copy deposited in a “house of life” (or more than one) for safekeeping. A frequent mark of their specialness was their secrecy.110 Some texts claim authority by including accounts of how they were found—after long neglect—in such a temple deposit. Morenz cites several texts that claim to be words from the gods that were later found in the “great hall” of a temple. For example, a medical-magical papyrus claims the following. This spell was found in the night, having come down in the broad hall of the temple in Koptos, as a secret of this goddess [Isis] by the hand of the lector priest of this temple While this land lay in darkness It was the moon that shone on this “book-roll” on all its sides. It was brought forth as a wonder To the majesty of the king of upper and lower Egypt, Cheops.111 It is possible that later priests sometimes found old writings in the book deposit of a given temple. But it is also possible that legends such as this one helped newer writings gain an authority in the present that was otherwise only given to much older, classic writings. The combination of the idea of the secrecy of temple writings and knowledge that they were stored in the temple opened the way for claims of having found a secret, purportedly ancient, writing in the temple that no one knew about.

Comparison of the Egyptian and Sumero-Akkadian Scribal Matrices The foregoing brief survey of Egypt only touches the high points of its educational-textual matrix, but it provides enough to sketch some similarities with and differences from the Sumero-Akkadian systems with which we began. Both cultures used texts as part of a broader process of enculturation of elites. In both cultures this enculturation involved much more than mere literacy. Rather, in addition to acquiring varying levels of mastery of the writing system (or systems), students used such skills to memorize and accurately recite a limited number of key works. At the outset of this chapter I summa-

109. For a fascinating discussion of a plaque that might provide some hints to the locus and mode of storage see Richard B. Parkinson, “Two or Three Literary Artefacts: EA 41650/47896 and 22878–9,” in Studies in Egyptian Antiquities: A Tribute to T.G.H. James, ed. W. V. Davies (London: British Museum, 1999), 51–53. 110. Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 29. 111. This is my translation of the rendering by Morenz of Papyrus BM 10059 in Morenz, Schriftlichkeitskultur, 16, corrected and improved by John Baines (personal communication).

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rized Assmann’s concept of “cultural text” for Egypt, but one could apply this concept to Mesopotamia as well. These cultural texts were identified in both cultures as special by virtue of being gifts from the gods, extremely old, and passed down to the present by means of a chain of authoritative scribes. The very writing of such texts—often in special scripts (e.g. cursive hieroglyphs) and formats—also lent an air of numinous power to them, as well as the fact that they were often written in a language marked off from the present idiom as foreign, archaic, and poetic. Though the contents of the Sumero-Akkadian and Egyptian curriculums were different in many respects, they both included some writings that might be identified as “wisdom” instruction, hymns, and stories. Both curricula reflect their origins in a process of creating a literate elite. Though each curriculum included some texts that could be vaguely characterized as textual templates preparatory to concrete scribal tasks, neither was focused on preparing students for the tasks and concerns of everyday work. The writing system in both cultures was extremely complex, and it was merely a sketchy notation system even for those who had mastered it.112 Unless someone trained in this system had already memorized a given text, he probably would not have been prepared to read it forth fluently. Furthermore, the core curricula of both cultures included a number of older texts with themes and concerns increasingly irrelevant to the times in which they were used. Yet, as Niek Veldhuis has already suggested in relation to the Sumero-Akkadian system, the very obscurity of such systems helps them function as elite education. Only the elite could take the time to master these texts and their writing systems, and this internal mastery of ancient, sacred tradition then marked them off from their peers as special. Does this mean that all of the literate—whether high-level elites or lower level administrative scribes—underwent the same, often esoteric training? It is difficult to know. So far, our documentation of education in Egypt focuses almost exclusively on the type of education just outlined. Indeed, it is difficult in many cases to identify a separate “school” institution in either Egypt or Mesopotamia that was exclusively responsible for such enculturation-education. Certainly almost never was there a separate building dedicated to education. Furthermore, “teachers” were not separate from scribes in either culture, and teaching was often integrally connected to a broader process of textual production. Sometimes we find recognizable schools in both Egypt and Mesopotamia, but even when such “schools” existed, it appears that much education still happened on an individualized or apprenticeship basis. In both cultures it was often the father who instructed a son in the family vocation. Sometimes, literate men of higher status would take on an educational “father” role vis-a`-vis the sons of others. Seen in broader perspective, there are also some remarkable parallels in

112. As noted earlier, alphabetic systems can be difficult as well, though for different reasons.

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how such education played a role in broader cultural processes. At the outset, education in Southern Mesopotamia (Akkadian and Ur-III periods) and Egypt (Middle Kingdom) reinforced a broader process of centralization. In both cases, it helped create a more cohesive and identifiable administrative elite to knit together an emergent or recently fragmented empire. Later, especially in the later first millennium, education and text production in both cultures becomes increasingly focused on the temple. And with the onset of Hellenism, this temple textual matrix in both contexts becomes a key locus for preservation of indigenous culture, while Greek forms of textuality and education increasingly dominated other (elite) spheres of each culture. We have also seen throughout this discussion that the Egyptian textualeducational matrix is different in some crucial respects from the SumeroAkkadian one. Scribes and writing were, if anything, more highly revered in Egypt than in Mesopotamia, and Egyptian rulers more consistently claimed scribal competence for themselves. Rituals are textualized much earlier in Egypt than in Mesopotamia, and we see special concepts in Egypt linking textuality and sacral ritual: reading as an offering like incense, the purification and spiritual preparation of the Egyptian reader for recitation of sacred texts, the marking of texts as special by their secrecy or discovery in a temple. The standard curricula of Mesopotamia and Egypt are somewhat different. Most important, Egypt’s curricula featured a much more prominent focus on wisdom instructions attributed to great sages. Especially as we move to the New Kingdom period, we see a focus on bygone teachers in Egypt that is not so obvious in the Sumero-Akkadian world. Moreover, the Egyptian focus on specifically “wisdom literature” is distinctive. The Sumero-Akkadian system did celebrate prediluvian sages, and wisdom literature played a crucial role in the transition from elementary to higher levels of education. Yet the sages did not achieve the prominence in text, relief, and cult in Mesopotamia that they did in Egypt. Moreover, wisdom literature was not the primary focus of the Sumero-Akkadian curriculum. In Egypt, wisdom instructions like Amenemhet and Kheti played the central role that sign, name, and lexical lists did in the Sumero-Akkadian system. Together these partial observations point to both emergent patterns and differences in ancient education. Put together, the Sumero-Akkadian and Egyptian systems are similar to each other in many ways that contrast with modern modes and ideas about education. As such, the picture built up from these cultures can correct anachronistic assumptions about text and education that are often imported into study of the Bible and other ancient documents. At the same time, we have also seen some important ways in which these systems were different. And this means that there is a likelihood that the textualeducational system in ancient Israel was distinctive in various ways as well, influenced by the mix of cultures around it while developing its own characteristics.

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Links Between Egypt and Israel I conclude this chapter with a discussion of some indicators that Egypt’s textual matrix—like the Sumero-Akkadian system—had specific links to that of ancient Israel. Certainly Egypt had deep political and economic contacts with Canaan/ Israel from an early period. Already in the Middle Kingdom we see attestation of merchant exchanges between Egypt and Syro-Phoenician cities like Byblos, Ugarit, and Megiddo; there is mention in the prophecy of Neferti (66–68) to building a “wall of the rulers” to bar Semites from entering Egypt for food and water during famine; and there were several military campaigns into SyroCanaan to subdue the inhabitants there. During the second intermediate period, Semites took over Egypt for a time, and afterward New Kingdom rulers like Thutmose III established firmer Egyptian control over much of SyroPhoenicia. The Amarna archives document interchange (in Akkadian) between Egyptian rulers and Egyptian-supported governors in central cities across SyroPhoenicia, including Jerusalem, an exchange apparently involving scribes themselves sometimes traveling to and from Egypt to read the letters they had recorded.113 Some such governors and other officials may have been educated in Egypt as part of the broader process of ensuring a loyal overclass in the Egyptian empire. And Egyptians themselves appear to have emigrated to serve in the courts of others, as indicated in the depiction in Wenamun of an Egyptian cupbearer and songstress in the Phoenician city of Byblos (Wenamun 2, 45–46 and 69)114 or the appearance of the Egyptian scribe Amenmose in the Syrian city of Carchemesh. After the New Kingdom, Egyptian power waned, including power over the Syro-Phoenician area. Nevertheless, later pharaohs, for example in the late tenth and the seventh to sixth centuries b.c.e., still carried out campaigns in the Syro-Phoenician area, and we see widespread Egyptian influence on the art of Syro-Phoenicia, especially during the eighth and seventh centuries: scarabs, flying suns, burning serpents, and so on in seals and other media of both Judah and Israel.115 A wide range of biblical materials attests to deep and highly varied levels of contact with Egypt. The book of Genesis refers to the flight of Abraham and Jacob’s families to Egypt for food and water, and the books of Exodus to Deuteronomy and non-Pentateuchal Exodus traditions refer Israel’s origins to its flight out of Egypt under the leadership of figures with Egyptian names like

113. The arguments for such travel are based on the glosses in the Amarna letters. See Izre
el, “Amarna Glosses,” and van der Toorn, “Cuneiform Documents,” 104. 114. Of course, Wenamun is a work of fiction but presupposes that this depiction of Egyptians in Byblos is plausible to its audience. ¨ gypten und Israel,” TRE 1 (1977): 492–505. See also the review of iconographic remains 115. R. Williams, “A Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Go¨ttinen, Go¨tter, und Gottessymbole: Neue Erkentnisse zur Religionsgeschichte Kanaans und Israels aufgrund bislang unerschlossener ikonographischer Quellen, 2nd ed., Quaestiones Disputatae (Freiburg: Herder, 1993), 282–98, 401–6 (English ed.: Gods, Goddesses and Images of God in Ancient Israel, trans. Thomas Trapp [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996], 265–81, 350–54).

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Moses, Phinehas, Merari, and Putiel. Solomon is reputed to have had particularly close relations with Egypt, taking an Egyptian princess as a wife and receiving the Canaanite city of Gezer from the Pharaoh as her dowry (1 Kgs 9: 16). 1 Kings 11:14–40 reports that two adversaries of Solomon, Hadad the Edomite and Jeroboam the Israelite, fled to Egypt, the latter returning to found the northern Israelite monarchy (1 Kgs 12; cf. Jer 26:21–23). And biblical historical narratives and prophetic oracles refer to eighth-century diplomatic efforts by both northern and southern rulers to enlist Egypt’s support in resistance to Assyrian oppression (e.g. Hos 7:11; 9:6; Jer 2:18, 36). Later on, we have both biblical and extrabiblical attestation of Egypt as a major site where Judeans settled outside Israel (e.g. Jer 24:8; 44:1), and the documents at the Egyptian Judean colony at Elephantine show that such communities maintained contact with their compatriots in Judah. These ongoing and deep contacts between Egypt and the land of Canaan/ Israel suggest the possibility of significant cultural interchange between the two areas. Though the Egyptian tradition did not achieve international prominence in the way the Sumero-Akkadian tradition did in the Bronze Age, Egypt played a very important role in the culture and politics of the Syro-Phoenician region throughout the period of ancient Israelite history. Moreover, Egyptian influence was strongest in the region during the late Bronze Age, the period in which Israel first emerges on the historical scene. Given these broader indicators of contact, I now turn to look at more specific indicators of Egyptian influence on ancient Israelite textuality.

Evidence of Overall Egyptian Influence on the Israelite Scribal Matrix As is not the case for the Sumero-Akkadian system, we actually have Israelite examples of Egyptian educational exercises. These are exercises in mathematics, practice exercises with hieratic numerals found at Kadesh Barnea and dating from the seventh century. They are not exercises in writing extensive sections of Egyptian literature. Nevertheless, they show that Egypt had a specific influence on at least one branch of Israelite education. Such Egyptian-style education in hieratic numerals prepared scribes to produce the various examples of such numerals found at Arad, Yabneh Yam, Samaria, Murabaat, and possibly Gezer.116 In addition, the Bible itself preserves evidence of influence from Egyptian educational materials. For example, it appears probable that Proverbs 22:17– 24:34 was modeled in some way on the Instruction of Amenemope. The parallels are not exact, but we have already seen in the Sumero-Akkadian instance how the move from one language and culture to another often was accompa-

116. T. Mettinger, Solomonic State Officials: A Study of the Civil Government Officials of the Israelite Monarchy, Coniectanea Biblica—Old Testament Series (Lund: Gleerup, 1971), 49–50.

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nied by free adaptation of the source text. Overall, Egyptian influence appears to have been strongest in the area of biblical literature most parallel to the “instructions” that were especially central in Egypt: biblical “wisdom” books like Proverbs and Qohelet. Nili Shupak has studied the entire range of vocabulary specific to such biblical “wisdom” literature and found a remarkable level of coincidence with similar terms in Egyptian educational literature. In particular, there is a common emphasis in both educational literatures on “hearing” and laying instruction on “the heart”—in part a reflection of their common focus on orality and memorization.117 Yet Egypt appears to have had an impact on the technology of text production in ancient Israel as well. The Phoenician alphabetic system that forms the bedrock of the Israelite system appears to have originated in Egypt and grew on analogy with alphabetic-type uses of the Egyptian hieroglyphic system.118 Notably, the Egyptian writing system may have been better suited as a model for the writing of Northwest Semitic languages like Hebrew because it, unlike Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, was originally developed to represent a Hamito-Semitic language.119 Moreover, like Egyptian writing, Canaanite and Hebrew alphabetic writing moves from right to left, and both systems—when used alphabetically—exclusively represent consonants. The correspondences continue. Insofar as we can reconstruct the original writing material of early biblical texts, it appears to have been Egyptian papyrus (along with associated writing implements) rather than the Mesopotamian tablet media seen earlier in Syro-Canaan.120 Furthermore, Hebrew Scriptures, like some Egyptian standard works, were divided into memorizable pericopes.121 Indeed, studies by Ernst Revell and others have shown how the Qumran and other early textual traditions already use the sorts of sectional divisions seen in Egypt, divisions much like those that appear in later Jewish tradition as parashot.122 Finally, certain aspects of the biblical tradition reflect a scripture consciousness akin to what we have seen in Egypt. Already, the Ptahhotep instruction,

117. Glendon E. Bryce, A Legacy of Wisdom: the Egyptian Contribution to the Wisdom of Israel (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1979); Nili Shupak, Where Can Wisdom Be Found? The Sage’s Language in the Bible and in Ancient Egyptian Literature, OBO (Freiburg: University Press, 1993), 297–311. Following the advice of James Crenshaw and Michael Fox, I have omitted reference here to the older theory that Old Testament lists (e.g., Job 38; Psalm 104) were influenced by Egyptian exemplars. For discussion see Michael V. Fox, “Egyptian Onomastica and Biblical Wisdom,” VT 36 (1986): 302–10. 118. Note, for example, the early alphabetic inscription by Asiatic workers, Steven Feldman, “Not as Simple as A-B-C: Earliest Use of Alphabet Found in Egypt,” Biblical Archaeology Review 26, 1 (2000): 12. 119. Hawkins, “Writing in Western Asia,” 162–63. 120. Victor Burr, Bibliothekarische Notizen zum Alten Testament, Forschungsstelle fu¨r Buchwissenschaft an der Universita¨tsbibliothek Bonn, Kleine Schriften (Bonn: H. Bouvier, 1969), 21–22; J. Phillip Hyatt, “The Writing of an Old Testament Book,” BA 6 (1943): 73–74; M. Haran, “Book Scrolls in Israel in Pre-Exilic Times,” JSJ 33 (1982): 161–73. 121. Some Egyptian periocopes are identified by verse points, while the Hebrew tradition used a system of line spacing. 122. For references see chapter 9, note 57. In addition, there is another analogy, though a bit more distant chronologically and analogically. Both systems used the beginning of a pericope as a memory aid for the remainder. We see this in the Egyptian practice of following the copying of a given pericope with the copying of the beginning of the next—to reinforce the sequence of pericopes. And we see this in early rabbinic biblical discussions where biblical texts are cited by their first words.

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like the Mesopotamian Erra epic, exhorts its hearers not to add or subtract from it in a way analogous to later exhortations in Deuteronomy.123 Moreover, just as certain New Kingdom Egyptian traditions were exalted through the lifting up of their authors as semidivine mediators of a classic past, so also the biblical tradition comes to be isolated as the product of inspired “prophets”— whether Moses, David, Solomon, or prophets like Isaiah—before the “end of prophecy” in the time of Ezra. The foregoing indicators are probably more significant than the few potential linguistic contacts between the Egyptian scribal system and the Israelite one. Partly because the Egyptian language is more distant from Hebrew than Akkadian, there are not as many words that were directly borrowed from the Egyptian language into Hebrew. Nevertheless, there are several potentially significant instances of influence. First, the scribe who is listed among David’s earliest officials bears the name Shavsha
(1 Chr 18:16)//Sherayah (2 Sam 8: 17)//Shisha
(1 Kgs 4:3)//Sheva
(2 Sam 20:25), which many have seen as a possible Israelite (or pre-Israelite) corruption of the Egyptian term for chief scribe, ssˇˇs.t, a term used in the Canaanite-Egyptian correspondence of the Amarna period.124 If this is so, it could indicate that David employed an Egyptian in his court, or that tradents writing about him were enough influenced by Egyptian to use a similar term to describe his textual specialist, or just that Israel was indirectly influenced by Egypt on this point, having borrowed an originally Egyptian term for textual-accounting specialist from Canaanite precursors who themselves were influenced by Egypt.125 Second, the Hebrew words for “ink” (devo; Jer 36:18) and “scribal palette” (qeset; Ezek 9:2, 3, 11) may derive from Egyptian.126 If so, these sorts of borrowings would be additional indicators that Egypt was an important source of early Israelite writing technology. Overall, the quality of evidence for Egyptian influence varies but is widespread throughout many parts of the Bible. Some of the indicators are vague and difficult to pin down—such as the possible influence of the Egyptian Memphite concept of creation by the word on Genesis 1, or the broader Egyptian idea of the king being the image of God—a concept also found in another form in the Sumero-Akkadian tradition. Such Egyptian royal ideology may also stand behind the fivefold royal titulary seen in Isaiah 9:5 (ET 9:6), or certain language found in 2 Samuel 7:1–17 and 1 Kings 3:2–15. And there are other cases, such

123. Cf. Michael Fishbane, “Varia Deuteronomica,” ZAW 84 (1972): 350. 124. A. Cody, “Le titre e´gyptien et le nom propre du Scribe de David,” RB 72 (1965): 381–93; R. Williams, “A People Come Out of Egypt,” in Congress Volume: Edinburgh, 1974, VTSup, ed. G. W. Anderson (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 236; Mettinger, Solomonic State Officials, 45–51. On the usage of this term in the Amarna letters see Karel van der Toorn, “From the Oral to the Written: The Case of Old Babylonian Prophecy,” in Ben Zvi and Floyd, Writings and Speech, 100–101. But cf. K. A. Kitchen, “Egypt and Israel During the First Millennium B.C,” in Congress Volume: Jerusalem, 1986, VTSup, ed. J. A. Emerton (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 112–13. 125. For a nuanced discussion of the options and discussion of earlier literature see Nili S. Fox, In the Service of the King: Officialdom in Ancient Israel and Judah, Monographs of the Hebrew Union College (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2000), 100–101. 126. Thomas Lambdin, “Egyptian Loan Words in the Old Testament,” JAOS 73 (1953): 149, 154.

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as the strong parallels between Genesis 39 (Joseph and Potiphar) and the New Kingdom Tale of the Two Brothers, where Biblical materials share folkloristic motifs that are difficult to localize in just Egypt or ancient Israel. That said, there are many instances where it is clear that the biblical writers were poorly informed about the Egyptian cultural tradition. For example, although the Joseph story includes examples of local Egyptian color (names, embalming of Joseph) and Joseph lives to the Egyptian ideal age of 110, neither this story nor the account of Moses’s birth features any focus on the scribal education so important in the higher ranges of Egyptian society.127 In these and other ways it is clear that the Israelite scribal matrix was not a simple extension of the Egyptian one.

Egyptian and Sumero-Akkadian Influence on the Bible: The Case of the Song of Songs One prominent reason for supposing that Israel was not a simple extension of the Egyptian scribal system is evidence that Israel stood between multiple realms of scribal influence, including the Sumero-Akkadian system discussed in previous chapters. Indeed, as we saw, Egypt itself was influenced by the Sumero-Akkadian system, just as the Sumero-Akkadian system as found in Egypt was influenced by Egyptian practices like use of colored ink.128 One good potential example of the interlacing of multiple spheres of influence is the biblical Song of Songs (hereafter “the Song”). Although scholars of the previous century focused on analogies between the Song and Arab Palestinian love poetry, the best comparative work over recent decades has focused on Egyptian love poetry on the one hand and Sumero-Akkadian love poetry on the other.129 Most Sumero-Akkadian love poems revolve in some way around the plot of sacred marriage between deities. Up through the Old Babylonian period, most such poems focused on the sacred marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi, but we see widespread attestation of this practice throughout the first millennium and even in a sixth-century Aramaic text written in Demotic script by settlers from the Assyrian province of Samaria.130 In contrast, the New Kingdom Egyptian poems are not so cultic in orientation. Instead, they are enter-

127. Herman Te Velde, “Scribes and Literacy in Ancient Egypt,” in Scripta Signa Vocis: Studies About Scripts, Scriptures, Scribes, and Languages in the Near East, Presented to J. H. Hosper, ed. H.L.J. Vanstiphout et al. (Groningen: Forsten, 1986), 254. 128. See pp. 51–52 earlier. 129. Occasionally scholars have argued that the Greek poetry, especially that of Theocritus, also might illuminate the biblical Song of Songs. For a recent analysis that includes iconography alongside texts and cites some earlier literature see Anselm C. Hagedorn, “Of Foxes and Vineyards: Greek Perspectives on the Song of Songs,” VT 53 (2003): 337–52. Hagedorn notes (337) that, in the Greek instance, such studies do not establish influence but instead allow us to read the Song better within its broader (eastern) Mediterranean milieu. 130. Richard C. Steiner, “The Aramaic Text in Demotic Script,” in Canonical Compositions, vol. 1 of The Context of Scripture, ed. William W. Hallo and K. L. Younger (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 309–27.

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tainment literature, to be performed at various festal banquets and other festive occasions. In both cases, love poetry seems to have played a secondary role in the educational system. One Mesopotamian school text features a detailed description of a royal litter in the context of a sacred marriage ritual, a description parallel to Song of Songs 3:6–10.131 There is a practice copy at Ugarit of another Sumero-Akkadian love song, the erotically tinged song of praise by Ludingira about his mother.132 And I already mentioned a dated educational copy of an Egyptian love poem at Deir el-Medina. Thus, functioning primarily in the cultic and entertainment realms, respectively, Sumero-Akkadian and Egyptian love poems also played some role—however marginal—in enculturating the young. Sex is a topic that plays well to those of age to be in the educational system, and it is natural to find that all of these cultures sometimes used love poetry as part of the body of literature that such youths memorized and performed.133 Furthermore, a closer examination of the contents of these love literatures indicates that the Sumero-Akkadian and Egyptian love songs share much in common with each other and with the biblical Song of Songs. In all of these literatures, the lovers address each other often as “brother” and “sister,” they mention their mothers as intermediaries, they describe their beloved as the “love” of their “heart,” they occasionally praise their lover’s body as if it were a statue, they often focus on the “garden” as a scene of lovemaking, and they even share more specific motifs, like the idea of lovemaking being as sweet as honey. Female lovers are the main protagonists in all three types of love literature, and female songstresses, like the Egyptian who entertained Wenamun in Byblos, appear to have played a prominent role in their performance.134 The biblical Song of Songs shares specific characteristics of both Egyptian and Sumero-Akkadian love poetry. On the one hand, much of the biblical Song of Songs follows the dialogue form that is most prominent in SumeroAkkadian love poetry, the woman is described as a “bride,” and in both forms of love poetry a “king” is a prominent protagonist. Nevertheless, SumeroAkkadian poetry is much more explicitly cultic in its orientation than either the Song of Songs or Egyptian love poetry. In this sense, the biblical Song of Songs is more similar to its Egyptian analogues, where divine motifs occasionally occur around the edges of the love poetry but the protagonists are clearly human. In addition, the Song of Songs shares many specific elements with Egyptian love poetry: indirection in describing the lovers’ lovemaking, emphasis on the obstacles they must overcome to be together, and specific

131. K. Deller, “ST 366: Deutungversuch 1982,” Assur 3, 4 (1982): 141, has a translation of the relevant section (11.4–13) and context. 132. See the discussion in chapter 3, p. 53, and note 32 in that chapter. 133. This is particularly clear in the erotically charged conclusion to Ben Sira that is preserved at Qumran. For the text and discussion see James A. Sanders, The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), 116–17. 134. David M. Carr, The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality and the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 91–107.

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themes surrounding the heart, the kiss, and the image of the male lover waiting impatiently outside for his female beloved to join him.135 If one had to vote on one influence or the other on the biblical Song, the Egyptian comparisons might well win. There is little evidence of a sacred marriage ritual in ancient Israel that would correspond to the Sumero-Akkadian counterparts, and the Song of Songs shares more general and specific elements with Egyptian love songs than with Sumero-Akkadian love literature. At the same time, we do not have to make an either-or decision regarding Egyptian or Sumero-Akkadian influence. Rather, the Song of Songs partakes of many elements that are common to many types of ancient love literature, while also sharing some elements specific to the Sumero-Akkadian system on the one hand and the Egyptian system on the other. As I have shown, there are indicators that the Israelite scribal matrix was influenced by both educationalscribal systems. So we should not be surprised to find loci like the Song of Songs where the lines of sharing, common dependence on folkloristic motifs, and potential influence are impossible to untangle completely. Up to this point I have focused almost exclusively—with the exception of Ugarit—on educational systems with extensive cadres of scribes who mastered logographic sign systems consisting of hundreds of signs. I have not looked at a more decentralized, small-scale textual matrix or looked in depth at a system of education based on alphabetic writing. We find such a system in ancient Greek education.

135. The most compelling and detailed study of links of Egyptian love poetry with the biblical Song of Songs is Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), on which much of the foregoing is based.

5 Alphabetically Based Textuality and Education in Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece presents a substantially different picture on a number of different fronts to what we saw in the cultures of the SumeroAkkadian and Egyptian traditions. In the case of the SumeroAkkadian tradition, we had access to the education-textual system by way of thousands of educational texts combined with explicit descriptions of education in the Edubba literature and mentions of education in hymns and other narratives. In the case of the Egyptian tradition, we had a lesser number of educational texts, along with mention of education in some inscriptions and other literature. But in the case of Greek education, we have virtually no practice texts, and mention of textual education is relatively rare—especially from periods much previous to the Macedonian period. There is a Greek abecedary and syllabary from Tuscany that is dated to the early seventh century that testifies to some sort of Greek education there, and there is a fifth-century find of about one hundred inscribed slabs of slate-like stone from a probable school in the Athenian agora.1 Otherwise, the combination of a rainy climate and use of perishable writing materials for education (especially papyrus) means that we have no advanced school texts from ancient Greece. As a result, we are missing a key form of evidence that might be used to reconstruct the curriculum and teaching methods of early Greek education. Indeed, this gap in evidence, along with a relative hostility toward textuality present in Plato, has led some classicists to deny that

1. For discussion see Teresa Morgan, “Literate Education in Classical Athens,” Classical Quarterly 49 (1999): 14. An image of the Etruscan find can be found in Beck (Album of Greek Education: The Greeks at School and Play [Sydney: Cheiron Press, 1975]), no. 37.

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there was much, if any, education in literacy prior to the fourth (or late fifth) century b.c.e. From Havelock’s arguments regarding Plato’s precursors in Preface to Plato (1963) to Morgan’s recent survey of datable references to education (1999), many have argued that early Greek education lacked much focus on textual literacy.2 After all, the earliest sources speak of two main branches of education: gumnastike¯ (“gymnastics, physical training”) and mousike¯ (defined here as “music with poetry”).3 Specific references to grammata (“education in writing/reading”) as a third branch of education only become prominent in the fourth century and later.4 Moreover, Plato speaks almost exclusively of “hearing” in early education, showing a clear hostility toward textual forms of memory. Such data, some argue, undercuts any assumption of general education in literacy prior to the late fifth or early fourth century.5 There just is not enough evidence, it is said, to establish the presence of education in literacy much prior to the Hellenistic period. Though such studies will inform the discussion that follows, they have had to contend with one crucial sort of evidence that was largely lacking in Mesopotamia and Egypt but is present in ancient Greece: widespread preHellenistic artistic depictions of education and textual use in Greece. From the early fifth and possibly late sixth century onward, we have Greek depictions of people reading texts on terra-cotta statues and red vase representations. Usually occurring on pottery that was used for festive symposia and other house parties, these artistic representations are part of a broader stream of Greek representations of daily life. These images are not straightforward evidence for a variety of reasons: we do not know their audience or original purpose, and it is likely they represent an ideal—rather than “true”—picture of the life of the elite. Nevertheless, such images provide an evocative set of iconographic data on ancient textuality and education that is largely missing from Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and other Near Eastern finds. Whether or not they are images of everyday reality, they do represent scenes of what some fifth-century Greek artists found a plausible fantasy of the life of some.6 First and foremost, these Greek pictures provide a visual counterpart to Near Eastern examples of the oral-written interface that has been the focus of the discussion so far. For example, a sixth-century kylix in Munich features

2. See Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), along with later writings such as essays collected in his The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982). Morgan’s very helpful, though cautious, discussions can be found in Literate Education, 1–19; Morgan, “Literate Education.” 3. See hereafter for arguments regarding the close link between music and recitation of poetry. 4. The key texts are surveyed in Morgan, Literate Education, 8–10; Morgan, “Literate Education,” 48–50. 5. See, for example, arguments along these lines in Havelock, Preface to Plato, and (more recently) Kevin Robb, Literacy and Paideia in Ancient Greece (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 192–97, 215–19. 6. As Ford points out (n. 33), the approximately one hundred depictions of writing and reading are far outweighed by more than fourteen hundred representations of athletic activity, and he summarizes various other problems raised by others about the use of this material to argue for general literacy (Andrew Ford, “Reading the ‘Song Culture’ of Classical Greece,” in Written Texts and the Rise of Literate Culture in Ancient Greece, ed. Harvey Yunis [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 23–24.

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scenes from the Greek symposia, including a depiction of two figures in different stages of a musical recitation. One figure sits reciting with a lyre, while another sits behind him, still reading a text. Egert Po¨hlmann argues that the latter figure who is reading is preparing for recitation, since the man who is reciting has the staff in his left hand, ready to hand it off to his companion behind him.7 Another image features a combination of a man and a woman. A young man stands with a lyre before a seated woman. Her eyes are on the last part of the scroll, apparently having followed in the scroll the text he has just recited to him.8 Whereas the first image featured possible use of a text to facilitate review of the text to be performed, the latter image features probable use of a text to facilitate the hearing of the performed text. The same process is textually attested by the late fifth-century writer Aristophanes, whose play The Frogs features criticism of Athenians watching plays and following along in texts before them (Frogs 1114–1119). Just as performances today often feature musicians singing from a printed text and audiences following along in their programs, so these ancient Greeks are depicted as using texts as subsidiary parts of a performance that is primarily oral and musical. Though many, if not most, of the images feature people of the same gender and similar age, there are some that point to a textually supported educational process involving people of different ages and even genders. One famous early fifth-century representation, the Douris cup, numbered 2285 at the Berlin Altes Museum, features two significant images: one (on the cover of this book) in which a boy stands ready to recite before a seated adult holding an open book with a line of lyric poetry on it; and one where a student recites with a lyre while the teacher follows along in a tablet with a stylus (or prepares to write in it).9 An educational context is suggested both by the presence of different generations in the image and by the book rolls and lyres hung on the walls. Another early fifth-century kylix similarly features scenes with book rolls hung on the walls; one image shows two boys reading with a book-roll chest between them, while the other main image shows three youths involved in different elements of the writing process—one singing with a lyre, one writing on a tablet, and one reading from a scroll.10 Still another scene from the later fifth century shows Linus, a famous teacher in Greek mythology, standing in a room with a scroll chest, preparing to check the recitation of his famous student, Museos.11 We even see at least one instance where a woman appears to be playing a teaching role. An early fifth-century cup features two scenes: an apparent contest in manners between girls on one side and on the other side

7. Egert Po¨hlmann, “Mu¨ndlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit gestern und heute,” Wu¨rzburger Jahrbu¨cher fu¨r Altertumswissenschaft 14 (1998): 17–18. 8. H. R. Immerwahr, “More Book Roles on Attic Vases,” Antike Kunst 16 (1973): 145. 9. H. R. Immerwahr, “Book Rolls on Attic Vases,” in Classical, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies in Honour of B. L. Ullman, ed. C. Henderson Jr. (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1964), 18–19. 10. Po¨hlmann, “Mu¨ndlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit,” 18–19. 11. Immerwahr, “Book Rolls,” 20; Beck, Album, 9–11.

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a depiction of a boy, probably reciting, standing before a seated woman with a scroll in her lap.12 The images just discussed are only a few of the surviving early Greek representations of textual performance, writing, and education. Some feature evident competitions between reciters. Others focus on more tender scenes of pleasurable common enjoyment of a text. Most feature homogeneous groups of men, boys, or women, while others show multiple generations in recitation situations or a man and woman together. To be sure, there are other early Greek representations of young men reciting poetry with a lyre and no text in sight. But images like those just discussed suggest that, at least by the fifth century, such recitation was often facilitated by written texts: student practice writing of texts to be recited, use of texts to check recitation in educational contexts, use of written texts for review of a given poem before recitation, and use of a written text by the audience to follow a recitation.13 Moreover, we have some idea of the types of texts that the artists meant to show being used in such musical performances: in virtually every case where the text on a given scroll can be deciphered, it is a fragment of a poem.14 At this point “lyric” and other poetry is intimately associated with the playing of the “lyre,” and vice versa. Yet we also see the increasing focus on stichic verse, like Homer, that can be recited without musical accompaniment.15 Such artistic renditions of ancient links between musicality, orality, and textuality are important enough, but these old Greek images are important for another reason as well. They point to the severe limitations of our written sources on education-enculturation in ancient Greece, and by extension, other ancient cultures as well. Where datable written sources fail to attest to much use of texts in education or recitation prior to the late fifth or early fourth century, we have multiple fifth-century visual images of such usage. Moreover, where we lack almost any attestation of women reading or teaching in ancient Greece, the visual sources show women reading almost as frequently as men.16 Lacking such visual sources, we could well conclude that early Greek education focused exclusively on males and did not feature much use of texts until a few decades before the onset of the Hellenistic period. But these visual sources suggest an alternative picture.

12. Immerwahr, “More Book Roles,” 144–45. 13. For overviews of these images see especially the early articles by Immerwahr ( “Book Rolls”; “More Book Roles”), along with the discussion by Po¨hlmann (“Mu¨ndlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit”) and the useful collection of images by Beck (Album). 14. See Immerwahr, “More Book Roles,” 143–47. As Immerwahr suggests, the one exception proves the rule, since it appears to be a list of mythological figures that would have served as an educational aid for recitation of such lyric poetry. 15. Ford, “ ‘Song Culture,’ ” 24–30. 16. The main textual exception is the description by Herodotus of Skyles being educated by his Greek mother (Hist. 4.78). On this and other evidence for female literacy see especially Cole, “Greek Women.”

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Textual Witnesses to the (Subordinate) Role of Texts in Greek Enculturation Aided by such images, we are better able to analyze the true role of written texts in ancient Greek enculturation-education. They show written texts being used in the context of musical recitation of poetry, as well as in various contexts of festive parties and intimate encounters. This picture is confirmed and elaborated upon in written witnesses to education from the fifth and early fourth centuries. From the outset it must be emphasized that the primary aim was recitation. Indeed, the earliest witnesses to education focus so much on recitation that one might think texts play no role at all. For example, the character “Better Argument” in Aristophanes’ play Clouds nostalgically describes students’ twofold education in earlier times, first mousike¯ (“music with poetry”) and then gumnastike¯ (“gymnastics, physical training”) (961–968): Very well, I shall describe how the old education used to operate in the days when I flourished by propounding what’s right, and when decency was accepted custom. The first rule was that not a sound, not even a mutter, should be heard from a boy. Furthermore, the boys of each neighborhood had to walk through the streets to the music master’s all together and in good order, without coats even if the snow was coming down like chaff. Then he would teach them to memorize a song—while keeping their thighs apart!—“Palas, Dire City Sacker,” or “A Cry Sounds From Afar,” and to tune their voices to the mode their fathers handed down. (Henderson, LCL) Plato similarly has several references to education in mousike¯ alongside gumnastike¯. In the Republic (early fourth century), Socrates, at the outset of an attack on the traditional educational focus on Homeric poetry, leads Adimantus through the following exchange (376e). socrates What, then, is our education? Or is it hard to find a better than that which long time has discovered—which is, I suppose, gymnastics for the body, and for the soul, music? adimantus

It is.

socrates And shall we not begin education in music earlier than in gymnastics? adimantus socrates adminatus

Of course. And under music you include tales, do you not? I do.17

17. The translation is from Paul Shorey, trans., “Republic,” in Hamilton and Cairns, Collected Dialogues of Plato, 623.

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Later, in his Laws, Plato’s Athenian describes education in the same twofold way, again illustrating a characteristically Greek focus on training of both mind and body: “Their instruction may be said to fall, for practical purposes, under two heads: physical culture, which is concerned with the body, and music, which aims at mental excellence”(795d).18 So far, these descriptions of education lack any references to use of writing or reading, but we have several clues from texts—in addition to the aforementioned images—that training in literacy played a subsidiary role in training in recitation, which was apparently part of the very earliest stages of training in mousike¯. Toward the end of the fifth century Aristophanes lampoons an uneducated sausage seller who admits at the outset: “but, my friend, I know no music/poetry (mousike¯), except for letters [grammata], and even that only badly” (Knights 188–189).19 Another play of his features a dog who does not know music but does know his letters (Wasps 958–960). In these cases, literacy is portrayed as a form of training that is either before and distinct from mousike¯ or part of the very earliest part of training in mousike¯. The central focus of mousike¯ was ultimately the use of writing, music, and other means to memorize the central epic and lyric poets. For example, Plato in his late dialogue the Laws has the “Athenian” describe in detail how the people of his city use writing in different ways to gain mastery of the poets (810e–811a): We have a great number of poets, in hexameter verse, in iambic trimeter, in a word in all the recognized meters, some grave and somegay. On them, so those many thousands of voices proclaim, young people who are being rightly educated should be fed, in them they should be steeped; their reading lessons must give them a wide acquaintance with their works and an extensive scholarship in them; whole poets must be learned by heart. There are others who compile anthologies of the poets and make collections of whole passages, which they say must be committed to memory and learned by heart if our prote´ge´’s wide familiarity with literature and extensive learning is to make a good and wise man of him.20 For Plato, instruction in grammata and mousike¯ often are closely associated, with the former preparatory for the latter, but they are not identical.21 Plato’s

18. The translation here comes from A. E. Taylor, trans., “Laws,” in Hamilton and Cairns, Collected Dialogues of Plato, 1369. For other references to the two parts of education see Plato’s Republic 521d–e; Laws 769c– e; Meno 94b and Aeschines, Against Timarchus, 9–12. In at least two of the cases from Plato (Republic 376e and Laws 795d–e) this twofold taxonomy is at least partially correlated with the body-mind dichotomy so crucial to Plato’s broader conceptuality and Greek culture more broadly. 19. My translation. See H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. George Lamb (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956 [orig. 1948]), 43. 20. The translation here is from Taylor, “Laws,” 1381. For discussion of the focus of this passage on stichic verse see Ford, “ ‘Song Culture,’ ” 26–27. 21. Alan D. Booth, “Douris’ Cup and Stages of Schooling in Classical Athens,” Echos de Monde Classique 19 (1985): 275–80. Note as well that Aristophanes’ sausage seller is represented as claiming grammata (reading/

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Euthydemus mentions the “music master” and the “grammar master” in tandem but separately from gymnastics (276a).22 Moreover, the foregoing passage from the Laws is preceded by one in which the learning of letters and grammar is connected not to musical poetry but to the learning of works without music or meter that are more difficult to memorize (Laws 809b–c).23 Elsewhere, Plato has Protagoras precede his description of mousike¯ and gumnastike¯ with the following description of early education in grammata (325d–326a): When they send the children to school, their instructions to the masters lay much more emphasis on good behavior than on letters or music. The teachers take good care of this, and when boys have learned their letters and are ready to understand the written word as formerly the spoken, they set the works of good poets next to them to read and make them learn them by heart, poems containing much admonition and many stories, eulogies, and panegyrics of the good men of old, so that the child may be inspired to imitate them and long to be like them.24 Plato obviously has a critical perspective on this characterization of education, placing it in the mouth of Socrates’ Sophist antagonist rather than in that of Socrates himself. As we saw at the outset of the discussion of Egypt, Plato saw writing as killing rather than helping memory (Phaedrus, 274c–275c). Nevertheless, his Protagoras character is depicted as presenting a credible picture of ancient education in the early half of the fourth century. Moreover, his threefold description of education in mousike¯, gumnastike¯, and grammata is paralleled by several other fourth-century references.25 By this point, training in writing is gaining an integrity of its own, though it still stands as preparatory to the ultimate aim: memorization and recitation of the core curriculum. Thus, Greek grammata focused not on gaining the ability to read and write a range of unfamiliar texts but instead on the achievement of “phonetic literacy,” possession of enough reading ability to puzzle out syllables aloud to learn a text by heart or to say prayers, but not to read silently with immediate comprehension.26 Indeed, Greek words used early for reading, like nemo¯, refer to reading out loud—performing a text,27 and even prose texts in later periods

writing) as the sole extent of his bad mastery of mousike¯, thus implying that such instruction came earlier rather than later in the educational process. 22. See also Isocrates’ Antidosis 181, 266–267, and Plato’s Republic 376e–377d. 23. Assmann notes that writing is particularly well suited to the memorization of contingent information— receipts, and so on—which are less easily fitted to schemas of plot or theme (“Texte,” 66–68). 24. The translation here comes from W.K.C. Guthrie, trans., “Protagoras,” in Hamilton and Cairns, Collected Dialogues of Plato, 322, slightly adapted to omit “desks” (thanks to Raffaella Cribiore for this correction). See also Ford, “ ‘Song Culture,’ ” 25–26. 25. Plato, Cleitophon 407b–c; Xenophon, Laecedaemonian Constitution, 1.10; Aristotle Politics 1337b23 ff.; but cf. Aeschines, Against Timarchus, 9–12. 26. Thomas, Literacy and Orality, 91–92. 27. J. Svenbro, Phrasikleia: An Anthropology of Reading in Ancient Greece, trans. J. Lloyd (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 109–22.

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may have been composed in relation to a primary focus on oral performance.28 Most of the earliest Greek inscriptions are inscriptions of poetic texts that were performed aloud.29 Moreover, early manuscripts were not written for those who lacked prior knowledge of the texts. As mentioned earlier, they were written in uncial letters and scriptio continua, thus meaning that the reader had to separate words as he or she went. Readerly helps were completely lacking. Dramas lacked indications of change in speaker. And the extended scroll form of such writings made impossible any quick consultation of an extended poetic text. It was just too difficult, and damaging to the scroll, to unroll and re-roll it frequently.30 These indicators suggest that writing in ancient Greece was linked from an early point to the tradition of recitation of poetry, serving as a secondary support for readers who already knew the poetry well. Training in writing simply allowed such reader-reciters to use textual helps in memorization, review, and accurate recitation—much like the readers depicted in the vase images discussed at the outset of this chapter. As indicated in the foregoing quotes from Plato’s Protagoras and Laws, students were to learn poets “by heart.” Like Pindar reciting the names of victors or Aeschylus remembering a letter, the Greek student eventually had older Greek texts “written on the (tablet) of [their] mind” (Pindar Olympian Odes 10.1–3; Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 788–789; cf. 460–461), much as the gods likewise had texts inscribed on their minds (Aeschylus Eumenides 273–275; P.Oxy XX [1952] 2256, frag. 9a 21; Sophocles, frag. 597; Euripides, frag. 506 N.2).31 Toward this end, teachers and authors provided helps for students. For example, already in Aristotle’s work On Memory we see the recommendation that students link items in a series to letters in the alphabet, using the alphabet sequence learned earliest in education as a structure on which to hang more complex items gained later on.32 Moreover, the very structure of texts facilitated their own memorization. In Homer we see the use of the chiastic structure for ordering material, a mode that helped reciters solve the age-old problem of organizing poetic units in their proper order.33 In addition, as Parry, Lord, and others have often observed, literature like Homer is dense with other elements

28. Rosalind Thomas, “Prose Performance Texts: Epideixis and Written Publication in the Late Fifth and Early Fourth Centuries,” in Yunis, Written Texts, 162–88. 29. Robb, Literacy and Paideia, 21–35, 44–62. 30. L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 2–3. 31. These and other citations are given in Rudolf Pfeiffer, A History of Classical Scholarship: From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 26, and Alfred Burns, “Athenian Literacy in the Fifth Century B.C,” Journal of the History of Ideas 42 (1981): 376. For discussion of ancient and medieval controversies surrounding the “heart” and “mind” see Carruthers, Book of Memory, 48. 32. Carruthers, Book of Memory, 109–15. 33. For an overview of evidence in Homer and other literature see Stephen A. Nimis, “Ring Composition and Linearity in Homer,” in MacKay, Signs of Orality, 65–78. For a study of similar principles in art see Anne MacKay, Deirdre Harrison, and Samantha Masters, “The Bystander at the Ringside: Ring-Composition in Early Greek Poetry and Vase Painting,” in MacKay, Signs of Orality, 115–42.

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that would have aided memorized recall of the text: use of standard sequences of epithets, repetition of the same sequence at the outset of several lines, repetition of broader speeches, and so on.34 Of course, students—particularly those who progressed to higher levels of education—gained increasing ability to read new texts. Equipped with a repertoire of widespread phraseology and vocabulary from their memorization of key texts like Homer, such students would have learned to read unfamiliar poetic texts. Moreover, many literate people would have used their literacy to decipher business or legal documents that they had not seen before, usually texts characterized by a high degree of formulaic predictability. Nevertheless, the data suggests that writing generally functioned—outside business and legal contexts—as a tool for reinforcement of existing knowledge of cultural texts, rather than as an access point for introduction to previously unknown material.

The Curriculum and Ends of Ancient Greek Education As we have seen, writing was not an end in itself in early Greek discussions of education, nor was it a practical tool for doing a particular job. On the contrary, practical education was ridiculed as coarse and typical of the masses.35 As a result, our older sources—skewed toward elites as they are—tell us little about the training of menial scribes responsible for copying and drafting documents. Their training may well have been similar to that of the aristocracy, but we have less to go on. Yet this is not as major a difference from the “scribal” cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt as it first appears. For, as we saw there, the training of “scribes” in such cultures often was an enculturation of elites who performed few, if any, scribal functions. Toward that end, Near Eastern administrators and leaders read and internalized a corpus of lists, instructions and literary texts, most of which did not teach competencies typically associated with an everyday “scribe.” Classical Greek education focused on learning of the great Greek poets of the past. We already saw this in Plato’s Laws (810e–811a), where Plato has the “Athenian” describe in detail how the people of his city use writing in different ways to gain mastery of the poets. Such instruction in texts equipped students to use writing in the ever expanding circles of law and business, circles in which writing was increasingly used in classical Greece. Nevertheless, in the most direct sense, this memorization and recitation of older poets prepared a

34. The classic overview is Lord, Singer of Tales. See also Albert Lord, “Memory, Meaning and Myth in Homer and Oral Epic Tradition,” in Oralita`: Cultura, Letteratura, Discorso: Atti del Convegno Internazionale, ed. B. Gentili and G. Apioni (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1985), 37–63. For linkage of this work to psychological research on memory see Rubin, Memory in Old Traditions, 194–226. 35. See, for example, Isocrates, Antidosis, 261–265. For broader discussion, H. I. Marrou, “Education and Rhetoric,” in The Legacy of Greece: A New Appraisal, ed. M. I. Finley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 192–93.

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student to do what Strepsiades asked of Phidippides in Aristophanes’ Clouds— the ability to take a myrtle branch after a banquet and sing forth the ancient songs from memory (1353–1374): I will indeed tell you how our name-calling first started. You’ll recall that we were having a feast. First of all I asked him to pick up his lyre and sing a song by Simonides, the one about how Ram got shorn, and he right away said it was old fashioned to play the lyre and sing at a drinking party, like a woman hulling barley . . . And he said that Simonides was a bad poet! I only just put up with it, but I did put up with it at first. Then I asked him if he would at least take a myrtle sprig and sing me something from the works of Aeschylus. And he right away said, “In my opinion, Aeschylus is chief among poets—chiefly full of noise, incoherent, a windbag, a maker of lofty locutions.” Can you imagine how that jolted my heart? But I bit back my anger and said, “All right then, recite something from these modern poets, that brainy stuff, whatever it is.” And he right away tossed off some speech by Euripides about how a brother, god save me, was screwing his sister by the same mother! I couldn’t put up with it any longer, but right away started pelting him with lots of nasty, dirty words. (Henderson, LCL) The ability to recite such text was part of what marked one as belonging to the elite class who would share a banquet. As the interchange depicted by Aristophanes between Strepsiades and Phidippides shows, there was some disagreement toward the end of the fifth century about exactly what poets should be learned and recited by the proper aristocrat. Strepsiades beats Phidippides for wanting to sing a bawdy part of Euripides instead of older poetry by Simonides or Aeschylus. Moreover, Plato’s Laws in the mid–fourth century indicates an ongoing dispute between those who expect a more comprehensive mastery of the poets and those who develop anthologies to aid more restricted learning (Laws 810e-811a). Within this context, it is notable that grammata begins to appear as a separate subject of study around the time that students begin studying tragedians like Euripides alongside the older poets. Previously, mousike¯ had encompassed all elements that led to the memorization and musically accompanied recitation of poetry. But as the curriculum broadened beyond the “lyric” and other poetic traditions, we start to see more use of the term grammata to refer to education in literacy that could serve an increasing variety of memorization/recitation ends. Be that as it may, certain poets such as Homer enjoyed a particularly central place in the literature that was memorized and recited. Plato’s Socrates mentions the writings of Homer along with Hesiod as key examples of the false tales that everyone includes in education despite the fact that they could never truly teach virtue (Republic 377d). Nicoratus in Xenophon’s Symposium proclaims, “My father, wishing me to become a good man made me learn the

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whole of Homer, so that even today I can still recite the Iliad and the Odyssey by heart” (III.5).36 And we see numerous instances in Hesiod, Pindar and other later poets of the author’s free use of memorized fragments from Homer (and other early poets) in the composition of new poetic works.37 Overall, Homer is taken as the paradigmatic example of poetic literature that could inspire goodness by example. The student learned from ancient portrayals of heroes in Homer age-old Greek values such as love of glory, the virtue of cunning, and the importance of preservation of honor.38 These were the ethical benefits which all agreed were the primary aim of mousike¯ (and grammata insofar as it supported mousike¯). As Plato’s Protagoras argues, students are taught mastery of the good poets “so that the child may be inspired to imitate them and long to be like them” (Protagoras 326a).39 It appears that this education often happened on a small scale. Aristophanes “Right Reasoning” character in Clouds recalls how students used to march to the home of the harp master (964) or gymnastics teacher (973) for education in small groups. In the fourth century we also see the emergence of schools like the Pythagorean school, Plato’s Academy, and Aristotle’s Lyceum, which were religious associations devoted to the Muses, with separate buildings, festivals, and observances. Meanwhile, the sophists followed the model of what Marrou calls “collective tutoring,” where students would work in small groups with a famous teacher, who was paid.40 Such pay contrasted with earlier ideals of education that were based in a student-teacher relationship of emotional and often physical love.41 Within such earlier contexts, there was always a clear distinction in power and prestige between teacher and student. Nevertheless, this type of intellectual-homoerotic relationship was quite different from that seen in the father-son hierarchical relationships of the Sumero-Akkadian and Egyptian examples. As we look closer, it becomes ever more apparent that this often intimate education in Homer and other poetic classics was about much more than the learning of certain ethical principles or imitation of great heroes of the past. It was the induction of a student into an elite male culture where the poetic tradition served as a cultural text on multiple levels. On the most micro level, we see texts of poetry used in small-scale education of the sort testified to by a few vases and texts. This prepared a student to recite the epic tradition (or parts of it)—often without the aid of text—in the context of private symposia. During the drinking after the meal, the men would pass the staff or myrtle

36. Translation adapted from Marrou, with the replacement of Marrou’s “accomplished man” with the more literal “good man” for ane¯r agathos. 37. For some surveys see Gregory Nagy, Pindar’s Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Havelock, Literate Revolution, 23, 234–56; Robb, Literacy and Paideia, esp. 23–31. 38. Marrou, History of Education, 10–13. 39. Translation adapted from Guthrie, “Protagoras,” 322. 40. Marrou, History of Education, 49. 41. Marrou, History of Education, 26–35.

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branch and recite from the epic tradition they had mastered as youths.42 Elsewhere, there was still a higher level of circulation of these texts, one that formed a broader cultural community: the recitation of the epic tradition at panHellenic festivals or the court by bards particularly skilled in the tradition. Indeed, many have argued that the origins of the stabilized Homeric tradition lie in such recitation, perhaps beginning with the mid-sixth century process attested to by Plato in his Hipparchus (228b–c):43 Hipparchus of Philaı¨dae, who was the eldest and wisest of Pisistratus’s sons, and who, among the many goodly proofs of wisdom that he showed, first brought the poems of Homer into this country of ours, and compelled the rhapsodes at the Panathenaea to recite them in relay, one man following on another, as they still do now . . . All this he did from a wish to educate the citizens in order that he might have subjects of the highest excellence. (Lamb, LCL) Here again we see the familiar link of recitation and moral excellence, only now the education occurs on the level of public festival. Education prepared adults to be full participants in this range of events where a broader “Greek” community was formed through shared epic memory.44 And the education continued through the reinforcement of such shared memory in both private and public contexts.45 The poetic tradition was, in a sense, a second language for those educated into it. As a result of memorizing a poet like Homer, students not only gained ability in his Ionic Greek, but they also gained a repertoire of themes, phrases, characters and plots that they then could incorporate into their oral and written speech. All this does not mean, however, that Greece achieved anything like general literacy. Though many have argued that the introduction of the alphabet in Greece resulted in the first generally literate public, more recent studies have questioned that idea. In particular, William Harris’s 1989 study, Ancient Literacy, showed that past studies of literacy had failed to take account of several key factors that limited training in literacy in the ancient Greco-Roman world: the society’s predominantly rural character, the limited uses of literacy in the society, and the relative expense of educating people to higher levels of literacy. Although many past and present scholars have referred to the practice of ostracism to justify assumptions of widespread literacy in fifth to fourth century Athens, even that would only justify the assumption that 15 percent of the adult male population reached a level of semiliteracy. Morris concludes that, at most, 5 percent of the population (including slaves and women) achieved a higher

42. Mark Griffith, “ ‘Public’ and ‘Private’ in Early Greek Institutions of Education,” in Education in Greek and Latin Antiquity, ed. Yun Lee Too (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 43–59. 43. Gregory Nagy, “An Evolutionary Model for the Text Fixation of Homeric Epos,” in Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord, ed. John Miles Foley (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1981), 390–93; Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, 1. 44. Nagy, Pindar’s Homer, 21–22, 54–81; Havelock, Preface to Plato, 120. 45. Griffith, “ ‘Public’ and ‘Private.’ ”

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level of fully functional literacy.46 Higher levels of literacy—30–40 percent of the free male population—were not achieved until the Hellenistic period, and even then, only in select urban contexts prior to the Roman period.47 Subsequent responses to Harris’s work have tended to confirm his basic correction of earlier anachronistic assumptions of widespread literacy in ancient Greece, though they have further nuanced his emphases on different sorts of literacy.48 Meanwhile, it is becoming increasingly clear that the alphabet was not the immediate and unqualified success it is often asserted to be, even within parts of the Greek world that knew it.49 The relative simplicity of the Greek alphabetic system may have meant that a broader range of Greeks achieved various levels of so-called “vulgar” literacy, whereby people could learn to sign their names, read familiar words, and/or perform basic business functions with letters. Nevertheless, this was not “literacy” in key ways that counted in Greek society. Contemporary concepts of “literacy”—including those often used in recent debates—are all too shaped by a highly limited focus on reading and writing competence, a focus that has a very particular background in European and North American social history.50 What appears to have mattered more in ancient Greek culture was a much broader “literacy” in the standard works of the tradition, a “literacy” that marked someone as a full participant in the ancient Greek polis. This “literacy”—like its correlates in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt— was possessed almost exclusively by elites. To be sure, these Greek elites were not identified in the same way, partly because of different attitudes toward writing in these different cultures. As we saw, the elites in text-loving cultures like Mesopotamia and Egypt were at least nominally denoted as “scribes” even when their responsibilities involved minimal writing. Ancient Greece, in contrast, only obliquely and gradually linked skill in reading/writing (grammata) with its elite. The fully educated depicted in classical Greek traditions, though they could read, were not first and foremost “scribes.” Instead, they were citizen participants in the broad, but still elite, form of democracy emerging in the ancient Greek polis. Only they had progressed beyond a rudimentary grasp of letters to achieve mastery of the poetic tradition. Only they were culturally marked by their competence in the “second language” of the earlier Greek tradition.

46. W. V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 328. 47. Harris, Ancient Literacy, 329. 48. For a sampling of scholarly responses to Harris’s work see, for example, J. H. Humphrey, ed., Literacy in the Roman World, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series (Ann Arbor, MI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1991). Though some have raised concerns about the selectivity of preserved sources and the need for more sensitivity to different sorts of literacy, Harris’s work has corrected prior enthusiastic, anachronistic projections of general literacy into the classical and Hellenistic worlds. On the contexts of literacy see also Griffith, “ ‘Public’ and ‘Private,’ ” 66–68. 49. See especially Anna Morpurgo Davies, “Forms of Writing in the Ancient Mediterranean World,” in The Written Word: Literacy in Transition, ed. Gerd Baumann (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 23–50. 50. For some discussion of this background see Pattison, On Literacy; B. V. Street, Literacy in Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Graff, Legacies, and the summary of research in Collins, “Literacy and Literacies.”

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In sum, though the Greek alphabet is often celebrated as a revolution in simplicity that allowed a broad public to read and write, Greek education—like Mesopotamian and Egyptian education—served a process of class formation. The mere ability to read and write was ridiculed as a competence that even a sausage seller or dog might attain. What was far more important was the ability to participate in the recitals of the ancient epic tradition that created panHellenic culture and helped define the elite classes within it. Education in literacy played an important role in gaining that ability. Nevertheless, such education was aimed at achievement of a basic literacy that could enable a young Greek to use a typical reader-unfriendly Greek manuscript as a reference point for his or another’s recitation of a memorized tradition.

The Creation and Depiction of Greek Cultural Texts As we have seen, the Greek written and pictorial evidence presents us with a complex blend of textuality and orality in the transmission and use of core cultural texts like Homer. On the one hand, the primary focus was on the orality of such texts. They were meant for performance. Moreover, we don’t see the same mystique surrounding written copies of these texts that we often find in Mesopotamia or Egypt, particularly in later periods. On the other hand, written texts do play an important, albeit subsidiary, role in the transmission of these cultural texts. Though training in phonetic literacy is sometimes denigrated as a preliminary, virtually worthless form of education in some sources, written texts appear to have played an increasing role in the training of Greeks for performance of the cultural tradition. Jan Assmann proposes a category of “pragmatic literacy” that nicely encompasses this ambiguity in priorities: a textuality in which written texts serve as an ancillary support for a primarily oral compositional, transmissional, and performance process. This ambiguity in the Greek sources themselves is sometimes reflected in scholarly theories about the creation of Greek literature. One school of thought—most prominently represented by the Parry-Lord school of oraltraditional composition—has argued that Greek texts were composed in an exclusively oral context and transmitted orally up until a fairly late period in Greek history. This approach has been supported by Lord’s and others’ study of elements in Homeric epic (and other poetic texts) that would enable a bard to memorize and perform a massive piece without textual help—elements such as density of formulae, poetic forms, themes, music, and so on. Yet such approaches, focused on oral-traditional orality, have been contradicted by other recent research that has argued persuasively that the Homeric tradition was written down already in the eighth century. Certainly, as discussed earlier, there is strong evidence for the use of writing to aid performance from the early fifth century onward. A brief detour may illuminate this mix of evidence for both oral and written transmission of Greek (and other) literature. Terrence Deacon, a biological anthropologist, and others have suggested an evolutional model that might

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explain the mix of indicators of orality and written textuality that are invoked by the aforementioned streams in classical scholarship. In the process of arguing that language is not hard-wired into the human brain as some sociobiologists would argue, Deacon urges thinking of a linguistic system in terms of a symbiotic parasite, that is, a parasite that has evolved to aid the survival of its host, even as its host evolves to aid the survival of the parasite. An example of such a symbiotic parasite in nature would be the endosymbiont in termites, a parasite that provides a crucial enzyme that allows termites to break down cellulose. Such symbiotic relationships in nature tend to encourage both partners to evolve to align their reproductive and survival processes. In the case of human culture, the human impetus to make sure that a given cultural set— language, text, ritual, art, and so on—is ingested by children and passed on to the next generation stands as a way human societies have evolved to encourage the reproduction of the cultures they host. Such cultural elements themselves have evolved to be more easily transferable and to support (or at least not contradict) the survival of the societies that “host” them. We see the dying out of those cultural elements—a sort of symbolic DNA—that are not easily transmittable or that lead to the self-destruction of the society that “hosts” them.51 The point of this detour is to suggest that the poetic and formulaic elements often pointed to by the oral-traditional school might be characteristics of written Greek epic that evolved to support its oral transmission within early Greek society. Over time, those elements of the written Greek tradition that promoted oral transmission survived, while elements of the literary tradition that lacked such mnemonic capacity were dropped, metaphorically “dying out.” As I have argued earlier, the Greek textual-educational system was oriented primarily around training for oral performance, however much it used written texts as a support for training and reference. This textually supported system was a crucial way in which Greek culture reproduced itself, while reproducing key parts of the poetic tradition—for example, Homer—in the process. To extend Deacon’s evolutionary metaphor just one step further, the written text served the function in this context of providing a stable form of cultural “DNA” for the training, transmission, and appreciation of the cultural tradition. Compared to purely oral texts, the written texts were a cultural form that mutated relatively little. As a result, they allowed for greater stability in cultural reproduction. At the same time, because Greek written texts supported a largely oral process, they encoded forms of the cultural tradition that lent themselves to oral learning and recitation: formulaic density, repeating themes, and so on. The transmission of such texts was not left to such oral-traditional elements, at least not in the centuries immediately preceding the Hellenistic period. Instead, written texts provided a subsidiary, but necessary, stable bedrock for a process focused on oral performance in class-specific contexts.

51. This entire discussion is dependent on the formulation in Terrence W. Deacon, The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain (New York: Norton, 1997), 110–15. He notes (468, n. 3) many earlier precursors to this approach, from the mid–nineteenth century onward.

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This mix of factors then would explain how Greek written cultural texts evolved to display such a density of oral characteristics. They are the preeminent oral-written texts, serving a process of cultural reproduction. Yet they also may be a pointer to a phenomenon of parallel evolution in other cultures where the oral-written matrix is less thoroughly documented by both text and art. For, as we have seen, both Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultural traditions feature their own mix of characteristics that would facilitate the memorization and oral performance of their key texts. Previous scholars have noted the widespread presence of formulae, poetic lines, and music in the Sumero-Akkadian tradition. And we found a similar predominance of metrical, episodic, and repetitive structures in Egyptian literature, again features that would have aided the “reproduction” of the tradition and its passing on to subsequent generations. On closer examination, some of these features are similar to each other and the Greek instance—such as the presence of poetic lines, the emphasis on oral performance, and the linkage of text and music. Like language universals, such features represent the parallel evolution of certain types of cultural DNA to fit similar structures of the memorizing human mind and society. Other oral elements of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian traditions are not shared with each other or with ancient Greece. In this sense, we are looking at distinctive forms of culture, evolving within different cultural environments and building on different cultural precursors.

The Greek Textual Tradition in Comparison The foregoing reflections show a variety of similarities and differences between the Greek textual matrix and its Mesopotamian and Egyptian counterparts. First and foremost, the writing system and the teaching materials are different, at least in the case of Greece of the sixth and following centuries. To be sure, Greece of an earlier period used a pictographic system much more like the Mesopotamian and Egyptian sign-systems, and we have a limited cache of sign and lexical lists from ancient Mycenae that are analogous to the scribal lists seen in the Mesopotamian and late Egyptian instances.52 Such lists were probably used to train scribal masters analogous to those found in the Near East. Nevertheless, this ancient, pictographically oriented Greek scribal matrix did not survive into later periods, and the alphabet-based system of later Greece used different materials toward different ends. The sole list that played a prominent role in classical Greek education was the abecedary, already attested on an early Etruscan jug. Epic texts like Homer took the place of the lexical lists of Mesopotamia or the key wisdom instructions of Egypt. Finally, the aim of classical Greek education was no longer to train a textually expert scribal elite, but instead to form an aristocratic elite of Greek citizens, defined in part by

52. See A. Heubeck, Aus der Welt der fru¨hgriechischen Lineartafeln (Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1966), esp. 12, for an overview of the materials.

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their ability to orally perform the cultural tradition in contexts like the symposia, and to appreciate such performances, both there and in broader dramatic-festival settings. The curriculum at the core of Greek education performance is identified differently from the Mesopotamian or Egyptian exemplars. At least for Athenian students, the classic Greek texts are not set apart in the same way from everyday utterance as Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultural texts. Though texts like Homer were composed in an Ionic dialect somewhat different from the students’ Attic, such students did not have to undergo much of a process of language acquisition to appreciate them. Generally, it was the Greek texts’ poetic form and link to song that set them apart as special speech. The Greek tradition did not make the same claims about its core texts that were made in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Though there are some brief claims for inspiration by the Muses at the outset of Homeric and other early works (e.g. Iliad 1.1; Odyssey 1.1, 10; 8.481, 488), this idea seems to have decreased rather than increased in prominence.53 Moreover, we do not generally see claims that Homer’s Iliad or other key texts derive from a chain of scribes or were composed before the flood. Instead, the authority of cultural texts often seems to reside in the authorial personages themselves: Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, and other key poets. In this sense, the Greek example is perhaps closer to the Rameside Egyptian one, where there is increasing agreement—though it is still fluid— on core authors (// Egyptian sages) who are the source of cultural power, rather than just a core group of largely anonymous texts. The key difference from the Egyptian example is that virtually all of the authors in the Greek tradition have multiple works associated with them, while that is true of only one central Egyptian sage, Kheti. This, then, opens the opportunity in Greece (and the Hellenistic world) for the creation and attribution of yet more works to these authoritative authors and the concomitant entry of such works into the stream of Greek education.54 Sometimes, indeed, authors themselves issued multiple editions of their works, while the manuscript traditions of some texts show evidence of interpolations by actors and others. Overall, most such traditions show the oral-written dynamics observed in previously discussed cultures: nonsignificant variants, nonstemmatic relationships between manuscript families, and so on.55 There are both similarities and differences between the role of written texts in Greece and the role of texts in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian systems. As in those systems, written copies were used to learn, review, and correct recitation

53. Johannes Leipoldt and Siegfried Morenz, Heilige Schriften: Betrachtungen zur Religionsgeschichte der antiken Mittelmeerwelt (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1953), 34. Note the reflections on the unusually nontextualized character of Greek religion in Albert Henrichs, “Writing Religion: Inscribed Texts, Ritual Authority, and the Religious Discourse of the Polis,” in Yunis, Written Texts, 38–41. 54. I have been most helped on this by a relatively old study, A. Gu¨demann, “Literary Frauds Among the Greeks,” in Classical Studies in Honour of Henry Drisler (New York: Macmillan, 1894), 52–74. 55. For an overview of these issues in early Greek texts see W. C. West, Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1973), 15–17.

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of poetic texts—both in educational contexts and early symposia. Nevertheless, libraries of such educational-enculturational texts are not well attested in the earliest periods. The most famous example is the Athenian Metroon, where Lycurgus deposited copies of three key tragedians for the purpose of reference and control.56 Aristotle’s book collection in his Lyceum is one other major example of a library, in this case a teacher-scholar’s library, which is passed on to his successor teacher-scholar, Theophrastus.57 His library may have been distinguished by virtue of its owner or its unusual comprehensiveness, but other teachers probably had copies of many texts they taught. It is not until the Hellenistic period, however, that we see more widespread attestation of private libraries, a book trade, and larger royal libraries like those of Alexandria and Pergamon.58 Overall, ancient Greek education and textual production took place in somewhat different institutional contexts from those of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Perhaps because of the democratic form of government in Athens, our largely Athenian sources for early Greek textuality and education lack attestation of royal sponsorship of education and library collections. Where the temple and priesthood were increasingly prominent in the transmission of Mesopotamian and Egyptian texts, the Greek cult appears to have played an ever more subsidiary role in transmission of key Greek texts. Where both the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians attached a special mystique to written copies of texts, the ancient Greeks do not appear to have done so. In general, we need to be careful not to overread Plato’s anxiety about texts as characteristic of all of early Greek culture. Nevertheless, in addition to Plato’s critique of the use of texts for cultural transmission we have the relative silence of Greek sources about the role of texts in that process and the accuracy of their reproduction. Finally, in comparison with Mesopotamia and Egypt, textual competence in ancient Greece appears to have been less closely connected to specific occupations and more connected to membership in a broadly defined aristocratic elite. To be sure, the “scribes” who were educated in both Mesopotamia and Egypt do not always appear to have done jobs that ended up requiring regular use of writing. Nevertheless, it appears that both of those cultures required a literate education in the cultural tradition to assume certain roles in palace or temple administrations. In contrast, text-supported education in Greece was not oriented toward producing identifiable “scribes,” nor was it apparently required to assume specific roles in a palace or temple administration. Instead, it produced citizens capable of reproducing and appreciating the cultural tradition as it was performed in a variety of contexts, as well as functioning in a

56. For more on the dating and use of this archive see W. C. West, “The Public Archives in Fourth-Century Athens,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 30 (1989): 529–43. 57. Bernhard Knox, “Books and Readers in the Greek World,” in Cambridge History of Classical Literature, ed. P. E. Easterling and B.M.W. Knox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 13–14. 58. F. G. Kenyon, Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), 18–25; Widman, “Herstellung und Vertrieb des Buches,” 603–10; Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, 2–4.

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society where writing was increasingly used for a variety of economic, legal, and other functions. Already we have seen this mix of similarity and distinctiveness of textualeducational systems in Mesopotamia, in the cultures it influenced, and in Egypt. Together with Greece, they present a range of distinctive textually supported enculturation systems. They share a focus on memorization, oral performance, and enculturation of a generation of leaders. In each case, there is a focus on class formation—the separation of a group of students from the whole by their mastery of an older cultural tradition. Yet there are also important differences. We will need to keep this mix of similarity and difference in mind as we turn to the final example of pre-Hellenistic textuality and enculturation in the Near East: pre-Hellenistic Israel.

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6 Textuality and Education in Ancient Israel

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. —Romans 15:4 NRSV The first time we actually have documentation for how the Hebrew Bible is used, it is used in educational contexts. The earliest synagogues were primarily teaching institutions, and the Bible was used first and foremost as a holy teaching tool for the educationenculturation of young Jews (mostly males). Within the early synagogues and nonsynagogal schools students learned to recite and understand biblical texts, learning Hebrew and memorizing the Torah, Psalms, and portions of the prophets.1 Such practices of reading, learning, and memorization of the Bible continue up to the present in many traditional Jewish communities. Despite this early evidence, Christian biblical scholarship has often sharply divided such phenomena in Judaism from the practices of ancient Israel. Building on a long Christian tradition of separation of the “Old Testament” from Judaism, many non-Jewish scholars have presupposed that Jewish usages of biblical texts must be decisively different from their original usage. To some extent this is true: in Israel, as in other cultures, cultural texts were adapted from letters, hymns, display inscriptions, annals, and so on previously used in various settings. Nevertheless, building on the earlier analogies of elite education in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece, this

1. The arguments for these assertions will be given in chapter 10.

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chapter will argue that such biblical texts only joined the stream of longduration usage when they were used to educate and enculturate young Israelites, a usage relatively consistent with later Jewish educational use of the Bible. From the earliest period of their use as Scripture, such (proto)biblical texts served as authoritative reference texts for use in education of literate elites in Israel. There are some significant differences between early and later use of such texts, but the similarities are more significant.

Approaching the Evidence for Textuality and Education in Pre-Hellenistic Israel Before embarking on a survey of the evidence for education and textuality in early Israel, it is important to note ways in which the multiple models of nearby cultures can refine our search. Certainly, both nonbiblical epigraphic evidence and the evidence of the Bible itself testify to some sort of education-textual apparatus in ancient Israel. Over recent decades, archaeologists have uncovered a significant number of ancient Israelite educational texts, correspondence, tax receipts, and graffiti. These finds constitute clearly datable evidence for both education and professional scribal practices in pre-Hellenistic Israel. Moreover, the Hebrew Bible— a complex collection of texts from widely different periods—testifies to a form of cultural reproduction that is intensely textual. Not only do we see frequent references to the use of texts in legal, annalistic, letter-writing and other contexts (e.g. Deut 24:1–4; cf. Jer 32:10–12; Isa 50:1);2 not only does the Bible itself often refer to prior texts and to book-rolls;3 but both narratives and prophecies closely link writing with revelation,4 and key books prominently feature stories of reciting and hearing like those of Josiah’s reform and Ezra’s law-reading (2 Kgs 23:1–3; Neh 7:72b–8:18 [ET 7:73b–8:18]).5 Finally, there is the evidence of the existence of the Hebrew Bible itself, a substantial ancient literature of vary-

2. Some other examples of legal texts include Jer 32:10–14; Job 31:35–36; Neh 7:5, 9:38. Some examples of letter writing narratives can be found at 2 Sam 11:14–15; 1 Kgs 21:8–11; 2 Kgs 5:5–7; 10:1, 5, 6; Isa 37:14 [9–13]// 2 Kgs 19:14 [9–13]; 20:12//Isa 39:1; Jeremiah 29; Ezra 4:7–23; 7:11–26; Neh 6:1–9; Esther 1:21–22; 3:13–14; 9:20– 23, 29; 2 Chr 30:1; 32:17. 3. See, for example, Isa 34:4; Job 31:35 and Jer 36:2 and 32; Ezek 2:8–9; Psalm 40:9 [ET 40:8]; Zech 5:1. We see references to prior texts already in a superscription like Gen 5:1 and in the frequent references to source materials in the historical books: Josh 10:13; 2 Sam 1:18; 1 Kgs 11:41 (//2 Chr 9:29); 14:19(//2 Chr 12:15), 29; 15:7 (//2 Chr 13:22), 23 (//2 Chr 16:11), 31; 16:5, 14, 20, 27; 22:39, 45 (ET 22:46; //2 Chr 20:34); 2 Kgs 1:18 (cf. 2 Chr 24:27); 8:23; 10:34; 12:19 (ET 12:20; //2 Chr 24:27); 13:8, 12; 14:15, 18, 28; 15:6, 11, 15, 21, 26, 31, 36 (//2 Chr 27: 7); 16:19 (// 2 Chr 28:26); 20:20 (//2 Chr 32:32); 21:17 (// 2 Chr 33:18–19), 25; 23:28 (//2 Chr 35:26–27); 24:5 (// 2 Chr 36:8); 1 Chr 9:1; 29:29; 2 Chr 26:22; Esther 10:2. 4. For a sample see Exod 17:14; 24:3–4, 7, 12; 32:15–16; 34:1, 27–29; Deut 4:13–14; 9:10–11; 10:1; 27:2–3, 8; 28:58, 61; 29:19–20, 26 [ET 29:20–21, 27]; 30:10; 31:9, 19–24; Josh 1:8; 8:32–34; 23:6; 24:26–27; 1 Sam 10:25; 1 Kgs 2:32; 2 Kgs 14:6; 17:37; Ezra 3:2–4; Isa 30:8; Jer 30:2; 51:60–61; Ezek 24:1–2; Hos 8:12; Hab 2:2; Neh 10:36; 13:1; 1 Chr 16:40; 2 Chr 23:18; 25:4. 5. For a broader survey see James W. Watts, Reading Law: The Rhetorical Shaping of the Pentateuch, Biblical Seminar (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 15–22.

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ing sorts of material, with superscriptions, subscriptions, and other sorts of evidence pointing to a complex process of production and transmission.6 Insofar as these nonbiblical and biblical texts date from various periods of Israel’s history, they reflect the presence of literate individuals able to write and read them.7 That said, we must be careful about how we conceptualize this process. Past debates about education in ancient Israel occasionally have focused on proving or disproving the existence of separate, identifiable “schools,” sometimes assumed to be much like those that we know today: in separate buildings, staffed by professional teachers deriving their livelihood from student tuition, and oriented toward the education of the general populace.8 Yet the educational systems discussed so far contrast with this contemporary model of education. Indeed, comparative work shows that a model of classroom education toward general literacy is misleading for the cultures chronologically and/or geographically near ancient Israel. As we have seen, much education even in larger cultures like Mesopotamia and Egypt took place not in identifiable, separate “schools” with professional “teachers,” but in an apprenticeship-like atmosphere in the homes or workshops of scribal masters. To be sure, during certain periods there were more clearly identifiable schools in both Egypt and Mesopotamia, and both have separate terms for “school” (Edubba/bı¯t-tfiuppi[m]; t-sb3). Nevertheless, we have also seen that much scribal education-enculturation in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia actually happened in family or family-like arrangements on a fairly small scale. This was certainly widely true in early Greece, where even sophistic masters taking on a group of students worked on a small scale compared with contemporary classrooms. Such small-scale education would be even more typical in a smaller kingdom like Judah. To be sure, some have suggested that kingdoms like those in Mesopotamia and Egypt were so much bigger than those in Judah-Israel that comparative analogies from such larger kingdoms are of little use. Smaller kingdoms like Judah or Israel, so the argument runs, required far less large-

6. On this phenomenon see especially discussions of colophons and superscriptions by M. Fishbane, summarized with relevant literature in Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 26–29. 7. To be sure, some would argue that some of the stories of writing cited earlier could be fictional, but at least their authors had to imagine such processes of writing and reading as plausible at some point in history. 8. See, for example, the arguments for schools in Israel in B. Lang, “Schule und Unterricht in alten Israel,” in La Sagesse de l’Ancien Testament, ed. M. Gilbert (Louvain, Belgium: Louvain University Press, 1979), 186–201 and Lemaire, Les Ecoles, 52–57; Andre´ Lemaire, “Sagesse et e´coles,” VT 34 (1984): 270–81. Note, however, Lemaire’s alternative picture of prophetic schools in Les Ecoles, 51–52, and his important qualifications regarding sites and personnel in schools in Andre´ Lemaire, “The Sage in School and Temple,” in Gammie and Perdue, Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, 167–68. Similar focus on identifiable schools also occurs in critiques of the idea of the existence of “schools” in Israel (e.g., F. W. Golka, “Die israelitische Weisheitsschule oder ‘des kaisers neue Kleider,’ ” VT 33 [1983]: 257–70; translated as “The Israelite Wisdom School or ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes,’ ” in The Leopard’s Spots: Biblical and African Wisdom in Proverbs, by F. W. Golka [Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark]) and qualifications of the idea of widespread schools in Israel (e.g., Graham Davies, “Were There Schools in Ancient Israel?” in Wisdom in Ancient Israel, ed. John Day et al. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995], 199–211; James L. Crenshaw, Education in Ancient Israel: Across the Deadening Silence, AB Reference [New York: Doubleday, 1998], 90–99).

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Figure 1. Relief stela, Bar-Rakib (r. 744–727 B.C.E.) and his scribe. Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource.

scale coordination than the larger empires, and the alphabetic system used in Syro-Canaan was so much easier to use (than cuneiform or hieratic) that extensive scribal training was not required.9 Yet already the Amarna evidence shows that small kingdoms in Syro-Canaan maintained scribes, indeed scribes who corresponded with Egypt using a minimal level of training in a local variant of the Sumero-Akkadian system. Ugarit is another smaller kingdom with an extensive, two-track educational-textual system. Moreover, this evidence continues into early first-millennium kingdoms using alphabetic systems. For example, Mesha, king of Moab, a kingdom in the Transjordan, left a significant stela reflecting an active scribal tradition there. The Tell Dan inscription shows similar language and literary form in a display inscription from Damascus, capital of the Aramean kingdom. And Bar-Rakib took enough pride in his scribal apparatus that he left a stela displaying him with his scribe (figure 1). This evidence, along with numerous seals of scribes from Israel and other first-millennium kingdoms, show that small-scale kingdoms like Judah and Israel maintained scribal-textual systems, often emulating their bigger neighbors and borrowing parts of their systems while working in broader regional

9. Golka, “Israelitische Weisheitsschule,” 264–65 (ET “Israelite Wisdom School,” 10–11) and David W. Jamieson-Drake, Scribes and Schools in Monarchic Judah: A Socio-Archeological Approach, JSOTSup (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1991), 152–54.

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scribal traditions.10 The issue was not just the use of writing to facilitate economic, administrative, and legal transactions but the use of writing to further the prestige of royal dynasties and elites/sub-elites within them. Such smaller kingdoms existed in a broader cultural-political matrix, whereas the monarchs of larger empires displayed their power through the display use of writing (e.g. stelae) and the maintenance of large sub-elites of literate scholars. Whatever the lesser need for writing in administration or business, the epigraphic and literary evidence suggests that kingdoms like Judah or Israel did maintain a scribal-education apparatus, one influenced by the methods and example of larger neighbors, albeit on a smaller scale.11 We have no way of precisely estimating how many literate professionals a kingdom like Judah trained and maintained. Given the fact that many students probably did not live long enough to exercise an administrative office, there was some need for educating more than the children of a given scribe.12 Nevertheless, a small state like Judah probably did not support the educationenculturation of more than a handful of administrative professionals every year or every few years, along with the lower-level education of functionaries for work in outlying regional or cultic centers and garrison towns.13 Some have argued, on the contrary, that ancient Israel was characterized by widespread literacy. The argument often runs that the alphabetic writing system used in Israel, like that in ancient Greece, enabled Israel to achieve a general literacy far beyond the limited scribal literacy typical of societies like Mesopotamia or Egypt.14 Often the epigraphic evidence and certain biblical texts (e.g. Deut 6:9; 24:1–4; Judg 8:14; Isa 10:1–2, 19) are interpreted as testifying to widespread literacy in ancient Israel, at least in the later preexilic period.15 Nevertheless, we must be careful. A closer look at the oft-cited biblical

10. See the survey in William Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 40–45 and the overview of seals of scribes in Y. Avishur and M. Heltzer, Studies on the Royal Administration in Ancient Israel in the Light of Epigraphic Sources (Tel-Aviv: Archaeological Center, 2000), 56– 57. 11. In this sense, Schniedewind himself errs, I would argue, in maintaining that earliest Israel would not have had much scribal activity because its administrative needs were minimal (Bible to Book, 63). Granting that the level of activity was probably lower than the later preexilic period (on this see hereafter), it is a mistake to characterize the scope of textuality-education in one of these kingdoms so purely in terms of administrativeeconomic utility. Class formation and broader dynastic prestige probably played bigger roles early on. 12. This contra Golka, “Israelitische Weisheitsschule,” 263–65 (“Israelite Wisdom School,” 9–10). 13. This model is most cogently developed by A. Lemaire, Les Ecoles, 49–50. On population and textuality see also Ehud Ben Zvi, “The Urban Center of Jerusalem and the Development of the Literature of the Hebrew Bible,” in Urbanism in Antiquity: From Mesopotamia to Crete, ed. Walter Aufrecht et al. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 194–209. For an older and somewhat maximalist but still interesting attempt to reconstruct a few genealogical lines of officials in preexilic Israel on the basis of the Bible and seals (with a particular focus on the seventh century) see S. Yeivin, “Families and Parties in the Kingdom of Judah [Heb.],” Tarbiz 12 (1941–42): 241–67. 14. See, for example, A. Demsky, “Education, Jewish,” Encyclopaedia Judaica 6 (1971): 391. 15. Lorenz B. Du¨rr, Das Erzeihungswesen im Alten Testament und im Antiken Orient (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1932), 106–7; A. Millard, “An Assessment of the Evidence for Writing in Ancient Israel,” in Biblical Archaeology Today, ed. J. Amitai (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1985), 301–12, and the reply of Demsky to Millard in Biblical Archaelogy Today, 351. Lemaire, Les Ecoles, 57–58, argues for general literacy in late preexilic period based on epigraphic evidence.

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texts indicates that they do not testify to general literacy in ancient Israel.16 In addition, the evidence for literacy is concentrated in the late pre-exilic period and is connected to artisans and professional functionaries. Even the important Lachish letter 3, where an army officer displays rudimentary writing competency in the process of refuting charges that he is illiterate, is authored by a member of what would have been an elite minority in Israel.17 As Harris has pointed out, ancient cultures like Greece or Israel simply did not have cause to invest the resources to produce universal literacy.18 Furthermore, as I pointed out in the introduction, we must be careful how we conceive “literacy.” A focus on rudimentary ability to read and write (for example, signing one’s name) is more prominent now than it was in the ancient world. The “literacy” that was the focus of most ancient education went far beyond mastery of the alphabet to a more extensive oral/cognitive mastery of a cultural tradition: for example, Gilgamesh, Kheti, Homer, Hesiod, or Euripides. In light of these considerations, we must approach the evidence for textuality and education in ancient Israel with presuppositions appropriate to education in antiquity. Though there was limited literacy and writing in ancient Israel, we will not find many “schools” of the sort we know from contemporary experience, nor will we find general literacy. With these cautions, I turn to the evidence itself.

Writers and Reading in Ancient Israel When you list those people who are depicted as writing in ancient Israel, it quickly becomes evident that virtually all are some sort of official. Aside from God, who is one of the Bible’s most prolific writers, virtually all writers and readers in the Bible are officials of some kind: scribes, kings, priests, and other bureaucrats.19 Especially starting with the monarchies of David and Solomon, such literate specialists appear to have been important for the international commerce, building projects, censuses, and other larger scale projects of the emergent Israelite state(s). Writing is a key potential organizational tool for such royal administrations, and so credible narratives about the Israelite monarchy include mention of scribal professionals.20 Beginning with the lists of David’s officials, we see the office of the sopher and sopher hammelek (“scribe” and “scribe of the king”) among the lead mem-

16. H. J. Hermisson, Studien zur israelitischen Spruchweisheit, WMANT (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1968), 99–100; S. Warner, “The Alphabet: Its Invention and Diffusion,” VT 30 (1980): 82–85; M. Haran, “On the Diffusion of Literacy and Schools in Ancient Israel,” in Congress Volume: Jerusalem 1986, VTSup (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 82–85; Crenshaw, Education in Ancient Israel, 38–39; M. Young, “Israelite Literacy: Interpreting the Evidence,” VT 48 (1998): 249–53. 17. On ways this letter displays a “quite basic” level of literacy see William Schniedewind, “Sociolinguistic Reflections on the Letter of a ‘Literate’ Soldier (Lachish 3),” Zeitschrift fu¨r Althebraistik 13 (2000): 157–67. 18. Harris, Ancient Literacy, 12–20. 19. M. Young, “Israelite Literacy,” 239–53. 20. Hermisson, Studien, 115–17.

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bers of the king’s entourage. In this case, David’s scribe is named variously as Seraiah (2 Sam 8:17), Sheva (2 Sam 20:25), Shisha (1 Kgs 4:3) and Shavsha (1 Chr 18:16), a series of names that—as mentioned earlier—has been linked to the Egyptian word for “royal secretary.” This scribe’s sons, Elihoreph and Ahijah, are listed as Solomon’s scribes in 1 Kgs 4:3, thus following a pattern of hereditary appointment also seen in the priesthood and other offices (1 Kgs 4: 2–6). The “scribe of the king” is listed, along with the high priest, as counting and paying out money brought to the temple during the long reign of Jehoash over Judah (2 Kgs 12:11–16 [ET 12:10–15]; 2 Chr 24:11).21 The Isaiah-Hezekiah narrative in 2 Kings mentions Shebnah, “the scribe,” among the officials who are described shuttling between the Rabshekah and Hezekiah (2 Kgs 18:18, 37; 19:2//Isa 36:3, 22; 37:2).22 Later on Shaphan is named as “the scribe” in the narrative of the discovery of the law in 2 Kgs 22:3–14//2 Chr 34:8–21 (also Jer 36:10), and Shaphan’s sons and grandsons play a prominent role in narratives surrounding Jeremiah (Jer 26:24; 29:3; 36:10; 39:14; 40:1–41:10). Another figure, Elishama, is listed as “the scribe” during Jehoiakim’s period (Jer 36:12, 20–21), and his son, Ishmael, is later depicted murdering Shaphan’s grandson, Gedaliah (Jer 41:1–10).23 This office of royal scribe is attested outside biblical histories as well. A psalm praising the king at his wedding starts with the Psalmist asserting: “my tongue is like the pen of a skilled scribe” (sopher mahir, Ps 45:2) and Proverbs tells students, “do you see a man skilled (again Hebrew mahir) in his work? He works for kings, he does not work for common people” (Prov 22:29).24 Such royal scribes then contrast with other potential scribal offices, including the royal position of the mazkir (“herald”)25 and the shotfierim (literate officials/officers).26 In addition, the ends of the books of Kings and Jeremiah include a narrative that mentions a “scribe of the commander of the army who mustered the people of the land” (Jer 52:25; 2 Kgs 25:19) among those executed

21. N. Fox’s discussion of the functions of the scribe focuses particularly on this accounting (and related registration) dimension of the scribal office (Service of the King, 101–7, 271–72). 22. Shebna accompanies Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, who holds the role of “one over the palace,” apparently a higher office. Isa 22:15–25 is an oracle pronouncing Shebna’s demotion from that office and Eliakim’s replacement of him. Still, Shebna is included on the lower rank of secretary in these Isaiah-Hezekiah narratives. 23. Cf. also Jonathan, named as scribe during Zedekiah’s reign, Jer 37:15, 20. On these families, cf. Yeivin, “Judean Families and Parties,” 254–55, 261–62. 24. On royal scribes see Otto Procksch, “Der hebraische Schreiber und sein Buch,” in Von Bu¨chern und Bibliotheken, Abschiedsgabe fu¨r E. Kuhnert (Berlin: Von Struppe and Winckler, 1928), esp. 2; J. Begrich, “Sofer und Mazkir,” ZAW 58 (1940–41): 1–29; W. F. Albright, “A Teacher to a Man of Shechem About 1400 B. C,” BASOR 86 (April 1942): 28–31; Hermisson, Studien, 98; A. Demsky, “Scribe,” Encyclopaedia Judaica 14 (1971): 1041–43; Demsky, “Education,” 392; Mettinger, Solomonic State officials, 25–51; Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 23–26. 25. Begrich argues on the basis of comparative evidence that the mazkir corresponds to the Egyptian whm.w, royal speaker. The key loci are 2 Sam 18:16/1 Chr 8:15; 20:24; 1 Kgs 4:3; 2 Kgs 18:18, 37//Isa 36:3, 22; 2 Chr 34:8; cf. Ezek 21:28 [ET 21:23]. For the mazkir as recorder and keeper of annals see esp. Procksch, “Hebraische Schreiber,” 7, but cf. Nili S. Fox, Service of the King, 110–21. 26. Num 11:16; Deut 1:15; 16:18; 20:5–9; 29:9 [ET 29:10]; 31:28; Josh 1:10; 3:2; 8:33; 23:2; 24:1; Prov 6:7; 1 Chr 23:4; 26:29; 27:1; 2 Chr 34:13. Some have suggested that the Hebrew root may be related to Akkadian sˇatfia¯ru, “write, have inscribed,” but see Mankowski, Akkadian Loans, 142–44. For further discussion of the issue, comparative material, and functions of this official see Nili S. Fox, Service of the King, 192–96, 275.

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by the king of Babylon.27 Chronicles includes a story about a scribe of Levitical lineage, Shemaiah, recording the priestly ancestral houses in the presence of the king and other officials (1 Chr 24:6). Nonroyal scribes also appear in various ways in the Jeremiah tradition, including the prominent, positive depiction of the scribe Baruch (Jer 36:1–32; 45:1–5; cf. 32:12–16; 43:3, 6) and the vigorous attack on those who claim to be “wise” and that the “Torah is with [them]” when that Torah has been corrupted by the “lying pen of the scribes” (fit sheqer sopherim, Jer 8:8).28 Finally, scribes appear elsewhere in passing, from the brief mention of those from Zebulun who “bear the staff of the scribe” (mosheqim beshebetfi sopher) in the Song of Deborah (Judg 5:14) to the scribal clans living in Jabez that are listed in Chronicles (1 Chr 2:55) and an enigmatic reference to “the sons of hassopheret” (“the [female] scribe”?) among Solomon’s servants in Ezra 2:55.29 Literacy, however, was hardly confined to those labeled as sopherim (“scribes”) or shotfierim (“literate officials”). Both epigraphic and other evidence testifies to more widespread literacy, especially among kings, priests, and other officials. The finds at Arad and Lachish feature multiple letters from army commanders and one from the governor of Lachish (6:5, 8–9, 13; 12:4), including one where an officer apparently defends his literacy and indignantly asserts his lack of need of a scribe (Lachish 3:8–13).30 In the Bible, multiple kings are described as reading and writing documents (e.g., David, Solomon, Jehu, Hezekiah, and Josiah), and the king’s law in Deuteronomy 17:19 presupposes that any Israelite king would have the ability to read.31 Biblical narratives depict a variety of other figures as possessing at least basic literacy, including Moses (Exod 17:14; 24:7; 34:28; and so on), the head craftsmen constructing the tabernacle (Exod 39:30), three tribal delegates from each tribe on land entry (Josh 18:4), Samuel (1 Sam 10:25), prophets like Isaiah (e.g. Isa 8:1) and Ezekiel (e.g. Ezek 24:2; see also Hab 2:2), priests, and Levites (e.g. Num 5:23; Deut 31:9–11; Neh 8:8). In addition, both the Isaiah and Jeremiah traditions feature broad indictments of groups using writing to oppress the poor (Isa 10: 1–2) or corrupt the Torah of God (Jer 8:8). In sum, writing is not confined to just scribes per se but is thoroughly intertwined with social structures in the poetic and narrative worlds of the Hebrew Bible. Perhaps this is partly why

27. For discussion, including the translation and related literature, see Nili S. Fox, Service of the King, 97 (esp. n. 61). 28. For discussion of other scribes in the book of Jeremiah see especially H.M.I. Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe [Heb.],” in Zalman Shazar Volume, ed. N. Avigad (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1971), 209–10. 29. Scribes aside from the royal scribe are focused on particularly in Procksch, “Hebraische Schreiber,” 3–7; Hermisson, Studien, 98–99; Demsky, “Scribe”; A. Demsky, “Writing in Ancient Israel (part 1),” in Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Martin Jan Mulder (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 16–17. 30. Cf. also graffiti apparently by tomb cutter at Khirbet el Qoˆm. See Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book, 104, for discussion of this and other examples. 31. For the texts: David (2 Sam 11:14–15); Solomon (2 Chr 35:4); Jehoram (2 Kgs 5:7); Jehu (2 Kgs 10:1, 6); Hezekiah (2 Kgs 19:14//Isa 37:14; cf. also Isa 38:9); Josiah (2 Kgs 23:2//2 Chr 34:30). For broader discussion of Deut 17:19 in the context of other claims for royal literacy see Jean-Pierre Sonnet, The Book Within the Book: Writing in Deuteronomy, Biblical Interpretation Series (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 72–78.

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late preexilic texts envision a group of “wise” people who do not just embody the goal of education (Prov 9:9; 10:8, 14; 12:15, 18; 13:14, 20; 14:24; 15:2, 7, 12, 31; 16:21, 23; 18:15; 21:11, 22; 24:23; 29:11) nor are a defined group of sages (e.g. Jer 18:18; cf. 8:8) but instead are judges, officials, and other leaders as well (Deut 1:13–15; Isa 5:21–24; 29:14; cf. Isa 31:1–2). These are the Israelite counterparts to the literate elites of Mesopotamia and Egypt. As in the case of ancient Greece, the issue in Israel is not mastery of an esoteric sign system to achieve literacy but use of literacy to help enculturate, shape the behavior, and otherwise mentally separate an educated upper class from their noneducated peers. Sometimes these literate groups interlock and overlap, especially as we move into later periods. For example, 2 Kings 12:3 asserts that Jehoash, king of Judah, “did what was right in the eyes of the LORD all his life because Jehoida, the priest, taught him” (horahu). Notably, this text seems to presume that education of a king by a priest is not a universal practice. Elsewhere, biblical narratives depict Solomon’s and Ahab’s sons as being brought up in a broader cohort of peers, overseen in Ahab’s case by
omenim//Akkadian umma¯nu (scribal masters) much like the cohorts of high-level sons brought up and educated together in Egypt (1 Kgs 12:8, 10; 2 Kgs 10:1–8; cf. 1 Kgs 11:20).32 Such distinct education of royalty is only attested in the earlier portion of Israel’s monarchy, thus following a pattern of separate royal and priestly scribal offices that is particularly characteristic of early Mesopotamian and Egyptian textuality as well. In later periods of Mesopotamian and Egyptian history, textual education and production were housed more and more exclusively in temple and temple-related institutions.33 Similarly, the aforementioned depiction of Jehoash’s priestly education (2 Kgs 12:3) comes in the late preexilic period of Israel’s history, and the postexilic history of Israel is dominated by the figure of Ezra, who is both priest and scribe. Indeed, the same word, mahir, that is used to describe Ezra’s skill as a scribe is used in Psalm 45:2 (ET 45:1) to describe the sort of linguistic skill once used to praise the king (cf. Prov 22: 29; also Ahiqar 1:1), but now Ezra is a scribe “skilled” in the “Torah of Moses” (Ezra 7:6; sopher mahir betorat mosheh; cf. Ps 45:2 [ET 45:1]) or, in a subsequent context, “scribe of the scroll of the words of the commandments of YHWH and God’s decrees for Israel” (7:11) or—in the Aramaic letter—“scribe of the law of heaven” (7:21).34 In sum, we have widespread evidence for literate specialists and literate officials in early Israel, particularly in the monarchy early and in the temple later. Yet even this evidence must be interpreted with caution. Though these texts present pictures that authors and audiences found plausible, many narratives are almost certainly not historically reliable. In addition, it is sometimes

32. For the Egyptian links see especially Hermisson, Studien, 117–18; Lemaire, Les Ecoles, 35–36. 33. M. Bar-Ilan, “Scribes and Books in the Late Second Commonwealth and Rabbinic Period,” in Mulder, Mikra, 22; Lemaire, “Sage in School in Temple,” 180; Crenshaw, Education in Ancient Israel, 112–13. 34. See also Neh 8:1, 4, 9, 13. Procksch, “Hebraische Schreiber,” 12; Du¨rr, Erziehungswesen, 396; Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 35–36; Lemaire, “Sage in School in Temple,” 180.

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unclear precisely what is meant when a text asserts that a given king or other figure “writes” or “reads.” For example, Jeremiah 36:2 describes Jeremiah as receiving an order to take a book scroll (megillat sepher) and write down God’s words. Jeremiah himself, however, does not write down these words but calls Baruch, who writes down the words dictated by Jeremiah on a book roll (36: 4).35 Examples like this—however fictional—of putative reading/writing versus “actual” reading/writing raise questions about other instances in which a king (e.g. David), other major figure (e.g. Jezebel in 1 Kgs 21:8–11), or group of people (e.g. Neh 9:3) is described as writing or reading.36 The biblical narratives of writing and reading generally presuppose or are consistent with pictures elsewhere of ancient cultures where the majority of the population does not read and relies on literate professionals in those instances where writing is required. The primary word for “read,” qara
, also means “call or cry out” and refers to a process by which a text is verbalized, usually for the benefit of a hearing audience.37 The word refers to public reading in Deuteronomy 31:10–13, a command that the Torah be read in the hearing of all Israel during the feast of booths in the year of remission. This instruction is followed by several narratives where major characters (e.g., Joshua, Josiah, Ezra) are described as reading the Torah to all Israel at major occasions (Josh 8:32–35; 2 Kgs 23:1–3; Neh 7:72b–8:18 [ET 7:73b–8:18]).38 Indeed, in Nehemiah 8:7–8 the Levites are even required to help the people understand what they hear, perhaps because the Torah is in Hebrew and many in the audience are seen as Aramaic speakers. In any case, when the Levites of the Nehemiah narrative thus teach at the public reading, they fulfill the role of teaching often attributed to them through much of the Bible (e.g. Deut 17:9–12; 31:9–13; 33: 10; 2 Chr 19:8–11; cf. Hos 4:6). In addition to such public readings and instruction, literate specialists also played a role on a smaller scale. For example, Jeremiah is described as relying on Baruch both to write his words of prophecy (e.g. Jer 36:4, 32; 45:1) and to provide safekeeping for legal documents (Jer 32:12–16).39 Furthermore, Persian period legal documents from Elephantine and Wadi ed-Daliyeh attest to the use of scribal professionals for a variety of legal and economic transactions, documents whose signatories often display a radically unpracticed hand compared to the drafters of the documents themselves.40 Various biblical texts pre-

35. Cf. also Esth 8:8–9 for a similar sequence. This example also comes from M. Young, “Israelite Literacy,” 248. 36. Cf. Demsky, “Writing,” 14. 37. Daniel Boyarin, “Placing Reading: Ancient Israel and Medieval Europe,” in The Ethnography of Reading, ed. Jonathan Boyarin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 12–16. 38. Indeed, Nehemiah 8:8–9 even describes the Levites as providing additional aid to the people to understand that which is read to them. Other texts that presuppose a dependence of the public on Levitical instruction include Deut 17:9–12; 33:10; and Hosea 4:6. 39. Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe,” 211–13. 40. E. Puech, “Les E´coles dans l’Israe¨l pre´exilique: donne´es e´pigraphiques,” in Congress Volume: Jerusalem 1986, VTSup (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 200.

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suppose that writing was used for various transactions in everyday life, such as inscribing Torah words on door posts and gates (Deut 6:9; 11:20), recording divorce (Deut 24:1–4; Jer 3:8; Isa 50:1), possession of property (Isa 8:1; 44:5; Jer 32:12–16), indictments (Job 31:35; cf. 13:26), genealogy (e.g. Neh 7:5), lack of descendants (Jer 22:30; cf. Ps 87:6), and participation in an agreement (Neh 10:1).41 Nevertheless, as in other cultures surrounding Israel, those nonliterate citizens who occasionally required such documents probably relied on literate professionals to help them. The frequency of need for such scribes probably approached our contemporary need for lawyers—more frequent for those of higher status, much more occasional for those without significant resources to distribute or defend.42 Thus, one must make a clear distinction in the Bible between those who know how to read (“know scroll[s]”; yodea hassepher/seporot; Isa 29:11; Ps 71:15) and those who do not. Though we encounter young men (Heb. naar) who can read in Judges 8:14 and Isa 10:19, they would represent youths (a non-Israelite youth in Judg 8:14) who had received early training rather than being evidence for any sort of general literacy.43 Not only does the foregoing evidence conform much more to a picture of limited literacy, but—as Susan Niditch has pointed out—writing throughout the Bible often has the numinous, magical aura that it particularly has in those cultures where only a minority of people can read. The Pentateuchal narrative features multiple descriptions of God’s divine writing and the deposit of the holy tablets of the law in the ark (e.g. Exod 31:18; 32: 16; 34:1; Deut 4:13; 9:10; 10:2, 4; see also 2 Kgs 17:37). The Korah story features an account in which the names of the ancestral houses are written on twelve staffs, and the primacy of the tribe of Levi/Aaron is indicated when it sprouts buds, blossoms, and almonds (Num 17:16–28 [ET 17:1–13]). Similarly, the future joining of Judah and Joseph is indicated in Ezekiel when God joins two sticks, one with “for Judah” written on it and one with “for Joseph” (Ezek 37:16–28). The ritual for determining the guilt of a woman accused of adultery includes a priest writing down curses on a tablet, washing it off into water of bitterness (me-hammarim), and making the accused woman drink that water so that, if guilty, she feels pain and suffers some sort of reproductive consequence (Num 5:23–28). These and many other narratives show the supernatural power writing was perceived to have in ancient Israel.44 Even when biblical stories and laws describe the inscribing of parts of houses or monuments with texts from the Torah (e.g. Deut 6:9; 11:20; 27:2–3; Josh 8:30–32), this again represents the luminous presence of letters probably unintelligible to the average Israelite. As

41. Albright, “Teacher”; Demsky, “Education,” 392–94; Millard, “Evidence for Writing.” 42. This is supported by the few occasions where the party to such a transaction is named, e.g., Isaiah (Isa 8:1); Job (Job 31:35) and the returnees with Nehemiah (Neh 10:1). 43. See M. Young, “Israelite Literacy,” 250 on the elite associations of several naarim elsewhere in the Bible. 44. Niditch, Oral World and Written Word, 78–88. See also James L. Crenshaw, “Transmitting Prophecy Across Generations,” in Ben Zvi and Floyd, Writings and Speech, 41.

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in early Greece, the writing on such monuments and other inscriptions lent them additional power as memorials and displays. They were not intended for the communication of information to the masses.45 One might argue that the biblical concentration on the literacy of scribes and other officials might just derive from the fact that so much of the Bible focuses on such high-level figures rather than on everyday people, but nonbiblical texts from ancient Israel confirm the foregoing picture of limited literacy. Aside from the clear educational texts (to be discussed later), other extant letters and other documents show clear signs of having been produced by professional, literate specialists. As Emile Puech in particular has argued, the scripts and spelling of many documents are standardized; errors are rare; and—as in Mesopotamia and Egypt—the letters and other documents have been crafted following clear formulae and generic conventions.46 The writers of these documents were not just trained in the Hebrew alphabet, simple as it is, but had received a broader training that included standard spellings and textual templates. Other cultures, such as the Neo-Punic one, testify to the sort of variance in spelling and generic conventions that can result when a broader group gains literacy and begins using it for transactions.47 To be sure, there must have been some in ancient Israel, like Simo Parpola’s man without a scribe, who had gained alphabetic literacy but not the broader forms of training given most people who formed the literate ruling class.48 Nevertheless, the epigraphic evidence supports the biblical picture of a largely illiterate populace combined with a ruling class who had received a broader training that began with alphabetic knowledge but moved far beyond it. I now turn to take a closer look at that training.

Epigraphic Evidence for Education in Pre-Hellenistic Israel As a result of epigraphic finds over the last forty years, we now have clearly datable evidence for some process of alphabetic education in early Israel. As in ancient Greece, the first and most important form of evidence for education is the abecedary, used by students to practice their letters in a standard sequence. But whereas for Greek education we only have an isolated abecedary found outside Greece in Tuscany, for Israel we have abecedaries from twelfthcentury Izbet Sfi artfiah, eighth-century Lachish and Kuntillet Ajrud, seventhcentury Kadesh-Barnea, and sixth-century Lachish. Notably these abecedaries exhibit two standard orders, both the order familiar from more recent Jewish tradition (Kuntillet Ajrud) and a variation of the order where ayin and peh are in reverse order (Izbet Sfi artfiah). Such divergent patterns of standardization point

45. On Greece see discussions in Thomas, Literacy and Orality, 65–88. 46. As was stressed to me in a personal communication from Andre´ Lemaire, this standardization is not universal. Cf. the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions; Arad ostraca, H fi orvat Uza ostraca, and so on. 47. Puech, “Les E´coles,” 201–2. 48. Cf. Parpola, “Man without a Scribe.”

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to some sort of formal educational system, indeed one that has achieved a level of differentiation along regional or other lines.49 Besides such abecedaries, there are a number of other texts that were probably used in education. These include ostraca on which a single word is repeatedly written, such as inscription 99 at Arad (with “Arad” repeatedly written) or a fragmentary ostracon from Kadesh Barnea with ml
, ml
, and then wttsr, wttsr repeated.50 In addition, there are the ostraca from Kadesh Barnea featuring sequences of the hieratic Egyptian numbers used widely in early Israel.51 All these are in addition to more controversial examples of educational texts, such as the Gezer list of months or letter ostraca that could be either practice or actual copies.52 Taken together, the epigraphic evidence points to some sort of training in literacy in outlying areas of preexilic Israel. Insofar as yet more such training occurred in urban areas, this evidence suggests that more extensive educational institutions probably existed in capital cities like Jerusalem or Samaria.53 Using this epigraphic evidence, Lemaire has suggested that elementary education involved a number of elements: reproducing copies of the abecedary previously made by the teacher, practicing random letters, practicing pairs of letters that were similar, repeated writing of certain words, practice of letter or contract formulae, writing of lists of words (e.g., the Gezer calendar), elementary math exercises, practice in art and music, and possibly instruction in a foreign language like Aramaic (2 Kgs 18:26//Isa 36:11) or perhaps Akkadian or Egyptian (more rarely).54 Puech and others have raised some questions about whether some of Lemaire’s texts—found on pottery, in caves, or on steps— were actually used for education,55 but we now have evidence collected by Cribiore that suggests that Greek educators sometimes used pottery for example texts, and that places like tombs and outdoor colonnades were among the many ad hoc sorts of contexts in which early education took place.56 Though from another culture, they show how contemporary assumptions about where education could and could not take place can be mistaken. Unfortunately, ancient Israel, like ancient Greece, lacks clear examples of

49. On these nonbiblical texts see especially Lemaire, Les Ecoles, 7–36. Cf. Puech, “Les E´coles,” 189–96. 50. Lemaire, Les Ecoles, 15–19, 20–32. 51. Puech, “Les E´coles,” 196, finds these to be the clearest examples of school texts. 52. For arguments that the Lachish letters are copies see Yigael Yadin, “The Lachish Letters—Originals or Copies and Drafts?” in Recent Archaeology in the Land of Israel, ed. H. Shanks and B. Mazar, trans. Aryeh Finkelstein (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1984), 179–86. See, however, the counterarguments in John A. Emerton, “Were the Lachish Letters Sent to or from Lachish?” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 133 (2001): 2–15. 53. Lemaire, Les Ecoles, 49–54. 54. Lemaire, Les Ecoles, 63–65. 55. See especially, Puech, “Les E´coles,” and Crenshaw, Education in Ancient Israel, 100–108. 56. See Cribiore, Gymnastics, 136, for discussion of a jar with a depiction of Pluto on it and a series of syllables used in education. See also 23–24 for discussion of a Greco-Roman tomb with a syllabary on the wall inscribed in red ochre, and a separate find of Greek maxims inscribed on the cells of early Christian tombs. In each case, the nature of the exercises indicates that these finds are school exercises, not alphabets serving a magical function. This does not rule out the likelihood that some late abecedaries, like the one found on the archway of a tomb at Bet Shearim, did serve such a magical-protective or decorative function.

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the higher level of student exercises. Many such exercises were probably inscribed on papyrus or leather, which does not generally survive in the better watered areas.57 In addition, the educational use of higher level texts becomes progressively more difficult to determine the more the advanced student progresses in handwriting ability. For example, lacking multiple copies of a given text, it is often impossible to determine whether a given letter is a practice letter or an actual letter.58 As a result, we have little epigraphic evidence from ancient Israel to help us in study of more advanced forms of education. We are faced with a similar situation to that of ancient Greece: having to rely on inferences about education based on transmitted literary texts along with references to education in them. Nevertheless, there is a big difference between the evidence situation in Israel and that in ancient Greece: partly because of an apparent Israelite/Jewish avoidance of images after the seventh century, we lack the sorts of iconographic data that are helpful in reconstructing early Greek education. In the case of Israel, we must rely virtually exclusively on literary/biblical texts for exploration of education beyond the most basic levels. We have one image of a person playing a lyre from Kuntillet Ajrud. Given the use of lyres in Greece to accompany performance of lyric poetry, this image at Kuntillet Ajrud could be one of performance of a textualized song, but in this case the performer is not depicted with a copy of any text.59

Literary Evidence for the Shape of Education in Ancient Israel Seen within the context of the discussion of other cultures and epigraphic Israelite evidence, the Bible provides a rich range of texts that illuminate the central foci and techniques of early Israelite education-enculturation. I start with an often-discussed fragment from Isaiah that appears to reflect one way in which the aforementioned alphabetic instruction took place (Isa 28:9–13). The educational connections of the text are indicated at the outset, when Isaiah’s opponents sarcastically charge him with speaking to them as a teacher speaks to the recently weaned (possibly the time of the outset of alphabet education): “Whom will he teach knowledge, and to whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from milk, those taken from the breast?”60 Isaiah’s opponents go on to quote what appears to be a saying or singsong used in an educational context:

57. William Hallo reports (personal communication) that even the surviving ostraca are the exception, since they generally fade unless they are dipped in water. 58. Mesfi ad Hashavyahu is particularly plausible candidate for a higher level practice text. Lemaire (Les Ecoles, 65–66) also focuses on evidence providied by Lachish 3:8–13. On these as possible educational texts see also Demsky, “Writing,” 14. 59. Note that while David, the putative author of many psalms, is depicted in biblical narratives as a skilled player of the lyre (1 Sam 16:23; cf. 16:16; 18:10), he is not described as singing in these narratives. Song and playing of the lyre are closely associated in several psalms, and the Levitical singers are also players of the lyre. 60. For discussion of this text and of weaning, which often took place late in cultures like Israel, as a key transition point for education-enculturation see G. Pfeifer, “Entwohnung und Entwohnungsfest im Alten Testament,” ZAW 84 (1972): 341–47.

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command to command, command to command, line to line, line to line a little there, a little there. The first part of this quote, tzab latzab, tzab latzab, qab laqab, qab laqab (“command to command . . .”) makes little sense as a statement but more sense as a quote from an instruction. As many scholars have suggested, this seeming nonsense phrase is probably modeled on a pattern of call and response based on the middle part of the alphabet (here qof and then resh). Following a calland-response pattern attested in ancient and more recent Muslim contexts, the teacher would say something like tzab latzab, and the students would echo him; then the teacher would go on to the next letter of the alphabet. The quoted instruction goes on to say “a little there and little there,” perhaps referring to small marks occasionally used to separate words.61 To this the prophet responds by promising that the God who once promised rest and repose will speak to the people with an alien tongue, perhaps Akkadian or the Aramaic used by Assyrians to speak to their opponents (cf. 2 Kgs 18:26//Isa 36:11). Then Isaiah requotes the elementary instruction back to his opponents: tzab latzab . . . qab laqab . . . But now, Isaiah may be drawing on the resemblance of this instruction to Assyrian taunts and asserting that this instruction will now be used to make them fall backward, stumble, and be captured.62 Overall, this prophetic saying is not intended as a description of early education, but it provides an evocative picture of an ancient alphabetically based process of call and response in the process of making its broader point. Other texts in the Bible bear witness to the use of the alphabetic and other systems to support more advanced mastery of texts. Some biblical texts built on students’ knowledge of the standard alphabet order by having each poetic line begin with a different letter of the alphabet, thus facilitating memorization. We find such alphabetic acrostics throughout the Bible, some of which follow the standard order familiar in more recent Jewish tradition (Pss 25; 34; 119; 145; Prov 31:10–31; Lamentations 1) and some of which follow the other order attested at Izbet Sfi artfiah (Pss 9–10; Lamentations 2; 3; 4).63 Such acrostics represent one strategy that alphabetic cultures used to cope with the problem already seen in Mesopotamia and Egypt: keeping memorized bits of tradition in the correct sequence.64

61. Lemaire, “Sagesse,” 38, 63. For a different argument regarding how this text might reflect early reading see William W. Hallo, “Isaiah 28:9–13 and the Ugaritic Abecedaries,” JBL 77 (1958): 338–42. 62. A. Van Selms, “Isaiah 28,9–13: An Attempt to give a New Interpretation,” ZAW 85 (1973): 336–39. The foregoing interpretation comes particularly from the version of this argument in Lemaire, Les Ecoles, 39. 63. Demsky, “Writing,” 12; Lemaire, “Sage in School in Temple,” 179. Sirach 51:13–30 (Hebrew) is another example and a wisdom text but is most clearly from a later period. Cf. Nah 1:2–11, which does not reach ayinpeh. 64. See the survey of biblical accrostics and analogous structures in the Sumero-Akkadian and Egyptian realms in Brug, “Biblical Acrostics.”

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In what follows I will look further at evidence for higher level educationenculturation in ancient Israel, particularly the sort of oral-written educationenculturation that is attested in the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and early Greek examples. Such education necessarily built on alphabetic education but moved far beyond it in involving the reading, performance, and ingestion of cultural texts that shape the sort of literate professionals surveyed earlier.

“Wisdom Literature” and Ancient Israelite Education-Enculturation One place many scholars have begun, naturally enough, is the biblical materials that fall under the narrower heading of wisdom material: for example, Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes.65 Such literature, especially Proverbs and parts of Ecclesiastes, corresponds to the sort of gnomic material that was so prominent in early phases of education in other cultures discussed here. Sumerian Proverb collections served as crucial transitional texts between early and later stages of Sumero-Akkadian education, providing an introduction to basic Sumerian grammar and values. Early instructions like those of Kemit and Kheti played a key role in early education in Egypt as well. And gnomic material is among the most common early teaching material in Greek schoolbooks and exercises, from the earliest Hellenistic period onward. In each case, such written “sayings” material was a tool used especially in early education, not only to reinforce emergent writing and reading competencies, but also to socialize youths in the basic values and worldview of the given culture. To be sure, a book like Proverbs was not written to provide us data on such a process of education and enculturation, any more than the materials from other cultures referred to earlier were. Nevertheless, we find reflections in Proverbs of a similar, writing-supported process of shaping young Israelites. For example, the introduction to a series of sayings late in the book of Proverbs runs as follows. The words of the wise: Incline your ear and hear my words, and set your heart/mind [Heb. leb] on my knowledge; for it will be pleasant if you keep them within your belly, if all of them are established on your lips. So that your trust may be in the LORD, I have made them known to you today—yes, to you. Have I not written for you thirty sayings of advice and knowledge,

65. For an older, classic discussion see Demsky, “Education,” 392–94. For one of the best recent treatments of the curricular setting of this material see Crenshaw, Education in Ancient Israel, 221–37.

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to show you what is right and true, so that you may give a true answer to those who sent you? (Prov 22: 17–21, NRSV adapted) This saying focuses on a process that has prominent oral characteristics: inclining “the ear,” “hearing . . . words,” applying the “heart” to these sayings. The student is to memorize them—“keep them within your belly”—and perform them orally, “established on your lips.” Nevertheless, the prologue stands at the outset of a written collection, indeed a collection “written” for the express purpose of showing the student what is “right and true” and of equipping him to provide a “true answer to those who sent [him].”66 This heading is doubly interesting because it is a key focus of arguments that much of the following material in Proverbs was appropriated from the (relatively minor) Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope. Although the material that follows in Proverbs (22:22–24:34) may not count out to the “thirty” sayings mentioned in the heading and in Amenemope, there are some striking thematic correspondences that indicate some sort of Israelite adaptation of the Egyptian material, however radical.67 Moreover, this specific instance of probable borrowing from Egypt is not isolated. On the contrary, collections like Proverbs are saturated with Israelite equivalents to Egyptian education and enculturation terminology.68 As in Egypt and other cultures, the student’s heart and mind (Heb leb/lebab) is a key focus in teaching texts (Prov 2:2, 10; 3:1; 4: 4, 21; 6:20–21; 10:8; 14:33; 16:21; 22:11, 15; 23:15, 26; 27:19; Eccl 7:4, 7; 10:2). A “hearing heart” or an “open ear” is the oral medium by which this heart receives teaching (e.g., 1 Kgs 3:9; Prov 2:2; Ps 78:1; cf. Isa 50:5). Yet writing is again central in this oral-written process. Just the Egyptian Satiric Letter spoke of the addressee as “having the teaching of every book inscribed on [his] heart” and several Greek texts spoke of having texts “written on the (tablet) of the mind” (e.g., Pindar, Olympian Odes 10.1–3), so also several wisdom texts join textuality and memorization in this way. Proverbs call on a student to bind loyalty and faithfulness to his neck and write them “on the tablet of your heart” (Prov 3:3; cf. Prov 6:21) or to bind the teacher’s teaching on his fingers and write it “on the tablet of your heart” (Prov 7:3).69 Here again writing, orality,

66. Michael Fox has a similar, independent discussion of the oral-written dynamics in this and other biblical wisdom passages in Fox, “Self-Presentation,” 163–64. 67. For an overview of the literature and and a nuanced affirmation of this hypothesis see John A. Emerton, “The Teaching of Amenemope and Proverbs XXII 17–XXIV 22: Reflections on a Long-Standing Problem,” VT 51 (2001): 431–65. In addition, Bryce finds evidence of borrowing from the same instruction elsewhere in Proverbs, Prov 15:16 (Legacy, 71–74) and Joseph Blenkinsopp finds parallels in Pentateuchal legal materials (Sage, Priest, Prophet: Religious and Intellectual Leadership in Ancient Israel, Library of Ancient Israel [Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1995], 37). Note that such radical adaptation was particularly common in SumeroAkkadian instances where a text was not just being borrowed but also being translated. The process of linguistic translation seemed to create room for conceptual translation as well. 68. For Egyptian links see Nili Shupak, “The ‘Sitz im Leben’ of the Book of Proverbs in the Light of a Comparison of Biblical and Egyptian Wisdom Literature,” RB 94 (1987): 98–119. 69. Lemaire, Les Ecoles, 61–62. An earlier, classic discussion of memorization in early Israelite education

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and memory are intertwined. The writing metaphor is used to conceptualize a process that is also oral, all of which is focused on the sort of word-for-word internalization of a text that is characteristic of oral-written, rather than strictly oral, cultures. Now in Proverbs we have multiple exemplars of the sort of materials that were used in this oral-written process of education and enculturation in Israel. The superscripts heading all of the wisdom books and scattered throughout Proverbs attest to an extensive process of textual production. As in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian systems, these headings sometimes assign these educational materials to a preeminent sage, usually Solomon (Prov 1:1; 10:1; 25:1; cf. 30:1 [Agur]; 31:1 [Lemuel]). Yet, as in those other cultures as well, the labels sometimes also mention the scribes involved in this production process. Proverbs 25:1 identifies the material that follows it, saying: “These, also, are proverbs of Solomon that the officials of King Hezekiah of Judah copied.” The colophon at the end of Ecclesiastes is even more explicit, speaking of the process by which Qohelet (“assembly leader”?) “listened to, spied out, and arranged” proverbs: “Besides being wise, Qohelet also taught the people knowledge, listening to, spying out, and arranging many proverbs. He sought to find pleasing words and write words of truth plainly” (Eccl 12:9–10). The passage goes on to describe how these written sayings are to function in this teaching: the sayings of the wise are like “cattle goads,” the iron points of sticks used to drive livestock from behind. The collected sayings of one such “shepherd” are “nails firmly planted” (Eccl 12:11). Thus the sayings are firmly fixed through writing, but their written firmness better suits them to prod students. The colophon concludes with a description of both the book-making and the studying process: “of anything beyond these, my child, beware. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Eccl 12:12 NRSV).70 The material thus set down in writing is well formed for memorization.71 Like other oral-written literatures, it is predominantly poetic. In addition, some material is shaped in additional ways to facilitate memorization. We have seen this before. Some Egyptian poems included numbered stanzas to aid the student in recalling them in the correct order, and Aristotle recommended the use of alphabetic keying to aid in memorization of sequential bits of information. As Mary Carruthers has shown in her study of ancient and medieval materials, such memory aids often helped the authors in oral-written contexts as they mentally composed material in advance of initial dictation of a given text. Then, incorporated by the author into the resulting text, such memory aids helped students memorize it. Whether it was a more general form like poetry, musi-

can be found in Geo Widengren, Literary and Psychological Aspects of the Hebrew Prophets, Uppsala Universitets A˚rsskrift (Uppsala: Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1948), esp. 90–91. 70. Qohelet, though probably written in the Hellenistic period, is used here as a continuation of an older tradition of Hebrew education. For linguistic arguments for an earlier dating cf. C. L. Seow, “Linguistic Evidence and the Dating of Qohelet,” JBL 115 (1996): 643–66. 71. For discussion of both oral and written dynamics behind Israelite wisdom literature see Crenshaw, Education in Ancient Israel, 182–83, and Fox, “Self-Presentation,” 163–64.

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cally shaped delivery of prose, catchword association, chiasms, numbered or alphabetically organized verses or stanzas: all these techniques could aid both an author and audience. Though we do not know all of the techniques that were used in ancient Israel, we see some such aids used in the Bible. For example, a poem like the praise of the powerful woman/wife that concludes Proverbs (Prov 31:10–31) is an alphabetic acrostic, with the lines each starting with the next letter of the alphabet. As mentioned earlier, a person memorizing such a text would have an easier time recalling the sequence of lines, being able to follow the alphabetic ordering learned first in his or her education. Similarly, devices like threefour number sequences aid in recall of all elements of a set sequence (e.g., Prov 30:15–31). Otherwise, students learning proverbial collections generally had to rely on the poetic form, reinforcement of memory through oral performance, and some catchword association in order to “incise [these collections] on the tablet of [one’s] heart.” This incision was a sometimes brutal process. The Bible, like Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Aramaic texts, contains numerous references to physical beatings, “discipline” (musar), that were apparently seen as an essential part of ancient education-enculturation (Prov 13:24; 22:15; 26:3; 29:17).72 These factors are combined in an illuminating representation of a student’s speech in Proverbs: You say, “Oh, how I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof! I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors. Now I am at the point of utter ruin in the public assembly.” (Prov 5:12–14 NRSV) This text illustrates the technique of Israelite pedagogy by depicting its possible failure: a student, shamed in the public assembly as a result of his sexual misdeeds, who hates physical discipline, a “heart” hardened to reproof, and “ears” closed to the voice of the teacher (Prov 5:1–23). Where did such instruction take place and who did it? We have even less information about the Israelite “teachers” and “instructors” mentioned in the foregoing passage than we do about counterparts in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece. Indeed, such references to a “teacher” or “instructor” are rare in biblical literature.73 Far more often in Proverbs we see the family-like structure attested in other cultures surveyed earlier: the student is a “son” while the teacher is the “father” or even “mother” (Prov 1:8; 4:3; 6:20).74 As in those other

72. Du¨rr, Erziehungswesen, 114–15. 73. Some references include Ps 119:99; Prov 5:13; Job 36:22; Isa 30:20; and Hab 2:18. They are outweighed by use of family terminology for teachers and learners. 74. Note also the prominence of the “mother” in other sayings such as Prov 10:1//15:20; 19:26; 20:20; 29:15; 30:11, 17, as well as the praise of the powerful woman at the conclusion of Proverbs (31:10–31) and the inclusion of mothers in the Ten Commandments (Exod 20:12//Deut 5:16) and in the Deuteronomic regulation

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cultures, these family epithets often reflect actual biological relationships. This is particularly clear in the case of the “mother” mentioned in these sayings. It is highly unlikely that female teachers would have taken on the epithet “mother” who were not the actual “mother” of a student, and Proverbs 31:1 even mentions a mother responsible for a given written teaching attributed to King Lemuel.75 Ultimately, sons in ancient Israel, as in other cultures, generally adopted the occupation of their fathers, thus meaning that some sort of familybased education made the most sense—usually by a “father” in both the biological and pedagogical sense. Indeed, even our sketchy records of Israel’s literate elite have preserved instances where scribes and others passed their literate occupation on to sons and grandsons (e.g. 1 Kgs 4:3 [cf. 2 Sam 8:17; 20:25]; Jer 26:24; 29:3; 36:10; 39:14; 40:1–41:10).76 Thus much, if not most, ancient Israelite education probably happened in the home and was done by parents, particularly the father. Yet biblical literature also presents some pictures of education beyond hereditary boundaries. For example, we have the assertion cited earlier in 2 Kgs 12:3 that Jehoash, the king, had been instructed by Jehoida the priest, and we have other probable reflections of education of larger groups, particularly in royal contexts (1 Kgs 12:8, 10; 2 Kgs 10:1–8; see also 1 Kgs 11:20). This biblical attestation of both family and some nonfamily education is similar to the distribution of types of education in the Egyptian craft village Deir el-Medina. There most education was done by fathers, but sometimes children would be sent to receive their education from a teacher who was not a parent. In these latter cases, the teacher was no longer a real but a symbolic “father.” The student was now only symbolically the “son.”77 A key goal of such (largely) family-based education was the cultural reproduction of the parent/teacher: enculturating a son (and some daughters) to play a similar sociocultural role to that of the parent (or pseudoparent). For some, this involved the gaining of specific writing and reading competencies that would be used in a specifically scribal office. But for many, the goals were probably more general. For example, the foregoing quotation on possible failure of education suggests that a successful student would gain the (sexual) selfdiscipline not to be ruined in the “public assembly” (Prov 5:14). Such success

regarding an unteachable son (Deut 21:18–21). For discussion see Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 8–10. In this context, Fox replies to studies such as those by C. Fontaine (Traditional Sayings in the Old Testament: A Contextual Study, Bible and Literature Series [Sheffield: Almond, 1982]) and C. Westermann (Wu¨rzeln der Weisheit: die a¨ltesten Spru¨che Israels und anderer Vo¨lker [Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1990]) which locate the roots of Old Testament wisdom literature in the oral setting of village and family socialization. Though they may be right about the oral origins of many sayings now in Proverbs and elsewhere in the Bible, the origins of specifically written educational literature lie in family-sited education linked to broader institutions of temple and state. 75. On this see especially Michael V. Fox, “The Social Location of the Book of Proverbs,” in Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran, ed. Michael V. Fox et al. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 228–32. Cf. Lemaire, Les Ecoles, 57, who suggests that the inclusion of “mother” in Proverbs 4:3 may be due to parallelism. 76. Yeivin argues persuasively that this was characteristic of various army, civil administrative, priestly, and other official positions in Israel, Yeivin, “Judean Families and Parties,” esp. 250–255. 77. McDowell, “Teachers and Students,” 219–30.

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would be engendered through various virtues repeatedly inculcated in proverbial sayings and instructions: fear of the Lord, care with the tongue, respect for those more powerful, and so on.78 The person who ingested such texts and the values they advocated joined a minority class. Such students did not just have alphabetic literacy—though that aided them on their way—but a broader, textually supported wisdom that marked them off as part of a literate elite.79 We do not know exactly when such text-supported educational processes began in Israel or how widespread they were. Given parallels in other cultures, it is likely that such education was part of Israelite urbanization. As soon as Israel started to take on the greater hierarchy of a city-state system, it would have developed—probably depending on models from surrounding hierarchical systems—an oral-written process of enculturation that helped socialize and set apart a priestly and royal scribal elite. There is much debate, however, about how and when such a development of an early Israelite state occurred. The biblical tradition itself assigns the creation of a royal city-state structure to Saul, David, and Solomon (1–2 Samuel; 1 Kings 1–11). Moreover, Solomon—as in the superscripts of Proverbs—is credited with the “speaking” of thousands of proverbs and over a thousand songs, including a form of “speaking” rare plants and animals that is reminiscent of the educational lists seen in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian systems (1 Kgs 5:12–13 [ET 4:32–33]).80 Nevertheless, many would argue that such traditions of a city-state during Solomon’s time are basically ideological retrojections.81 The archaeological evidence for such a state and the epigraphic evidence of literacy is more extensive in the late preexilic period.82 The latter period is the time of activity of the “men of Hezekiah” mentioned in the superscription in Proverbs cited earlier (25:1), as well as a time when we see evidence of conflict over the ascendancy of a group of the “wise” in prophetic critiques of this group, for example, Isaiah 5:21: “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and discerning in their own sight.”83 Given this evidence, the late preexilic period is the latest time to posit some system of Israelite education-enculturation.84 Nevertheless, it is likely that such a late preexilic system was a broadening of emergent forms of textuality and education from earlier periods, particularly the Solomonic one.85 So far, this discussion—and many like it—is deficient in a crucial respect. It has failed to consider other sorts of texts that likely were included in this

78. Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 131–34, 347–51. 79. See Bryce, Legacy, 148–54. 80. Note the NRSV renders Hebrew dbr here as “compose,” but the tradition here reflects the prominent oral elements of the teaching-composition process. 81. The relevant studies are surveyed and responded to in Gary N. Knoppers, “The Vanishing Solomon: The Disappearance of the United Monarchy from Recent Histories of Ancient Israel,” JBL 116 (1997): 19–44. 82. Jamieson-Drake, Scribes and Schools in Monarchic Judah. 83. See also Isa 29:14; Jer 4:22; 8:8–9; 10:7–9; cf. prophetic pronouncements over “the wise” in other countries in Isa 19:11–12; Jer 10:7–9; 50:35; 51:57. 84. The best recent argument for this approach is to be found in Schniedewind, Bible to Book. 85. On the infrastructure of this period see especially Knoppers, “Vanishing Solomon.”

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education-enculturation process. In the past, most arguments for educational use of books like Proverbs have been connected to the anachronistic assumptions about “schools” discussed at the outset of the chapter, and most scholars have assumed that books like Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes were distinguished from other biblical books by their educational purpose. As a result, such scholars have misinterpreted the thematic and terminological distinctiveness of such “wisdom” books. Certainly instructions in both Mesopotamia and Egypt likewise were distinguished by certain themes and terms. Nevertheless, the instructions of Shuruppak and Kheti were used alongside poetic texts (e.g. the Egyptian Hymn to the Inundation) and narrative texts (e.g. Gilgamesh) as part of a broader educational process that encompassed far more than what we would define as “wisdom” literature. Within Mesopotamia, “wisdom” instructions appear to have played an important bridge function between elementary lists and higher level texts. Egypt appears to have begun education with short instructions like that of Kemit and broadened out to a wider range of instructions and other works. So also, classical Greek instruction focused not only on gnomic material but also on Homeric epic narrative and key dramatic texts. In each case, “wisdom” or “gnomic” instructions often played roles particularly in the early stages of a broader curriculum of literature used for teaching. Nevertheless, the comparative evidence I have worked with so far suggests that the concept of “wisdom literature” can be misleading for both biblical and nonbiblical evidence, insofar as it suggests that didactic tales and sage instructions were separated from other forms of literature by their educational usage.86 Teachers in all these cultures authored and (re)used a wide variety of genres of texts.87 Therefore, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and other Israelite wisdom texts are only an initial pointer to the educational use of other biblical texts. The Bible itself points to a broader, textually supported, oral educational process in Israel. For example, the central tradition about Solomon’s wisdom not only mentions his widespread knowledge of plants and animals and his authorship of proverbs but also his speaking forth of 1,005 “songs”(1 Kgs 5:12 [ET 4:32]). Moreover, key biblical texts depict a process of instruction that utilizes written texts to teach oral “songs.” Take, for example, the following introduction to David’s lament over Jonathan: “He [David] ordered that the Song of the Bow be taught [lammed] to the men of Judah; it is written in the scroll of Yashar. He said: Your glory, O Israel, lies slain” (2 Sam 1:18–19*; NRSV adapted). Similarly, the song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 is framed by the following two texts. In the introduction to the song:

86. For critique of the concept of “wisdom” in Egyptian literature see Leclat, Les Sagesses, 11–15 and Eyre, “Semna Stelae,” 151. For Mesopotamia see Lambert, Wisdom Literature, 1–2; Konrad Volk, “Methoden altmesopotamischer Erziehung nach Quellen der altbabylonischen Zeit,” Saeculum 47 (1996): 182. 87. This point was made in a preliminary way for Israel and Egypt in Leo Perdue, Wisdom and Cult: A Critical Analysis of the Views of Cult in the Wisdom Literatures of Israel and the Ancient Near East, SBLDS (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977), 360. See also Bickel and Mathieu, “Amennakht.”

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Now therefore write this song, and teach it to the Israelites; put it in their mouths, in order that this song may be a witness for me against the Israelites. . . . That very day Moses wrote this song and taught it to the Israelites. (Deut 31:19, 22 NRSV) After the song: Moses came and recited all the words of this song in the hearing of the people, he and Joshua son of Nun. When Moses had finished reciting all these words to all Israel, he said to them, “Take to heart all the words that I am giving in witness against you today; give them as a command to your children, so that they may diligently observe all the words of this law [torah].” (Deut 32:44–46 NRSV) Both cases concern poetic material attributed to major figures in Israelite history: David’s song of the bow and the song of Moses. In both cases the tradition that is taught is envisioned as oral. It is to be “sung.” Yet in both cases, the sung poetic material is “written” to be “taught.” Neither tradition features vocabulary or themes that would identify it as part of the gnomic tradition seen in Proverbs. This is not “wisdom” literature. But it is clearly envisioned— however fictionally—as written material that is the subject of education. Within the narrative world of the Bible, such written texts are seen as the basis for a process of teaching Israel or Judah certain classic “songs.”88 This insight need not be confined to inclusion only of “songs” or poetry in the broader category of instructional literature. As later Jewish tradition attests, prose material can be configured to be “sung,” and texts such as Exodus 17:14 depict a world where a prose work is commissioned to be written as a “memorial, reminder” (zikkaron), while also being orally placed in the “ears” of a chosen successor: “write this as a reminder in a scroll, and put it in the ears of Joshua: I will utterly destroy the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven” (NRSV).89 Later, I will present additional evidence that Israel, like Mesopotamia and Greece, used prose as well as poetic material in instruction. To be sure, even if a given song or prose text was eventually used in education, it is impossible to argue that all such texts were originally written for that purpose. This is an important distinction between nongnomic material and the sorts of instructional material discussed earlier. Though most material now found in Proverbs probably was used from the outset in some sort of education-enculturation, the same is not necessarily true for David’s lament over Jonathan and Saul, or Moses’s song, nor is it true for the range of nonIsraelite narrative, historical, hymnic, and other texts that found their way into Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greek educational-enculturational systems.

88. For discussion of the depiction of the giving of the Song of Moses in relation to Ahiqar and other depictions of fatherly, educational testaments at the end of life see Steven Weitzman, Song and Story in Biblical Narrative: The History of a Literary Convention in Ancient Israel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 42–46. 89. Demsky, “Writing,” 19–20; Hurowitz, “Aspects,” 21–23.

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In what follows I will look at several pointers to the idea that ancient Israelite education was a more complex whole than might be suggested by an exclusive focus on clearly “wisdom” texts. Most past studies that have linked biblical literature with education have focused on Proverbs, Job, and similar texts.90 Studies that have looked more broadly (e.g., Lorenz Du¨rr, Lemaire) have not received enough attention, partly because they have been understood to be positing a nonattested, institutionalized system of separate “schools” with professional teachers.91 As discussed in earlier chapters, we now know that such separate “schools” were not the norm, even for cultures like Mesopotamia and Egypt where they were once thought to be. Moreover, recent research on education in these contexts has shown that the literature used went well beyond that typically associated with “wisdom.” This provides additional corroboration for Du¨rr and Lemaire’s approach. That approach is augmented here with additional focus on the oral-cognitive dimension of education seen in other cultures, a dimension that helps explain why biblical written literature is so focused on oral performance and internalization.92 In what follows I start by looking at the educational vision found in Deuteronomy and related material in the books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings (the “Deuteronomistic History”). I then turn to look at evidence of text-supported, oral prophetic education-enculturation systems, particularly as reflected in the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah. This will prepare us for a broader look at how biblical literature as a whole, whatever its diverse origins, entered the stream of tradition by way of its use to educate-enculturate ancient Israelites. Then I will return to the question of composition-adaptation of such materials for use in education and enculturation.

Education in Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History Education plays a central role in the Deuteronomic/Deuteronomistic vision, though not precisely as an extension of specifically “wisdom” emphases of the gnomic material surveyed earlier. Rather what we have in Deuteronomy is a counter-vision of ur-education placed even before Solomon. It is an educational vision that is projected into the community’s Mosaic past as a potential replacement for gnomic material in its traditional early and key role in education. To be sure, the authors of Deuteronomy, like other literates in ancient Israel, themselves would have been educated-enculturated using more traditional material. And this influence shows in their adoption of some key terms and concepts that are also found in wisdom literature.93 Nevertheless, we must be as clear on the contrasts of Deuteronomy with wisdom as on the continuities. As

90. Exemplary studies include Hermisson, Studien; J.P.J. Olivier, “Schools and Wisdom Literature,” Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 4 (1975): 49–60, and Shupak, Where Can Wisdom Be Found? 91. Du¨rr, Erziehungswesen; Lemaire, Les Ecoles. 92. For further discussion of the relation of this study to previous ones see the appendix. 93. The most influential discussion is Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 244–319.

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Bernard Levinson and Jan Assmann in different ways have pointed out, Deuteronomy stands in a highly complex relationship to the past and its predecessors: innovative, yet denying originality; continuous, yet inserting difference.94 One place to start is the stipulations regarding teaching in Deuteronomy 6:4–25, a key passage toward the outset of the book and perhaps the original beginning of some form of the book of Deuteronomy.95 It starts with a focus on the “heart” so central in Israelite and other educational texts, calling on all Israel to “love YHWH your God with all your heart, life-strength and might” (Deut 6:5), along with a further command to “keep these words which I am commanding you today on your heart” (Deut 6:6). The text continues by describing the process by which these words will be put on the heart: “Repeat them to your children and recite them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise” (Deut 6:7). As Georg Fischer and Norbert Lohfink have argued, this text does not refer to discussion of the commandments, as is often implied by the translations (e.g. NRSV “talk about them”). Instead it commands a constant process of recitation of the texts during all activities of the waking day.96 As the following text makes clear, this incision of texts on the heart is part of a broader process of writing them throughout one’s surroundings, again paralleling wisdom exhortations to bind teachings on the self (Prov 6:21; 7:3): “bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates.” (Deut 6:8–9 NRSV)97 Recitation, writing, and other forms of reminder are all forms of cultural circulation, ensuring—in the Deuteronomic vision—that Israelites do not “forget” YHWH and the commandments he has given them (Deut 6:12).98 The chapter concludes with a picture of education, this time a dialogue in which the children ask about the meaning of the statutes and commandments that their parent is constantly reciting (Deut 6:20), and the parent then puts them in the context of God’s rescue of Israel from Egypt, gift of the land, and promise of life and righteousness if the people obey them (Deut 6:21–25). Similar themes occur again in Deuteronomy 11:18–21, toward the end of the section of paranesis that Deuteronomy 6:4–25 introduced.99 The text starts by repeating the command to put “these words” on the “heart” and “life strength” (nephesh, 11:18a), and then includes a twofold return to themes of

94. Assmann, Kulturelle Geda¨chtnis, 212–29; Bernard Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), esp. 146–52. 95. Norbert Lohfink, Das Ju¨dische am Christentum: Die verlorene Dimension (Freiburg: Herder, 1987), 154– 55. 96. Georg Fischer and Norbert Lohfink, “ ‘Diese Wo¨rte sollst du summen’: Dtn 6,7 wedibbarta¯ ba¯m: Ein verlorener Schlu¨ssel zur meditativen Kultur in Israel,” Theologie und Philosophie 62 (1987): 59–64. 97. Sonnet, Book Within Book, 57–58. 98. For a catalogue of different memory techniques by which Deuteronomy tries to reinforce its particular form of oppositional collective memory see especially Assmann, Kulturelle Geda¨chtnis, 218–21. 99. For redaction–critically oriented discussion of the relation of these passages to each other and their context see Georg Braulik, “Das Deuteronomium und die Geda¨chtniskultur Israels: Redaktionsgeschichtliche Beobachtungen zur Verwendung von lmd,” in Biblische Theologie und gesellschaftlucher Wandel: Fu¨r Norbert Lohfink SJ, ed. Georg Braulik (Freiburg: Herder, 1993), 19–20.

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writing God’s words on the body and on door posts (11:18b, 20). These themes frame the central focus of 11:19: teaching the children through a process of constant recitation: “Teach them to your children, reciting them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise” (NRSV adapted). The process envisioned here is one of self- and child-education through constant vocal repetition. Since children in the ancient world typically were included in their parents’ daily activities, parents constantly reciting a text would put that text not only on their own hearts but on their children’s hearts as well.100 Yet the “teaching” to be recited here is not the typical educational material used in early education of children. Instead, as Georg Braulik has argued, these injunctions to recite “these words” in Deuteronomy 6:7 and 11: 19 refer to Deuteronomy 5–26 as a whole.101 According to the D vision, this Mosaic corpus, rather than Solomonic wisdom collections of the sort discussed earlier, is to serve as the initial and central focus of Israelite education and enculturation. The teaching focus of this overall corpus is reinforced by the introduction to the corpus in Deuteronomy 1–4, along with its introduction in Deuteronomy 5:1. Moshe Weinfeld in particular has observed how the story of Moses’s appointment of officials in Deuteronomy 1:9–18 is distinguished from its Pentateuchal parallels (Exod 18:13–26; Num 11:11–17, 24–30) by its emphasis on how the leaders delegated by Moses were to be “wise, discerning and with understanding” (Deut 1:13; cf. 1:15), terms common in the gnomic instructional literature discussed earlier.102 Similarly, Deuteronomy 4 is saturated with such conceptuality. It starts and continues with descriptions of Moses “teaching” the laws to Israel (4:1, 10, 14). It applies to this material an old scribal formula seen outside Israel for not “subtracting or adding to” the instruction to be ingested (Deut 4:2).103 It talks of how the Israelite people’s observance of the laws will reveal them to be a uniquely “wise and discerning” people among the other nations, possessors of a uniquely righteous instruction/torah (Deut 4:6–8). It exhorts the Israelites not to forget the “words” they have “seen” or let them slip from their “hearts” but to make these words known to their children and grandchildren (Deut 4:9). And it concludes by identifying what follows as the “instruction which Moses set before the Israelites” (Deut 4:44) and the “instruction, statutes and commands, which Moses spoke to the sons of Israel when they came out of Egypt” (Deut 4:45).104 This learning focus is then re-

100. For discussion of the design of this passage and its conceptuality see especially Fischer and Lohfink, “Diese Wo¨rte,” 64–67. 101. See Braulik, “Geda¨chtniskultur Israels,” 19–20, and Lohfink, Ju¨dische am Christentum, 154–55. 102. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 244–47. Such terms are also common in some critiques leveled at “the wise” in early prophecy. See especially Isa 5:14; 29:14. 103. Leipoldt and Morenz, Heilige Schriften, 56; Fishbane, “Varia”; Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 260–64. 104. For translation of edot here as “instruction” see B. Couroyer, “E´duˆt: Stipulation de traite´ ou enseignement?” RB 95 (1988): 321–31; Norbert Lohfink, “D(w)t im Deuteronomium und in den Ko¨nigsbu¨chern,” Biblische Zeitschrift 35 (1991): 91–93. Couroyer argues persuasively that the term probably refers to an “instruction.” Lohfink finds Couroyer partly persuasive, suggesting that the word’s function was taken over later in Deuteronomic material by the word “torah,” which also refers to “instruction.” He raises this as a translation

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inforced by Deuteronomy 5:1, which calls on Israel to “hear” the “statutes and commandments which I am speaking in your ears today.” Israel is to “learn” (limmed) and “obey” them. The process envisioned here is clearly oral (“hear,” “speaking in your ears”), yet the material to be learned is written. Together, this prologue material—though probably later than much of the hortatory and legal material that follows—reinforces the teaching-enculturation focus already found in Deuteronomy 6–11. It accentuates an emphasis elsewhere in the Deuteronomic utopia on education of all male Israelites—not just a smaller elite— in textual-torah wisdom. Now, in Deuteronomy 4:6–8, education, which generally separated an elite group off from peers in societies like ancient Israel, is envisioned as distinguishing Israel as a whole from other nations. Deuteronomy 5:1 is immediately followed by one of the most prominent biblical examples of early instruction. The Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5:6–21 are an excellent example of teaching structured for memorization.105 The rules focus on central values of ancient Israel.106 As Erhard Gerstenberger observed decades ago, their “apodictic” form most closely resembles that of gnomic instructions inside and outside Israel.107 In addition, the ordering of the list into ten items—however this is done in various streams of tradition—allows the beginning student to use his or her fingers to count off and see whether he or she has included all of the key elements of this fundamental instruction. This combination of elements—focus on central values, simplicity of form, and memorizability—has contributed to the ongoing use of the Ten Commandments in religious education up to the present, along with the focus on them as an icon of central values in contemporary cultural battles over the biblical tradition. The Ten Commandments, however, are only the beginning of the legal instructional material to be found in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 1–11 as a whole introduces the following laws as the heart of the “instruction, statutes and commandments” to be kept on the “heart” of every Israelite (Deut 6:6; 11: 18). To be sure, this body of text has a complex prehistory. Like the multiply redacted legal instructions of the Mesopotamian traditions, the instruction in Deuteronomy 12–26 is a complex mix of old and new. As I argued in chapter 2, scribal masters in the Sumero-Akkadian tradition probably wrote new such instructions through building on their word-for-word memory of older instructions in their earlier education. So also, multiple sections of Deuteronomy 12– 26 are complex revisions of stipulations in the book of the covenant found in Exodus 20:22–23:33*. As in the Mesopotamian instances, the relationship of

possibility alongside that of “oath, treaty,” but the two possibilities are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Oaths and treaties were sometimes used in ancient education. The Deuteronomy covenant might at the same time be an oath/treaty that was envisioned for use in instruction. 105. Most recent scholarship agrees that the parallel version of the commands in Exodus 20:2–17 is a later parallel to that found in Deuteronomy. It is also possible, however, that these are oral-written parallel variants of each other. 106. See especially Hermann Schulz, Das Todesrecht im Alten Testament, BZAW (Berlin: To¨pelmann, 1969). 107. Erhard Gerstenberger, Wesen und Herkunft des apodiktischen Rechts, WMANT (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukircher Verlag, 1965).

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these two corpora is not that of text and commentary but a fluid interweaving of verbal echoing and modification.108 Yet Deuteronomy 12–26 is not merely a revision of an earlier collection. Sometimes it includes stipulations that have no parallel in the book of the covenant. One that is particularly relevant for our purposes is the law of the king in Deuteronomy 17:14–20. The law concludes with a focus on the need for the king to have a copy of the Deuteronomic instruction (torah) written for him so that he may read it continually and “learn to fear YHWH his God,” “observe all the words of this torah/instruction,” and—again paralleling gnomic instructional material—not turn to the right or left from the commandment (Deut 17:19–20; cf. Prov 4:27; 7:25). Other laws focus on the teaching office of the Levites (Deut 17:9–12; 24:8; cf. 31:9–13; 33:10), dealing with a “stubborn” (sorer) and “rebellious” (moreh) son who refuses instruction (Deut 21:18–20; cf. use of the verbal root mrh in Isa 50:5),109 and the importance of resisting the “teaching” of the nations, prohibitions that—as in non-Israelite educational material—sometimes characterize the forbidden behavior with equivalents of the biblical term “abomination” (toebah; Deut 18:9; 20:18).110 The instructional content of Deuteronomy 12–26, however, is not limited to such explicit references to “teaching” or terminology that is attested in Israelite “wisdom” material, any more than the instructional elements of Homer and other non-Israelite texts were so limited. Rather, this material is quite similar to legal material used elsewhere in instruction. Moreover, the fact that Deuteronomy 12–26 revises materials like the covenant code is further evidence that it was part of an ongoing process of writing-supported education and enculturation. Toward the end of the book of Deuteronomy more texts refer back to the instructional material (torah) and provide stipulations for further reinforcement of it. Deuteronomy 30 echoes Deuteronomy 6 in focusing again on the all-important “heart,” now speaking of God’s aim to “circumcise” the heart so that Israel fulfills the command in Deut 6:5 to “love” YHWH with all its “heart” and “life strength” (30:6, 10). The mind-oral connection seen in the preceding texts is reemphasized, as this chapter asserts that the law is not far off but “near to you, in your mouth and in your heart to do it” (Deut 30:11–14). Functioning together with similar references in Deuteronomy 6 and 11, this material in Deuteronomy 30 frames the intervening written “torah” as material to be orally written on the heart to ensure obedience.111 Intertwined with the instance discussed earlier of the writing of the “song of Moses” (Deut 31:19, 22) there is one more key text, in which Deuteronomy speaks of the creation of an actual copy of the Deuteronomic Torah as a

108. A sophisticated recent study of the relationship of these two corpora is Levinson, Deuteronomy. 109. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 303–4. 110. For Egyptian analogies see Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 260. For SumeroAkkadian analogues see William W. Hallo, “Biblical Abominations and Sumerian Taboos,” JQR 76 (1985): 22– 33 (and 34–35 for other culture areas outside the Bible). 111. Braulik, “Geda¨chtniskultur Israels,” 21–24.

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whole.112 This is the copy deposited with the Levites, who in turn will supervise the creation of the king’s copy. The text starts by saying that “Moses wrote down this torah [“instruction”] and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and to all the elders of Israel” (Deut 31:9; cf. 17:18). Moses then commands a public reading of the copy of the law in the presence of all Israel every seven years during the Feast of Tabernacles (31:10–11). As Jean-Pierre Sonnet points out, verbal parallels between this passage and Deuteronomy 4–5 indicate that this reading is stylized as a reenactment of the Horeb theophany, using the performance of the written Torah to perpetuate the revelational experience across time to subsequent generations.113 In this way, later Israelites, according to Moses, will “learn” to fear YHWH and observe the instruction (31:12; cf. 17:19), in particular the children (31:13). Like the pan-Hellenic recitations of Homeric poetry in classical Greece, this public reading is envisioned as yet an additional form of cultural circulation, introducing material to children and reinforcing it for adults. Yet this is not the only function envisioned for the copy of the Torah in the care of the Levites. In addition, it is to serve as a reference copy when Moses is not there to recite it any more. Once Moses finishes writing the copy of the instruction “to the very end,” he commands them to deposit it beside the ark as a “witness” (ed) amid them (31:26). This written copy, and Moses’s final recitation of its contents in Israel’s “ears” (31:28), will stand over against Israel’s propensity to turn aside from the true way after Moses’s death (31:27, 29). Once again, oral and written modes are integrally intertwined in the process of transgenerational cultural reproduction.114 The following history in Joshua to 2 Kings is less focused on educationenculturation than the D “torah” instruction discussed so far. Nevertheless, there are some pointers toward the ongoing importance of such instruction. Right after the death of Moses, the book of Joshua includes the following in God’s earliest instructions to Moses’s successor Joshua.115 Be strong and courageous in taking care to act according to the instruction which my servant, Moses, commanded. Do not turn to the right or the left so you may be successful everywhere you go. This scroll of the instruction shall not depart from your mouth; You shall recite it quietly day and night, so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it. Then you shall prosper on your way. Then you shall be successful. (Josh 1:7–8) Here again we see the joining of text—“scroll of instruction”—with orality: “from your mouth.” Furthermore, Joshua is commanded to recite it quietly

112. On the synchronic dynamics surrounding this intertwining see Sonnet, Book Within Book, 156–67. 113. Sonnet, Book Within Book, 142–46. 114. Fischer and Lohfink, “Diese Wo¨rte,” 67–70; Hurowitz, “Aspects,” 22. 115. For the classic arguments regarding the secondary character of this section see Rudolph Smend, “Das Gesetz und die Vo¨lker: Ein Beitrag zur deuteronomistischen Redaktionsgeschichte,” in Probleme biblischer Theologie: Gerhard von Rad zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Hans Walter Wolff (Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1971), 494–97.

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(hagah), thus fulfilling the injunctions for constant recitation in Deuteronomy 6:6–7 and 11:18–19. Now, however, he is to recite the entire scroll of Deuteronomy.116 Later, the Deuteronomistic history includes references to the great learning of Solomon, the preeminent founder of the traditional instructional system (e.g., 1 Kgs 5:9–14 [ET 4:29–34]). Nevertheless, the key narrative of Solomon’s acquisition of such wisdom appears to be adapted from a preDeuteronomistic version, so that his primary gift is torah wisdom for judging cases, not the broader wisdom of typical gnomic instructions (1 Kgs 3:2–15).117 The latter part of the book of Kings narrates the discovery of the Deuteronomic “torah” during Josiah’s reign, and his institution of this torah instruction as a covenant binding on all the people (2 Kgs 22:3–23:3). He is depicted from the outset as faithful in the way Joshua was called to be, “turning neither to the right nor the left” (2 Kgs 22:2; “like David”). He goes beyond the injunction in Deut 17:18–20 for the king himself to read and learn, and reads the scroll to the entire people (2 Kgs 23:2). Furthermore, the narrative echoes the text with which we started, Deuteronomy 6:5–6, in describing him as leading the people to observe the “commandments, instruction and decrees” with their whole heart and life strength (2 Kgs 23:3), and together they join in making a covenant to “establish the words of the covenant written in this scroll.”118 This is a major concluding event in the Deuteronomistic history. For the first time since Joshua (24:1–27; cf. 23:6–16), the book of Deuteronomy—which is not just torah-teaching but stylized as a vassal covenant between God and Israel—is fully instituted in its dual role as covenant and teaching, to be recited publicly and taught privately.119 An early version of the Deuteronomistic history probably concluded with this climactic event and the following destruction of non-Jerusalem sanctuaries and celebration of Passover. Only later was the present edition of the Deuteronomistic history extended to the beginning of the exile.120 Such reflections on dating, of course, are severely hampered by the lack

116. On hgh see especially Ko¨hler, “Lautes lesen,” ZAW 32 (1912): 240. On this text see Fischer and Lohfink, “Diese Wo¨rte,” 70–71, who point out that this text implies a broader reference for such recitation than the earlier texts. Now the whole scroll of Deuteronomy is included. 117. See on this particularly David M. Carr, “Royal Ideology and the Technology of Faith: A Comparative Midrash Study of 1 Kgs 3:2–15” (Ph.D. diss., Claremont Graduate University, 1988), 120–22; cf. David M. Carr, From D to Q: A Study of Early Jewish Interpretations of Solomon’s Dream at Gibeon, SBLMS (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1991), 28–30. 118. Such a reference to “this scroll” jumps from the world of the narrative—where it would be “the scroll” or “that scroll”—to the world of the reader/hearer, who is told about “this scroll” before him or her. At this climactic point a historical text containing Deuteronomy and Josiah authorizes itself, marking itself as containing the words of the covenant that Josiah and the entire people joined to enforce. Of course now the words found in 2 Kgs 23:3 are transmitted in a book separate from Deuteronomy. The scrolls for this history have multiplied. Nevertheless, this narrative suggests that they were not separate at one point, or at least were conceived as being parts of a single scroll tradition. Whereas at one point Deuteronomy itself stood apart as a “scroll of the Torah,” now 2 Kgs 23:3 depicts it as embedded in a broader history extending after it. 119. Frankena, “Vassal Treaties”; Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 59–157. 120. The relevant studies are surveyed and built on in Jeffrey C. Geoghegan, “ ‘Until This Day’ and the Preexilic Edition of the Deuteronomistic History,” JBL 122 (2003): 201–27.

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of a superscription of the sort we saw in Proverbs 25:1, which identified the “men of Hezekiah” as responsible for the following collection. We cannot know for sure exactly which scribes were responsible for the bold new vision in Deuteronomy or the Deuteronomistic history. An increasing number of recent scholars have wanted to argue that the narrative of “found law” in 2 Kings 22 is completely fictional, and that the whole history dates from the exile or later.121 Certainly much of the vision in the core of Deuteronomy is utopian, and the history surrounding Josiah has been designed to authorize it. Nevertheless, multiple strands of evidence converge to suggest the late preexile as a time for the creation of the Deuteronomic vision in Deuteronomy, and the reign of Josiah as the most likely time for its inclusion in a broader history. Elements of the history itself point to a (late) preexilic dating;122 this is also the time when we see increasing epigraphic evidence of literacy in ancient Israel. The striking decline in use of images in the late preexilic period suggests that the antiiconism of Deuteronomy was instituted then in some way.123 The late preexile is the time when we see references like that in Jeremiah to those who claim “we are wise and the torah of YHWH is with us” when “the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie”(Jer 8:8; see Jer 18:18; Isa 5:21; 29:14). Jeremiah is a figure said to be active in the time of Josiah (Jer 1:1–2), and this passage critiques a sort of combination of “wisdom” and “torah” that is characteristic of the Deuteronomic Torah. Although the family of Josiah’s scribe, Shaphan, is prominent among those depicted in the book of Jeremiah as Jeremiah’s supporters,124 Jeremiah 8:8–9 may be a rare reflection of the sort of controversy that ensued when scribal masters like them instituted a radical revision of earlier traditions used in instruction. The Deuteronomic torah instruction under discussion here is not just radical in offering a new version of older instructions, though its revisions to the covenant code are often profound. Nor is it radical in including legal or narrative material in instruction. We have seen that often in other cultures, and I will argue later that early Israel used such material in education as well. What makes the D vision particularly unique, especially in Deuteronomy itself, is the totalizing claim it makes for the instruction advocated in it. This is not an instruction to be set alongside others. This is not just another collection of proverbs or didactic narrative. Rather, the book constantly presents itself as a yet earlier and more foundational Mosaic Torah. This is the Torah that Israelites

121. Philip R. Davies, Scribes and Schools: the Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures, Library of Ancient Israel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 93–99. Most of Davies’ arguments regarding dating relate to the utopian vision in Deuteronomy, not the broader history. All are speculative about what could and could not be written under a monarchy. European studies are surveyed and affirmed in Anders Runesson, The Origins of the Synagogue: A Socio-Historical Study, Coniectanea Biblica, New Testament Series (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International, 2001), 247–48. 122. See studies surveyed in Geoghegan, “ ‘Until This Day,” ’ 201–2. Also note the (unpublished) discussion of ancient Near Eastern analogues in Carr, “Idealogy and Technology of Faith,” 132–39. 123. Keel and Uehlinger, Go¨ttinen, Go¨tter, und Gottessymbole, 406–22. 124. See especially Jer 26:24; 29:3; 36:10–19; cf. 40:1–16.

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are to recite all day and night. There is no room for another. Though this aspect of the Deuteronomic utopian vision was not fully implemented, just as others were not as well, it would have an important influence on the later position of Mosaic “Torah” amid the range of materials used in Israelite educationenculturation.125 Not just Deuteronomy but also the Deuteronomistic history following it, was shaped and used for education. Such didactic use of historical texts has precedents in other ancient educational contexts. Earlier I discussed how scribes in the Mesopotamian and Hittite systems used older display inscriptions and created new historical texts out of older annals for use in education and enculturation. Such texts are attested among Mesopotamian educational exercises, particularly in the first millennium, and their fluid textual history attests to their use in oral-written contexts. So also, the textual history of the historical materials preserved in the Deuteronomistic history (in MT, Qumran, and LXX), and appropriation of the Deuteronomistic history in Isaiah 36–39, Jeremiah 52, Chronicles, and Josephus reflects a similar oral-written usage.126 Moreover, the contents of the Deuteronomistic history go far beyond the aims of merely archival or monumental texts. Though such annalistic and other materials were probably used to write it, the history now features major speeches and other transitions that would enable its audience to draw an educational point from the events described. Like the Hittite historiographic texts discussed by Hubert Cancik, the Deuteronomistic history is full of teaching incidents and exempla.127 Its judgments on earlier events stood as a new oralwritten representation of collective memory almost as radical as the legaleducational vision in Deuteronomy, the book it built on and authorized. Together, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic history formed the core of an emergent alternative curriculum in ancient Israel, one that would be quite influential in the exile and later periods.

125. Frank Cru¨semann, “Das ‘Portative Vaterland’: Struktur und Genese des alttestamentlichen Kanons,” in Kanon und Zensur: Beitra¨ge der Archa¨ologie der literarischen Kommunikation II, ed. Jan Assmann and Aleida Assmann (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1987), 65–67. 126. This is not to say that all variants are to be explained as oral variants but only that the preponderance of large-scale and nonsignificant variants is best explained by a combined oral-written process of the sort also seen in Mesopotamian colophons and other ancient evidence. One particularly stimulating use of versions and parallel narratives to reconstruct textual history (with sensitivity to oral-written issues) is Raymond F. Person, The Kings-Isaiah and Kings-Jeremiah Recensions, BZAW (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1997). But note the review of this work in Hermann-Josef Stipp, “Review of Raymond F. Person, The Kings-Isaiah and Kings-Jeremiah Recensions,” TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism 3 (1998), available online at: http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol03/ Person1998rev-x.html, and other studies cited in that review. 127. See Cancik, Grunzu¨ge, 54–64, for particularly interesting parallels from the Hittite historiography. For an earlier discussion of the Deuteronomistic history as teaching literature see Du¨rr, Erziehungswesen, 100– 101, who cites Norbert Peters, Unsere Bibel: Die Lebensquellen der Heiligen Schrift (Paderborn: Bonifacius, 1929), 208–10. For a more recent discussion of successive editions of the Deuteronomistic history as curricular materials in early Israelite education see Andre´ Lemaire, “Towards a Redactional History of the Book of Kings,” in Reconsidering Israel and Judah: Recent Studies on the Deuteronomistic History, ed. G. Knoppers and J. G. McConville (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 446–61, esp. 459–60 (with citations of other recent literature).

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(Counter)Education in the Prophets Nevertheless, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic history were not the only or even the first alternative curriculum in ancient Israel. We see a similar sort of juxtaposition of types of education in early prophets, particularly Isaiah.128 Isaiah was probably educated in a traditional way, whether in the family, court, or temple scribal workshop. I have already discussed how one passage in Isaiah, Isa 28:9–13, probably reflects a form of alphabetic education known by both the prophet and his opponents. Moreover, studies by Johannes Fichtner, William Whedbee, and others have highlighted how early prophetic material in Isaiah 1–39 is saturated with forms and terminology also characteristic of early instructional literature of the sort found in Proverbs.129 Nevertheless, Isaianic material also suggests a critical attitude toward traditional “wisdom” and a push toward offering an alternative form of instruction. One woe oracle proclaims judgment on a group who is “wise in their own eyes,” drunkards and perverters of justice (5:21–24). Another oracle proclaims that “wisdom shall perish from the wise” (29:14), and yet another judges those who go to Egypt because of its military might rather than consulting YHWH “who is also wise” (31:1–2). As Michael Fishbane and others have suggested, this may well reflect Isaiah’s critique of a revival of wisdom under the “men of Hezekiah,” perhaps under the influence of incoming instructional material from the recently fallen northern kingdom.130 It probably reflects a substantial critique by Isaiah of the chief representatives of traditional education of his time. Furthermore, indicators suggest that Isaiah, facing opposition in his day, sought to pass on his prophecy as a “teaching” to subsequent generations. For example, after a series of passages describing opposition to Isaiah’s prophecy (8:5–15), the following passage depicts an intention to “wrap up”/“seal” his instruction-teaching amid his “students:” Wrap up the instruction [teudah], Seal the teaching [torah] among my students [limmuday]. I will wait for YHWH, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob. I will hope in him. See, both I and the young boys that YHWH has given me,

128. In what follows I will refer simply to “Isaiah,” though there is a chance that some of the sayings often attributed to him were authored by someone of another name. 129. Some key studies are Johanes Fichtner, “Jesaja unter den Weisen,” Theologische Literaturzeitung 84 (1949): 75–80; William Whedbee, Isaiah and Wisdom (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1971); Joseph Jensen, The Use of Toˆraˆ by Isaiah: His Debate with the Wisdom Tradition, CBQ Monograph Series (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1973). For additional studies and responses to them see the survey in J. Crenshaw, “The Wisdom Literature,” in D. Knight and G. Tucker, ed., The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 371–373. 130. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 33.

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1 Kings already described circles of “sons of the prophets” as groups surrounding other figures like Elijah and Elisha, long before Isaiah, but it included no clear description of a process of educating them (2 Kings 2:1–18; 4:38; 6:1–7). In this Isaianic passage, however, we have a clearer reflection of the sort of small-scale education characteristic of the ancient cultures discussed here. The term for “students” used here, limmudim, is cognate for the word for students at Ugarit, lmdm. In this case, they may not be just students but Isaiah’s own children, given to him “from YHWH” and featured prominently in the preceding narrative (7:3; 8:1–4). Whether or not this is true, the instruction that he wraps them up or seals them in is opposed to that of others.131 The passage is followed by a judgment oracle on opponents who insist that a people should seek “instruction” (teudah) and “teaching” (torah) not from a prophet like him but from ancestral “gods,” “from the dead” (8:19–20a). To be sure, there is nothing in Isa 8:16–22 explicitly about “writing” this instruction-teaching. Nevertheless, there are multiple markers both here and elsewhere in Isaiah that this educational process, like the others discussed in this and preceding chapters, was both written and oral. First, such “instruction” and “torah” mentioned in Isa 8:16, 20, was often written as well as oral in the ancient world, and 8:16 uses metaphors for handling scrolls—“wrap up” and “seal”—to talk of the process of inculcating this teaching in students.132 Second, this passage is itself a written text, following on and authorizing other written texts. Indeed, the passage occurs toward the conclusion of an often-posited early collection of Isaianic prophecy, the testimony book (Isa 6–8*). If there was such a book, Isaiah 8:16–18 or 8:16–22 could have served as a concluding colophon to it, like the concluding colophon to Ecclesiastes that was discussed earlier (Eccl 12:9–12 [13–14]).133 Moreover, there is another Isaiah text, Isaiah 30:8, that refers explicitly to the writing of prophecy amid references to the people’s rejection of the prophet’s prophecy as a rejection of the instruction/ torah of YHWH (30:9–11), who is the true teacher (30:20) and wise one (31:2): Go, write it down on a tablet, and inscribe it in a scroll.

131. This text has long been a locus classicus for discussions of Israelite education. See A. Klostermann, “Schulwesen im alten Israel,” in Theologische Studien: Theodor Zahn, ed. N. Bonswetsch (Leipzig: A. Deichert’sche, 1908), 193–232; Jensen, Use of Toˆraˆ by Isaiah, 110–12, and the survey of recent discussion in Lemaire, Les Ecoles, 37–38. 132. Jensen, Use of Toˆraˆ by Isaiah, 110–14. 133. If the colophon was so placed, it would authorize not only the text but the student-bearers of it. For discussion of older scholarship and more recent critiques of the Isaiah testimony book hypothesis see Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, OTL (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 42–44. For a recent affirmation of the hypothesis see Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 223–24.

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So that it may be for a later time, A witness forever. This text, occurring toward the end of prophecies attributed to the eighthcentury prophet, explicitly authorizes written material. Isaiah is to write the torah-teaching of YHWH for rebellious “sons” who do not heed the “instruction of YHWH” (30:9). Much as Deuteronomy included a passage toward the end about how it was written and deposited with the Levitical priests as a “witness” against future generations (Deut 31:25–27), so also this passage toward the end of first Isaiah material likewise authorizes itself as a “witness” for future generations amid a rebellious current one. Moreover, as in the case of the later Deuteronomic instruction, this Isaianic torah-teaching is posited as true versus surrounding teachings that are false. In this case, the false teachings are followed by people who go to Egypt and reject the true torah of YHWH, the holy one of Israel (Isaiah 30–31*). As often in the ancient world and in later prophets like Habakkuk (2:2), writing is particularly permanent. It preserves a work for its appointed time.134 Such reference copies—whether on tablet or scroll—ensured the persistence of a given teaching into a generation that would otherwise have forgotten key parts of an exclusively oral torah. Indeed, as Haim Gevaryahu has suggested, the very writing of a prophecy like Isaiah’s was probably responsible for the continued preservation of remnants of his words, as opposed to our lack of comparable sayings material from “prophets” like Elijah and Elisha.135 Prophets like Isaiah mark the emergence of oral-written prophetic education that could serve as the context for transmission of a given instruction to later generations. Like the Egyptian scribe Amennakht (though probably for different reasons), Isaiah appears to have produced a minicurriculum of materials of various genres. This included not just judgments or prophetic “teachings” (e.g. Isa 1:10–20) but also royal hymns (e.g., Isa 9:1–6 [ET 9:2–7]; 11:1–9), parables (e.g. Isa 5:1–7), and other forms of literature.136 Isaiah probably also resembled Amennakht in not having a “school” with a separate building or full-time teacher. Isaiah did not even necessarily have “students” other than his own children. But at least Isaiah’s students, his equivalent to the “sons of prophets” (cf. 2 Kgs 2:1–18; 4:38; 6:1–7), succeeded in preserving some form of the teaching-instruction that had been wrapped up/ sealed in them.137 The book of Jeremiah is the other major source of prophetic material relating to oral-written transmission and instruction. The book and prophet depicted

134. For discussions of this in relation to Isa 30:8; Hab 2:2, and other texts see Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe,” 207; Michael H. Floyd, “Writing and Prophecy in Habbakuk 2,1–5,” ZAW 105 (1993): 462–81; Ehud Ben Zvi, “Introduction: Setting an Agenda,” in Ben Zvi and Floyd, Writings and Speech, 13. 135. Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe,” 203. 136. For discussion of the case of Amennakht see chapter 4, p. 70. 137. Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe,” 205.

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in it have numerous parallels to Isaiah. As the son of Hilkiah from the priests of Anathoth (Jer 1:1), Jeremiah, like Isaiah, probably received an earlier traditional education.138 As in the case of Isaiah, the material in the book of Jeremiah reflects forms and conceptuality found in early educational literature like Proverbs.139 Yet, like Isaiah, Jeremiah is depicted as opposing the chief representatives of such wisdom during his day. He critiques those who claim to be wise and who pervert the torah with their false pen (Jer 8:8–9; cf. Isa 5:21–24), and he attacks opponents who proceed with plots against him because of their conviction that “instruction [torah] will not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor a word from the prophet” (Jer 18:18; cf. Isa 29:14). The latter quotation suggests a conceptuality where torah teaching in Jeremiah is associated not with prophets but with priests.140 Thus, Jeremiah should not too quickly be merged with Isaiah.141 Moreover, Jeremiah does not use teaching terminology for his prophecy, at least not to the same extent we saw in passages like Isaiah 8:16–18. Nevertheless, there are indications that Jeremiah, like Isaiah, drew on oral-written processes for transmission of his prophecy, thanks to which we now have the book under his name. Moreover, despite the general lack of teaching terminology, this system owed much to the oral-written teaching system that Jeremiah and some of his supporters had undergone. The chief indicators of this, as Gevaryahu in particular has shown, are found in Jeremiah 36, one of the most explicit discussions of reading and writing in the Hebrew Bible. As in the cases discussed in Isaiah (Isa 8:16; 30:8), Jeremiah receives a divine command to write down his prophecy for a future generation because of opposition from his contemporaries (Jer 36:1–3). Unlike in Isaiah, we then hear of Jeremiah calling a scribe, Baruch, who writes down Jeremiah’s words for him “at Jeremiah’s dictation” (mippi yirmeyahu; Jer 36:4; cf. 36:32). Moreover, because Jeremiah is prevented from entering the temple, Baruch goes on Jeremiah’s orders to deliver orally the words of the scroll he has written, first to the people at the new gate of the temple (36:9–10) and then to a group of officials of the king (36:11–19). After assessing that the scroll was indeed produced by dictation (36:17–18), the officials tell Baruch and Jeremiah to hide (36:19) before informing King Jehoiakim, who gradually destroys the scroll when he hears it read to him (36:20–26). This, however, is not the end of the prophetic transmission process. Rather, Jeremiah receives yet another command to produce a scroll of his sayings, and Baruch produces a revised

138. Demsky, “Education,” 396–97. 139. T. R. Hobbs, “Some Proverbial Reflections in the Book of Jeremiah,” ZAW 91 (1979): 62–72. Later in this chapter I discuss the references to “writing on the heart” in Jeremiah. 140. See Christof Hardmeier, “Wahrhaftigkeit und Fehlorientierung bei Jeremia: Jer 5,1 und die divinatorische Expertise Jer 2–6* im Kontext der zeitgono¨ssischen Kontroversen um die politische Zukunft Jerusalems,” in Exegese vor Ort: Festschrift fu¨r Peter Welten zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Christl Maier (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2001), 137–39, who makes a good argument that Jeremiah’s priestly identity and the character of Jeremiah 2–6 suggest that it may have had the status of a divinatory document. 141. That is a liability of a discussion like that in Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe,” 203, which only emphasizes similarities.

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and expanded version at the dictation of Jeremiah (36:27–32). Apparently Baruch did not experience the typical glories of a scribe as a result of his association with Jeremiah. Toward the end of the book we find an oracle directed toward him from Jeremiah on the writing of the scroll, when he apparently has offered the following lament. “Woe is me! YHWH has added grief to my pain; I am worn out from my groaning, and I find no rest” (Jer 45:3). To this, God—as quoted by Jeremiah—replies with a command not to seek great things for himself. He will receive his own life as a prize of war amid the devastation to be visited on the whole land (45:5).142 Nowhere is Baruch called a “student” of Jeremiah, yet he performs many similar functions. He comes to Jeremiah already a “scribe,” much as more advanced students would have come after receiving early education in their family or (more rarely) a school.143 Like an advanced student, he receives text by dictation, a text that is meant to be delivered in oral form. Moreover, this oral-written textual tradition—like others we have seen—is not fixed but is given multiple recensions by the master who dictates, in this case Jeremiah (36:27–32). Finally, as Gevaryahu observes, the data in the Jeremiah tradition resembles that included in some Mesopotamian colophons in recording not only the name of the originating master but also the name of Baruch, the scribe, and in emphasizing the fact that he received the tradition “by mouth” (36:4, 17–18; 45:1).144 Thus Baruch escapes the anonymity of the transmitters of the Isaiah tradition.145 Moreover, standing at the edge of the catastrophe of exile, he serves as a crucial oral-written bridge to later periods, connecting the largely rejected prophecy of Jeremiah with later generations who would receive that word more positively.146 Whether at Baruch’s hands or those of later tradents, this prophecy is stylized in ways that recall the oral-written dynamics seen earlier in Proverbs, Deuteronomy, and Isaiah. Once again, writing metaphors are used to describe the process of transmission, both how sin is written on the hearts of the Judeans and how God will write God’s Torah on their hearts. In the first instance, Jeremiah 17 describes the impact on children when their parents have the wrong thing written on their hearts: The sin of Judah is written with an iron pen inscribed with a diamond tip On the tablet of their heart-mind

142. Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe,” 241–42. 143. Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe,” 209. 144. Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe,” 204. 145. See Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe,” 203, 205–9, for speculation on the reasons for this. Gevaryahu also emphasizes (220–21) the possibility that Baruch may have been responsbile for the unusually extensive superscription system in Jeremiah, though he notes that it is difficult to distinguish Baruch’s work from that of his successors. 146. Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe,” 240–42.

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This text shows how the metaphor of writing on the mind can be used to describe the corruption of the mind as well as its cultivation. Later Jeremiah 31:33–34 describes how God will address corruption of the people through replacing their teaching with God’s teaching: This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my torah teaching within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (NRSV, emphasis added) In this case, the process of divine inscription on the heart and mind is contrasted with the process of making the former covenant where God married them (baalti bam; 31:32). The metaphor of God as teacher succeeds and supersedes the metaphor of God as husband (31:31–32). For this author, “writing on the heart” is a more effective way of binding Israel to God than is marrying her. Many have argued that the latter passage, Jer 31:31–34, is partly an exilic D redaction of Jeremiah,147 and the broader phenomenon of the predominance of such “D” elements in Jeremiah may indicate another important step in the transmission of the Jeremiah traditions. Though certain early parts of the Jeremiah tradition appear fairly distinct from the Deuteronomistic history, substantial parts of Jeremiah are unusually saturated with language and conceptuality reminiscent of Deuteronomic and Deuteronomistic materials. Perhaps the family of Josiah’s scribe, Shaphan, developed an educational system focused on Deuteronomic materials that (later?) included materials from Jeremiah as well. Certainly descendants of Shaphan are mentioned in the book of Jeremiah as among his protectors and supporters (Jer 26:24; 29:3; 36:10–19; cf. 40:1–16).148 If this were so, the scribes responsible for further transmitting Jeremiah would have ingested Deuteronomic and Deuteronomistic texts as part of their formation. As a result of their memorization of this textual repertoire, terms and phrases from such classic texts—more or less slightly modified— would come to their lips and pens as they transmitted the legal, historical, and prophetic traditions they had received. For example, having memorized the

147. Siegfried Hermann, Jeremia: Der Prophet und das Buch, Ertra¨ge der Forschung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990), 76–77, provides a brief summary. 148. For discussion of writing and the circle of Jeremiah’s supporters see Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe,” 235–36.

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Deuteronomic injunction to “have the words [God] is commanding in your heart” (Deut 6:6) and “put [God’s] words on your heart and soul” (11:18) they then might easily write a prophecy from Jeremiah that spoke of how God will “put my torah in them and write it on their heart” (Jer 31:33). This is a vision of divine education in the book of Jeremiah built on the educational vision in the Deuteronomic utopia and spoken in the Deuteronomic idiom. The book of Ezekiel does not contain explicit teaching imagery like that of Isaiah. Nevertheless, Ezekiel is yet another figure—like Jeremiah—who probably received an education within the context of the priesthood (Ezek 1:3).149 Moreover, his prophecy contains vivid imagery of the oral-written matrix. Rather than using writing metaphors of the sort seen in Jer 31:33, Ezekiel speaks of God giving the people “one heart,” a “new heart,” or a “new spirit” (Ezek 11: 19; 18:31; 36:26; cf. 11:21; 14:3–5; 16:30; 40:4; 44:5, 7, 9). Nevertheless, Ezekiel’s call narrative includes a vivid description of him actually ingesting God’s words in written form: I looked, and a hand was stretched out to me, and a written scroll was in it. He spread it before me; it had writing on the front and on the back, and written on it were words of lamentation and mourning and woe. He said to me, O mortal, eat what is offered to you; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. He said to me, Mortal, eat this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it. Then I ate it; and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey. (Ezek 2:9–3:3, NRSV) Having thus ingested a text, Ezekiel is then told to go and tell it to the people, whether or not they hear (Ezek 3:4–11; see also 33:30–33). Thus the text moves from a picture of the prophet ingesting a whole text, the scroll, to his communicating this “word” orally to the broader populace. This resembles the depiction of Jeremiah in Jeremiah 36, who is able to dictate the entire contents of his earlier scroll (and more!) to Baruch after the first copy was destroyed (Jer 36:32; cf. 36:4, 17–18, 27–32). Both texts—Ezekiel’s call and the Jeremiah narrative—envision a world where figures like prophets could hold entire texts in their minds and hearts which they then orally communicated to other Israelites. Yet writing continues to be important in the Ezekiel tradition. Like both Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ezekiel is depicted as receiving a command to “write down” his vision (of the temple) for a later generation who can hear him (Ezek 43:11).150 We see explicit use of educational terminology in the later exilic and postexilic portions of the book of Isaiah. In a written passage that repeatedly echoes an

149. Demsky, “Education,” 396–97. 150. Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe,” 237.

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ancient oral educational context with its frequent beatings, an exilic (or postexilic) writer authorizes his own words with the following. The Lord YHWH has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens, wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. (Isa 50:4–6, NRSV, adapted) The speaker adopts the stance of someone who knows the experience of a student and is undergoing it again. Only now his “ears” are open to God’s instruction, while he endures the beatings of his human peers.151 Furthermore, the same or a similar author elsewhere characterizes God as a “teacher” (48: 17) and promises Zion that all her sons will be “students” (limmudim) of YHWH, much as he was (54:13; cf. 50:4–5). As in earlier Isaiah, the important teaching is God’s, to be received through the ear of the prophet and preserved in writing, as well as delivered orally.152 Of course, the prophetic writings are far less focused on revealing the context of their own transmission than on God’s vision for Israel. On the basis of the evidence provided by the prophetic books, it is impossible to reconstruct fully the mix of groups responsible for the diverse prophetic writings that made it into the Bible. Sometimes we see snapshots of supporters or other groups surrounding a given prophetic figure like Jeremiah (e.g. Jer 36:25) or Zechariah (Zech 11:11).153 Sometimes clues like the Deuteronomistic language in the book of Jeremiah suggest a linkage with other biblical traditions in the enculturation transmission process. Generally, we cannot know the development of use of these texts nor the circles that used them, but we do know that the prophetic texts found their way into the present Bible. Whatever their origins, they were no longer mere archival records of a prophetic word or scholarly notations of oracles given. Instead, such prophetic words eventually became part of a stream of educational-enculturational oral-written literature used in the formation of (elite) Israelites. The colophon at the end of Hosea, the introductory book in the Book of the Twelve Prophets, points to this understanding of prophetic material:

151. This text was already introduced to the discussion of ancient Israelite teaching by Klostermann. For a more recent discussion using comparative material see Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe,” 237. 152. Jensen, Use of Toˆraˆ by Isaiah, 124–32. 153. Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe,” 236.

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The one who is wise will understand, The one who is discerning will know them. For the ways of YHWH are straight, the righteous walk in them, while the wicked stumble in them. (Hos 14:10 [ET 14:9]) Through this subscription, the preceding material in Hosea is designated as shaped for those who are “wise.” This hardly means that Hosea was produced or revised by a special group of “sages.”154 Rather, this colophon is an indicator that books like Hosea had entered the stream of various kinds of literature, including books like Proverbs and Deuteronomy, that could be used for gaining and keeping wisdom—in other words, for education. Such educational use of prophetic material is somewhat unusual in the broader scope of the ancient Near East. One possible analogy may be NeoAssyrian reference copies of multiple oracles from Ishtar.155 A more geographically proximate analogy, proposed by Lemaire, is the Deir Alla site, where an abecedary, probably used in education, was found along with a wall-copy of “the scroll of the seer, Balaam, son of Beor.”156 Perhaps in first millennium, northwest Semitic cultures like those manifest at Deir Alla and in the Bible, prophecies were the equivalent of the extensive divinatory collections used in advanced Mesopotamian education, with prophets—some of whom (e.g., Jeremiah, Ezekiel) were priests—playing a divinatory role.157 Where firstmillennium Mesopotamian scholars were learning to “read” the heavens and various omens, first-millennium Israelites and their neighbors studied the “scrolls” of seers like Balaam or Isaiah. Within Mesopotamia, such writings were used on a high level to educate specialists in the highest form of cosmic hermeneutics. So also, within Israel, prophetic writings appear to have been used initially to enculturate a small group of “sons” (e.g. Isa 8:16–18) and were transmitted through individuals (e.g. Baruch). Yet the inclusion of this specialist literature in the Bible testifies to the fact that it gained a broader audience. Prophets had been commanded to write their words for a future generation (Isa 8:16; 30:8; Jer 36:1–3; Hab 2:2–3), and later generations apparently heard them.158

154. Note arguments by some for special “wisdom” material in Habbakuk: Donald Gowan, “Habbakuk and Wisdom,” Perspective 9 (1968): 157–66; Gary A. Tuttle, “Wisdom and Habakkuk,” Studia Biblica et Theologica 3 (1973): 3–14. 155. Note Martti Nissinen, “Spoken, Written, Quoted and Invented: Orality and Writtenness in Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy,” in Ben Zvi and Floyd, Writings and Speech, 235–71. 156. Andre´ Lemaire, “Les inscriptions sur plaˆtre de Deir Alla et leur signification historique et culturelle,” in The Balaam Text from Deir Alla Reevaluated, ed. J. Hoftijzer and G. van der Kooij (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 52–55. 157. Hardmeier, “Wahrhaftigkeit und Fehlorientierung,” 137–39. 158. For an earlier discussion of the “school” context of prophecies, particularly Jeremiah’s, that uses extensive comparisons with scribal and school practices of other cultures see Gevaryahu, “Baruch, the Scribe,” esp. pp. 203–5, 209, 215–16, 220–21.

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Other Biblical Literature as Educational Literature: Torah, Psalms, and Other Texts So far we have seen several biblical parallels to the sorts of texts used in ancient education: gnomic/instructional wisdom (e.g. Proverbs), didactic tales (e.g. Job), law (e.g. Deuteronomy), and historical material. We have also seen the educational use of a type of material, prophecy, that is only obliquely attested in education elsewhere. But there are several other sorts of long-duration texts that were transmitted in education-enculturation in other ancient cultures and have not been discussed in this chapter so far: cultic-priestly instruction, semimythic early narratives, and hymns. Such texts in other cultures are almost never marked by their contents as educational. We would rarely know of their educational function aside from the oral-written dynamics of their transmission or their attestation in school exercise copies. The same is somewhat true of biblical narratives, priestly instructions, and hymns. Nevertheless, I will show some explicit marks that they were used in education-enculturation and (re)shaped for that purpose. Priests in the ancient world were among the most literate members of the populace, and priests, particularly Levites, are often depicted in biblical narratives as the keepers of the texts (e.g. Deut 31:9–11; cf. Num 5:23) and the teachers of Israel (Hos 4:6; Deut 17:9–12; 31:10–13; 2 Chr 19:8–11; Neh 8:8– 9). Notably, the Levites are also identified in Chronicles as the musicians and singers of ancient Israel (e.g. 1 Chr 25:2–6; 2 Chr 5:12), perhaps indicating a join—on the priestly level—between song and text that was evident in other cultures as well. The term for their teaching is “torah,” as in Jeremiah’s quotation of opponents who claim that “torah will never perish from the priests” (Jer 18:18), though others, like prophets, are known to offer such torah teachings as well. Leviticus and Numbers are particularly saturated with remnants of priestly teachings, complete with superscriptions of the sort typical of scribal educational transmission.159 Some appear to follow chiastic designs of the sort used elsewhere to organize oral-written material for easy memorization.160 Nevertheless, such priestly teachings in the Pentateuch are distinguished in a key respect from their counterparts in other cultures. Priestly instruction outside Israel was reserved for advanced ranks of cultic professionals. Cultic regulations did not play the general educational role of gnomic material, narratives, or hymns. In contrast, the torot /teachings in Leviticus and Numbers now sit in a text, the Pentateuch, used by a broader public.

159. A. F. Rainey, “The Order of Sacrifices in Old Testament Ritual Texts,” Biblica 51 (1970): 307–18; Michael Fishbane, “Accusations of Adultery: A Study of Law and Scribal Practice in Numbers 5:11–31,” HUCA 45 (1974): 32–35; “On Colophons, Textual Criticism and Legal Analogies,” CBQ 42 (1980): 438–49. 160. An early study of this phenomenon in the Old Testament, N. W. Lund, “The Presence of Chiasmus in the Old Testament,” American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 46 (1929): 114–21, found a particularly high proportion of examples in Leviticus (Lev 11:24–28; 14:10–20, 21–32, 49–53; 24:13–23).

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The Pentateuch also includes another key type of long-duration material that was typically used elsewhere in ancient education: narratives that focus on history long before any contemporary royal dynasty. This broad category would cover texts like the Enuma Elish creation account, Atrahasis creation and flood story, Gilgamesh story, and Homeric epic. The Bible includes particularly close parallels to these nonbiblical texts in Genesis 1–11, which covers both creation and flood.161 Nevertheless, other narratives in the Bible likewise focus on early, pre-land ancestral figures in Israel’s history (e.g., Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekkah, Jacob). Unlike the priestly teachings, the earliest, non-P versions of these narratives are not separated by different superscriptions.162 Perhaps they were lost, or they may have been longer continuous texts. Some may have been produced for noneducational purposes. Nevertheless, these narratives also came to be included in the present Pentateuch, a literary whole that now goes by the term “teaching”/torah.163 As much scholarship in the past has stressed, the present whole of the Pentateuch is complex. It now begins with and continues with narrative, includes priestly instructions like those in Leviticus, and concludes with the Deuteronomic “teaching.” Yet both the placement of these materials and their later usage appear to have led to an extension of the concept of “torah” to include not just priestly teachings or Deuteronomy but the broader literary whole. Though the injunction to constantly recite “torah” in Josh 1:8 originally may have referred to the Deuteronomic Torah and not the Pentateuch, it now refers to the whole Torah, standing as it does just after its conclusion. Furthermore, we see similar terminology regarding constant recitation later in Psalm 1:2, which proclaims the happiness of those “whose delight is the Torah of God, and his Torah they recite quietly day and night.” These texts from Joshua and Psalms are similar enough that some have used them to posit an editorial redaction that linked the Psalms with the Torah and historical books.164 The important point for our purposes, however, is that they construe the Torah as a written text to be internalized through oral recitation. Whatever the original usage and origin of its narratives and laws, those texts now form part of a Torah whole that is taken as oral-written literature: never to leave the mouth, to be recited day and night. The Deuteronomic authors may originally have conceived of constant recitation of just their own torah teaching, but those claims of primacy have now been extended to cover a range of priestly and other preland traditions as well. The last major category of ancient educational text is song or hymn. I have already discussed how certain songs embedded in narratives, like the song of Moses and David’s lament over Jonathan, are explicitly identified in their con-

161. For an overview of potential linkages see Carr, Reading the Fractures, 241–46. 162. The genealogical superscriptions of Genesis (e.g., 2:4a; 5:1; and so on) are widely agreed to be later priestly additions. 163. Du¨rr, Erziehungswesen, 77; Lemaire, Les Ecoles, esp. 72–83. 164. Odil Hannes Steck, Der Abschluss der Prophetie im Alten Testament: Ein Versuch zur Frage der Vorgeschichte des Kanons, Biblisch-theologische Studien (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1991), 161–63.

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texts as oral-written literature to be taught.165 The book of Psalms stands as another major source of Israelite oral-written teaching literature. This does not mean that all Psalms were written from the outset to serve an educational purpose. Many were used in worship or are imitations of forms actually used in worship. The present written Psalter, however, thoroughly reflects its function as teaching literature, indeed, literature for teaching torah piety. The introductory Psalm 1, quoted earlier, calls for constant recitation of Torah. The call to learn and teach “Torah” in Psalm 78 (78:1), whatever its original referent, now functions to direct its hearers toward oral-written ingestion of the Pentateuch. The longest Psalm (119) is an acrostic poem calling for similar recitation of and devotion to Torah. In addition, the Psalter features several so-called wisdom psalms that are particularly dense with terminology found in early instructional literature like Proverbs, and it includes several acrostic poems, in addition to Psalm 119 (Pss 9–10; 25; 34; 145), that use the alphabetic principle to aid memorization and recitation of their varied contents. Indeed, one psalm even uses the “writing on the heart” imagery seen in Proverbs and elsewhere, now talking of the internalization of God’s Torah and the superiority of an “open ear” to cultic sacrifice: Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then I said, “Here I am; in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do your will, O my God; your torah-teaching is in my inmost parts.” (Ps 40:7–9 [ET 40: 6–8], NRSV, modified) This, along with other Torah-focused psalms, now sets the tone within a broader psalter that is introduced by Psalm 1 and divided by doxologies into five parts mirroring the five parts of the Pentateuchal Torah: 3–41; 42–72; 73– 89; 90–106; 107–149. In sum, despite the probable cultic origins of certain psalms and genres used in the book of Psalms, the Psalter as a whole is now part of a broader educational process, interlaced with scribal superscriptions of the sort we have seen so frequently elsewhere in educational long-duration literature (often including musical notations), shaped through their musicalpoetic form (and occasional acrostic form) for educational memorization, often echoing so-called wisdom themes of early teaching texts, mirroring the Torah teaching in structure, and calling at strategic points for constant oral internalization of the Torah.166

165. See above, pp. 132–33. 166. For an earlier discussion see J. Reindl, “Weisheitliche Bearbeitung von Psalmen,” in Congress Volume: Vienna 1980, VTSup, ed. J. Emerton (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 340–41. On “wisdom Psalms” see the overview of

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The Song of Songs stands as yet another example of a biblical text possibly transmitted within the context of education. In chapter 4 I discussed how love literature like the Song of Songs was a documented part of education in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Ugarit. There I argued that, whatever its origins in early Israelite banquets, it probably entered Scripture as an increasingly frequent part of early Israelite education. Moreover, it—like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes—was attributed to the preeminent Israelite sage, Solomon.167 Some other biblical texts are less likely candidates for extensive use in education. For example, the book of Chronicles, despite its intensive focus on teaching and education, does not seem to have played a central role at any point of Jewish education. It appears to be a reformulation of material also seen in the Deuteronomistic history, a reformulation that never did more than stand in its shadow. Other megillot (scrolls), like Esther, seem to have played their primary educational role in the microeducational context of an annual festival, Purim in this case. This idea of oral-written educationenculturation should not be pushed too far. Some parts of the Bible may have been included in the broader library of Israelite heritage, despite their only occasional use for formation and consultation. The point argued so far, however, is the following: such books are far more the exception in the biblical tradition than the rule. Moreover, those parts that were not used in either ongoing education or regular festival—for example, Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah—were probably included by virtue of their parallel to and association with other items—for example, the history extending from Genesis through 2 Kings—that were. Though we cannot know exactly which biblical texts were used in Israelite education, the scope of material covered was remarkably broad. To be sure, it is difficult for contemporary scholars to imagine achieving memorized mastery of such a vast corpus. Such memorization is rare today, except perhaps for the memorization of the Koran in traditional Islamic education. And indeed, such memorization was probably not typical in ancient Israel. I have argued here that few Israelites achieved mastery of even the earlier stages of such education—whether dominated by Proverbs, Deuteronomic Torah, or the Pentateuch. Fewer still would have achieved mastery of the whole. Still, we have attestation of elite scribe-scholars achieving mastery of similar sized corpora in other cultures. As William Hallo points out, the present Hebrew Bible, at approximately twenty-three thousand verses, is comparable in size to the Greek Homeric corpus of twenty-eight thousand lines and somewhat smaller than the Sumerian educational corpus of approximately forty

literature and discussion in James L. Crenshaw, The Psalms: An Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 87–95. Crenshaw’s arguments against a separate genre of “wisdom Psalm” dovetail with the present arguments for the instructional character of the Psalter as a whole. 167. See earlier, pp. 88–90. This was helped by Solomon’s reputation for love and the mention that he composed many songs and proverbs, along with the reference to his wedding and royal litter in 3:7–10 (possibly added at the time of ascription?). But it also conflicted with elements like Song of Songs 8, where Solomon’s possession of a vineyard is contrasted with the love depicted.

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thousand lines.168 And though one might object that Homeric or Sumerian poetry is better suited to memorization than biblical prose, it should be noted that such prose can be poeticized by being organized into canted lines and reinforced through semimusical performance, as it has been by later Jewish communities. There are a variety of ways, “poetry” being only one, of shaping a corpus so that it can be incised on the mind and heart.

Hebrew and Foreign Forms of Education in (and before) Ancient Israel So far the claims made in this chapter are fairly limited. Some others have felt able to say more specific things about literate personnel, the process of training, and the production and use of texts in ancient Israel. This chapter, however, has concentrated on building the case for a picture of oral-written education of a literate elite in Israel, a process beginning with but sometimes building far beyond alphabetic literacy to encompass enculturation accomplished partly by means of memorization and recitation of written texts. I have argued that much of biblical literature came to serve as key parts of an indigenous curriculum for early Israelite scribes and other literate members of the upper class. That said, ancient Israel may not have been confined in all periods and contexts to instruction in Hebrew literature. The Hezekiah-Isaiah narrative features a tantalizing story about three officials—the one over the palace (Eliakim), the royal scribe (Shebna), and the recorder (Joah)—asking the Rabshekah to speak his taunts in Aramaic rather than Hebrew so that the people will not understand (2 Kgs 18:26//Isa 36:11). Thus, the author presupposes that officials of this sort had received training in Aramaic, the lingua franca of the late Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Persian empires, giving them a competence then lacking in the general populace. We saw similar foreign language training in the Sumero-Akkadian tradition, including attestation outside Mesopotamia during the second millennium, when Akkadian was the lingua franca of much of the Near Eastern world. Therefore, it would be mistaken to assume that Israel and its most important Canaanite precursors always had only a single-track educational system focused on indigenous language texts (e.g., Ugaritic, Canaanite, or Hebrew). In earlier chapters I discussed some faint clues that Israel was influenced by the textual-educational systems of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Moreover, we know that Aramaic became increasingly important in ancient Israel, both because of interaction with the Aramaean kingdoms and the arrival of foreign conquerors who used Aramaic for international communication. Given this data, it is likely that some royal officials like Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah underwent specific instruction in another language, language instruction that—in

168. Hallo, “Sumerian Literature,” 30, 38, n. 5.

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the ancient world—appears to have been intricately bound with learning a language’s associated instructional literature. If so, late preexilic Judah would have had a two-track educational system, like those found in Bronze Age Ugarit or Amarna: one track focusing on texts in the local language and another, more exclusive educational track focused on education in a foreign language and a highly limited corpus of foreign language texts. This sort of two-track system, whether in Israel itself or in the textualeducational systems preceding it, is the most plausible context suggested up to this point for influence of non-Israelite texts on Israelite literature. Previously, many have spoken of the international character of “wisdom” literature and argued that the “school” would have been a likely context for Israel to be influenced by texts like Amenemope. This book, however, is proposing to understand most ancient literature as primarily instructional-enculturational literature, thus breaking down much of the distinction previously seen between “wisdom” and other literature. Thus, if a given early Canaanite or Israelite scribe was trained in another culture’s literature, he would not necessarily just learn what we would term “wisdom” literature. Rather he (or occasionally she) would learn additional narrative, hymnic, and other materials as well. This kind of education does appear to have occurred for pre-Israelite scribes like those attested through finds at Amarna, Emar, and Ugarit, scribes who themselves could then produce analogous, highly adapted, indigenous-language counterparts to the foreign textual traditions they had learned. Early Israelite scribes like David’s Shisha, who must have gained their education from somewhere, probably were educated in some form of such a pre-Israelite textualeducational system, one still bearing the marks of past importation-translation of Mesopotamian (e.g., Gilgamesh or Atrahasis) and Egyptian materials.169 Yet it is also possible that a few Israelite scribes themselves gained an expertise in a foreign language and literature, whether in order to claim a broader, higher learning or to facilitate international interchange. For example, later textual specialists, like Shebna or Ezra, may have been influenced by a body of Aramaic literature that is now largely lost (though cf. the Instruction of Ahiqar). There is little data for specific assertions about the process or dating of influence and interchange. Nevertheless, significant links between the Bible and other educational-enculturational literatures show that such influence and interchange happened, whether directly or indirectly. Moreover, some form of the oral-written, textual-educational matrix focused on in this book is the most likely context for such interchange, not just of “wisdom” texts but of all texts. This system is the best-documented mode by which texts crossed boundaries in the Near East, particularly in the Sumero-Akkadian instance, and the nonIsraelite texts reflected in parts of the Bible are well attested in Mesopotamian and Egyptian education. Furthermore, once a foreign textual-educational ele-

169. Oswald Loretz, Qohelet und der alte Orient: Untersuchungen zu Stil und theologischer Thematik des Buches Qohelet (Freiburg: Herder, 1964), 93–94.

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ment had been adapted to serve (in translated form) in the Israelite stream of tradition, it could persist among certain elites for a remarkably long period of time. For example, Ben Sira’s book of wisdom has a striking number of possible contacts with native-language Egyptian instructions, despite the fact that any need for Egyptian in international interchange had ceased centuries earlier.170 When bilingual scribes—whether at Ugarit, Israel, or another context— adapted traditions for indigenous use, they apparently showed the same sort of freedom in appropriation that we saw earlier in the transition from Sumerian to Akkadian forms of the Mesopotamian tradition. The move across the language boundary often involved other massive shifts in the tradition as well. Working from memory, a given Israelite or pre-Israelite scribe could draw on both wording and themes of foreign education-enculturation texts, even as he created indigenous texts uniquely fitted to his own context. Whether such bilingual scribes were pre-Israelite or Israelite, their internalization of foreign instructional materials allowed them to use this literary repertoire in a variety of ways and in various loci: for example, early instruction, primeval traditions, law, love poetry. That said, it is also clear that most scribes—particularly in ancient Israel— never would have required such intricate training in a foreign body of texts and literature. Instead, most, if not all, Israelite scribal elites probably were trained on a standard curriculum of Israelite texts, the forerunners to our Bible. Day after day, year after year, these future administrators would have ingested Israelite stories of creation, prophecies, psalms, and wisdom. These preBiblical texts, like their Mesopotamian and Egyptian counterparts, were imbued with an aura marking them as a unique means of access to a storied past. Whether Mosaic revelation, prophetic word, or even history and instruction, these texts as a whole come to be marked—like many of their foreign counterparts—as a divine word. Within a predominantly oral context, the written status of the texts lent them extra numinous power. Moreover, as Hebrew dialects changed and the people began speaking Aramaic as their first tongue, the language of the Bible—like that of other instructional literatures—became ever more alien to the linguistic context in which it is heard and learned. Its linguistic strangeness and written character became additional marks of the uniqueness and specialness of the divine instruction.171 This is not yet “canon” in a technical sense.172 Rather this is the sort of powerful body of written-oral instructional writings known already in the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greek instances.

170. O. Rickenbacher, Weisheitsperikopen bei Ben Sira, OBO (Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1973), 176–96; Jack T. Sanders, Ben Sira and Demotic Wisdom, SBLMS (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983). 171. Seth Schwartz, “Language, Power and Identity in Ancient Palestine,” Past and Present 148 (1995): 3– 47. For Qumran Hebrew see also William Schniedewind, “Qumran Hebrew as an Antilanguage,” JBL 118 (1999): 235–52. 172. Assmann, Kulturelle Geda¨chtnis, 103–29.

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Textual Transmission, Storage, and Revision Furthermore, I propose that successive generations of master Israelite scribes revised and augmented this education-enculturation curriculum as conditions changed. We have already seen this documented through divergent versions of major texts, especially in Mesopotamia, where the written media of instructional texts has survived the test of time. But we also saw it in substantial revisions of Egyptian instructional materials, like the instruction of Ptahhotep. In these cases of broad revision, the textual variants often point to a process of memorization and augmentation: nonsignificant variants, the interchange of graphically different but semantically or phonemically equivalent signs, and so on. Ancient authors could copy texts, but they did not require the ancient texts to be before them. Instead, they had already ingested such texts in the process of their education-enculturation. These ancient texts were part of their vocabulary. They could cite or consciously “allude” to them, but often the influence of the instructional curriculum went far beyond that. Many Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts are a patchwork of distant and closer echoes of other texts, a product of an educational system where people learn to write new texts by internalizing ancient ones. So also, many post-Homeric Greek texts clearly demonstrate their authors’ thorough internalization of the Homeric and other lyric traditions. Similarly, it is increasingly clear how much of Israelite literature is likewise “intertextual.” But it is not intertextual in the sense that early Israelite authors were constantly engaged in a process of visually consulting, citing, and interpreting separate written texts. Commentary and exegetical debate comes later. Rather, I am suggesting that such Israelite authors had been trained from the outset to write by building on templates provided by earlier texts. As in other cultures like Mesopotamia or Egypt, young scribes showed their competence through their ability to accurately recite and copy texts from the authoritative curriculum. Yet fully educated literate specialists in those other cultures also demonstrably added to that curriculum at key points, whether through producing a translation or new edition of major works, or through authoring new works that often echo those works in which the scribal author was trained. So also, Israelite specialists appear to have added to, recombined, and otherwise revised elements of the Israelite textual-educational tradition. The literature bears clear marks of this process, and these marks have provided the basis for theories such as the documentary hypothesis for the creation of the Pentateuch or the multiple authorship of books like Isaiah. Yet such “sources” generally were not incorporated in written form, nor did editors juggle multiple copies of manuscripts in the process of producing their conflated text. It is possible that a scribe may have worked with a given manuscript on occasion. Certainly colophons in other cultures show visual consultation of copies. Nevertheless, well-educated scribes often could write out a verbatim, memorized form of an older authoritative text, so faithfully reproducing it that its borders and clashes with other material would still be visible in the final product.

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Furthermore, having learned such precise, verbatim memorization in a text-supported oral educational system, Israelite authors were able—like nonIsraelite authors taught in similar systems—to echo their own writing. Their training in verbatim memorization in a text-supported environment gave them tools for exact or semiexact repetition that allowed them to produce works that featured remarkably precise parallels. They could author multiple speeches and other narrative elements that closely paralleled earlier speeches and narratives in their own composition.173 Though occasionally an author might have consulted an earlier locus in a scroll, such echoing did not require visual copying. An author could construct elaborate (semi)repetitions through memorization skills learned in having multiple texts “inscribed on [his or her] heart.” Of course, texts often were written down, stored, and visually consulted. We have already seen scores of examples describing the writing of various texts. Nevertheless, what is described in the Bible is not the making of copies of other texts.174 Instead, as Edgar Conrad points out, the Bible’s own descriptions of text production feature a world where texts are generally written down from dictation for subsequent recitation and reference.175 Oral vocalization aided the internalization of such texts by a literate elite, and this elite then could perform such texts (possibly still using a written copy) for a broader, illiterate populace. Thus, long-duration Israelite texts, like their counterparts in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece, were transmitted dually—in written media and in the minds and hearts of those who had ingested them. On one level, written copies were stored in a scribal workshop or temple sanctuary. These (usually) visually copied texts were a crucial reference point for further written and oral transmission. Nevertheless, a primary focus of long-duration textuality was the inscribing and preserving of texts in the people they were used to educate. Stored written copies, holy though they were, were merely the technology and tangible written talisman for a broader process of passing on to the next generation of leaders the values, views, and less tangible qualities of the ancient, revered tradition.176 The Hebrew Bible says virtually nothing about any formal library in ancient Israel. Most of our evidence regarding ancient Israelite book storage re-

173. This did not mean they didn’t alter certain elements, whether through slight memory lapses or through literary design. For an extensive argument regarding the possible literary uses of such variation in repetition see esp. Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading, Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 365–440. 174. There are exceptions, such as the reference to the king’s copy of the Deuteronomic Torah in Deut 17: 18. 175. E. W. Conrad, “Heard but Not Seen: The Representation of ‘Books’ in the Old Testament,” JSOT 54 (1992): 46–47. Fishbane notes possible echoes in Deut 4:2 and 13:1 (also cf. Prov 30:6), of a Mesopotamian formula regarding exact copying—“not adding to or subtracting”—that is found in the Erra epic, a tradition that itself appears to have been transmitted through visual copying. Such claims of and exhortations to exact transmission, however, also have parallels in oral tradition. 176. This model is advocated by Widengren for Islamic and, by extension, Israelite tradition. See Widengren, Hebrew Prophets, esp. 1–46. It was developed, focusing largely on rabbinic descriptions of education and reading, in Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity, trans. Eric Sharpe (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksells, 1961), 33–66.

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lates to storage of holy texts in a central sanctuary, and virtually all of it comes from the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The Hebrew Bible itself only describes storage of Mosaic revelation in central sanctuaries leading up to the temple in Jerusalem. The priestly tradition of the Sinai narrative presupposes the idea of storage of texts in sanctuaries with its concept of the deposit of the “instruction/witness documents” (edut) in an ark that was kept in the core of the wilderness sanctuary (Exod 25:16).177 As noted earlier, Deuteronomy describes Moses giving the “Torah” to the Levites, the preeminent Torah teachers (Deut 31:9–13), who also bear the ark of the Lord (Deut 31:9, 25–27; cf. Deut 10:1–5; Josh 8:32–35).178 1 Kings 8:9, 21, asserts that these tablets are still in the ark when Solomon puts the ark in the center of the Jerusalem temple, and the temple is the place where a long-lost Torah is said to be found by Josiah’s officials during renovation work centuries later (2 Kgs 22:3–8).179 Furthermore, the biblical narrative at this point describes Josiah’s destruction of competing sanctuaries in Judah and even the north, so that the Jerusalem temple becomes the centralized locus for orthodox Israelite religiosity and textuality (2 Kgs 23: 8–20). We also have the narrative of Jeremiah passing on a divine commission to Baruch to store a deed of purchase of land in an earthenware jar (Jer 32:14), probably reflecting widespread practices of private storage of documentary materials. Otherwise, the Bible is largely silent on the issue of collection and storage of written copies of long-duration texts. Moreover, the archaeological evidence is not helpful either, at least with regard to pre-Hellenistic storage of long-duration texts. The closest we come is the Deir-Alla inscription (and abecedary), a possible testimony to the display on a (sanctuary?) wall of nonIsraelite textual material similar to that found in prophetic narratives and the Balaam story.180 Otherwise, we have only the tantalizing remnants, discussed earlier, of early alphabetic and numeric education, along with some archival materials: receipts, letters, and so on.

Education and Textuality Across Israelite History This overall model for the development and use of Israelite scripture has significant implications for reinforcing and revising our current picture of the development of textuality in ancient Israel. Most immediately, it provides an alternative model to that parodied by Niditch in the quotation that opens chapter 1.181 Rather than juggling multiple scrolls or having one scribe take dictation from two or three others, this model suggests that Israelite scribes most likely 177. From this point forward the priestly tradition frequently refers to the ark in relation to the edut in it as the
aron edut. 178. Here again, much of the rest of the nonpriestly tradition assumes this picture in referring to the ark as the “ark of the covenant” (
aron habberit) and related expressions. 179. For some additional indicators of deposit in early Israelite sanctuaries see Burr, Bibliothekarische Notizen, 14–15. 180. Again see Lemaire, “Deir Alla,” 52–55. 181. Niditch, Oral World and Written Word, 113.

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would have drawn on their verbatim memory of other texts in quoting, borrowing from, or significantly revising them. Of course, as in other cultures, Israelite scribes probably visually copied certain texts that they wished to reproduce precisely. Yet, as in other cultures, Israelite scribes probably did not work with cumbersome scrolls when they needed to produce something new, something not bearing the claim of being a precise visual copy of an earlier document. Moreover, as I will show, there are crucial instances in Israelite history, first and foremost the Babylonian exile, when Israelite scribes probably had no access to reference copies of key traditions on which to base their reproduction or revision of the corpus. In what follows, I will offer a sketch—only incompletely developed—of this and several other points in the evolution of Israelite textual production. My focus is on instances where a corpus of long-duration, educationalenculturational texts might have emerged or changed. As I will show, the history of the development of Israelite literature, particularly the Pentateuch, appears to have been extraordinarily complex. Where Mesopotamian and Egyptian traditions often manifest a single redaction of a given tradition, the Pentateuch and other key traditions appear to have gone through multiple stages of revision.182 As I will show, these revisions have to do with massive shifts that happened at multiple stages in Israelite textuality-enculturation, such as the initial move in early monarchal contexts toward appropriation of a textual-educational system, the extension and revision of the textualeducational corpus amid urbanism and expanding literacy in the eighth century, the massive reorganization of the corpus around the Mosaic Torah in the seventh century, the reconstruction of oral-written traditions in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the recombination of traditions and renewed focus on Torah in the postexilic period, the latter perhaps with some involvement by the Persians. Mesopotamia was able to maintain a more continuous scribal tradition across the first millennium, and the tablet medium of its educational-enculturational corpus was more durable. Egypt too, despite occasional incursions, was able to maintain a comparatively stable cultural tradition. In Israel we have the remnants of an educational-enculturational corpus of a land often dominated by more powerful neighbors. The resulting longduration literature has fractures and crosscurrents that mark the impact of successive dislocations and Israelite reactions to them. Turning first to the prestate period, the model developed in this book reinforces the supposition of much scholarship that the use of writing cannot be dated plausibly to the prestate period depicted in the biblical narrative. Although streams of biblical tradition describe the creation of holy texts in the period of Moses, the use of writing-supported education and text production appears to have been particularly characteristic of city-state and empire structures in the

182. The main exception of which I am aware is the multistage history of formation of the Gilgamesh traditions. See Tigay, Gilgamesh Epic.

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ancient world. Depictions of writing in the time of Moses or scribes in the time of Deborah (Judg 5:14) are probably retrojections of later forms of textuality into earlier periods. To be sure, some would cite the literary description of Gideon commissioning a “youth” (naar) to make a list of the officials in his hometown of Sukkoth.183 Nevertheless, others have pointed out: (1) this text is a retrojection of a picture of writing from a later time in Israel’s history, late preexile at the earliest, when writing was more widespread; (2) the (fictional) picture of literacy it depicts is not that of Israel but of the (then) Canaanite city of Sukkoth;184 (3) the type of literacy it depicts is at the most elementary level of list making;185 and (4) there may be some elite connotations with the word naar that would mean that the depiction of literacy in this “youth” does not imply general literacy.186 So when did writing, specifically writing of the sort found in the Bible, actually begin? One possibility is the Davidic-Solomonic period, a time the Bible depicts as the time of emergence of city-state structures. Moreover, there is some archaeological evidence that this depiction of a tenth-century Israelite city-state in central Canaan is at least partially accurate. It is likely that such an Israelite state—lacking its own literate resources—would have drawn on pre-Israelite models of literate bureaucracy and even used literate bureaucrats from pre-Israelite Jerusalem.187 One indication of this—in addition to the lists of Davidic scribes and other officials discussed earlier—is a cache of early ostraca, from the Judean outpost of Arad, dating in (small) part to the tenth century, which use Egyptian hieratic numerals and accounting signs to record amounts of barley.188 To some extent, early Israelites also may have drawn on pre-Israelite texts, such as the Egyptian instruction of Amenemope.189 This also would be the obvious time for the textualization of probable prestate poems like the song of Deborah, the emergence of an early Israelite corpus of royal and Zion Psalms, the development of early collections of poems like the oftencited book of Yashar (Josh 10:12–13; 2 Sam 1:18; and [LXX] 3 Kgdms 8:53a),190 the creation of preforms of parts of Proverbs as part of Israelite early education, and the possible development of an early prose curriculum as well, including early forms of the creation-flood narratives and narratives centering on figures like Jacob, Moses, and David.191 Where such traditions did not draw on prior

183. E.g., Procksch, “Hebraische Schreiber,” 2; Du¨rr, Erziehungswesen, 106–7. 184. Burr, Bibliothekarische Notizen, 12. 185. Demsky, “Education,” 392–94; “Writing,” 12. 186. Young, “Israelite Literacy,” 250. 187. As Schniedewind points out, biblical narratives of total destruction of Canaanite culture are later ideological representations. Schniedewind, Bible to Book, 56–57. 188. O. Goldwasser, “An Egyptian Scribe from Lachish and the Hieratic Tradition of the Hebrew Kingdoms,” Tel Aviv 18 (1991): 248–53. 189. On arguments that Amenemope influenced multiple Israelite texts see note 67. 190. For discussion of these and other possible references to ancient song poetry in Exod 15:1; Deut 31: 30; and Num 21:17 see now Schniedewind, Bible to Book, 52–56. 191. Contrary to Schniedewind (Bible to Book, 63), a small-scale writing-education system does not preclude the creation of longer works. All that is required is a few scribes and the felt need to create and perpetuate a writing-stabilized cultural tradition that marks off the emergent hierarchy from others.

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scribal knowledge of non-Israelite texts, they would have represented the first written recording of Israelite traditions that—up to that point—had been exclusively oral and extremely fluid. Many may have been poetic or musical. Certainly the traditions surrounding David focus on his musical competence. Yet there is no indication of special efforts toward stabilizing the tradition.192 Only when they entered the oral-written education-enculturation process would such traditions have gained the stability given by writing and the other techniques for accurate recall that are often used as people recognize—through writing—variation in the tradition. The epigraphic evidence, however, suggests that any such early forms of textuality and education pale in comparison to the development of education in the later preexilic period. The epigraphic material appears earliest and most prominently not in Jerusalem or broader Judah but in northern Israel: including two groups of Samarian ostraca, the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions, and more than fifty inscribed seals.193 This does not mean that writing was unknown in northern Israel prior to the eighth century. The founding of a northern monarchy, and especially its expansion under Omri-Ahab, was probably accompanied by at least a small-scale northern Israelite textual-educational system of the sort we see in other kingdoms. We even have possible hints of educational groups in northern Israel in the references to the “sons of the prophets” (e.g., 2 Kgs 2:3, 5; 6:1–2) or the “sons of Ahab” under care of guardians (
omenim) in Samaria (2 Kgs 10:1–11).194 Unfortunately, our access to northern Israelite textuality is mostly indirect, by way of writings like Hosea’s that are attributed to northern figures, or materials in the Pentateuch and elsewhere which appear to derive from northern Israelite prototypes. Nevertheless, we can do little more than claim that the north probably had a textual-educational system and that materials from it appear to have had some impact on the south, perhaps by way of refugees who fled to Judah after the destruction of the north. The eighth century also sees expansion of epigraphic evidence in the south, such as the Khirbet el-Qoˆm inscriptions, the Siloam inscription, the Arad ostraca, seals of royal officials under Uzziah and Ahaz, thousands of jars with royal stamp inscriptions, and various other stamps of royal officials.195 Moreover, as David Jamieson-Drake has shown, it is during the time of Hezekiah and Josiah that we see a substantial expansion both of archaeological remains of substantial building structures and of epigraphic evidence for ed-

192. Compare, in this instance, the extensive efforts made in other cultures, such as are seen in recitation technology for the Koran or the Vedas, to ensure accurate recall of the tradition. In both cases, these techniques developed in cultures with an anxiety about variation associated with writing, even if the traditions themselves were primarily or exclusively oral. 193. For a useful brief summary of the shift in level of epigraphic documentation see Andre´ Lemaire, “Schools and Literacy in Ancient Israel and Early Judaism,” in The Blackwell Companion to the Hebrew Bible, ed. Leo Perdue, trans. Aliou Niang (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 208. The following material in this paragraph is based largely on the same source. 194. Lemaire, Les Ecoles, 36–38. 195. For a broader list, again see the survey by Lemaire (“Schools and Literacy,” 208), along with the more recent discussion by Schniedewind (Bible to Book, 71–73).

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ucation and writing in ancient Judah.196 These data, combined with indicators like the superscription regarding Hezekiah’s men in Proverbs 25:1, suggest that alphabetic literacy expanded significantly in this period, including army officers, priests, prophets, and royal officials. As William Schniedewind suggests, the impact of the Neo-Assyrian empire may have been a major impetus for this expansion in eighth-century Judah: increasing urbanization through destruction of older community structures, pushing some literate northern immigrants into Judah through the destruction of the northern state of Israel, and more generally stimulating the use of alphabetic writing in Judah and neighboring nations through the promotion of (alphabetically written) Aramaic as an empire-wide lingua franca for official exchanges.197 Here again, however, we must be careful not to impose contemporary models of universal literacy on this ancient context. Though literacy apparently broadened, most Israelites in the north and south would not have been able to read. The epigraphic and biblical evidence are both skewed heavily toward royal administrators and priests, and this fits with the fact that premodern cultures had no cause to train people in general literacy. That said, the eighth century saw a significant broadening of both the monarchy and the literacy of its administration, and this broadening included an expanding use of writing that corresponds to increased use of oral-written texts for education-enculturation of the growing class of royal functionaries. Notably, one of our clearest indications of textual collection at this point, the mention of the “men of Hezekiah” in Proverbs 25:1, is associated with the sort of “wisdom” literature that was intensively used in early stages of such education-enculturation. Yet this is also the time for the emergence of oralwritten prophetic, divine counterteaching of the sort seen in Isaiah. Furthermore, the eighth century in Judah is a probable context for the writing and/or entry of other sorts of texts into the Israelite oral-written educationalenculturational corpus: a version of the broader history of the monarchy extending to Hezekiah,198 and probably some Pentateuchal narratives,199 portions of the Psalms, a form of the “covenant code” in Exodus 20:22–23:33,200 and

196. Jamieson-Drake, Scribes and Schools in Monarchic Judah, 48–106. See also the summary of more recent work in Schniedewind, Bible to Book, 68–69. 197. Schniedewind, Bible to Book, 64–75. 198. For two recent arguments relating to this see Lemaire, “Redactional History” and Schniedewind, Bible to Book, 77–91. It is possible that this or an earlier version of the history (e.g. in the time of Manasseh) corresponded in key instances to the material in common between Samuel-Kings and Chronicles (lacking material present in one but not the other), rather than corresponding more with what we see in Samuel-Kings up through the time of Hezekiah. For presentation of the case for this model, see particularly A. Graeme Auld, Kings Without Privilege: David and Moses in the Story of the Bible’s Kings (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), along with questions raised about this as an exclusive paradigm in Steven L. McKenzie, “The Chronicler as Redactor,” in The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture, M. Patrick Graham and Steven L. McKenzie, ed., JSOTSup 263 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 80–87 (and Auld’s response on pp. 91–99). 199. Regarding the former, I judge this the most likely context for the creation of the Judah-focused version of the Jacob-Joseph story through the addition of texts like Gen 38 and 49 and related additions in 30:21; 34:1– 31; and 35:21–22a. For discussion of this stratum and citation of earlier literature see Carr, Reading the Fractures, 249–53. 200. See the discussion and review of literature in Rainer Albertz, Religionsgeschichte Israels in alttesta-

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some specialized priestly instructional material.201 Such growth in Israelite literature in the eighth century would correspond to movements to collect older literature in Mesopotamia and Egypt.202 Moreover, scribes responsible for writing books like Kings would have had access in the eighth century (and the seventh century) to official archives that would have been preserved in the preexilic period but were destroyed in 587. Moving to seventh-century Judah, we see several indicators of further expansion of writing, including the use of long-duration oral-written educational texts.203 The epigraphic evidence is even more extensive, including numerous seals and ostraca (e.g., Mesfi ad Hashavyahu, Lachish, Arad, Kadesh Barnea, H fi orvat Uza, and Jerusalem), inscribed weights, the Murabaat papyrus letter, artisan graffiti, and a set of silver amulets from Ketef H fi innon that contain paraphrases of passages now in Numbers (6:24–26) and Deuteronomy (7:9– 10). Multiple indicators, such as the Lachish letter 3 discussed earlier, show that rudimentary literacy now extended even to relatively low levels of the army and royal bureaucracy.204 Perhaps most important, this is the time when we see the narrative of Josiah’s priestly and royal officials discovering a scroll in the temple, a text that then prompts the king to engage in a wide-ranging religiopolitical reform (2 Kings 22–23).205 Thus a text, probably an early form of Deuteronomy, comes to have such status that it not only was to enculturate the king and his officials but was to be his specific guide in future decisions (Deut 17:14–20). Perhaps reacting to decades of Assyrian oppression and a tumultuous transition in the Davidic dynasty (2 Kgs 21:19–26), it appears that certain sub-elites in Judah—those responsible for educating-enculturating the young king, Josiah—implemented a process of the sort that Jan and Aleida Assmann label excarnation—the shift from flesh to word.206 This elevation of Mosaic Torah appears to have been connected with a

mentlicher Zeit, vol. 1, Von den Anfa¨ngen bis zum Ende der Ko¨nigszeit, Grundrisse zum Alten Testament (Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1992), 283–90. Frank Cru¨semann, building on earlier literature, raises some cautionary comments based on the lack of a connection between Hezekiah’s reform as depicted in 2 Kgs 18:4//2 Chr 31:1–21 and the contents of the Covenant Code (Die Tora: Theologie und Sozialgeschichte des alttestamentlichen Gesetzes [Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1992], 230) yet also raises some additional links between the covenant code and the events of the late eighth century (230–34). 201. See, for example, the arguments based on linguistic features raised in Avi Hurvitz, “The Evidence of Language in Dating the Priestly Code,” RB 81 (1974): 24–57; A Linguistic Study of the Relationship Between the Priestly Source and the Book of Ezekiel: A New Approach to an Old Problem (Paris: Gabalda, 1982). For a discussion and brief list of problems with using such evidence to date P as a whole see Carr, Reading the Fractures, 133–35. 202. Schniedewind, Bible to Book, 74–75. 203. See Hardmeier, “Wahrhaftigkeit und Fehlorientierung,” 124–27, for a survey of evidence, particularly within the Bible. 204. For overviews see Lemaire, “Schools and Literacy,” 209, and Schniedewind, Bible to Book, 98–106. The latter mistakenly asserts that the Ketef H fi innon amulets contain texts from the Torah (106), when the most we can say is that the texts on those amulets found their way into the Torah at some point. 205. For more discussion of this text and historical problems surrounding it see foregoing, pp. 140–41. On this period cf. Schniedewind, Bible to Book, 91–117, though I do not agree with his claims for a “sharp contrast” between oral and written and this time as “one of the most profound cultural revolutions in human history: the assertion of the orthodoxy of texts” (p. 91). 206. Assmann places this move a bit later, in the exile, Assmann, “Fu¨nf Stufen,” 87–89. See this source for citation of earlier discussions.

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radical reconceptualization of the educational-enculturational corpus. In contrast to comparable educational curricula, the ascendant Mosaic Torah was placed first in the educational process (as envisioned in Deuteronomy), while older introductory proverbial and instructional materials were relegated to a later point. Moreover, this Deuteronomic Torah itself appears—in large part— to be a scribal revision of the older Covenant Code (Exod 20:22–23:33), an example of revision of an oral-written educational curriculum that is linked with broader shifts in the religiomonarchal structure.207 Furthermore, the Mosaic Torah, as seen in Deuteronomy, became the lens for a significant revision of earlier Israelite traditions. We see the impact of the Deuteronomic idiom and ideology in the shaping of collections of prophets like Isaiah, Hosea, and particularly Jeremiah. So also, as argued earlier, this time appears to be a context for the production of a new version of the authoritative history extending up to the time of Josiah.208 Overall, during this time and later, the writings in this emergent corpus are depicted as “prophetic.” Moses is the prophet par excellence (e.g. Deut 34: 10–12), while the prophets after him are depicted collectively in Deuteronomistic and related materials as a series of prophets—often “God’s servants, the prophets” (e.g., 2 Kgs 17:13, 23; Jer 44:4; Ezek 38:17; Amos 3:7; Zech 1:6; Dan 9:10)—to whom past Israel was not obedient (2 Kgs 17:7–23; 21:10–15; 24:2; cf. Jer 7:25; 26:4–6; 29:19; 35:13–15).209 Where once prophets like Isaiah offered a countercurriculum to the “wisdom” of traditional education, now the whole curriculum of the royal establishment is—at least in theory—“prophetic.” As it develops, this prophetic teaching no longer marks a prophet and his circle off from the rebellious people surrounding them. Rather—at least in theory— the words of Torah and prophets mark Israel as a whole off from other nations as a uniquely special and wise people (e.g. Deut 4:6) and reinforce their resolve not to be “like the nations” (see 1 Sam 8:5, 19–20). In addition, it appears that the entire curriculum was increasingly depicted in prophetic ways. For example, in contrast to other educational literatures in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece that were only irregularly sacralized, this emergent corpus of Torah and the prophets is depicted resolutely as a divine word. This curriculum is a new level of sacred literature, “scripture” proper, probably stored in the temple yet transmitted in oral-written form and used by scribes like Shaphan and his descendants (among others). But what happened to this emergent corpus during the exile? If one works with a model of textuality focused exclusively on writing, it is not clear how preexilic traditions would have survived into later periods of Israelite history.

207. For more detailed study of this process and citation of earlier literature see Levinson, Deuteronomy. 208. See foregoing, p. 140. 209. On this see in particular Stephen Chapman, The Law and the Prophets: A Study in Old Testament Canon Formation, Forschungen zum Alten Testament (Tu¨bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 112–31, 198–209. For discussion of the two-level pedagogical situation in which such literary condemnations of past generations might serve the aims of educating later communities see Weitzman’s illuminating discussion in Weitzman, Song and Story, 42–54.

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The temple and virtually all major structures in the land itself were destroyed, and the literate elite was deported.210 Though it is probable that some of Jehoiachin’s retinue were masters of the tradition and we now have inscriptional evidence that scribes were active elsewhere in the Jewish Diaspora, it is unclear how such groups would have access to written versions of the tradition, especially after the destruction of the Jerusalem palace-temple structure and the capture of its elite.211 Whatever sorts of correspondence characterized interchange between exiles and people in the homeland in the years 597–587 b.c.e., it still seems unlikely that Jews could have carried trunkloads of holy scrolls from the ruins of the temple to Babylonian exile. The oral-written model being advocated here provides one way to explain how the traditions continued. According to this model, the catastrophe of the exile would have been a key occasion when scribes would have augmented and revised earlier tradition, when the tradition demanded a re-presentation and recasting. Like Egyptian scribes facing the possible extinction of key traditions in the first intermediate period, Israelite scribes had to produce new reference copies of older traditions in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem.212 With little or no access to reference copies of the tradition, such scribes may not have had an alternative to the use of memorized forms of documents. Even if unable to access good written copies of the tradition, they could work from memory in building a new standard Israelite literature—one built on memorized building blocks of the old but addressing the need for new hope and rebuilding.213 Sometimes such scribes may have produced new versions of older texts that were quite close to the form they had in the preexilic period. In other cases they may have radically reused parts of older long-duration texts so that they were no more recognizable as wholes than reused architectural elements are in a village of houses made up of columns, lintels, and other parts of older buildings.214 Overall, it appears that the exile was a time of renewed focus on Israel’s pre-land traditions, the Mosaic Torah, with radical reformulations of those pre-land traditions being done in the oral-written matrices of both royal, nonpriestly scribal circles and priestly groups.215 In either case, the resulting “Torah” (teaching) and other documents (“Prophets”) then served as the educational groundwork for Israelite education in the exilic and postexilic periods and beyond. Together these Hebrew texts,

210. See Schniedewind, Bible to Book, 141–49, for survey of the data relevant to writing in the exile. 211. For Jehoichin see Schniedewind, Bible to Book, 149–57. For inscriptional evidence see provisionally F. Joanne`s and Andre´ Lemaire, “Trois tablettes cune´iformes a` onomastique ouest-se´mitique,” Transeuphrate`ne 17 (1999): 17–34. I am indebted to A. Lemaire (personal communication) for additional information about evidence of Jewish scribal practices in the same find. 212. Assmann, “Fu¨nf Stufen,” 87–89, discusses the analogies between these two periods. 213. Cf. Burr, who argues that the temple texts were hidden, as in the case of Qumran; Burr, Bibliothekarische Notizen, 22–24. 214. Jean Louis Ska, Introduction a la lecture du Pentateuque, trans. Fre´deric Vermorel (Brussels: Editions Lessius, 2000), 266–67. 215. For an overview of the data regarding identification of such priestly and nonpriestly traditions in Genesis, along with the location of consolidation of each in the exile see Carr, Reading the Fractures, 43–232.

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ever more linguistically alien to the increasingly Aramaic context of their readers, stood as semimagical manuscript talismans, traveling forward through the Persian period as stable, numinous links of Israelites to the divine and to an otherwise inaccessible past.216 The particular Hebrew repertoire in this corpus of texts gained its own sanctity. Though commonplace in the late preexilic period, such classical Hebrew, in its diverse forms, became a literary idiolect, a set of language commonplaces marking these—and texts written from inside the tradition and using its linguistic repertoire—as coming from the hallowed, preexilic past.217 Ancient copies of this literature are lost, probably due to the writing of it on perishable media like papyrus and human memory.218 From here on out, the surviving written records testify to a shift, from the exile onward, toward the use of Aramaic for the types of administrative and legal transactions that once were recorded in Hebrew.219 Soon after the exile, we see significant change in the groups involved in textual transmission and use. Though Davidic royal figures appear to have enjoyed a certain stature in the Babylonian court, we hear no more of Davidides after the disappearance of Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel in the early postexilic period. During the exile such royal figures or their entourage probably extended and retouched preexilic traditions, but they do not appear to have been a force in postexilic Judaism.220 Instead, the main group that is explicitly attested as teaching and reading in Second Temple Judaism is the priests (including Levites). Thus the Iron Age trend (also seen in Mesopotamia and Egypt) toward concentration of textuality in the temple is manifest in Israel as well. The priests of Israel become the main repository for both priestly and nonpriestly traditions transmitted earlier. The rise in prominence of priests probably explains key changes in the uses to which priestly traditions were put in the postexilic period. Earlier, priests were subordinate parts of a temple-palace apparatus headed by the king, and they—like their counterparts in Mesopotamia and Egypt—probably underwent an early education similar to that of other functionaries: abecedaries, proverbs, instructions, hymns, and so on. In addition, we can suppose that early Israelite priests—like their counterparts elsewhere—probably formulated their own upper-level instructional materials, reserved for their subgroup, that marked their membership in a priestly sub-elite. As mentioned before, some cultic instructional materials in Leviticus and Numbers

216. For observation of the contrast of holy language and Aramaic context see Burr, Bibliothekarische Notizen, 9. For discussion of the “axial shift” toward both “Torah” and “Prophets” see Michael Fishbane, “From Scribalism to Rabbinism” in The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, John G. Gammie and Leo Perdue, ed. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 440–445. 217. Schwartz, “Language, Power and Identity.” 218. M. J. Geller, “The Last Wedge,” ZA 87 (1997): 43–64, notes a similar phenomenon in later Mesopotamia, where everyday indigenous-language transactions are done in Aramaic, alongside a continuing tradition in Akkadian. The difference, however, in Mespotamia, is that the tablet format preserved the literary tradition alongside everyday transactions, while the media used for the literary tradition in Israel and similar cultures did not last. 219. See Lemaire, “Schools and Literacy,” 209–10, and Schniedewind, Bible to Book, 175–77. 220. Schniedewind, Bible to Book, 149–64.

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show signs of having once been such preexilic professional instructions, instructions that Deuteronomy in turn presupposes. Yet sometime in the exile or postexilic period it appears that certain priestly groups, particularly the Aaronides, wrote a priestly version of the “Mosaic Torah” to stand alongside the Deuteronomic/non-priestly one. This Torah included older priestly instructional materials but went far beyond them, encompassing narratives about Israel’s pre-land history and exhortations to Israel as a whole.221 A vacuum had opened in the older system of royal Judean textuality-enculturation, and (Aaronide) priests stepped in. Ultimately, however, the new priestly traditions did not replace their nonpriestly counterparts but stood alongside them. Indeed, Israel’s ongoing preservation of massive amounts of nonpriestly narrative and prophetic materials contrasts with the evidence seen in first-millennium temple-focused textual systems in Egypt and Mesopotamia. By the time of the authoring of EzraNehemiah, Israel appears to have endorsed a Mosaic Torah made up of both the Priestly Proto-Pentateuch and its non-Priestly counterpart.222 There is much debate about how this somewhat unprecedented conflation of traditions came about. To some extent, it may have been the product of a compromise between the remnants of royal groups in early postexilic Judah and the newly dominant priests. Yet it is also possible, even probable, that the Persians played some role in endorsing and even commissioning the combined Torah of Priestly and non-Priestly traditions. Peter Frei and others have surveyed ways in which the Persians endorsed local cultic traditions and supported the collection of written traditions in Egypt.223 Furthermore, Assmann notes that Darius’s first temple in Egypt represents a remarkable extension of Egyptian tradition, going beyond the cultic to codify other forms of knowledge as well.224 This background gives extra significance to the narrative in Ezra-Nehemiah in which Ezra is depicted as commissioned by the Persians to enforce “the law of your God and the law of your king” (Ezra 7:26), a law depicted there as virtually identical to the

221. For summary of basic arguments for identification of the Genesis portion of this Priestly instruction and questions of dating see Carr, Reading the Fractures, 43–140. The model adopted here resembles that of Israel Knohl (Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995]; see also M. Haran, Temples and Temple Service in Ancient Israel: An Inquiry into Biblical Cult Phenomena and the Historical Setting of the Priestly School [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977], 108–9, 146–47). I diverge from Knohl on the contours and characterization of the later layer of Priestly tradition. 222. On this see Joseph Blenkinsopp, “Was the Pentateuch the Civic and Religious Constitution of the Jewish Ethnos in the Persian Period?” in Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch, ed. James Watts (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001), 56–58. In this context, he attempts to address the absence in our Pentateuch of the festival of wood but apparently overlooks the attestation of this festival in an edition of the Pentateuch reflected in 4QRP (4Q365; frag. 23, col. 1.6–8). For discussion see Carr, “Method,” 117–18. 223. For a recent summary see Peter Frei, “Persian Imperial Authorization: A Summary,” in Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch, ed. and trans. James Watts (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001), 5–40, along with the more recent contribution by Blenkinsopp, “Constitution,” and the insightful observation in James Watts, introduction to Watts, Persia and Torah, 3–4. Other essays in the same volume help in qualifying some of Frei’s original claims but do not successfully refute the overall approach. 224. Assmann, “Fu¨nf Stufen,” 89.

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present P/non-P Pentateuch that we have. Though none of the examples of Persian involvement in cultic affairs are exactly comparable, the examples taken together support the idea that Persians were involved in encouraging the formation of our P/non-P Pentateuch, a document the Persians somehow recognized.225 If this is so, this would be a somewhat different iteration of an linkage already seen between education and empire. In this case, the Persians, by way of local elites that they sponsored, reinforced the western flank of their empire (e.g. Egypt, Judah) by empowering such elites in their consolidation of local traditions. Whether through Persian endorsement or not, the Mosaic Pentateuch gained a supreme authority in postexilic Judah. If there was any question of the relationship between God’s Torah and “the prophets” in the preexilic or exilic periods, it appears to have been resolved toward supremacy of Torah after the exile. It is the Torah that is read in Nehemiah 8 and no other text.226 The Torah is the prime focus of citations in Chronicles.227 And as we move later into the Second Temple period, it is the Torah that enjoys pride of place alongside the temple as the focal point for Jewish life.228 “God’s servants, the prophets,” are merely the Torah’s interpreters, exhorters to Torah obedience, and pointers to Israel’s future.229 One mark of this development is the relatively early fixing of the basic contours of the Mosaic Torah. We now have at Qumran several early modifications and conflations of the Pentateuch’s divergent traditions—the so-called proto-Samaritan tradition, and 4QRP, and QTemple—yet these end up relegated to the margins of the stream of tradition.230 In contrast, the Septuagint and finds from Qumran show us that our present Hebrew Bible contains later revisions of non-Torah books such as Joshua, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. To be sure, the Pentateuch still was used in the oral-written, educational process. As I will discuss in chapter 9, the Mosaic Torah traditions at Qumran testify to an ongoing, highly dynamic process of oral-written use and transmission of the Torah. Nevertheless, it appears that such oral-written dynamism had comparatively little impact on the text of the Torah that was transmitted as authoritative to subsequent generations. The version of the Torah found in most early manuscripts and included in the Hebrew Bible is distinguished by its relative an-

225. For analysis of the Ezra text and a survey of scholars pursuing this approach see Blenkinsopp, “Constitution,” 56–61. 226. Runesson, Synagogue, 288–92, points out ways in which the placement of this narrative and rituals associated with the reading of the Torah highlight its augmented authority in this period. 227. This is evident even in Chapman’s exploration of how Torah and prophets are coordinated in Chronicles (Law and the Prophets, 218–31). 228. For surveys see Pieter van der Horst, “Was the Synagogue a Place of Sabbath Worship Before 70 CE?” in Jews, Christians and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue: Cultural Interaction During the Greco-Roman Period, ed. Steven Fine (London: Routledge, 1999), 34–35, and Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 b.c.e. to 640 c.e. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 14–16. 229. Cf. Chapman, Law and the Prophets, 231–85, who documents ongoing value on the prophets in the postexilic period but also the subordination of prophetic traditions, where they appear, to Mosaic Torah. 230. For discussion and citation of some earlier literature see Carr, “Method,” 113–23.

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tiquity. For the bulk of Judaism, it appears that the highly complex process of formation of the Torah had come to an end. This relatively fixed Mosaic Torah instruction now stands at the center of a temple-centered community headed by priests. The monarchy is gone. Where a king, Josiah, is envisioned as leading the people in the Torah-reading and covenant-making in Kings (2 Kgs 23:1–3), the book of Nehemiah depicts a priest, Ezra, leading the people in a similar Torah-reading (Nehemiah 8). In addition, the “Torah” taught to such Israelites—whether in Ezra’s period or afterward—is an increasingly priestly Torah. Through the inclusion in the Torah of priestly traditions, lay Israelites receive some of the educationenculturation once reserved for priests. As a result, Israel is no longer just a “wise” people (as in Deuteronomy) but a people made “holy” by their reception of a (partly) priestly education-enculturation, “a nation of priests.” In literary depictions like Nehemiah 8 they receive this education-enculturation from true priests, but it marks them—at least in comparison to non-Israelites—as a holy people. This is a particularly priestly enactment of the older Deuteronomic ideal picture of universal education of a “wise and discerning nation.” Within that ideal, a system of ancient education once used to separate a literate elite from peers was depicted as separating Israel as a whole from the other nations (Deut 4:6–8; cf. 6:6; 11:18). Class-educational distinctions were envisioned in those texts as potential distinctions between Israel and other nations; ethnic Israel was an educated elite. Whatever its older associations, this Deuteronomic vision would have had special cogency during the postexilic period, when waves of the returnees—being descendants of the elite classes of Israel (2 Kgs 24:14; 25:11–12)—were more highly educated than the bulk of those remaining in the devastated land, and many of those remaining in the land were redefined as “Canaanite.” Yet the later traditions under discussion now (e.g. Exod 19:6) go further. They depict emergent Israel not only as educated but as priests—a particularly holy, educated minority—within a broader world of unclean nations. I will show this move continuing into the later Second Temple period, both in the creation of a specially holy group of priests and nonpriests among the Essenes and in the more wholesale extension of priestly purity regulations to the people in the Pharisaic movement. The starting point for such developments, however, is the move made in the wake of the destruction of the monarchy toward the reconceptualization of Israel as a priestly people, and the concomitant revision of its general education-enculturation traditions to include prominent priestly traditions. These pictures of a “wise” and “priestly” people, however, are either projections of ideals into the Mosaic past or visions for the future. At no point in pre-Hellenistic Israelite history do the people as a whole actually gain the sort of literary “literacy” that counted most in the ancient world. General literacy was not achieved amid the emergence of an early Israelite state. During the later preexilic period various forms of alphabetic literacy expanded, and we see the Deuteronomic vision of oral-written education. Nevertheless, we do not have clear evidence of literacy beyond members of the administrative and rul-

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ing classes.231 So also, the exilic period was hardly the time for a radical expansion of Israelite literacy, neither in Israel itself nor in Babylon. And the postexilic period, as Schniedewind argues, was not much better.232 Though the conditions for writing improved somewhat in the later Persian period,233 any expansion in percentage of literacy probably came more from the postexilic redefinition, described earlier, of what constituted an “Israelite” rather than major increases in access to literate education. We must wait until the Hellenistic and Roman periods before we begin to see more evidence of a broadly based educational system in Israel, a system formed in response to a more broadly based educational system in the Greco-Roman world. I turn now to take a closer look at that Hellenistic educational system.

231. The best evidence for such widespread literacy would be the Mesfi ad Hashavyahu ostracon, along with graffiti at sites like Khibet el-Qoˆm and Khirbet Beit-Lei. Nevertheless, the graffiti was probably written by artisans, an unusually well-educated class in the ancient world (cf. Deir el-Medina), and the ostracon—possibly written by a scribe—is a slender basis on which to build a picture of general literacy in Israel that would be unprecedented elsewhere in the ancient world. On this see Schniedewind’s arguments for widespread “basic” literacy in Bible to Book, 103–4. 232. Schniedewind, Bible to Book, 167–82. 233. Ben Zvi, “Urban Center,” 197–98.

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part ii

Textuality and Education in the Eastern Hellenistic World

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7 Education and Textuality in the Hellenistic World Egypt and Other Examples of Hellenistic Hybridity

The Hellenistic period marks a definite shift in many important respects from the pre-Hellenistic one. First and foremost, education and textuality are part of a broader clash of cultures. In contexts like Hellenistic Egypt, participation in elite Greek education marked one as a “Greek” and thus a member of the Greek ruling class, especially if one progressed to the point of having graduated from the gymnasium. Yet I will show in this chapter how this education, particularly on the elite levels, was not open to all, nor was it equally accessible to all students. Instead, education and textuality becomes a central means for legitimating Greek overlordship by way of possession of purportedly superior Greek culture. In response, dominated cultures like Egypt articulated at least part of their resistance to Greek rule through asserting and redefining their own cultural heritage.

Hellenistic Education and Text Production Before progressing further in detailing this clash of cultures, let us take a look at the Hellenistic textual-educational matrix, particularly as it is attested outside of the Greek heartland. Fortunately, this stage of ancient education is better documented than almost any other stage, save perhaps that of Mesopotamian education in the Old Babylonian period. Not only do we have theoretical discussions of education in Hellenistic Greek literature, but we can also draw on extensive finds of schoolbooks and educational exercises from Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. In the case of the use of the theoretician Quintilian, for example, I draw on Roman period texts to illuminate

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the shape of an educational system that preceded him and remained remarkably continuous into the time of early Byzantine materials. Nevertheless, the primary aim here is to reconstruct systems of Greek textuality and education as they first arose in Hellenistic cultures like Ptolemaic Egypt. The picture that emerges from these materials is remarkably similar to that seen in earlier chapters: small-scale educational processes rather than formal schools, focus on memorization and recitation of a textual heritage, use of such education for class formation. Still, there are some important ways in which Hellenistic education is distinct from Sumero-Akkadian, Egyptian, and even pre-Hellenistic Greek systems. As before, Hellenistic education appears to have happened in a variety of sites, particularly on the elementary levels. To be sure, we see mention of “schools,” as we did in the Sumero-Akkadian and Egyptian instances. Yet, as in those instances, “school” can mean very different things in different contexts. Cribiore’s excellent survey of Hellenistic to early Byzantine sites of education identifies evidence of early education in private homes (particularly for elite students), on the street (good for publicity of the teacher), in the country, and in temples (particularly for low-level Greek and Demotic education), tombs, and colonnades.1 Later on, upper-level teachers like Libanius could rent special rooms for their teaching,2 and there is fairly extensive archaeological evidence for gymnasia.3 Nevertheless, only a few students would have reached such advanced levels, and it is not clear in any case how much literary-cultural education happened in gymnasia, aside from an occasional competition or visiting lecturer.4 There were exceptions, but Hellenistic education appears to have been an enterprise centered on individual teachers, and a “school” often consisted of little more than the teacher, an agreed meeting place, and any associated upper-level students functioning as assistants. Amid this variety in Hellenistic educational arrangements, we see the emergence of a remarkable consistency in what was taught. Indeed, past and recent research has identified the Hellenistic period as having achieved a regularity in pedagogy that was not seen previously in Greek education.5 Most discussions find it helpful to summarize the contents of Hellenistic education according to an overall three-part structure: elementary education in basic literacy, secondary education in grammar, and higher education in rhetoric. Though these different levels could be taught in different contexts, the threepart scheme is a useful starting point for an overview of the contents of Hellenistic education.6 1. Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 21–34. See also the discussion of problems in identifying school settings in Teresa Morgan, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds, Cambridge Classical Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 28–29. 2. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 31–32. Though this is later evidence, there is little reason to believe teachers like Libanius inaugurated this practice. 3. The standard survey (though older) is Jean Delorme, Gymnasion: E´tude sur les Monuments Consacre´s a l’Education en Gre`ce, Des Origines a` Empire Romain (Paris: Boccard, 1960). 4. On this issue see hereafter. 5. See, e.g., Morgan, Literate Education, 34. 6. For discussion of the problems with past assumptions of a three-part pattern see esp. Alan D. Booth,

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The first stage of education occurred in the greatest variety of contexts. The teacher could be the child’s parent, a slave working in the household, a private tutor, or a low-paid teacher running a class in a makeshift location like the street, colonnade, tomb, or country.7 At this initial stage students copied, read aloud, memorized, and sang initial lists and literary excerpts. Looking more closely at these early teaching materials, we still see the abecedaries that were already attested for classical Greek education, but these were followed by a more regularized series of other teaching materials, such as syllable lists, name lists, and lists of multisyllabic words. Wisdom maxims were also featured prominently, along with poetic literary passages such as the first part of Homer’s Iliad and related works. This sort of sequence is well illustrated by schoolbooks that appear to have served as teachers’ models in Hellenistic Egypt. It is also attested in theoretical discussions outside Egypt like the following oft-quoted description of education by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Comp. 25; see also Dem. 52): When we are taught to read, first we learn by heart the names of the letters, then their shapes and their values, then, in the same way, the syllables and their effects, and finally words and their properties, by which I mean the ways they are lengthened, shortened, and scanned; and similar functions. And when we have acquired knowledge of these things, we begin to write and read, syllable by syllable and slowly at first. It is only when a considerable lapse of time has implanted firmly in our minds the forms of the words that we execute them with the utmost ease, and we read through any book that is given to us unfalteringly and with incredible confidence and speed. (Usher, LCL, p. 57) This later discussion provides a useful framework for interpreting the earlier evidence from exercises. According to this picture, the student progressed from the smaller to the larger, from individual alphabet letters up through larger literary excerpts. Though the order probably varied more than discussions like Dionysius’s would allow, each step needed to be mastered before one progressed to the next.8 For example, by the time of Quintilian (Inst. 1.1.25–26), students memorized the alphabet not only from beginning to end but in reverse order, pairs beginning with first and last, and random orders.9 From the outset of education, memorization of materials played a key role.

“Elementary and Secondary Education in the Roman Empire,” Florilegium 1 (1979): 1–14; Robert Kaster, “Notes on ‘Primary’ and ‘Secondary’ Schools in Late Antiquity,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 113 (1983): 323–46; and Cribiore, Gymnastics, 36–44. ¨ gypten,” in Egypt and the Hellenistic World: 7. H Maehler, “Die Griechische Schule Im Ptolema¨ischen A Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Leuven, 24–26 May 1982 (Louvain: Studia Hellenistica, 1983), 196–97; Cribiore, Gymnastics, 150–63. 8. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 167–72. 9. Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 111.

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The third century (b.c.e.) writer Athenaeus depicts a banquet discussion of how children learn the alphabet through singing it.10 Herodas provides a sketch in which a student fails to recite a memorized speech.11 Callimachus’s epigrams include one that playfully interprets a school bust with a gaping mouth as a representation of how young students must sing forth various lines of verse.12 Later Greek theoreticians like Pollux (Onomasticon 4.18), PseudoPlutarch (Moralia 9e–f ) and Quintilian (Inst. 1.3; 10.1.19; 11.2; etc.) discuss the centrality of memory and memorization to the educational process. Indeed, “memory” was recognized as the mother of the seven Muses who were seen as sponsors of education and textuality.13 Such memorization was important because manuscripts of literary texts were as difficult to read and search through at this time as they were during the classical period. Except for easy-to-read school models, texts lacked syllableor word-separators, and virtually all texts were written solely in capital letters, without accents or other readerly helps.14 The Roman anecdotalist Aulus Gellius indicates how much more was required to read a text than just knowledge of letters and words. In his Attic Nights he describes the humiliation of a man who boasted mastery of Varro but was unable to read a text of Varro fluently, “so wretchedly did he pronounce the words and murder the thought” (13.31; Rolfe, LCL). In another anecdote from the Shepherd of Hermas, Hermas receives a book of visions that he must copy letter by letter, “for I could not make out the syllables” (2:3–4). As Cribiore has pointed out, one of the best indicators that a given text is an educational model for student copying is the presence of word-separators to help students with the process of initial interpretation.15 Only as students gradually mastered an ever broader range of literary material, were they capable of “reading”/“rerecognizing” (Greek anagino¯skein) and re-

10. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 10.453d. Athenaeus was a native of Naucratis in Egypt. 11. Herodas, Mime 3 (“Schoolmaster”), lines 30–36. 12. Callimachus, Epig. 49. Callimachus worked most of his career in Alexandria. Cribiore (Gymnastics, 15) quotes a third-century (c.e.) schoolbook from Gaul that likewise describes how students learn their colloquia and recite them. 13. For more on the centrality of memory in Hellenistic education see H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. George Lamb (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956 [1948 original]), 150–59; Raffaella Cribiore, Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt, American Studies in Papyrology (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996), 154–55 (who notes the similar patterns in the Sumero-Akkadian and Egyptian systems); T. Olbricht, “Delivery and Memory,” in Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period 330 B.C.– A.D. 400, ed. S. Porter (Leiden: Brill, 1997); Morgan, Literate Education, 194–97, 246, 250–51; Cribiore, Gymnastics, esp. 149, 151, 166–67 and books on memory in antiquity by Carruthers and Small (Carruthers, Book of Memory; Jocelyn Penny Small, Wax Tablets of the Mind: Cognitive Studies of Memory and Literacy in Classical Antiquity [London: Routledge, 1997]). For discussion of a similar focus on memorization in Latin education see Marrou, History of Education, 271, 289 and Catherine Hezser, “The Mishnah and Ancient Book Production,” in The Mishnah in Contemporary Perspective, ed. Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 184– 85. 14. Some discussions of the difficulty of manuscripts for reading include F. G. Kenyon, Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), 67; Marrou, History of Education, 166; Martin P. Nilsson, Die Hellenistische Schule (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1955), 4; L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 2–3; Small, Wax Tablets, esp. 11–25, and Cribiore, Gymnastics, 189–90. 15. Cribiore, Writing, Teachers, Students, 48–49, 123–28; Cribiore, Gymnastics, 132–40.

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citing a given work without such helps.16 As Cribiore puts it, rather than store a copy of a schoolbook in his house, the student stored its contents in his memory: “the cubbyholes of his mind contained the syllabaries of the past, the lists of mythological figures, and the works of the poets he had scrutinized.”17 As in other cultures discussed earlier, this work of memorization was aided from the outset through the predominance of oral performance. Students would sing the alphabet and some verses, or perhaps read a text aloud. This was not an issue of their inability to process a given text internally.18 Rather, oral performance helped students internalize texts through processing them by mouth and ear as well as by eye. Later writers like Quintilian sometimes likened facilitation of memorization through vocal murmuring to the mouthly rumination of a text, chewing on it and ingesting it.19 Moreover, oral performance of texts provided a measure of the competence or incompetence of students through demonstration and competition (e.g., Herodas, Mime 3 [“The Schoolmaster”]). Thus the oral register was important both for achieving initial mastery of the cultural tradition and for proving that mastery to others.20 This work of memorization and oral performance of literary tradition would not have come naturally to students, especially those without extensive prior knowledge of some form of Greek language and culture. As Morgan points out, the first stages of alphabet and syllable learning turn the student into a “reciter of nonsenses.” This is the opposite of whole-word literacy education. Students learn letter names and syllables without any referent to things they already know. The situation does not improve much when they progress to mastering meaningless sequences of multisyllable words. And many students would not have understood much more when they started writing and memorizing wisdom maxims and excerpts from Homer. Such literature would have been incredibly difficult for beginning students, full of grammar and vocabulary unfamiliar even to students fluent in the Koine Greek of the Hellenistic period.21 Nevertheless, such literature was introduced at the outset of a student’s education and repeated throughout in hopes of reshaping his language and molding his moral character. Roman-period educational theorists like Quintil-

16. On the verb see Nilsson, Hellenistische Schule, 4, who comments on the similar meanings of Latin legere and German lesen. 17. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 149, 151. 18. See A. K. Gavrilov, “Techniques of Reading in Classical Antiquity,” Classical Quarterly 47 (1997): 56– 73, for a discussion of contemporary research on the development of silent reading capability and of several texts that point to silent reading as a more typical mode of reading than is typically assumed. Cf. already Sedgewick, “Reading and Writing in Classical Antiquity,” Contemporary Review 135 (1929): 90–91, who notes the oral setting of most performance of literature, not lack of reader capacity, as the ground for preferring vocalized to nonvocalized reading. Cf. Carruthers, Book of Memory, 170–71, for proposal of an alternative way of understanding the function and terminology for silent and vocal reading. 19. Carruthers, Book of Memory, 164–65. 20. On the importance of reading aloud in Hellenistic education see Marrou, History of Education, 165– 66, 195, 224; Cribiore, Gymnastics, 190–92. 21. Morgan, Literate Education, 100–110, 165–66. See also Maehler, “Griechische Schule,” 200–201 on the unsuitability of Greek educational materials for language acquisition.

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ian argued that it was especially important to introduce such fine literature at an early age lest impressionable young students be morally formed by substandard, contemporary writings (Inst. 1.8.5–6). So also, Pliny the Younger writes of how the student would start and return again and again to the same, central texts and authors.22 Along the way, teachers provided some helps. For example, Roman period authors like Quintilian built on earlier Greek antecedents in composing and using florilegia (excerpt collections) consisting of literary extracts organized by moral or other categories. As Carruthers argues, their purpose was “not to substitute for the study of original texts, but to provide cues for recollecting material read earlier.”23 In addition, the use of alphabetic acrostics as memory aids continued. Especially at the earlier stages, students would have been confronted with a physically brutal process of inscribing this alien textual material on their minds. Evidence from the Hellenistic period testifies to widespread use of physical violence on younger students. Lower-level teachers had a wide array of weapons to wield on their students, and most appear to have done so— despite the criticisms of such practices by theorists like Libanius and Quintilian.24 But teachers did not just beat students into learning. They also provided aids to their learning—for example, educational models with word-separators. Moreover, they provided positive encouragement for students to learn, such as imaging education as an attractive “lady” to be won. Despite all this, the material was far from easy to digest, especially for students from non-Greek families. Teachers would use violence on recalcitrant students, and we have isolated stories of students breaking their teachers’ schoolbooks in rebellion.25 The successful early teacher mastered his students, taming their minds by way of their bodies and engraving on those minds the rudiments of Greek culture. Many students would have stopped there, but some went on to a broader and deeper encounter with Greek literature. If they had not already begun study outside the home by this point, they usually began such study now with a more highly paid, higher-status grammarian (grammatikos) or with assistants working under a teacher of rhetoric like the later Libanius, perhaps traveling from their small town to a central urban area like Alexandria to pursue their studies.26 Under the guidance of the teacher (or his upper-level students/assistants) the students branched out in their reading, covering larger stretches of classic

22. Epistulae 7.9.15 as referred to by Cribiore, Gymnastics, 192–93. 23. The quote in Carruthers, Book of Memory, 176–77. See 174–78 for a broader discussion of dating issues and the pedagogical uses of such florilegia in ancient and medieval education. 24. Marrou, History of Education, 158–59; Catherine Atherton, “Children, Animals, Slaves and Grammar,” in Pedagogy and Power: Rhetorics of Classical Learning, ed. Yun Lee Too and Niall Livingstone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 242–44; Cribiore, Gymnastics, 65–73; Joy Connolly, “Problems of the Past in Imperial Greek Education,” in Education in Greek and Latin Antiquity, ed. Yun Lee Too (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 366– 70. 25. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 156–57. 26. On the higher status and pay of such teachers see especially Cribiore, Gymnastics, 53–63. See 106–8 of the same book for discussion of education of children by parents.

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literature, such as Euripides, Isocrates, and others, such as Herodotus and Thucydides, that often occurred in the educational texts and standard lists found in ancient theorists such as Quintilian.27 As before, Homer took pride of place, but now portions of the Iliad and Odyssey were used that had not been studied as much earlier in Greek education.28 Moreover, Homer was not just read and memorized; the student learned glossaries of Homeric language, lists of realia and unusual words, commentaries elaborating how Homeric heroes could be construed as moral ideals, and so on.29 Students no longer sang as much, but they still read aloud, while also practicing adding accents to teacher models and otherwise perfecting their oral demonstration of their comprehension of the given text.30 Such higher-level, “grammatical” education was only available to a few, and it proved the real watershed in distinguishing mere utility literacy from the higher literateness that marked an upper-class person. Only through deeper engagement with the linguistic details of a broad range of literature could a student gain facility in the somewhat artificial brand of Attic Greek that marked one off as truly educated.31 Moreover, only such a broad and deep engagement gave students the full facility to reach the goal outlined by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his statement quoted earlier: “It is only when a considerable lapse of time has implanted firmly in our minds the forms of the words that we execute them with the utmost ease, and we read through any book that is given to us unfalteringly and with incredible confidence and speed.” Finally, an even smaller number of students went on to a third stage of education that typically included training in rhetoric, along with, possibly, philosophy and other subjects like medicine. The emphasis on the oral word was, if anything, more prominent at this stage.32 Nevertheless, students were no longer limited to ingesting classic works but were being trained to produce new speeches and compositions building on the wording and grammar of the older works that had been the focus of their education throughout.33 Thus, for example, a student might learn writing by copying a maxim from Diogenes in the first stage, learn grammar by declining that same saying in the second

27. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 192–219. 28. See Cribiore, Gymnastics, 194–97, 204–205. Glenn W. Most, “Canon Fathers: Literacy, Mortality, Power,” Arion 1 (1990–91): 48–49, notes that “Homer” of the Hellenistic period has been purged of various early lyrical poems that were circulated earlier as part of the “Homeric” corpus. 29. For some discussion of the centrality and uses of Homer at this stage see Marrou, History of Education, 162–63, 169–70; Nilsson, Hellenistische Schule, 80, 95–96; Cribiore, Gymnastics, 194–97. Cribiore (131) notes one story from Plutarch where Alcibiades beats a man for claiming to be a teacher of grammar and not having a copy of Homer in his possession (Alc. 7.1). 30. On the change in type of performance see Marrou, History of Education, 165–66. On reading aloud at this stage see also Cribiore, Gymnastics, 189–91. 31. Morgan, Literate Education, 166–67; Atherton, “Children,” 214–17, 236–40. 32. Marrou, History of Education, 195. 33. For overviews of rhetorical training see Morgan, Literate Education, 190–239, and Cribiore, Gymnastics, 220–44. For discussion of memorization even at the stage of new composition see Olbricht, “Delivery and Memory.”

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stage, and learn rhetoric by elaborating that saying during the third. The overall process started, returned to, and concluded with the classical texts at the core of Greek culture.34 The available evidence suggests that there was substantial agreement about the scope of the ancient Greek culture to be taught. Gnomic material, whether isolated sayings or literature dense with maxims, was especially popular. For example, there are an unusually large number of educational exercises using Menander in the earlier Hellenistic period, perhaps partly because Menander combined education in a Greek worldview with practice in Attic Greek.35 Homer was the most dominant source of literature, particularly material from the first six books of the Iliad and the portions of the Odyssey that most closely linked to the characters of the Iliad.36 Euripides was also popular, particularly his play Phoenissae, with its links to the Iliad.37 Isocrates was also frequently part of the regular “core” or “minimal package” of Hellenistic education, again because of the prominence of sayings material.38 Yet students were not taught just such core texts. Rather, they mastered a mix of literary standards like Homer and a wide-ranging list of more peripheral works. Morgan has proposed the model of “core” and “periphery” to characterize this teaching material, arguing that it better approximates the evidence than concepts of a standard “curriculum.” Others have placed greater stress on the testimony of later theoreticians (e.g. Libanius) that there was a fairly fixed curriculum across the full range of education. In either case, the point was for students not just to gain mastery of a cultural core (e.g., Homer, Euripides) but also to spice up their speech with elements from other authors. This mix of core competence and eclectic range communicated to their peers a grasp of the breadth of Greek literary culture.39 This cultural deposit ingested by students was clearly defined over against contemporary texts and language by the antiquity of its authors and their language. Homer was clearly distant from the time and idiom of students. Euripides, Isocrates, and Menander likewise came from a time far distant, certainly more distant than when such authors were occasionally used in pre-Hellenistic Greek education. Through enshrining certain works by such older authors, Hellenistic teachers enculturated students into writing and speaking a schol-

34. For a useful overview of how similar materials might be used differently at different stages see Ronald Hock and Edward O’Neil, The Chreia and Ancient Rhetoric: Classroom Exercises, Writings from the Greco-Roman World (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002). 35. Andreas Mehl, “Erziehung Zum Hellenen—Erziehung Zum Weltbu¨rger: Bemerkungen Zum Gymnasion Im Hellenistischen Osten,” Nikephoros 5 (1992): 66; Morgan, Literate Education, 120–51; Cribiore (Gymnastics, 201–4) notes that Aristophanes replaces Menander in later exercises. 36. Morgan argues on the basis of distribution of educational exercises that quite limited portions of the Iliad were used, especially at the elementary stages (Morgan, Literate Education, 105–106. Cribiore (Gymnastics, 204–5, esp. 205, n. 98) argues that such educational texts may present a misleadingly narrow picture of the amount of Homer encountered. Though she agrees that the beginning of the Iliad was favored (pp. 194–197), she argues that broader mastery of both works was not as exceptional as Morgan suggests. 37. Morgan, Literate Education, 115; Cribiore, Gymnastics, 140, 197–201. 38. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 178–80. 39. Morgan, Literate Education, 67–73.

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arly version of Attic Greek that was distinct from the Koine Greek in use at the time. Students who progressed further gained a more fluent mastery of the often unpredictable forms and expressions of the documents that formed the core of their education. The later Roman satirist Lucian provides vivid pictures of what happened to students who avoided such advanced education, focusing only on a few contemporary authors. He depicts them as embarrassing themselves because of their inability to do anything more than cite a smattering of older expressions and names from ancient writings.40 Overall, this Hellenistic Greek textual heritage was both similar to and different from the Sumero-Akkadian and Egyptian ones. On the one hand, the syllable, word, and name lists that begin to occur in Hellenistic schoolbooks bear a marked resemblance to similar teaching materials that were used in Sumero-Akkadian and Egyptian education.41 Moreover, all of these cultural deposits were distinguished by their antiquity, language, and claim to represent the values of a bygone age. Generally, only Greek works attributed to preHellenistic authors were considered for inclusion in the educational process, while later works were excluded.42 On the other hand, the Hellenistic educational literature was distinguished from its counterparts in focusing almost exclusively on a set of human authors rather than claiming that the texts were divinely inspired or were faithfully copied from bygone times by a set of semidivine scribes or sages. In this respect, Hellenistic Greek education is closer to Egyptian counterparts, particularly New Kingdom texts like the ChesterBeatty Papyrus, which lists a set of authoritative ancient sages while also claiming special inspiration for them. One reflection of this unusual level of emphasis on authors in the Hellenistic tradition is the emergence during the late third or early second century of an authoritative Alexandrian list of the best old Greek authors. This list is not a completely new development. It is an outgrowth of earlier debates in the Greek tradition about the best Attic tragedians, comedy writers, and so on. Nevertheless, it appears that Aristophanes, working in the context of the Alexandrian library, succeeded in establishing a broader list of the best lyric poets, orators, philosophers, and so on, authors who then were recognized as egkrithentes (“admitted, sanctioned” [as classical]). This list defined the outer limits of classical Greek learning, serving as the exclusive focus of Aristophanes’ and others’ lexical efforts, and defining those works that were given new editions by Alexandrian scholars. It was not called a “canon,” and it had only a limited impact on the educational-textual system. Most students would never have mastered many authors on this select list. Nevertheless, Aristophanes’ list did have a significant effect in defining the Greek corpus and sidelining nonincluded Greek writings. In a foreign context like Alexandria, it helped concentrate textual production on a selection of certain authors. Moreover, it solidified

40. See, for example, Lucian, The Rhetoric Professor and Lexiphanes. 41. See hereafter for more discussion of the problems in determining influence. 42. More recent Latin works were included in Latin education (Atherton, “Children,” 217). On the period covered see Most, “Canon Fathers,” 54–55.

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an emphasis on these ancient authors’ works, lifting them up as models for a negatively judged present. Yet such lists also involved a decisive shifting of attention away from other authors, as a result of which works by such authors fell out of production and disappeared.43 This new level of focus on authors in the Hellenistic world had important effects on textual production. For example, textual creativity in the Hellenistic world often took the form of the creation of new works attributed to older authors, along with the addition of new material to older works. Pseudonymity became more prominent.44 Partly in response to this, scholars at elite institutions like the Alexandrian Museon made copies of many rare books and attempted to establish authoritative scholarly editions of older works that excluded later additions.45 The influence of these scholarly efforts on broader textual production is debated, but they testify to the earlier-described dynamism of textual production, including production of falsely older works and supplementation and corruption of truly older works.46 Certainly libraries like that in Alexandria themselves stood as a statement of the power and scope of Greek learning. Callimachus’s catalogue of the library, spanning 120 volumes of lists of various authors and works by them, stood as a major testimony to the range and prestige of the Greek tradition so important to the broader Hellenistic social system. Both the creation of pseudonymous books and the Alexandrian effort to provide a comprehensive, verified collection of Greek intellectual heritage were part of a more broadly attested expansion of the production and consumption of books in the Hellenistic world. By this point the possession of books had expanded in important ways beyond those state and temple contexts where collections were primarily housed in the pre-Hellenistic period. Not only do cities like Alexandria and Pergamon gain prestige through their vast collections of books, but an increasing number of wealthy scholars follow earlier examples like Aristotle in building collections of their own.

43. For discussion see especially the classic overview in Rudolf Pfeiffer, A History of Classical Scholarship: From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 203–8, along with subsequent discussion in Ernst A. Schmidt, “Historische Typologie der Orientierungsfunktionen von Kanon in der Griechischen und Ro¨mischen Literature,” in Assmann and Assmann, Kanon und Zensur, 246–58; Most, “Canon Fathers.”; Franco Montanari and Theodore Heinze, “Kanon,” in Der Neue Pauly, ed. August Friedrich von Pauly and Hubert Cancik (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999), 248–50. On the distinctive dynamics set up by the censure involved in the creation of such lists see Jan Assmann and Aleida Assmann, “Kanon und Zensur,” in Assmann and Assmann, Kanon und Zensur (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1987), 7–27. 44. For an illuminating, though dated, discussion of these phenomena see A. Gu¨demann, “Literary Frauds Among the Greeks,” in Classical Studies in Honour of Henry Drisler (New York: Macmillan, 1894), 52–74. 45. Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, 5–6; Mostafa El-abbadi, The Life and Fate of the Library of Alexandria (Paris: UNESCO, 1990), 107–8, 111. ¨ berlieferungsgeschichte der 46. Compare the positive statements about influence in Hartmut Erbse, “U Griechischen Klassischen und Hellenistischen Literature,” in Geschichte der Textuberlieferung der Antiken und Mittelalterlichen Literatur, ed. Herbert Hunger (Zu¨rich: Atlantis Verlag, 1961), 221–23; Most, “Canon Fathers,” 55; Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, 5–6; El-abbadi, Alexandrian Library, 114–16, with more sceptical ones by Kenyon, Books and Readers, 69; Marrou, History of Education, 164–65.

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The Goal and Scope of Hellenistic Education Certainly the vast majority of people never achieved the literacy or possessed the resources to enjoy such a private library during the Hellenistic period. Rather, only a minority of the broader population pursued education on any level. Only a few of those progressed to the advanced levels of “liberal education” that marked them as members of the ruling class. To be sure, the Hellenistic period was a time when the use of written records rapidly expanded, at least in well-documented areas like Hellenistic Egypt. We see a move in many circles beyond the idea of scribal literacy toward a society where even the illiterate in the society had to reckon with writing in their everyday lives and recognized the conventions governing writing.47 Moreover, an increasing number of leading citizens needed literacy to make their way. They did not necessarily need writing in their direct work, but they did need literacy and basic oratorical skills to perform adequately as members of their class. Thus education is generalized and standardized to play a new role for this elite. For them, there was no alternative to learning the standard Greek works. Anyone with resources was vulnerable in such a context if he or she couldn’t read. That person was dependent on literate people for trustworthy access to written documentation of economic and legal transactions.48 This was no small thing. Papyri attest to fraud, and the presence of an illiterate amid the Greek aristocracy was considered noteworthy. This phenomenon of increased documentation parallels the evidence of some state and private sponsorship of lower-level education: the Ptolemaic exemption of teachers from the salt tax and the private endowment of public schools at places like Teos and Rhodes. These are among the factors that led Harris to estimate that literacy reached a high point in certain settings during the Hellenistic period, with 20– 30 percent of adult males in urban areas like Teos or Rhodes being literate— a level approaching the craft literacy characteristic of certain urban medieval contexts. Though such literacy levels may sound low by contemporary standards, they were virtually unprecedented in human history. Earlier Greek traditions sometimes spoke of an ideal of universal education. But these later, isolated Hellenistic urban contexts came closer than their predecessors toward realizing that ideal.49 Literacy dynamics were quite different in a context like Egypt, where Greeks—whether by blood or education—were in a small minority. Greek presence was concentrated in larger cities like Alexandria, Naucratis, and Pto-

47. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 163. 48. W. V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 144–45. 49. Harris, Ancient Literacy, 141. For introduction of the useful concept of “text broker” to characterize the dynamics of a society with limited literacy and yet the need for broader services, see H. Gregory Snyder, Teachers and Texts in the Ancient World: Philosophers, Jews, and Christians, Religion in the First Centuries (London: Routledge, 2000), 11, 186–205, and 215.

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lemais, along with some Egyptian centers like Memphis.50 Educational-literary texts appear earliest in those areas with the most Greek wealth, such as the Arsinoite nome, and then appear elsewhere.51 Overall, only a very small proportion of the overall population of Ptolemaic Egypt was literate. Bagnall and Frier estimate that 32 percent of the male population of the heavily Hellenized Arsinoite nome was literate, while Dorothy Thompson argues for broader literacy rates of around 9 percent in towns and 2 percent in large urban centers.52 Here again, depending on how one defines literacy, the rates are rather high by the standards of the ancient world. This is especially true if one shifts focus from the overall population—which was probably majority nonliterate—to the “Greek” minority. Partly by defining as “Greek” those who were educated, the Hellenistic world projected the ideal that most “Greeks” in the overall population had achieved some education in Greek letters. Though some resident foreigners (e.g., Jews and Persians) and fewer native Egyptians gained access to education, Greek education and textuality was a key part of a system that legitimated Greek overlordship by way of a purportedly superior Greek culture. We see hints of cultural confrontation in both Greek and non-Greek sources. In one papyrus, a non-Greek camel-driver complains that he had not been compensated regularly because “I am a barbarian” and “I do not know how to behave like a Greek.”53 Elsewhere an Egyptian priest asserts that the person he is litigating against “despises me because I am an Egyptian.”54 So also, Harris has suggested that the Greek minority living in Egypt may have felt all the more impelled to establish institutions of education during their confrontation with barbarians there.55 This dynamic of cultural confrontation could even lead to the elimination of Egyptian elements from older Greek teaching literature. Cribiore notes one instance where Aesop’s fable 48 (in which a man flees to the Nile and is eaten by a crocodile) is purged of any element of Egyptian local color in an Egyptian-Greek version of it.56 In the original sixth-century Greek context in which the fable was composed, Egyptian details like the Nile and crocodiles added to the exotic attraction of the story. Nevertheless, such elements apparently were perceived as problematic to the Hellenized Greek minority preserving their culture amid broader Egypt. Such education was not necessarily limited to ethnic Greeks. Theoretically, non-Greeks could become Greek through being educated properly in Greek tradition. Already Isocrates speaks of this possibility.57 Within the Hellenistic

50. F. W. Walbank, The Hellenistic World, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 113– 14. 51. Morgan, Literate Education, 59–60. 52. Dorothy J. Thompson, “Literacy and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt,” in Literacy and Power in the Ancient World, ed. Alan Bowman and Greg Woolf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 75–76. 53. P. Col. Zen., 66, lines 19, 21, as rendered by Walbank, Hellenistic World, 115. 54. P. Yale, 46, col. i, line 13, again as rendered in Walbank, Hellenistic World, 115. 55. Harris, Ancient Literacy, 138–39. 56. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 180. 57. Antidosis 296–7; Evagoras 47–51 and Panegyricus 51.

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world this option was used to varying extents to socialize non-Greeks into lower- and mid-level administrative roles in ruling systems dominated by Greeks.58 Within Egypt, we already see early Ptolemaic period figures like Manetho with enough Greek education to promote their culture to their nonEgyptian counterparts, and there is increasing evidence of Egyptian participation in Greek education during the later Ptolemaic period: interference of spoken Egyptian in school exercises59 and attestation of teachers of Greek whose parents have Egyptian names.60 Especially as Greek replaced Demotic as the official language for all legal documentation (145 b.c.e.), an increasing number of Egyptian-speaking scribes were required to translate and write the petitions of native Egyptians.61 Non-Egyptian foreigners like Jews or Persians played an intermediate role between the Greeks and the native Egyptians. Generally they did not perform the highest jobs in administration, nor were they included in the educational system as much as Greeks. But the Greeks used such foreigners early on for lower- and mid-level administration. Their relatively high level of Greek education is reflected in the integration of Hellenistic themes in Jewish writings from the early Hellenistic period onward.62 Morgan argues persuasively that the Hellenistic educational system helped ensure that most such non-Greek students did not attain the same level of achievement as students who began their education with a prior knowledge of Greek and Greek culture. Only students coming from culturally Greek families would have been able to make sense of the language and contents of much of the early teaching material. In theory, education is supposed to be a meritocratic way of sorting between people. Nevertheless, in practice it privileged those students who had prior Greek cultural capital and thus could progress through the difficult process of memorization of often disconnected tidbits of language and culture.63 Indeed, this may even be implicitly built into the system. Morgan notes that discussions of education like Quintilian’s appear to be directed toward students preparing for the highest levels of rule in Hellenistic society, while the maxims used in most of the educational papyri from Egypt

58. Gerhard Wirth, “Der Weg an die Grenze: Blu¨te und Schicksal der Antiken Bildungstradition,” in Schulgeschichte Im Zusammenhang der Kulturentwicklung, ed. Lenz Kriss-Rettenbeck and Max Liedtke (Bad Heilbrunn: Julius Klinkhardt, 1983), 85–88; Morgan, Literate Education, 20–23. 59. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 211. 60. Dorothy J. Thompson, “Literacy and the Administration in Early Ptolemaic Egypt,” in Johnson, Life in a Multi-Cultural Society, 324–26. 61. Dorothy J. Thompson, “Literacy in Early Ptolemaic Egypt,” in Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Congress of Papyrology, Cairo, 2–9 September 1989, ed. A.H.S. El-Mosalamy (Cairo: Ain Shams University, Center of Papyrological Studies, 1989), 79, n. 3; Mehl, “Erziehung Zum Hellenen,” 53–55. Cf. Harris, Ancient Literacy, 143–44, who says that the level of Egyptian participation was “certainly minuscule.” Clarysse (“Greeks and Egyptians in the Ptolemaic Army and Administration,” Aegyptus 65 [1985]:57–66) and Mehl (“Erziehung Zum Hellenen,” 62–63) note some factors that would explain the lack of broader documentation of Egyptian participation in education: Egyptian use of Greek names, lack of signatures on school exercises, lack of school lists in general, and so on. 62. On this see especially Carl Holladay, “Jewish Responses to Hellenistic Culture,” in Ethnicity in Hellenistic Egypt, ed. Per Bilde et al. (A˚arhus: A˚arhus University Press, 1992), 139–63. 63. Morgan, Literate Education, esp. 22–23, 102–3.

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fit students destined for life as sub-elites with little individual power.64 Largely found in outlying areas of Ptolemaic Egypt and often showing interference of the Egyptian language, many such exercises reflect the education of native Egyptians for low-level participation in Hellenistic society. Another way of looking at the issue of educational and social hierarchy is to consider what sort of literacy truly counted in the Hellenistic world. Writing and reading ability did not qualify a person for the aristocracy. Indeed, lowerlevel teachers of literacy appear to have had low status and been poorly paid. Furthermore, the most literate scholars often used slaves or servants to perform the manual labor of reading texts or writing documents for them.65 Rather, here as elsewhere, another type of literacy counted for far more: the mastery of Greek tradition provided by a liberal education.66 This was not preparation for specific tasks of literacy needed in one’s economic or legal doings. On the contrary, part of what defined a “liberal education” was its inapplicability to specific, manual tasks. The liberally educated person, generally male, was someone who had the resources and leisure to progress to the higher levels of education, more fully mastering the classics of Greek literature and incorporating their language into his speech. Hellenistic texts depict the person who ascends this educational mountain as clearly superior to those below him. For example, a person who mastered the speech of the classics was as superior to his peers as a human was to speechless animals.67 It is education that gives people humanity and separates them from the animals.68 In addition, the maxims encountered early and throughout Hellenistic education stressed the superiority of men over women and the value of male bonding. They depict women as uneducated, unwise, and only useful as wives, while men qua men are depicted as self-controlled, autonomous, and the masters of others.69 Notably, this does not necessarily reflect reality, since women possessed significant legal rights in many Hellenistic cultures, and there is extensive papyrological evidence that many women were independent, well-educated, and powerful. Thus, the picture of weak, dependent women in many maxims reflects the ideological orientation of the educational process, depicting literate men as masters on the high side of multiple dichotomies: men, not women; Greek, not barbarian/Egyptian; free, not slaves; human, not animal. Within the fictional world that educational literature sought to actualize, the Hellenistic male stood apart from and above those he had been educated to organize and rule.70 He stood together with

64. Morgan, Literate Education, 146–50. 65. For a discussion of education focusing on copyists from a somewhat later period see Kim HainesEitzen, Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 21–40, 53–75. 66. Konrad Vo¨ssing, “Staat und Schule in der Spa¨tantike,” Ancient Society 32 (2002): 249–50. 67. Atherton, “Children,” 214–17. 68. See, e.g., Aulus Gellius XIII.17 (LCL 2, 456–59). 69. Morgan, Literate Education, 135–38. 70. Morgan, Literate Education, 269.

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other educated males in bonds of friendship and association that superseded family and other roles.71 Many of these themes of hierarchy, socialization, and association come together in another context I have only minimally discussed so far: the gymnasium. Certainly within Hellenistic Egypt the gymnasium appears to have served as a more decisive marker of membership in the upper echelons of the Greek ruling class than completion of any specific form of education. A number of inscriptions identify a group of “those from the gymnasium” as having special prestige and power. We see “clubs” (hairesis) of male compatriots (sunephe¯boi) who continue to work together years after concluding their brief time in the ephebate.72 This male association appears to have been the primary context for the sort of male bonding strongly advocated in the maxims discussed earlier. Much like college today, it was a key marker of elite social status. Networks formed in the gymnasia were the most important ones for those who reached that level of Hellenistic education-enculturation. Perhaps as a result, gymnasia were widely present in Greek towns and cities, while participation in them was highly limited.73 At least in the early Ptolemaic period, membership in the gymnasia was limited to children born of two Greek parents.74 Even later on, when participation seems to have been a bit broader, participation of Egyptians in the gymnasia was extremely restricted.75 The activities of the gymnasium contrasted with those of educationenculturation in Greek culture. By the time a youth participated in the gymnasium, he was not primarily involved in furthering his literary education. Indeed, there is some evidence that a few ephebes still had trouble writing.76 Instead, the primary focus of the gymnasium appears to have been athletic training and competition, socializing students into the Greek way of life. Though the Hellenistic period was a time when athletics appears to have been a less prominent part of the overall Hellenistic educational process,77 physical training remained an important marker of cultural difference between Greek and non-Greek in the Hellenistic kingdoms of the East. For example, such training had not been a central part of education in Egypt for hundreds of

71. Morgan, Literate Education, 141. 72. Thomas A. Brady, “The Gymnasium in Ptolemaic Egypt,” University of Missouri Studies 11 (1936): 11– 12; Nilsson, Hellenistische Schule, 91–92; M. Rosotovtzeff, A Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998 [1956 orig.]), 1058–59; Walbank, Hellenistic World, 117–18. 73. On the wide distribution of gymnasia see Maehler, “Griechische Schule,” 195; Nilsson, Hellenistische Schule, 83–87. Cribiore (Gymnastics, 35–36) notes that gymnasia are more widely present in the Ptolemaic period than they are in the Roman years. 74. Nilsson, Hellenistische Schule, 91; Michael Avi-Yonah, Hellenism and the East: Contacts and Interrelations from Alexander to the Roman Conquest (Ann Arbor, MI: Institute of Languages, Literature, and the Arts, 1978), 131–33; Marie-Franc¸oise Baslez, L’E´tranger dans la Gre`ce Antique (Paris: “Les Belles Lettres,” 1984), 301, 352–4. 75. Brady, “Gymnasium,” 16–20; Nilsson, Hellenistische Schule, 85; Avi-Yonah, Hellenism, 126–28; Walbank, Hellenistic World, 117–20. 76. Nilsson, Hellenistische Schule, 95. 77. C. Pre´aux, “Lettres Prive´es Grecques d’E´gypt Relatives a Dl’education,” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 8 (1929): 800; Wirth, “Weg,” 86; Mehl, “Erziehung Zum Hellenen,” 67–68.

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years.78 Therefore, when a Greek, Egyptian, or non-Egyptian foreigner engaged in extensive physical training, that man articulated his distinction from his surrounding non-Greek peers in an even more concrete way than he could if he were studying or performing a Greek text. Nevertheless, in addition to a primary focus on athletic training and competition, the Hellenistic gymnasium appears to have presupposed Greek education and enculturation.79 There are a number of libraries associated with gymnasia.80 The gymnasium itself was often host to visiting lectures by scholars and (occasionally) competitions in literary recitation.81 There is some evidence of training in rhetoric at some gymnasia.82 At the very least, the presence of a gymnasium in a given community is a good predictor of the presence of associated educational institutions.83 All such literary activities, however, took second place to the primary goal of most gymnasia: athletic training of prospective elite youths, teaching them a mastery of their bodies that mirrored their prospective mastery of others. In sum, the gymnasium was a key part of a broader educationalenculturational process that had multiple tracks and levels. At the lowest levels, students—whether in elite homes or low-level schools—were harshly educated into an initial mastery of Greek letters and excerpts of central Greek literature. The most privileged students progressed to a broader mastery of Greek tradition and speech, physical training, and the varied literary activities of the gymnasium, and—for some—advanced training in rhetoric. The ultimate goal was the autonomous, self-controlled male: one who was master of his own body and prepared for mastery of others. Such a man had integrated the heroic morals of the Greek tradition and was prepared for rule through his experience of being forced to subjugate his body and mind to his teachers. Early on in his education he was the one being subjugated. But, as psychodynamic theory tells us, people often respond to such experiences by internalizing their subjugator and then living out that role in relation to others later. Cribiore notes an image of children “playing teacher” where one of them is already sitting on the teacher’s chair, holding the teacher’s characteristic weapon—the staff.84 Indeed, not just men were influenced by these dynamics of formation

78. See the survey of texts and discussion in Wolfgang Decker, Quellentexte zu Sport und Ko¨rperkultur Im ¨ gypten (Sankt Augustin: Richarz, 1975). Alten A 79. Nilsson, Hellenistische Schule, 97. 80. Marrou, History of Education, 187–88; Wirth, “Weg,” 87; Nilsson, Hellenistische Schule, 51–52. Cf. Cribiore, Writing, Teachers, Students, 19–20. 81. Marrou, History of Education, 187–88. 82. Johannes Christes, “Gesellschaft, Staat und Schule in der Griechisch-Ro¨mischen Antike,” in Sozialmassnahmen und Fu¨rsorge: Zur Eigenart Antiker Sozialpolitik, vol.3, ed. H. Kloft, Grazer Beitra¨ge. Supplementband (Graz [Horn]: F. Berger and So¨hne, 1988), 62–63; Morgan, Literate Education, 28–29, 156. Broader claims of instruction at gymnasia, such as those found in Delorme (Gymnasion, 316–24), have not been sustained in recent scholarship. See the cautions in Nilsson, Hellenistische Schule, 93–94; Harris, Ancient Literacy, 134–35; and Cribiore, Gymnastics, 34–36. 83. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 36. 84. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 65–73.

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toward masculinity and power. Some high-born women received this sort of education, though not as a matter of course. Though education of girls at schools is attested at Teos and Pergamon, it is not at all clear how typical such examples were. Probably many girls in elite families received their education at home, and this intellectual distinction helped confirm their membership in the aristocratic class. We even have documentation of some women becoming teachers.85 These women, like the men, were also shaped by the educationalenculturational process, if only by way of displacing the male model on others. In one collection of four letters, Isidora, occasionally writing in her own hand, repeatedly urged her brother, Asklepiades, to “act like a man” (diandragatheo¯).86 As we have seen, literate men like Asklepiades had been educated to stand above and rule others. They were expected to act the part.

Indigenous Hellenistic Culture: The Egyptian Instance The confrontation of cultures changed over the hundreds of years of the Ptolemaic, Roman, and later Byzantine periods. Concentrating here on the Ptolemaic period, it apparently started with comparatively good relations between the Greeks and Egyptians. At least some Egyptians welcomed the Macedonian conquerors as liberators from the hated Persians,87 Egyptian Demotic and Greek texts were used side by side to document key transactions, and the earliest Hellenistic rulers appear to have depended on Egyptian collaborators to run the country.88 Soon it became clear, however, that the Hellenistic rulers were as ruthless and uninformed about native Egyptian religious practices as their Persian predecessors. Dreams of a return to rule by native Egyptian pharaohs resurfaced, focused no longer on overthrow of the Persians but on overthrow of the Greeks. Egyptians became involved in quite concrete and relatively successful resistance to Greek rule. After Egyptian soldiers were used to win the battle of Raphia in 217 b.c.e., a series of revolts rocked the Ptolemaic kingdom. This started with a revolt extending from 217 to 185 b.c.e. and extended to Egyptian collaboration with the attempt of a Seleucid king (Anthiochus IV) to take Egypt, mass refusals to work, and raids and smaller insurrections throughout the second century.89 Meanwhile, perhaps partly in response to such developments, we see greater involvement of Egyptians both in Greek education and in higher levels of Hellenistic administration.90 Moreover, Hellenistic rulers appear to have strengthened their efforts to provide for and

85. For broader discussion of literate women in the Hellenistic period see esp. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 74– 101. 86. The translation and example is from Cribiore, Gymnastics, 92. 87. Samuel K. Eddy, The King Is Dead: Studies in the Near Eastern Resistance to Hellenism 334–31 BC (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), 260–67. 88. Thompson, “Literacy and Administration,” 323–24. 89. For an overview of the revolts see Eddy, King Is Dead, 297–302. 90. Walbank, Hellenistic World, 118–20.

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protect Egyptian temples, thus enlisting the support of the native Egyptian priesthood.91 The Egyptian temples and priesthood were important because they were the nodal point for Egyptian culture, especially from the Persian period onward. In earlier periods of Egyptian history, royal and provincial administrations represented another locus for education, textuality, and culture that was distinct from, though highly integrated with, the operations of the Egyptian temple. But with the Persian and following periods, that level of administration was increasingly taken over by foreign rulers. Egyptian culture and textuality was concentrated in the temple.92 Priests educated their own children using older educational methods, old texts were reproduced, tombs were inscribed, and Manetho could still consult older records in writing his history of Egypt.93 When we see new texts written in Egyptian during the Hellenistic period, we can start with the assumption that they were written by someone educated in the temple and probably working there. The textual evidence suggests that the members of the priesthood of the temples were related in complex and varying ways to Hellenistic rule and culture. On the one hand, royal sponsorship and solicitation of Egyptian temples was sometimes rewarded by priestly endorsement of a given ruler as a legitimate pharaoh. There are even instances of hymns of praise for the Greek princess Berenice composed in an Egyptian house of life.94 Such collaboration may have won protection for some temples amid the series of revolts against Greek rule.95 On the other hand, the temple system would have stood as one of the central networks for organization of such revolts, and there is some specific evidence that Egyptian priestly groups, like the priesthood of Khnum, played a role in them. Moreover, during the Hellenistic period, we see a series of visionary texts appear, probably out of priestly milieus, that envision an end to Greek rule and the beginning of true pharaonic rule with observance of the proper customs. The Demotic Chronicle looks forward to the restoration of Maat with the defeat of the oppressive Greeks by a native pharaoh. The Potter’s Oracle is an originally Egyptian text that likewise foresees a golden age of native pharaonic rule on the other side of the cosmic disaster of Greek rule. Another Demotic prophecy is found on a first century papyrus that contains a lamb’s vision of the despoiling of Egypt’s shrines by foreigners

91. Eddy, King Is Dead, 313–20. 92. Helmut Brunner, Alta¨gyptische Erziehung (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1957), 27–32; Kaplony-Heckel, “Schu¨ler und Schulwesen,” 237; Ju¨rgen Osing, “La Science Sacerdotale,” in Le De´cret de Memphis: Colloque de la Fondations Singer-Polignac a` l’Occasion de la Ce´le´bration Du Bicentenaire de la De´couverte de la Pierre de Rosette, ed. D. Valballe and Jean Leclant (Paris: De Boccard, 1999), 138–40; Stephen Houston, John Baines, and Jerrold Cooper, “Last Writing: Script Obsolescence in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45 (2003): 447. 93. Donald B. Redford, Pharaonic Kinglists, Annals and Daybooks: A Contribution to the Egyptian Sense of History (Minnisauge: Benben, 1986), 214–22. 94. K. Nordh, Aspects of Ancient Egyptian Curses and Blessings: Conceptual Background and Transmission, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis (Uppsala: Almquist and Wiksell, 1996), 139. 95. Eddy, King Is Dead, 319.

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and their eventual recovery by the Egyptians, again bringing about a golden age. Though the guardians of Egyptian culture, Egyptian temples were not separate from the Greek culture with which they interacted. Both Greek and Egyptian texts were found at locations such as the Soukhos temple library at Tebtynus of the Fayyum96 and at the Serapeum at Memphis.97 We have later documentation of bilingual education in Demotic and Greek in the temple precinct of the village of Narmuthis.98 Though knowledge of Greek in earlier years was probably confined to a minority of Egyptian priests and focused on spoken Greek,99 knowledge of Egyptian declined in later years, while there is increasing evidence for Egyptian priests teaching in the Hellenistic system.100 Even early resistance texts like the Potter’s Oracle were translated into Greek, and later resistance texts like the apocalypse of Asclepius were originally written in Greek.101 As Baines has shown in a recent study, monumental remains of Egyptian elites from the Ptolemaic period show a complex interaction between Egyptian and Greek culture.102 At the same time, Egyptian education and enculturation methods may have influenced Greek ones. The sorts of word lists long characteristic of Demotic education first appear in Greek education in Egyptian educational exercises of the early Ptolemaic period. Since Demotic appears to have played a substantial role in early Ptolemaic administration,103 it is possible that Greek educators in the early Ptolemaic period borrowed such a focus on lists from their Egyptian counterparts, who in turn were building on a much more ancient and extensive tradition of educational use of lists in the ancient Near East.104 One other possible area of indirect influence of Hellenistic and Greek

96. Osing, “Science Sacredotale,” 128. 97. Kaplony-Heckel, “Schu¨ler und Schulwesen,” 237–38. 98. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 22. 99. See Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 16, for discussion, including notes 19 and 20 for overviews of the limited scope of such education and the frequent attestation of Egyptian priests illiterate in Greek. 100. On the decline in knowledge of Egyptian see Kaplony-Heckel, “Schu¨ler und Schulwesen,” 135–38. For the drift of Egyptian priests, particularly in the Roman period, toward teaching in the Greek system see Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 165–66. 101. Jørgen Podemann Sørensen, “Native Reactions to Foreign Rule and Culture in Religious Literature,” in Bilde, Ethnicity in Hellenistic Egypt, 169. 102. John Baines, “Egyptian Elite Self-Presentation in the Context of Ptolemaic Rule,” in Alexandria Between Egypt and Greece, ed. William V. Harris and Giovanni Ruffini, Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition (Leiden: Brill, in press). 103. Thompson, “Literacy,” 87; Thompson, “Literacy and Administration,” 323–24; Thompson, “Literacy and Power,” 72–73. 104. For discussion of various sides of the debate surrounding the issue of possible influence see KaplonyHeckel, “Schu¨ler und Schulwesen,” 229–32; Helmut Brunner, “Schrift und Unterrichtsmethoden Im Alten ¨ gypten,” in Erziehungs und Unterrichtsmethoden Im Historischen Wandel, ed. Lenz Kriss-Rettenbeck and Max A Liedtke (Bad Heilbrunn: Linkhardt, 1986), 32 (both see likely influence); M. Tassier, “Greek and Demotic School Exercises,” in Johnson, Life in a Multi-Cultural Society, 313–15 (skeptical about influence); and Morgan, Literate Education, 274 (possible limited influence but difficult to verify).

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culture lies in the area of libraries. I have already discussed both Hellenistic Greek and older Egyptian libraries. Egypt had a long tradition of text collections housed in temples, but the largest library complex in the Ptolemaic period was the pair of prestigious libraries housed in Alexandria, both the initial royal library and the Serapeum. The latter libraries formed part of the Ptolemies’ claim of cultural dominance not only of local Egyptian culture but of Hellenistic culture more generally. Callimachus’s great catalogue of the works stored in those libraries, along with the sheer bulk of books, stood as tangible evidence of the breadth and power of Greek culture. Other Greek rulers, such as those at Pergamon, attempted to compete with Alexandria in amassing their own collections. Given this context of competition and cultural contact, it is noteworthy that the Hellenistic period is the first time we see catalogues of actual works stored in Egyptian libraries. A list of ritual books is inscribed on a pillar at the temple at Ed-Tod.105 A more theoretical inventory of forty-one books is engraved on a wall at the temple of Edfu.106 A list quite similar to the one at Edfu later appears in Clement (Stromata/Miscellanies VI, chap. 4), where he describes a procession of priests responsible for different books in the collection, with the most important ones first.107 Notably, both the Edfu and the list in Clement have forty-two items, a number representing wholeness in Egyptian culture.108 Yet they are not purely theoretical. A comparison of Clement’s list with the contents of Hellenistic-period Egyptian libraries at Tanis and Tebtynus revealed a significant level of overlap, along with some local differences.109 Later, we see more collections of Egyptian writings, such as those found in the Suchos Temple in the Fayyum, at least one item of which may also be found in the Edfu catalogue and on Clement’s list.110 Whatever influence present here is quite complex. This is not an issue of Egyptian priests trying to set up their libraries in competition with the ones at Alexandria. Nor are they putting tiny catalogues into competition with a catalogue by Callimachus that they probably never saw and possibly never heard about. Instead, as Assmann has suggested, these catalogues of Egyptian works represent the apparent formation of a textual community.111 More specifically,

105. A. Grimm, “Alta¨gyptische Tempelliteratur. Zur Gliederung und Funktion der Bu¨cherkataloge von Edfu und et-Tod,” Studien Zur Alta¨gyptischen Kulture, Beiheft 3 (1988): 162–69. 106. For discussion see Grimm, “Alta¨gyptische Tempelliteratur,” 152–59. An English translation of the list is given in Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 57–58. 107. For an argument that Clement’s list may represent an insertion of older material see Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 58–59. 108. Jan Assmann, “Fu¨nf Stufen auf dem Wege Zum Kanon. Tradition und Schriftkulture Im Alten Israel und Fru¨hen Judentum,” in Religion und Kulturelles Geda¨chtnis. Zehn Studien, by Jan Assmann (Munich: Beck, 2000), 96. 109. Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 61–62; Osing, “Science Sacredotale,” 127–34. 110. For discussion of this library see E.A.E. Reymond, From the Contents of the Libraries of the Suchos ¨ sterreichischen Nationalbibliothek (n.s.) Temples in the Fayyum, Mitteilungen Aus der Papyrussammlung der O (Wien: In Kommission bei Verlag Bru¨der Hollinek, 1977), esp. 25–41. For correction of Reymond’s characterization of these writings as “Hermetic” and discussion of an instance of potential overlap see Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 61–62. 111. Assmann, “Fu¨nf Stufen,” 91–96. For the concept of “textual community” he explicitly draws on Brian

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I am suggesting here that these Hellenistic-period Egyptian temples stood as textual communities of resistance to Greek culture. Texts were already a focal point in Hellenistic education, and royal power was displayed through libraries. Though key texts in these Egyptian lists were preserved from pre-Hellenistic periods,112 the appearance of formalized, theoretically rounded lists of Egyptian traditions in this context represents a previously unseen formalization and partial standardization of those traditions over against the dominant Greek tradition. Moreover, the Egyptian priests did not attempt to compete with Greek culture on its own terms, surpassing it in volume or breadth. Instead, these catalogues stand as a secret, precious, and potent counterpart to the myriad of books found in a public institution like the Alexandrian library system. Unlike the Alexandrian library, the Egyptian collections are closely bounded. Not everything is let into them. Moreover, access is more restricted. Though the Alexandrian library was open to a variety of scholars and visitors for use with royal permission, the access to temple books in the Egyptian system was tightly limited to the Egyptian priesthood. The concept of “hybridity” from postcolonial criticism can help articulate the complexity of the cultural interaction here. Postcolonial studies have shown a variety of ways in which formerly colonized cultures find themselves articulating their resistance to colonization through partially adopting cultural forms from their colonizers.113 Native Americans adopt specific forms of writing in the process of competing with the writing culture of European settlers. African writers explore what it might mean to write a specifically African novel. Asian communities pose their ancient writings as “Bibles” to balance the Christian Bible often used by missionaries. Within the phenomenon of cultural contact, few cultural expressions—by colonizer or colonized—are pure. Instead, they are hybrid mixes. Often the influence of the colonizer is subtly present even in the very ways in which colonized peoples attempt to diverge from their colonizer’s cultural models. In the case of the temple catalogues, Egyptian priests took very ancient indigenous traditions and posed them as a tightly bounded, cosmically whole series of secret writings in contradistinction to the ubiquitous Greek writings used by their Hellenistic overlords. In doing so, they were influenced by Greek culture, even as they attempted to pose the superiority of their own culture to that of the Greeks. Moreover, this particular cultural move was not long-lived. Native-language Egyptian literature did not survive much into the Roman period. Greek transformations of Egyptian literature, such as the Hermetic corpora, lasted a bit longer. But the strategy of preservation of priestly lore within

Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983). 112. On some lines of continuity see Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 60–61. 113. For the classic discussion of the concept see Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 37–39, 111–15, 193–94. See also summaries of subsequent discussion of the concept in Bart J. MooreGilbert, Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics (London: Verso, 1997), 180–82, 192–95, and Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 1998), 173–80.

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the tight bounds of the ancient temple priesthood did not prove a long-term solution.

Other Modes of Interaction with Hellenism In the next chapters I will discuss a more long-lasting cultural response to Hellenism, but before doing so, I conclude with a much briefer survey of two other zones of contact between Hellenistic and other cultures, both inside Egypt (in the case of interaction of Judaism and Hellenism) and outside Egypt (in the interaction of Seleucid Hellenism and indigenous cultures). Egyptian Judaism presents an important comparison to the example discussed earlier of indigenous Egyptian culture. It presents a varied picture. In some instances Jewish modes of interaction with Hellenism may not have been that different from those of the Egyptian priests. One group had their own preHellenistic temple complex at Leontopolis, and this Jewish temple does not seem to have had a longer life than its Egyptian counterparts. In addition, however, Jews in Hellenistic urban centers like Alexandria had earlier and more opportunities to participate in the Hellenistic educational-cultural enterprise than Egyptians did. As mentioned earlier, the Hellenistic rulers used foreigners like Jews extensively in the process of ruling Egyptians. The presence of highly Hellenized Jewish works from the outset of the Ptolemaic period testifies to Jewish participation in Hellenistic education.114 Moreover, a later Roman decree forbidding Jewish attendance at the gymnasium suggests that such attendance was possible earlier.115 And this continued into the Roman period, in which Philo, a first-century Jew, provides some of the most detailed discussion of Hellenistic education to be found anywhere. Again, Philo’s main discussion of education is a hybrid product, an allegorical interpretation of Genesis 16:1–6. The allegorical method and the education being discussed are largely Greek, but the textual focus is ancient Israelite.116 In general, Jews like Philo appear to have thoroughly integrated central elements of Hellenistic culture while maintaining adherence to the texts and practices of their indigenous culture. Turning to the broader Seleucid kingdom, we have far less data to work with than we did in the Egyptian instance. There are fewer educational inscriptions, and virtually no school texts have survived. Nevertheless, the surviving evidence clearly points to the localization of Hellenistic-period, indigenous textuality in Mesopotamia, as in Egypt, in the temple and only there.117 That said,

114. Holladay, “Jewish Responses” On Jewish participation in Hellenistic education see also Rosotovtzeff, History, vol. 1, 323–25, and vol. 2, 1070–72. 115. Maehler, “Griechische Schule,” 195–96. 116. This work is Philo’s “On the Preliminary Studies.” For discussion of Philo’s views on education in this and other works see Alan Mendelson, Secular Education in Philo of Alexandria (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1982). 117. M. J. Geller, “The Last Wedge,” ZA 87 (1997): 43–64; Petra D. Gesche, Schulunterricht in Babylonien Im Ersten Jahrtausend v. Chr., AOAT (Mu¨nster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2001), 29–31; Houston, Baines, and Cooper, “Last Writing,” 451–52.

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indigenous-language temple textuality in Mesopotamia manifests some slightly different patterns from those seen in Egypt. Two will be mentioned here. The first is the extent to which Seleucid rule deviated from the highly centralized pattern seen in Egypt. Where the Ptolemies ruled a large, relatively homogeneous population from a few major urban centers, the Seleucids controlled a much more varied array of ethnic groups through a network of Hellenistic cities scattered across their kingdom. Most of these cities were founded early in the Hellenistic period, when the Seleucid rulers were able to entice Greek immigrants to help build them, but another series was founded in the early second century by Antiochus IV, particularly in north Syria.118 Though educational texts did not generally survive in the climates of these cities, archaeological remains of gymnasia testify to the presence of educational complexes in many of them.119 The second significant distinction of the Seleucid instance from the Ptolemaic one is the extent to which natives were apparently admitted into the Hellenistic educational system. Perhaps partly because the system of control was more dispersed, it depended more on education-enculturation of native peoples for participation in rule of their compatriots.120 This was not part of a more general Hellenization of the non-Greek population. On the contrary, part of the point was the separation of a Hellenized overclass—whether ethnically or culturally Greek—from the noneducated, native majority. As a result, the impact of Hellenism on central Mesopotamian social entities was even more marginal than in the Egyptian instance.121 Such are examples from Egypt and other Hellenistic-period cultures of the Near East. I turn now to one more example of temple-centered, Hellenisticperiod indigenous-language textuality and education, that found in Israel of the later Second Temple period.

118. Walbank, Hellenistic World, 123–40. On the limited evidence for Hellenization in the Seleucid realm (and its concentration in North Syria) see Fergus Millar, “The Problem of Hellenistic Syria,” in Hellenism in the East: The Interaction of Greek and Non-Greek Civilizations from Syria to Central Asia After Alexander, ed. Ame´lie Kuhrt and Susan Sherwin-White (London: Duckworth, 1987), 110–33. 119. Rosotovtzeff, History, vol. 3, 1060–61; Nilsson, Hellenistische Schule, 83–84. 120. See Peter Green, Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 319–20, for discussion and references. 121. On this see, for example, R. J. Spek, “The Babylonian City,” in Hellenism in the East: The Interaction of Greek and Non-Greek Civilizations from Syria to Central Asia After Alexander, ed. Ame´lie Kuhrt and Susan Sherwin-White (London: Duckworth, 1987), 57–74.

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8 Temple- and Priest-Centered Textuality and Education in Hellenistic Judaism

Draw near to me, you who are uneducated, and lodge in the house of instruction. —Sir 51:23, NRSV Though there is much debate about whether early Israel had schools, most scholars agree that this mention of a bet hammidrash (“house of study”) in Ben Sira represents an unambiguous reference to some sort of formal school in early Judaism.1 Yet, as I will show, this quotation is part of a range of data testifying to fundamental shifts in textuality and education in Judaism during the “Hellenistic” portion of the Second Temple period (333 b.c.e.–70 c.e.).2 Ben Sira/ Sirach is but one book that testifies to the merging of Torah and education, a development already begun in the pre-Hellenistic period. Furthermore, we see testimony in 2 Maccabees to the collection of Jewish books by Judas Maccabeus, creating a temple library within Hellenistic Judaism that parallels the indigenous Egyptian libraries discussed in Hellenistic Egypt. Writing-supported education is more widely attested through phenomena like the appearance of written

1. But note the questioning of this interpretation in discussions such as Rainer Riesner, Je¨ berlieferung, WUNT (Tu¨bingen: sus als Lehrer: Eine Untersuchung zum Ursprung der Evangelien-U Mohr-Siebeck, 1981), 166–67; Oda Wischmeyer, Die Kulture des Buches Jesus Sirach, BZAW (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1995), 175–77, and Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 7, n. 7. Cf. Rickenbacher, Weisheitsperikopen bei Ben Sira, 207–8. 2. “Hellenistic” is put in quotation marks because, as Mortin Smith and others have pointed out, Hellenism was a cultural force prior to 333. This date, however, represents a significant turning point in the type and intensity of Hellenistic influences in Judaism, both in Palestine and the Diaspora. For discussion of both the reality of interchange with the Greek world, the limits of the term “Hellenization,” and the significance of the change in 333 see especially Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 12, 22–27.

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“Testaments” of figures like Amram or the patriarchs, which record in writing the purported final teaching of important men to their sons. Key archaeological finds provide examples of educational exercises. The Qumran manuscripts give unparalleled testimony to both educational practices and the transmission of ancient texts. Finally, during the first century Philo, Josephus, and others testify to the ideal of universal education of Jewish males in the sacred texts and the prominence of public study and reading of those texts in an emergent Jewish synagogue. And this is not even to begin to survey the range of later rabbinic evidence regarding education and Scripture, evidence whose late dating renders problematic its use for outlining the Second Temple period. By the end of the Second Temple period, key parts of Judaism have endorsed a different blend of Hellenism and indigenous education-textuality from that seen in Egypt. Partly in resistance to the power of Hellenistic culture, Judaism develops its own indigenous educational system, a system supported by (purportedly) pre-Hellenistic Hebrew texts but aimed—like Hellenistic education—at education of more than a scribal elite. Judaism does not fully achieve universal (male) education in this period, but it takes a crucial turn toward such education, an education-enculturation system focused first and foremost on mastery of Torah and the rest of an early “Hebrew Bible.” In the chapters that follow I will survey the most pertinent data showing the journey toward this emergent, culturally hybrid educational-textual system, a system whose highly protected indigenous curriculum is a “Bible” much like the Scriptures of later rabbinic Judaism. In this chapter, however, I trace a form of education that preceded and undergirded any broader text-supported education of male Israelites in general: the use of scriptural literature first and foremost by and for priestly educationenculturation. Following the lead of earlier studies by Albert Baumgarten, Steven Fraade, and others, I will show how much indigenous-language, textsupported education in Hellenistic-period Israel—as in contemporary Egypt and Mesopotamia—was centered in the temple and focused on priests. Moreover, as I will show, this emphasis on temple and priesthood does not end in the period under discussion in this book. Rather, later forms of broader education preserve remnants of the temple locus of earlier education and still feature a focus on priests.3

The Testaments and Other Pseudepigraphic Writings Our earliest evidence for Hellenistic-period Jewish educational literature is found in pseudepigraphic literature. Though fictional, this literature preserves

3. I am indebted for much of what follows on the following: Albert I. Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation, JSJ Supplements (Leiden: Brill, 1997), esp. 117–18, and Steven D. Fraade, “ ‘They Shall Teach Your Statutes to Jacob’: Priests, Scribes, and Sages in Second Temple Times,” unpublished essay (2003). I am grateful to Professor Fraade for sharing his essay and allowing me to cite parts of it for the following survey. See these studies for references to earlier works.

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valuable reflections of what Second Temple authors presupposed about the contexts and means of education. As I will show, it reflects a situation in which Israelite indigenous-language textuality and education are concentrated among various priestly groups. The groups educated in the indigenous language traditions are not large, confined as they are to males in one or another priestly line. As in small-scale education elsewhere, these priestly elites are educated in a family-based, text-supported environment. Just such an environment is presupposed in the earliest layers of the Enochic tradition, some of which date to the third century or early second century b.c.e. For example, 1 Enoch 81 envisions Enoch having one year to be with his son Methusaleh, during which he writes down a new “law” for his children (1 Enoch 81).4 The narrative world here presupposes a context where a father transmits his learning to his children by means of a combination of oral and written instruction. So also, the Epistle of Enoch purports to give the teaching that Enoch gave Methusaleh (1 Enoch 92:1). And we see the same literary fiction of fatherly oral-written teaching in 1 Enoch 108, a chapter added to the end of Enoch toward the conclusion of its formation. These are early examples of the increasingly widespread Jewish genre of pseudepigraphic “testament,” where a given writing presents itself as the final teaching of a prominent Israelite patriarch: the twelve patriarchs, Kohat, Amram, or Moses.5 In this case, from early on, the Enoch tradition depicted Enoch as a “scribe” parallel to Ezra and focused on Enoch’s writings.6 The testaments embedded in the book of 1 Enoch depict him passing on his knowledge to his “son,” with Enoch as both biological and teacher “father” and Methusaleh as student “son” as well as his biological offspring. Sometimes the “testament” is directed to a broader group, as in the introduction to the “Book of the Watchers.” Here the author uses language reminiscent of Moses’s final address to Israel (Deut 33:1) to introduce the following text as Enoch’s address to future generations, an address long predating the Mosaic revelation on which it draws. The group here is larger than the audience-of-one represented by an heir like Methusaleh (cf. 1 Enoch 81; 92:1), but it is smaller than the “sons of Israel” in the parallel Deuteronomy text.7 This text and the Enochic texts just

4. This may be part of the early “astronomical book” in 1 Enoch, or, as argued by Randal Argall, it may be part of the original conclusion to the “book of Watchers”; 1 Enoch and Sirach: A Comparative Literary and Conceptual Analysis of the Themes of Revelation, Creation and Judgment, Society ofBiblical Literature, Early Judaism and Its Literature (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1995), 257–65. 5. For discussion of various elements of the “Testament” genre in the foregoing and other Enochic writings see Argall, 1 Enoch and Sirach,39–52. 6. 1 Enoch 12:3–4; 13:3–7; 14:1; 15:1; 89:68–77; 90:17–20; 92:1; 98:7–8; 104:2, 7, 10–13; 4QEnGiantsa VIII, 1–4; 4QEnGiantsb II, 14 (also 39:2 in the parables of Enoch). For discussion of some of these references see Christine Schams, Jewish Scribes in the Second Temple Period, JSOTSup (Sheffield: JSOT, 1998), 92–98, and M. A. Knibb, “The Book of Enoch in the Light of the Qumran Wisdom Literature,” in Wisdom and Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Biblical Tradition, ed. F. Garcı´a Martı´nez (Leuven: Leuven University Press and Peeters, 2003), 196–97. The parallels to Ezra are discussed in George W. E. Nicklesburg, “Enoch, Levi and Peter: Recipients of Revelation in Upper Galilee,” JBL 100 (1981): 585. 7. For discussion of the introduction to the book of the watchers and comparison with its parallel in Deuteronomy see Argall, 1 Enoch and Sirach, 18–20; see 24–35 for discussion of other indicators of the testament genre in the body of the book of the watchers.

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discussed all build on the presuppositions of small-scale elite education to present themselves as the secret, written records of an education long available to some but not to the many. Though such pseudepigrapha are useless for access to the actual sayings of the ancient figures to which they are attributed, they are important witnesses to what their writers considered to be plausible pictures of education and socialization. They created a narrative world, purportedly plausible to their contemporaries, where knowledge was transmitted from generation to generation by way of oral instruction by the great patriarchs. Yet they presented their own writings, these “Testaments,” as the written deposit of such oral teachings. The resulting texts presuppose that some people have access to this teaching while others do not. They are an elite form of text-supported instruction, in which only an exclusive elect can participate: those with access to the texts and the ability to interpret them properly—usually passing down their knowledge within the limited context of the family. The original social location of the Enochic traditions is unusually difficult to reconstruct, since the figures of Enoch and his contemporaries are not connected to specific social groups in later Israel (cf. Levi or Judah). Nevertheless, there are several clues that the Enochic traditions originated as the polemics of specific priestly groups against others. The Enoch character at their center not only is a scribe but also has priest-like access to the heavenly temple and intercedes like a priest on behalf of the watchers before God.8 Jonathan Z. Smith and Michael Stone have argued persuasively that apocalyptic literature in general and Enoch in particular reflect the specific sorts of calendrical concerns and esoteric learning of Hellenistic priestly groups.9 In addition, David Suter and George Nicklesburg argue that the problem of mixed marriage and other elements in the book of the watchers mark it as a priestly critique of the Jerusalem priesthood.10 The book of Jubilees provides similar pictures of priest-centered, smallscale, family-oriented forms of textuality and education.11 Within its narrative world, all literate figures up to and including Jacob are priests, while—of the descendants of Jacob—it is the descendants of Levi who are especially learned

8. Benjamin Wright cites an unpublished paper by David Suter, “The Priesthood and Apocalyptic,” on Enoch’s combined priestly/scribal role and his access to the heavenly temple (“ ‘Fear the Lord and Honor the Priest’: Ben Sira as Defender of the Jerusalem Priesthood,” in The Book of Ben Sira in Modern Research, ed. Pancratius C. Beentjes [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1997], 199). For Enoch’s intercessory role see Martha Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 23–25. 9. Jonathan Z. Smith, “Wisdom and Apocalyptic,” in Religious Syncretism in Antiquity: Essays in Conversation with Geo Widengren, ed. Birger A. Pearson (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975), 131–56; Michael Stone, “The Book of Enoch and Judaism in the Third Century B.C.E,” CBQ 40 (1978): 489. 10. David Suter, “Fallen Angel, Fallen Priest: The Problem of Family Purity in 1 Enoch 6–16,” HUCA 50 (1979): 115–35; “Revisiting Fallen Angel, Fallen Priest,” Enoch 24 (2002): 137–42; Nicklesburg, “Enoch, Levi and Peter,” 584–87. Cf. some critical reflections on this thesis summarized in Martha Himmelfarb, “The Book of the Watchers and the Priests of Jerusalem,” Enoch 24 (2002): 131–35, and Eibert Tigchelaar, “Some Remarks on the Book of the Watchers, the Priests, Enoch and Genesis, and 4Q208,” Enoch 24 (2002): 143–45. 11. On the family orientation of education in Jubilees see Baumgarten, Flourishing of Jewish Sects, 121.

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in the textual world created by Jubilees.12 As others have argued, this may reflect the origins of Jubilees in Levitical, possibly anti-Aaronide, priestly circles.13 Furthermore, like Enoch, Jubilees depicts these priest-like figures as involved in a process of text-supported education of their sons. Jubilees envisions Enoch as the first to learn writing and wisdom, and—like 1 Enoch—speaks of his deposit of a written testimony as well (4:17–19).14 Later, after the flood, Noah’s sons go different ways, each of which is characterized by a form of writingsupported instruction. Shem’s son, Arpachshad, teaches Canaan knowledge of writing, which he unfortunately uses to read and copy the Book of the Watchers, leading him to sin (8:2–4). Noah gives all of his sons a “testament” that he received from his fathers back to Enoch (7:34–39; cf. Genesis Apocryphon V.20–29), but he more specifically leaves a writing of angelic instruction about healing for Shem, his favorite son (10:13–14). The pattern changes in the case of Abraham. His father, Terah, teaches him writing (11:16), but God’s angel teaches him Hebrew, the language of creation, forgotten until then (12:25–27). The rest of Jubilees portrays Abraham’s heirs as particularly educated: Jacob learns writing and Esau does not (19:14), and Jacob receives a written revelation from God at Bethel in which God gives him the power to memorize (32:21– 26). Yet this literate knowledge is bestowed particularly on Levi (30:18): Jacob mentions his task of teaching in his blessing (31:15), and he gives all of his books to Levi, his son (45:15). Here again we see priests as particularly responsible for texts and instruction. A similar emphasis on priests is manifest in the early Aramaic form of the Testament of Levi tradition, found at Qumran and linking in multiple ways with the Levitically oriented book of Jubilees.15 As reconstructed and translated by Kugler, the conclusion to this tradition includes the following exhortation to his Levitical descendants:16 Listen to the word of Levi, your father, and pay heed to the instructions of God’s friend. I am instructing you, my children, and I reveal truth to you, my beloved ones . . . And now, my children, teach reading and writing, and instruction, and wisdom to your children, and may wisdom be with you for eternal glory. He who teaches wisdom, she is an honor in him, but whoever abandons wisdom, to dis-

12. For discussion of the priestly depiction of figures in Jubilees see Martha Himmelfarb, “A Kingdom of Priests: The Democratization of the Priesthood in the Literature of Second Temple Judaism,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 6 (1997): 91–92. As she notes (93–96), Jubilees depicts all of Israel, not just the descendants of Levi, as observing priest-like regulations regarding blood and sexuality. In this context, it is notable that it is in the area of literacy that Jubilees distinguishes the Levites from the rest of Israel. 13. Anders Hultga˚rd, L’eschatologie des Testaments des Douze Patriarches, vol. 1, Interpre´tation des texts, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1977), 21–45; Robert Kugler, From Patriarch to Priest: The Levi-Priestly Tradition from Aramaic Levi to Testament of Levi, Judaism and Its Literature (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996), 144–46. 14. Knibb, “Enoch and Qumran,” 198. 15. Hultga˚rd, L’eschatologie, 15–44; Kugler, Patriarch to Priest, 146–69. 16. Kugler, Patriarch to Priest, 120.

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textuality and education in the eastern hellenistic world dain he is given. Observe, my children, my brother Joseph [who] taught reading and writing and the instruction of wisdom for glory, and for greatness and for knowledge. (Ar. Levi 83–90*)

By this point the priestly linkages of the text are even more explicit than in the materials discussed earlier. The text focuses on Levi, the ancestor of a major priestly group. It critiques other priestly groups, focusing in particular on particularly priestly concerns of exogamous marriages and calendrical issues. And the text includes specific priestly instructions (13–60). Indeed, the similarity of the concerns of the Levi tradition with those of 1 Enoch has led some to propose that both texts represent the critiques of Levitical priests against the dominance of Aaronides and Zadokites.17 This tradition of priestly “testaments” advancing the perspective of various priestly groups continued into the later Second Temple period. The later Testament of Levi that was included in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs includes a section, like that just quoted, in which Levi exhorts his sons to learn and teach writing (13:1–3).18 Another testament in the same document, the Testament of Reuben, even elevates Levi over Reuben because of his authoritative knowledge of “the law of God” (T.Reu. 6:5–8).19 Moreover, we see this concept of priestly teacher in other early testaments. The finds at Qumran included the priestly testament of both Aaron’s father, Amram, and that of his grandfather, Kohat. Both are only partially preserved, and the existing fragments do not mention instruction. Nevertheless, the very existence of such written texts, purporting to be the deposit of priestly instructions to the next generation, testifies again to the prominence of priestly teaching in the educational universe of Second Temple Judaism. All show signs of having been created in a priestly context, and together they provide evidence for priestly concepts of ideal education in a small-scale, family setting.

Ben Sira Our other major testimony to pre-Maccabean Jewish textuality and education is the book of Ben Sira (translated as the Greek Sirach). Ben Sira is important from a variety of perspectives. Unlike other texts to be discussed in subsequent chapters, the bulk of Ben Sira is datable to a period before the Maccabean revolt, based on the testimony of its prologue, its lack of reflection of issues that emerged in that revolt, and probable references in 50:1–21 to the high

17. Saul Olyan, “Ben Sira’s Relationship to the Priesthood,” Harvard Theological Review 80 (1987): 279– 80; Wright, “Ben Sira as Defender,” 203. An earlier discussion focusing on the priestly origins of the Levi Testament tradition is Hultga˚rd, L’eschatologie, 44–81. See also Kugler, Patriarch to Priest, 135–37. 18. Again see Hultga˚rd, L’eschatologie, 44–81, for potential linkages to the Levitical line of priests. 19. See Olyan, “Ben Sira,” 281, for other linkages of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs to Levitical concerns.

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priest Simon the Second (219–196 b.c.e.).20 Moreover, unlike many other wisdom texts found at Qumran, Ben Sira has been preserved as an entire book, providing an example of a complete instruction written in this key period.21 Finally, Ben Sira witnesses to a transition stage in Israel, showing parallels to aspects of pre-Hellenistic Israelite education-textuality but also anticipating changes that are more widely attested later. A series of recent studies has highlighted motifs that Ben Sira shares with the early apocalyptic writings discussed earlier, even as his “teaching” appears designed in certain respects to oppose theirs. First, and most important for this context, Ben Sira stands as another example of textuality based in the priesthood, or at least closely connected to it. In one passage, Sirach 7:29–31, Ben Sira uses language from the Shema (Deut 6:5) to exhort his students toward a devotion to priests that parallels the devotion that they should have for God.22 In his praise of Israel’s fathers he devotes more space to praise of Aaron than he does to praise of Moses (45:6–24, 25; cf. 45:1–5), and he spends the most space of all on a praise of Simon, the high priest (50).23 Moreover, there are indications that this focus on priests, particularly Aaronide priests (50:13), is not just that of a pious layman but reflects the priestly identity of Ben Sira himself. He is named as the son of one “Eleazar” (a typical priestly name), and he betrays in his praise of Simon a remarkably specific knowledge of priestly garments and practices.24 Whether or not he himself performed priestly cultic functions, all these aspects establish his close connections to the temple priesthood, particularly—as Saul Olyan has pointed out—the Aaronide priestly line.25 Despite these links to the priesthood, Ben Sira represents a very different sort of teaching from that seen in the pseudepigrapha already discussed. Though he shares numerous themes and motifs with those writings, Ben Sira appears to explicitly critique the sorts of speculations, dreams, and visions that are featured in the priestly testaments and apocalypses (3:21–24; 18:4–7; 34:1–

20. For discussion of the key data see Alexander A. Di Lella and Patrick W. Skehan, The Wisdom of Ben Sira: A New Translation with Notes, AB (New York: Doubleday, 1987), 8–10. For a survey see Di Lella and Skehan, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 51–59. See now, however, questions raised about reading Ben Sira 50:1–21 as a reference to Simon “the Just” or Simon II in chapter 3 of James VanderKam’s From Joshua to Caiaphas: High Priests after the Exile (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 141–57. 21. To be sure, most of Ben Sira is only accessible now in the Greek and Syriac translations and medieval Jewish manuscripts. 22. Helge Stadelmann, Ben Sira als Schriftgelehrter: Eine Untersuchung zum Berufsbild des vor-makkaba¨ischen So¯fe¯r under Beru¨cksichtigung seines Verha¨ltnisses zu Priester-, Propheten- und Weisheitslehrertum, WUNT (Tu¨bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1980), 65–66; Olyan, “Ben Sira,” 263–67; Wright, “Ben Sira as Defender,” 193. 23. Olyan, “Ben Sira,” 267–72; Wright, “Ben Sira as Defender,” 194–95. Stadelmann (Schriftgelehrter, 68– 138) and Wright, “Ben Sira as Defender,” 193–94, also note Ben Sira’s extensive section on proper sacrifices (Sir 34:21–35:12). 24. For older and more recent arguments that Ben Sira himself probably was a priest see Stadelmann, Schriftgelehrter, esp. 4–39; Himmelfarb, “Kingdom of Priests,” 103. John Collins argues against Ben Sira being a priest because of the lack of specific priestly calendar and cultic concerns (Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age, OTL [Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1997], 37), but the Qumran literature to be surveyed hereafter suggests that Israelite priests—like their counterparts in other cultures—could produce and collect both explicitly cultic and noncultic instructional literature. 25. Olyan, “Ben Sira.”

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7).26 Those documents advanced perspectives critical of the contemporary priesthood by presenting themselves as the “teachings” of priest-sages yet older than Moses.27 Ben Sira, in contrast, writes in his own name, praises the contemporary priesthood, and affirms the Mosaic Torah as the decisive teaching above others. Partly because Ben Sira does not purport to be an archaic record of preMosaic instruction, it provides more direct evidence than the pseudepigrapha about contemporary educational practices. Like them, Ben Sira reflects smallscale, writing-supported, oral education of a literate elite. The book does not witness to any public school or universal literate education yet. When Ben Sira talks of education in general, he presupposes that parents are the primary teachers of their children (Sir 8:9; 30:3–4; cf. also 14:26). He also envisions the Aaronide priests as those responsible for teaching the people God’s commandments (Sir 45:5, 17). Nevertheless, it is unclear what the character of this teaching was or how widespread it was. Ben Sira presents himself as a more advanced teacher. He is a teacher and counselor of elite leaders (Sir 33:18–19; 39:4). Furthermore, he recognizes that the wisdom of the scribe depends on the opportunity of leisure; “only the one who has little business can become wise.” (Sir 38:24, NRSV).28 These and other comments confirm that Ben Sira’s “wisdom,” like that of most ancient Near Eastern sages, was intended for the small minority who had the time to master higher instruction.29 Ben Sira’s teaching itself likewise shows many resemblances to the data seen in early Israel. As before, orality is a key medium, if not the key medium, for teaching. Ben Sira’s instruction is full of calls to “listen” and “hear” the instruction (e.g., 3:1; 6:23, 33; 35; 16:5; and passim), and a teachable student is one who has an “attentive ear” (Sir 3:29).30 Yet the book itself witnesses to Ben Sira’s use of writing to pass his instruction to “future generations” (24:33–34; cf. 39:32), and he concludes it with a colophon urging students to lay these

26. On shared motifs see Argall, 1 Enoch and Sirach; “Competing Wisdoms: 1 Enoch and Sirach,” Enoch 24 (2002): 169–78, along with some additional observations in J. Corley, “Wisdom Versus Apocalyptic and Science in Sirach 1,1–10,” in Martı´nez,Wisdom and Apocalypticism, 275–80. On Ben Sira’s critical response to Enoch, Testament of Levi, and Jubilees see Wright, “Ben Sira as Defender,” esp. 204–17; “Sirach and 1 Enoch: Some Further Considerations,” Enoch 24 (2002): 179–87. I did not find Wright’s arguments (204–208) regarding Ben Sira’s critique of a lunar calendar (Sir 43:6–8) as persuasive as his treatment of other themes. 27. For arguments that the Enoch tradition actually aimed to replace Mosaic Torah with Enochic teaching see George W. E. Nicklesburg, “Enochic Wisdom: An Alternative to the Mosaic Torah?” in Hesed ve-Emet: Studies in Honor of Ernest S. Frerichs, ed. Jodi Magness (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1998), 123–32. 28. Note that his text occurs in the context of a “praise of the scribe” that shows striking links to classic Egyptian “praise of the scribe” developed in a culture of elite education. This does not negate the value of this text in witnessing to education in Israel in this period but does show how models and materials from elite educational settings were still influential. 29. Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine During the Early Hellenistic Period, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), 80 (see also vol. 2, p. 54, n. 168); Wischmeyer, Kulture, 175–77, 181; John J. Collins, Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age, OTL (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 38. 30. Wischmeyer, Kulture, 185–86; James L. Crenshaw, “The Primacy of Listening in Ben Sira’s Pedagogy,” in Wisdom, You Are My Sister: Studies in Honor of Roland E. Murphy, ed. M. L. Barre´ (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association, 1997), 180–87.

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written teachings to their “heart” in order to “become wise” (50:27–29). Such memorization, “laying to heart,” of Ben Sira’s written instruction, was facilitated by its use of poetic form and tactics like numerical proverbs (e.g., 23:16– 17; 25:1–2; 25:7–11).31 Such memory-helps are continued in the transmission of the book through the appending to it of an acrostic praise of wisdom (51:13– 30) and its later organization through the addition—in the Greek tradition— of superscriptions (e.g., 23:7; 24:1; 30:1; 30:18). Later, Ben Sira’s grandson describes him as one who not only read “the law, prophets, and other writings of our ancestors” but also memorized them, having “gained possession for himself ” of these writings (peripoie¯samenos). But such oral-written mastery of the writings was not enough, because Ben Sira recognized the duty of scribes who are learned in books to instruct those lacking knowledge through use of both speaking and writing (kai legontas kai graphontas). There is much debate about exactly which books Ben Sira himself saw as key to educational instruction. Both his praise to the fathers and the rest of his instruction show a deep familiarity with and appreciation of most books now found in the Hebrew Bible. Nevertheless, Ben Sira’s own description of the scribal curriculum is farther from the Hebrew Bible than later descriptions like his grandson’s prologue to Ben Sira. In this text he describes how the true scribe studies the “law of the most High,” “wisdom of the ancients,” “prophecies,” “sayings of the famous,” “parables,” and “proverbs” (39:1–5).32 Except for its placement of Torah at the outset, this listing does not follow the later tripartite division of Torah, Prophets, and Writings, or even later bipartite listings of “Torah and Prophets.” Instead, Ben Sira mentions nonprophetic instructional literature before and after “prophecies”: both “wisdom of the ancients” and later “parables” and “proverbs”—and some of this instructional literature may well have been foreign materials obtained through travels abroad (39:4; cf. 51:13).33 Ben Sira only approximates later mentions of “Torah and Prophets” when he turns toward the end of his writing to a praise of “our fathers” (44:1; emphasis added). Here he uses the term “father,” which elsewhere in the book refers to teaching figures, to introduce an overview of specifically Israelite teachings. As Alon Goshen-Gottstein has argued recently, the overview is divided into two sections: (1) a praise of figures from the Torah which construes that work as a timeless revelation by God of God’s covenant (44:16–45:26) and (2) a survey of post-Torah figures that conspicuously links to almost all works later included in the Hebrew Bible (46:1–49:16).34 The latter praise of figures from non-Torah books refers both to later “prophetic” books like Isaiah and to works later included among the “writings,” such as Psalms

31. Other examples include Sir 26:5–6; 26:28; 50:25–26. 32. Cf. Di Lella and Skehan, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 452, who asserts without argument that Sir 39:1 refers to the tripartite Hebrew canon, while 39:2–3 refers to foreign wisdom. 33. For surveys see Jack T. Sanders, Ben Sira and Demotic, 27–106; Di Lella and Skehan, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 46–50; Collins, Jewish Wisdom, 39–41. 34. Esther, Ezra, and Daniel are not mentioned explicitly.

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as a composition of David (47:8), wisdom works attributed to Solomon (47:17), and Job “the prophet” (49:9).35 It even draws on Chronicles.36 This survey anticipates, but is not yet equivalent to, later construals of the Hebrew Scriptures as a collection of Torah on the one hand and a collection of “Prophets” on the other. In this case, Ben Sira’s “prophets” collection includes books like Job, Psalms, and Proverbs.37 Even within this broader survey of specifically Israelite “fathers,” it is clear that Torah occupies a place of its own within Ben Sira’s consciousness.38 It is the Torah that is at the head of Ben Sira’s curricular overview in 39:1. And it is the Torah, not any broader corpus, that is the foundation on which Ben Sira himself builds. As he puts it, Torah is the river from which his own written instruction flows, paralleling the “prophecy” of earlier generations (24:23–33). This focus on Torah is an intensification of older trends. We already saw a move in pre-Hellenistic writings like Deuteronomy to replace early instructional materials of the Proverbs type with a Mosaic Torah. Nevertheless, Ben Sira takes such tendencies further. For Ben Sira, the “fear of the LORD” so characteristic of earlier Israelite wisdom is always Torah obedience (e.g., 10: 19; 19:20; 21:11; cf., e.g., Prov 15:33).39 Moreover, though at times he speaks of “wisdom” as a female figure obtained through obedience to the Torah (e.g., 1: 26; 15:1), he witnesses in texts like chapter 24 to an emerging identification of Torah law with the female “wisdom” figure so prominent in books like Proverbs.40 As in the Tanach itself (e.g., Jos 1:8–9; Ps 1:2), Ben Sira calls on his students to ingest God’s statutes and commands through constant recitation (6:37; cf. 14:20–21 [wisdom]). Moreover, Ben Sira promises here that the God who gave those commands will establish them in the “heart” of the student who does this (6:37). Here again, we see the insistence not only on study and obedience but on the cognitive internalization of “wisdom,” now Torah “wisdom,” in the heart of the student. Ben Sira’s teaching builds on a Torah teaching that is first and foremost

35. Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “Ben Sira’s Praise of the Fathers: A Canon-Conscious Reading,” in Ben Sira’s God: Proceedings of the International Ben Sira Conference (Durham, 2001), vol.321, ed. Renate Egger-Wenzel, BZAW (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001), 244–60 (on Job see 242). 36. See Lester Grabbe, “Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period,” in Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period, ed. Lester L. Grabbe (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 145–48, and Jean Louis Ska, “L’e´loge des pe`res dans le Siracide (Si 44–50) et le canon de lAncien Testament,” in Treasures of Wisdom: Festschrift M. Gilbert, ed. N. Calduch-Benages and J. Vermeylen (Leuven: Leuven University Press and Peeters, 1999), 188–91 (the latter noting some important contrasts between Chronicles and Ben Sira). 37. Goshen-Gottstein (“Ben Sira’s Praise of the Fathers,” esp. 250–60) notes a prophetic emphasis in the second portion of Ben Sira’s praise. Nevertheless, as he recognizes (e.g., 242), this part of the praise does not follow the precise contours and limits of the later “Prophets” section of the tripartite rabbinic Scriptures. In addition, I would maintain that Goshen-Gottstein’s use of the term “canon-conscious” for this praise is anachronistic for Ben Sira’s period. Ben Sira is describing the works of those specifically Israelite father-teachers that should form part of a good curriculum. This is on the way to later concepts of “canon” but is not yet there. 38. T. Swanson, “The Closing of Holy Scripture: A Study in the History of the Canonization of the Old Testament” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1970), 114–21; Goshen-Gottstein, “Ben Sira’s Praise of the Fathers”, esp. 244–49. 39. Note also similar links in Sir 15:1; 23:27; 24:23–27. 40. This is also seen in Baruch 3:9–4:4 and key Qumran wisdom texts to be surveyed in the next chapter.

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the responsibility of priests. In his praise of the fathers, he presents Moses as the one who first taught Israel the commandments (45:1–5) and the priest, Aaron, as the one commissioned to carry on this task (45:17). The teaching here is first of all oral: God “allowed [Moses] to hear God’s voice” and “gave him the commandments face to face, the law of life and knowledge” (45:5 NRSV). Yet the rest of Ben Sira makes clear that the commands envisioned here are those of the written Pentateuch. Thus Aaronide priests, including perhaps Ben Sira, are responsible for teaching the people the traditions written in the Torah. Ben Sira himself focuses on an upper-level instruction that presupposes the importance of Torah study and obedience, yet goes beyond it in genre and focus. Though many of the strictures he includes can be compared with Torah commandments, he explicitly claims to have sought wisdom in travels outside Israel (39:4), and several parts of his instruction closely parallel non-Torah instructional literatures, including some Egyptian and Greek instructional corpora.41 Certainly, instructional genres like “proverbs” and “parables” form a key part of his instruction (39:1–3). Nevertheless, as in pre-Hellenistic Israel, Ben Sira does not limit his teaching to such introductory “wisdom” genres. Rather, he includes an hymnic overview of Israelite history up to Nehemiah (44–49), a prophet-like “woe oracle” in 41:8–9; a prayer for deliverance of Israel in 36: 1–22; and an individual thanksgiving in 51:1–12, among other genres.42 As in earlier periods and other cultures, such materials are as much a part of the educational project as proverbs, instructions, or wisdom-hymn-like compositions (like the praise of creator in 39:12–35 and the hymn to God’s created order in 42:15–43:33). Ben Sira does not represent the first instructional use of such historical, prophetic, or liturgical genres. Instead, he represents a key example of an upper-level instructional synthesis of these genres for a curriculum initially focused on Torah. Ben Sira manifests several shifts away from earlier models of Israelite textuality, shifts that become yet more pronounced in later periods. First and foremost, he is one of the most important witnesses to the identification of the female wisdom figure with the Torah of Moses, an identification we see in other witnesses around and after Ben Sira’s time (e.g., Baruch 3:9–4:4; 4Q 417 2 I,14; 4Q184 14–15; 4Q525 2–3 II,1–6; 11QPsa XVIII,10–13 [//Ps 154:12–15]). Second, as mentioned earlier, he also witnesses to an intensification of a more widespread tendency in Israel and the ancient Near East to house indigenous textuality and education in the temple and with the priests. Whether or not he himself was an (Aaronide) priest, he works in a world where priests enjoy a godlike centrality (7:29–31) and can be plausibly depicted as the original and primary Torah-teachers of Israel (45:17). Finally, Ben Sira is a tantalizing early example of Greek-Israelite hybridity

41. For discussion see the studies cited earlier, note 33. 42. For an older, but still useful survey of the variety of genres in Ben Sira, including hymns, thanksgiving songs, laments, and prophetic forms see W. Baumgartner, “Die literarischen Gattungen in der Weisheit des Jesus Sirach,” ZAW 34 (1914): 161–98.

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in a variety of ways. To be sure, it is difficult to establish just how much he is dependent on specific Greek traditions. Nevertheless, he shows much more specific linkages to such texts than were evident in pre-Hellenistic Israelite literature, especially Theognis and book 4 of the Iliad. More important, as Elias Bickerman in particular has suggested, Ben Sira’s intensified emphasis on the Torah morphologically resembles the Greek emphasis on Homer as the preeminent teacher of the Greeks. For Ben Sira, Moses plays a role like a Jewish Homer, and the Pentateuch’s role as core of Jewish education is like that of the Iliad and (to a lesser extent) Odyssey in the Hellenistic curriculum. At least at this stage, this is not an antagonistic development. There is no explicit polemic against Greek education or textuality in Ben Sira. Moreover, this is an outgrowth of earlier tendencies to focus on Torah, such as those seen in Josiah’s reform or the affirmation of the Torah in the Persian period. Still, Ben Sira’s focus on Torah-Wisdom in texts like Sirach 24 has taken on a cosmic dimension not seen before. Indeed, some have argued plausibly that Ben Sira’s depiction of Torah-Wisdom as the law of creation may be influenced somehow by Stoic ideas of nomos prominent in Greek education in his area and time. Moreover, the increasing focus on Torah evident in Ben Sira is a probable early example of a form of Jewish hybridity that we will see again elsewhere, a hybridity in which Second Temple Judaism reacts to the (Homer-focused) Hellenistic curriculum in the process of shaping an indigenous Israelite Hebrew form of textuality and education.43

Other Reflections of Temple-Focused Textuality and Education In sum, both early pseudepigraphic writings and Ben Sira, opposed as they are to each other, similarly witness to the lodging of most indigenous textuality in Israel in the temple with priests. This is a trend seen in other firstmillennium Near Eastern cultures, particularly in the Hellenistic period. It is not brand new. We already saw a focus on priests in Israelite textuality of the postexilic Persian period, with the association of the Torah with Ezra, a scribe and priest. Nevertheless, Persian period materials like the Nehemiah memoir testify to the presence of lay exegetes like Nehemiah alongside priestly textual masters like Ezra. This duality is not so present in the materials surveyed here. Instead, our earliest Hellenistic-period witnesses to textuality appear to emanate out of various priestly groups and express their competing perspectives. Moreover, we have good external testimony to the dominance of priests over textuality and education. As Baumgarten points out, it is confirmed in Hecataeus of Abdera, who reports around 300 b.c.e. that Moses appointed the

43. Elias Joseph Bickerman, The Jews in the Greek Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 170– 74, 191; Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 75; Wischmeyer, Kulture, 199–200; Catherine Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine, Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum (Tu¨bingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2001), 70–71, 104. Note also the evocative discussion by Burton Mack, “Under the Shadow of Moses: Authorship and Authority in Hellenistic Judaism,” Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers 21 (1982): 299–318.

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priests as those entrusted with the “guardianship of the laws and customs” (kai te¯n to¯n nomo¯n kai to¯n etho¯n phulake¯n).44 And it is indirectly evident as well in the priestly associations of the Hasmoneans (to be discussed later) and the Hasidim attested in 2 Maccabees.45 Such associations even persist late into the Second Temple period and beyond. In the first century we still see a lot about family-based education and textuality associated with temples and priests. For example, 4 Maccabees depicts a mother of seven martyred sons recounting the education that her husband, a priest known for his learning (4 Macc 5:4), gave those sons in the “Law and the Prophets,” with “Prophets” apparently including Daniel, David, and Solomon (4 Macc 18:10–19). Josephus, one of the most prolific Jewish writers of the first century, claims a priestly office for himself (Life 1–2 [1–9]; 39 [198]), links his knowledge of sacred prophecies to this office (J.W. 1.3; 3.352) and boasts that priests consulted him while he was still a boy (Life 9). Similarly, the Gospel of Luke claims that Jesus impressed priests with his understanding when he stayed several days with them at the temple, “listening and asking questions” (Luke 2:46), and the Gospel of John refers repeatedly to Jesus teaching (didasko¯) in the temple (John 7:28; 8:2, 20; see 18:20). Josephus and Philo both describe the priests as those entrusted with the guardianship of “the law and pursuits of everyday life” (Josephus, Ag. Ap. 2.187; [Thackeray, LCL]; see also, e.g., Ag. Ap. 1.28–29; Ant. 14.194; Philo Spec. Laws 4. 188–192), even in the Diaspora (Philo Hypoth. 7.13). Though the same writers attest elsewhere to teaching and reading outside the temple by nonpriests (e.g. John 18:20), in these locations they testify to the primacy of the temple and the priesthood in Jewish textuality, even in the late Second Temple period. In addition, Josephus and others attest to the centrality of the temple as the age-old locus for storage of sacred writings. He depicts Moses as giving the law to the priests (Ant. 4.304), and we subsequently hear a general report about the deposit of sacred texts in the temple in general (Ant. 5.51; 10.57–58). There are also specific stories about Samuel’s storage of books he had written in the tent of meeting (Ant. 6.66), Josiah’s discovery of the Torah scroll deposited in a treasure closet of the temple (Ant. 10.57), and the later theft of the sacred torah scrolls from the temple on its destruction (J.W. 7.150, 162). Josephus’s testimony to the storage of Scriptures in the temple (see also Ant. 3.38; 4.302–304; 5.61) correlates with earlier texts, such as the letter of Aristeas, that depict the Jerusalem temple as the site where the authoritative copies of the Torah are stored (Let. Arist. 46, 176–177; see also 1 Macc 14:49; 2 Macc 2: 14–15), and rabbinic tradition preserves multiple and various mentions of reference copies of the Torah in the temple.46 As Fraade in particular has argued,

44. Baumgarten, Flourishing of Jewish Sects, 117–18. The Hecataeus material is quoted by Diodorus of Sicily, 40.3–5. Cf. Biblical material such as Mal 2:7 that likewise presupposes a prominent instructional role for priests, but an instructional role not as focused on guardianship of texts. 45. Fraade, “Priests, Scribes, and Sages.” 46. For overviews of the relevant texts see Saul Liebermann, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950), 21–26; Shemaryahu Talmon, “The Three Scrolls of the Law That Were

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these and other texts show that the temple and priesthood were still the primary locus of textuality and learning in the late Second Temple period.47 Though formed far later in a post-temple context, rabbinic writings preserve pale reflections of the earlier temple-centered forms of Hebrew textuality. Numerous rabbinic writings still testify to the original storage of Torah scrolls—or scriptural scrolls in general—in specific parts of the temple,48 and major annual and septennial readings of the Torah at the temple (m.Yoma 7:1; m. Sotah 7:8).49 Rabbis speak of Hebrew as the “temple language” (lashon haqqodesh),50 and precedence is given in reading the Scriptures to priests.51 Furthermore, several rabbinic descriptions of elementary education in Torah still specify that it should begin with education in the cultic prescriptions of Leviticus.52 This may reflect a reality that the modes of education adopted by later Judaism originated in a priestly training that focused first and foremost on cultic instructions of the sort found in Leviticus. Only later did this professional priestly training get broadened beyond the priestly circles.53 The foregoing survey only covers a few of the central witnesses to the lasting importance of temple and priesthood in early Jewish textuality and education. In the following chapters I will look at some examples of Jewish textuality and education that were based outside the temple and featured an increasingly prominent role for nonpriests. Yet, as I will show, even these examples at Qumran and elsewhere betray the ongoing dominance of priestly personnel in Jewish oral-written education and enculturation. Though these forms of Jewish textuality and education may not be as focused on priests and the temple as the materials discussed earlier appear to be, they all have links to the priesthood or the Jerusalem temple. They represent forms of templecentered textuality radiating outward, even if they are not specifically templeor priest-focused.

Found in the Temple Court,” Textus 2 (1962): 14–27; Arie van der Kooij, Die alten Textzeugen des Jesajabuches: ein Beitrag zur Textgeschichte des Alten Testaments, OBO (Freiburg and Go¨ttingen: Universita¨tsverlag and Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht,, 1981), 332–35; Mordechai A. Friedman, “Publication of a Book by Depositing It in a Sanctuary: On the Phrase ‘Written and Deposited’ [Heb.],” Leshonenu 48–49 (1983–84): 49–52; Roger Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and Its Background in Early Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985), 80–86; Bar-Ilan, “Scribes and Books,” 23; Arie van der Kooij, “The Canonization of Ancient Books Kept in the Temple of Jerusalem,” in Canonization and Decanonization, ed. Arie van der Kooij and Karel van der Toorn (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 31. Examples include m. Yad. 3:5; m. Yoma 7:1; and m. Sotfiah 7:7; Tg. Ezek 1:1. 47. Fraade, “Priests, Scribes, and Sages.” 48. See foregoing, note 46. 49. Runesson, Synagogue, 207–13. 50. Schwartz, “Language, Power and Identity,” 33–34. 51. Hezser, Jewish Literacy, 453–54. 52. See, e.g.,
Abot R. Nat. 6 and 15; Lev Rab. 7:3. For discussion of these and divergent traditions see Samuel Krauss, Talmudische Archa¨ologie, vol.3 (Leipzig: Gustav Fock, 1912), 235, 357, nn. 295–97, and Hezser, Jewish Literacy, 76–78. 53. For additional references in rabbinic literature to a priestly focus in Second Temple education see BarIlan, “Scribes and Books,” 21–23.

9 Qumran as a Window into Early Jewish Education and Textuality

The finds in the caves near Khirbet Qumran provide the most important evidence to date of various levels of education and textuality. In Ben Sira and the Pseudepigrapha, we must extrapolate a picture of education in the Second Temple period from their presuppositions and indirect references. In contrast, the Qumran manuscripts provide direct testimony to a process of education, along with physical evidence of textuality and education. Moreover, the Qumran documents diverge some from the priest-temple focus of the writings discussed in the previous chapter. Though I will show how priests (come to) play a prominent role in the community, the Qumran documents provide a model of priestly instruction of nonpriests, one in which priests are the bearers of the teaching but the community as a whole achieves a hitherto unseen level of education in Scripture and higher mysteries. For this reason, I devote considerable space in the following to a discussion of the finds near Qumran. This starts with a summary of older arguments that Qumran was a community devoted to textuality and education, both of which were thoroughly controlled by priests from an early period onward. I then survey explicitly educational materials at Qumran, both writing exercises and instructional materials that more closely resemble what many would term “wisdom” writings. I will show, however, that these clear instructional materials already indicate that the category of “wisdom” at Qumran, as in Ben Sira and earlier Israelite literature, fails to encompass the range of texts used in instruction. So I turn next to indicators for the oral-written instructional use of other texts at Qumran, the Torah first and foremost but also other books both within and outside of the (present) Hebrew Bible. I conclude with some reflections on

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how the Qumran materials, like Ben Sira, reflect an important instance of Hellenized Judaism, linking with multiple aspects of Hellenistic associations (so Weinfeld), including the performance and study of (Hebrew) texts as part of a symposium-like meal (Matthias Klinghardt and Dennis Smith). I turn first to indicators of the community’s history of and focus on (priest-directed) study.

The Qumran Community, Education, and Priests The scribal practices characteristic of many texts found at Qumran are especially pronounced in a family of texts (e.g., the Community Rule, Damascus Document, Hodayot, Pesharim) that articulate the community life of the serek hayahfi ad, a group of “sons of light” who had rejected the current temple cult, separated from the “sons of darkness,” and taken up life in the desert to await God’s intervention on behalf of the temple, its rightful priests, and proper cultic observance. Most scholars plausibly suppose that this group is identical with the Essenes described by Josephus, Philo, and Pliny, or at least a splinter group of such Essenes.1 Particularly important for my purposes here, however, is how this group appears to have come to be guided by priests from the Jerusalem priesthood. Their main early leader, the “teacher of righteousness,” is described as a priest (4QpPsa [4Q171] III, 15) and depicted in priestly ways (1QpHab II, 8–9; VII, 4–5).2 Moreover, the “sons of Zadok” are extremely prominent throughout specifically Qumran documents: 1QSa (1Q28a) gives the rule of the congregation “when they gather in community to walk in accordance with the judgment of the sons of Zadok (1.1–2); 1QSb (1Q28b) has the maskil (teacher) bless the “sons of Zadok” who are responsible “to teach [God’s people] in accordance with what God commanded” (III, 23–24); the Damascus document specifies that there should always be a “priest” in any group of ten, “learned in the book of HAGY,” and “by his authority all of them should be governed” (CD XIII, 2–3; also XIV, 6–8); and the final redaction of the community rule says that all who join the community of “torah and possessions” must submit “to the authority of the sons of Zadok who guard the covenant and the authority of the men of the community who hold fast to the covenant” (1 QS V, 2–3).

1. For a judicious survey of the issues see Armin Lange, Weisheit und Pra¨destination: Weisheitliche Urordnung und Pra¨destination in den Textfunden von Qumran, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 21–23. For detailed response to those who have disputed any link between the Essenes and Qumran see esp. F. Garcia Martı´nez and A. S. van der Woude, “A ‘Groningen’ Hypothesis of Qumran Origins and Early History,” RevQ 14 (1990): 526–36. 2. For discussion of the term hakkohen in the documents see John J. Collins, “The Origin of the Qumran Community: A Review of the Evidence,” in To Touch the Text: Biblical and Related Studies in Honor of Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, ed. M. Horgan and P. Kobelski (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 162–67. Against those who would maintain that the teacher of righteousness was an expelled high priest, Collins notes the conspicuous absence of any reference in the Qumran documents to such an expulsion and the occasional use of hakkohen to refer to figures who are not high priests.

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To be sure, the sorts of priestly leadership involved in the Qumran community appear to have evolved, judging from the description of a “time of groping” before the arrival of the priestly teacher of righteousness (CD I, 9– 11) and from lack of references to the “sons of Zadok” in early redactions of the community rule.3 Nevertheless, the “sons of Aaron,” along with other priests and Levites, are present from an early point in community documents (e.g. CD I, 7), and this influence of priestly figures gains further shape with the arrival of the teacher of righteousness and the appearance of the “sons of Zadok” in community documents. The prominence of priests at Qumran would explain the large numbers of texts with priestly concerns in the Qumran caves, some of which were apparently authored by members of the community and others not: purity regulations, priestly instructions (halachot), and various texts surrounding the proper observance of a pre-Hasmonean solar calendar, including “Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” appear designed to accompany that calendar at a time when some priests at Qumran still presided over sacrifices in the temple.4 Moreover, a variety of indicators suggest that a key event in the early history of the community was the replacement in Jerusalem of the solar cultic calendar used up to that point in the temple with the lunar one still prevalent in Judaism. Like prior priests of the Jerusalem temple, the priests at Qumran appear to have felt a special responsibility to provide instruction to those around them. Their founder, in addition to being described as “the priest,” is more often called a “teacher of righteousness,” and his key contribution is teaching (1QS III, 13; IX, 12–X, 5), including provision of proper interpretation of the Torah and Prophets (1QpHab VI, 15–VII, 5 and II, 7–10). As Carol Newsom argues, this teacher, the maskil, stands at the head of a hierarchy of knowledge in a community of those “learned in law” and “wise in knowledge” (1QM X, 10), each member of which is regularly tested on his “knowledge” (1QS V, 23–24; VI, 18).5 Other community designations confirm this self-understanding as a community focused on learning and study. Those included in the community are called “students of God” (limmude
el) in CD XX, 4 or “men of Torah” (
anshe hattorah) in 4QSd I, 1. In addition, the teacher of righteousness is designated as “the interpreter of Torah” (doresh hattorah; CD VI, 7; VII, 18; cf. 4QFlor I, 11), and the community is a “house of Torah” (CD XX, 10, 13). Central texts (pesharim, florilegia) articulate the authoritative interpretation of sacred texts offered by the teacher of righteousness and other sons of Zadok. For example, a central text in the community rule gives a description

3. For a useful overview of the presence and absence of references in the community rule see Robert Kugler, “Priesthood at Qumran,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment, vol.2, ed. Peter W. Flint and James Vanderkam (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 97–100. 4. For discussion of the issues see Lange, Weisheit und Pra¨destination, 21–28; James Vanderkam, “Identity and History of the Community,” in Flint and Vanderkam, Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty Years, vol. 2, 487–533, esp. 528–529. 5. Carol Newsom, “The Sage in the Literature of Qumran: The Functions of the Mas´kıˆl,” in Gammie and Perdue, Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, 373–82, esp. 382.

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of induction of initiates into proper exegesis by “the interpreter” (1QS VIII, 10–12) and then articulates the function of the community as “preparing the way” through study of Torah and obedience of it:6 As it is written, “In the desert, prepare the way of [YHWH] make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God [Isa 40:3].” This is the study of the torah which he commanded through the hand of Moses, in order to act in accord with all that has been revealed from age to age, and according to what the prophets revealed through his holy spirit. (1QS VIII, 14–16) Other texts in the same rule specify that a prospective member of the community must swear to return to the Torah of Moses, “according to all that has been revealed from it to the sons of Zadok” (V, 9; cf. V, 2–3 cited earlier), be examined for fitness for “instruction” (musar) by the collective of the community (VI, 12–16), and taken into a two-year probationary period.7 Within the process envisioned here, the initiate is not yet included in the purified meals and community possessions of the community during the first year but studies and is examined after one year concerning his “knowledge” and observance of the Torah” (VI, 18). If he passes, he completes a second year of study and another examination, whose passage brings his entry into the “midst of his brothers for Torah, judgment, purity and common possessions” as well as for voice in the community council (VI, 21–22). This elaborate process—paralleled by a simpler process of examination by an overseer in CD XIII, 11–12—then begins participation in an ongoing community of study, where every group of ten must always have an interpreter of the Torah day and night, relieving one another in shifts, reading the scroll aloud, investigating the law, and blessing the congregation (1QS VI, 6–8). This and a similar regulation in the Damascus document represents the community’s execution of the earlier regulation in Joshua to “recite softly” (hgh) the scroll of the Torah and have it on their mouth (Jos 1:8). Indeed, exactly this text in Joshua may be behind the use of the enigmatic expression sepher hagi/hagu possibly to designate the Mosaic Torah. A regulation in the Damascus document parallel to the aforementioned Community Rule passage regarding reading Torah in shifts (CD XIV, 6–8; cf. 1QS VI, 6–8), specifies that every group of ten must have a priest learned in the

6. See Steven D. Fraade, “Interpretive Authority in the Studying Community at Qumran,” JJS 44 (1993): 51–52, on the centrality of this text for formation of community. Hartmut Stegemann, The Library of Qumran: On the Essenes, Qumran, John the Baptist, and Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 52–55, has an interesting set of arguments regarding the relevance of this text to text production in the Judean desert. He notes that the extra sham in VIII, 13 may indicate that this community was particularly responsible for production of texts for other Essene communities. 7. Josephus J.W. 11.138–142, who says that the Essenes had a three-year probationary period. Lemaire (“L’enseignement esse´nien et l’e´cole de Qumraˆn,” in Hellenica et Judaica: Hommage a` Valentin Nikiprowetzky, ed. Caquot et al. [Leuven: Leuven University Press and Peeters, 1986], 192–94) understands 1QS VI, 13–23 to be in agreement with the three-year probationary period mentioned by Josephus, but the plain sense of the text appears to be somewhat divergent. Note also the two-year probationary period envisioned for those returning to the community in 1QS VII, 18–21; VIII, 20–25.

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“scroll of recitation/meditation” (sepher hagi). Though it is not universally agreed, the sepher hagi that is so prominent here and elsewhere in Qumran documents is probably the Mosaic Torah.8 Similarly, the rule of the congregation, 1QSa (1Q28a), describes the process of initiation of a male child born into the community. The key passage follows an initial call for “the men of his counsel” to assemble women and young children and “read aloud into their ears all the regulations of the covenant” (1QSa I, 3–5). This oral instruction of women and children in general then contrasts with the following regulation to instruct each native Israelite boy in the “book of recitation/meditation” (probably the Torah) and—according to his age—in the specific regulations of the Qumran community (1QSa I, 6–8). He is classified as a child during the first ten years. At age twenty he enters among those registered in the community and can marry. After ten more years of study he is eligible for full inclusion in the assembly upon approval of the priestly “sons of Aaron” (1QSa I, 8–16).9 We must be careful, of course, not to homogenize these descriptions too much or to assume that they accurately reflect the realities of the Qumran community. On the contrary, the texts that appear specifically connected to the Qumran community represent varied ideal constructs of its history, present operations, and future. Nevertheless, amid this variety some lines of continuity emerge. In particular, these various visions concur in the educational orientation of key aspects of community boundary regulation and definition: focus on study of Torah, induction into the authoritative interpretation of it by the community’s priestly leader (or the “inspector”; CD XIII, 7–9; XIV, 9–11), examinations in knowledge of the Torah as interpreted by authorities—usually priests—and definition of the community into which they enter as a holy community of study. The community thus defined represents an important extension of priestly

8. For interpretations of sepher hagi as the Torah see Naphtali Wieder, The Judean Scrolls and Karaism (London: East and West Library, 1962), 215–36; J. Licht, The Scroll of Regulations from the Desert of Judah, The Manual of Discipline [Heb.] (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1965), 255–56; M. Delcor, “Qumraˆn IV, C, Litte´rature esse´nne,” SDB 9 (1979): 845; Lemaire, “L’Enseignement Esse´nien,” 195; Fraade, “Interpretive Authority at Qumran,” 56–58. This interpretation is not universal (see Martin Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE–400 CE [New York: Oxford University Press, 2001], 31 and 173–74, n. 25) and has been disputed recently by A. Lange, based on his reconstruction of 4Q417 2 I, 15–18 and his understanding of texts like CD XIV, 6–8 as distinguishing the “book of meditation” from the “laws of the Torah” (Weisheit und Pra¨destination, 51, 84–90; “Die Weisheitstexte aus Qumran: Eine Einleitung,” in The Wisdom Texts from Qumran and the Development of Sapiential Thought, ed. C. Hempel, A. Lange, and H. Lichtenberger [Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002], 19–20). 4Q417 2, I, 15–18, however, mentions not the sepher hagi of later Qumran documents but a hfi azon hagi, which appears to be some sort of special revelatory document bequeathed to Enosh, much like the pseudepigrapha discussed in chapter 8 (on the distinction between these books see Knibb, “Enoch and Qumran,” 203). At Qumran, there is no candidate for a separate, non-Mosaic book that could be a sepher hagi alongside the Mosaic Torah. Non-Torah works, including apocalyptic and sectarian documents, were copied and cited far less often. Therefore, it makes more sense to understand the expression besepher hagi ubekol mishpatfie hattorah in CD XIV, 7–8 as a hendiadys referring to knowledge of the same nomistic body of work: the Mosaic Torah. 9. Much of this survey is indebted to Lemaire, “L’Enseignement Esse´nien,” and Fraade, “Interpretive Authority at Qumran.” Note particularly, as well, Michael O. Wise, Thunder in Gemini: And Other Essays on the History, Language and Literature of Second Temple Palestine, JSPSup (Sheffield: JSOT, 1994, 103–51) and Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 28–38.

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learning beyond that of the priests alone. The priests, long understood to be instructors of the people, are depicted here as presiding over a much more intensive process of education and ongoing socialization of nonpriests than is described in other Second Temple texts discussed so far. From early on, the community appears to have consisted of many nonpriests, and the leadership group envisioned in 1QS VIII, 1–3 includes fifteen persons fully knowledgeable in the revealed Torah—twelve nonpriestly men, corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel—alongside three priests. Though other texts describe a hierarchy with [Zadokite] priests at the top, it also includes Levites below them, along with leaders of various levels of Israel and then probationary members (1QSa [1Q28a] I, 22–25; CD XIV, 3–6). The education of young boys in the torah and precepts of the community is envisioned in 1QSa, and all initiates anticipated in 1QS and CD likewise receive instruction in the torah and community precepts which they must recite and observe. There is no place for illiteracy in the community of interpretation envisioned here. In sum, the Qumran community seen in its self-representations represents one realization—or at least idealization—of a particularly literate Israel, an Israel whose holiness is not only constituted by proper observance of various regulations but also by its members’ special knowledge of sacred texts, the Torah above all. Priests stand at the head of the community, regulate its borders, and supervise the instruction. But this new “Israel,” echoing the old Israel in the primacy of twelve Torah-knowledgeable lay leaders, is a community of nonpriestly learned as well. Together they represent a new Jewish iteration of the older Deuteronomic ideal of an Israel distinguished from those outside it by the excellence of its knowledge (Deut 4:6). Through the thorough involvement of split-off priests, this new “Israel” as a whole gains an elite knowledge that separates it from others as surely as older scribal education once defined the older literate elite, whether royal scribal or priestly, in Israel and other cultures. At least within the bubble represented by the Qumran community and its relatives elsewhere in Judea, the older ideal of Israel as a “holy people” and “nation of priests” appears to have reached a hitherto unattested level of actualization.

Educational Exercises and “Wisdom” Literature at Qumran Furthermore, we have multiple indications that this vision was realized. Not only is it widespread in the community’s own documents, and not only were the Essenes well known by Josephus to be particularly intensive in the care of books and study (J.W. 2.136, 142), but the Qumran caves included probable student exercises, and an ostracon with the unpracticed hand of a student was even found in the ruins of Qumran itself.10 To be sure, it is not always easy to

10. Andre´ Dont-Sommer, The Essene Writings from Qumran (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961), 63. For discussion of possible loci of textual production and education at Qumran see Lemaire, “L’Enseignement Esse´nien,” 199–

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determine whether a given text is an exercise by an advanced apprentice or a copy made by an accomplished scribe. Nevertheless, it is clear that the one (to three) abecedaries found at Qumran attest to some level of elementary instruction there.11 In addition, 4QExercitium Calami A (4Q234) contains several words written in different directions, and 4QExercitium Calami A and B (4Q234 and 360) is a Hebrew example of the sort of list often used just after learning of the alphabet in Hellenistic education: a list of names following the order of the alphabet.12 Yet instructional material is not limited to such highly elementary exercises. As we saw in the discussion of Hellenistic education, instruction in Greek literature moved fairly quickly from the learning of the alphabet and lists of names to the copying, recitation, and memorization of longer stretches of text from the Hellenistic curriculum: Homer above all, but also gnomic literature, dramas such as Euripides’ Phoenissae, and other texts. In the case of Qumran, we have several copies of texts that others have proposed as student exercises because of their poor handwriting: a copy of Genesis 48 on a single sheet, a section of a Daniel-Susanna tradition, Enoch, and a version of Psalm 89.13 Together, these potential examples of student exercises at Qumran provide epigraphic evidence of the process of education-socialization testified to in the Qumran literary texts. Moreover, these exercises stand in opposition to those who would suppose that all of the Qumran documents were once part of Jerusalem libraries, exported for safekeeping to the Dead Sea area.14 Such exercises were of such an elementary nature or poor quality that they usually were discarded as useless, unworthy of safekeeping or any kind of long-term storage. Yet these few exercises survived at Qumran, representing the tip of an iceberg of a broader educational process, one that included these identifiable exercises, others now lost, and the probable presence at Qumran of more advanced student copies of texts that are indistinguishable from the work of accomplished scribes.

201; “Qoumran: sa fonction et ses manuscrits,” in Qoumran et les manuscrits de la Mer Morte: un cinquantenaire, ed. E. Laperrousaz (Paris: Cerf, 1997), 128–31. 11. See Emanuel Tov, “The Scribes of the Texts Found in the Judean Desert,” in The Quest for Context and Meaning: Studies in Biblical Intertextuality in Honor of James A. Sanders, ed. C. A. Evans and S. Talmon (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 140, on the two abecadaries displayed at the Israel museum. Lemaire, “L’Enseignement Esse´nien,” 201–2, works only with the one published by Roland deVaux and argues on the basis of this relative rarety of abecedaries and the evidence of Josephus that Qumran was focused on education not of children but of adults. Nevertheless, 1QSa envisions a process of education of children, we may have more abecedaries from Qumran, and their frequency is not a good index of how widespread such education would have been. Such elementary exercises would have been the most likely to be discarded. 12. See the discussion in chapter 7, p. 179, where this type of Hellenistic list is discussed. See also J. Naveh, “A Medical Document or a Writing Exercise? The So-called 4 Q Therapeia,” IEJ 36 (1986): 52–55. Hezser’s treatment of this and other evidence for education in writing (Jewish Literacy, 85–89) is discussed in chapter 10, note 5. 13. This list comes from Tov, “Scribes,” 140–41, who cites the relevant discussions. 14. Examples of this approach are Karl H. Rengstorff, H 6 irbet Qumraˆn und die Bibliothik vom Toten Meer (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960); Norman Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? The Search for the Secret of Qumran (New York: Scribner, 1995). For response see Stegemann, Library of Qumran, 64–65; Martı´nez and van der Woude, “ ‘Groningen’ Hypothesis,” 526–36; Runesson, Synagogue, 336, n. 326.

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One key indicator of the prominence of education at Qumran is the large corpus of “wisdom” texts found there, many of which have become available only in the last several years. As has become increasingly evident, a bulk of these texts predates the Qumran split from the temple, thus providing hitherto unavailable access to textual materials used to educate priests in preHasmonean Judah. The largest and best-attested of these wisdom writings is a text once called 4QSapientiala but now often known as 4QInstruction (muˆsar leme¯bıˆn). This text is found in seven or eight copies at Qumran yet probably predates the community.15 It includes instruction for the mebin, junior sage, including detailed regulations for forms of community life that are not envisioned in specifically Qumran writings. Notably, like Ben Sira, the instruction builds specifically on Torah teachings, especially Genesis 2–3 (4Q416 2, III, 20–IV, 6), Exodus 32:16 (4Q417 2, I, 14), and priestly regulations in Numbers 30:6–15 (4Q416 2, IV, 7–10) and Deuteronomy 22:9–11 (4Q418 103, II, 6–9).16 Yet the instruction does not yet feature the explicit joining of “Wisdom” and Torah that is seen in Ben Sira and elsewhere. With regard to attitudes toward Mosaic Torah, 4QInstruction stands between Proverbs, which is not explicitly coordinated with Torah, and Ben Sira and others, where the link with Torah is more fully established.17 As is seen in later Qumran literature, the Torah is understood as revealed wisdom, giving insight into the “mystery to be” of a world divided by God between evil and good and in which God will intervene eschatologically on behalf of the godly. As such, 4QInstruction stands as part of a broader stream of Hellenistic-period, priestly, indigenous literature, like the Egyptian Potter’s Oracle and Enochic materials, that articulates a secret wisdom of divine liberation from unrighteous oppressors. Yet this deeper wisdom probably was not universally accepted. Dualistic texts like 4QInstruction may be the opponents Ben Sira critiques in Sirach 15:11–20, which attacks those who attribute wrongdoing to God.18 Indeed, 4QInstruction is but a particularly well-attested example of a much broader corpus of explicitly instructional literature at Qumran, much of it similarly dualistic and eschatological. Contained in 4Q424, a text that now appears to have been a composition separate from 4QInstruction, are proverbs and sayings that represent an even earlier stage of instructional literature. Though it has some vocabulary in common with 4QInstruction, 4Q424 still talks of research (darash) without equating it with scriptural interpretation and of judgment (mishpatfi) without equating it with Torah. Lange argues that it may be a fragment of instructional literature comparable in date with that found in Proverbs, perhaps even containing traditions antecedent to Ezekiel (13:10–11).19 A

15. For a recent overview of the research relating to the text’s date and relation to the community see M. Goff, The Worldly and Heavenly Wisdom of 4QInstruction, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 219–32. 16. Lange, “Die Weisheitstexte aus Qumran,” 18–19. 17. Lange, Weisheit und Pra¨destination, 31–36. 18. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 303, already pointed to this text from Sirach in the context of dualism, long before dualistic wisdom texts like 4QInstruction had come to light. 19. See Lange, “Die Weisheitstexte aus Qumran,” 27, for discussion.

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later text is the Book of Mysteries, an instructional work which resembles 4QInstruction in its use of priestly terminology, links to priestly Torah material (Lev 5:18 in 1Q27 VI, 2–3), and (fragmentary) specifically priestly instructions (e.g. 4Q299 55:5; 69:1–2; 79:6–7). It too speaks of the “mystery to come” and depicts a dualism of good and evil, yet shows clear indicators of origins outside the Qumran community.20 4Q525, “4QBeatitudes,” is another text showing signs of non-Qumran origin and containing exhortations to seek wisdom, a wisdom which is here equated with Torah.21 4Q184, originally titled “the wiles of a wicked woman,” echoes earlier wisdom depictions of dame folly as an image of temptation away from wisdom (cf. Proverbs 7), and appears to equate torah observance and wisdom (frag. 1, line 15; see also frag. 5, line 5).22 4Q185, “4QSapiential Work,” refers to the Torah story of Exodus in the process of exhorting its audience to pursue wisdom, and it likewise equates wisdom and Torah.23 All these instructional texts stand in addition to copies of previously known “wisdom” works found at Qumran: Ben Sira (2Q18; 11QPsa XXI, 11–17; XXII, 1), a hymn to Torah wisdom that was part of the Syriac Psalter (11QPsa XVIII, 1–16//Ps 154); copies of parts of the Biblical books of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes, and two Aramaic translations of Job. Several other texts found at Qumran combine instructional elements with genres not typically associated with “wisdom.” 4Q420–421, “4QWays of Righteousness,” combines sayings about temple matters with exhortations to the righteous to seek wisdom. It and the more fragmentary 4Q473 (“4Q Two Ways”)24 stand alongside 4QInstruction, 4QMysteries, and so on as additional examples of the combination of “priestly” and “wisdom” concerns in Qumran instructional material.25 Another text with a mix of aspects is 4Q302, “4QpapAdmonitory Parable,” which is addressed to the wise, but features the prophetic rib genre. We saw a similar combination of instructional and prophetic elements in Ben Sira’s use of the woe oracle form (Sir 41:8–9).26 4Q426, “4QSap-Hymnica,” is a hymn which echoes the vocabulary of earlier wisdom and prophetic texts, including its talk of God having “put into my heart knowl-

20. See Lange, Weisheit und Pra¨destination, 94–120, for discussion of the text’s ideology, dualism, and so on. For more on its possible priestly origins see Eibert Tigchelaar, “Your Wisdom and Your Folly: The Case of 1–4QMysteries,” in Martı´nez, Wisdom and Apocalypticism, 81–82, and cf. Torleif Elgvin, “Priestly Sages? The Milieus of Origin of 4QMysteries and 4QInstruction,” in Sapiential Perspectives: Wisdom Literature in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, E. G. Chazon (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 67–87. 21. Daniel Harrington, Wisdom Texts from Qumran (New York: Routledge, 1996), 68–69; Collins, Jewish Wisdom, 113–14. 22. See Lange, “Die Weisheitstexte aus Qumran,” 9–10, for discussion. 23. John J. Collins, “Wisdom Reconsidered, in Light of the Scrolls,” DSD 4 (1997): 270. See Carol Newsom, “4Q370: An Admonition Based on the Flood,” RevQ 13 (1988): 23–43, on links of this text to 4Q370; and Lange, “Die Weisheitstexte aus Qumran,” 11, on probable dependence of 4Q370 on this text. 24. Collins, Jewish Wisdom, 129. On the problems see Lange, “Die Weisheitstexte aus Qumran,” 8. 25. See also Eibert Tigchelaar, “More on 4Q264A (4QHalakha A or 4QWays of Righteousnessc?),” RevQ 75 (2000): 452–56, who argues that 4Q264a is another fragment of the same work. 26. Cf. Lange, “Die Weisheitstexte aus Qumran,” 5. On the genre see B. Nitzan, “Post-Biblical Rib Pattern: Admonitions in 4Q302/302a and 4Q38a 69, 76–77,” in Biblical Perspectives: Early Use and Interpretation of the Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. M. E. Stone and E. G. Chazon (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 159–74.

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edge and understanding” (frag. 1, line 4).27 Other texts with links to “wisdom” literature include a pair of short hymns to the created order (4Q411 [4QSapiential Hymn]; 4Q412 [4QSap-Didactica],28 and fragments with wisdom vocabulary whose broader contours are difficult to discern (4Q303–5;29 4Q413;30 4Q425 [4QSap-Hymnicb].31 If we turn to include texts with specific indicators of probable origin in the Qumran community, the corpus of instructional material is yet larger. One particularly interesting example is 4Q298 [4QcryptA]. Written in a code script found in some specifically Qumran documents, it appears to represent an instruction used for initiates undergoing the initial probationary period outlined in 1QS. The initial editor of the text has argued plausibly that its address to the “sons of dawn” refers to a group on the way to being “sons of light.”32 The cryptic script may have been intended to keep the instruction secret, since such instruction necessarily happened before the initiates were allowed to live in the community.33 It includes an initial address to them as “men of heart,” along with typical wisdom exhortations.34 Only toward the end are there some now fragmentary references to an end time. Notably, the one manuscript of this secret instruction had multiple errors (e.g. 1–2, 5 I,3 and 3–4 II,7), a possible indication that it was a student copy.35 Several other texts specifically associated with the Qumran community show strong links with instructional material. For example, just as Ben Sira’s instruction includes hymns written or collected by the teacher, so also the finds at Qumran include eight copies of a book of hymns, the “Hodayot,” attributed to the priestly “teacher of righteousness.” This book appropriates vocabulary and phrasing from the previously-surveyed instructional works.36 The Damas-

27. See Lange, “Die Weisheitstexte aus Qumran,” 8, on identification problems because of the fragmentary character of the text. 28. But see Lange, “Die Weisheitstexte aus Qumran,” 6. John Strugnell, “The Smaller Hebrew Wisdom Texts Found at Qumran: Variations, Resemblances, and Lines of Development,” in Hempel, Lange, and Lichtenberger, Wisdom Texts from Qumran, 38, argues for presectarian origin for this manuscript and associates it with wisdom works. 29. On these fragments see Lange, “Die Weisheitstexte aus Qumran,” 5; Strugnell, “Smaller Hebrew Wisdom Texts,” 37. 30. See Lange, “Die Weisheitstexte aus Qumran,” 6–7, and Strugnell, “Smaller Hebrew Wisdom Texts,” 38–39. 31. Strugnell, “Smaller Hebrew Wisdom Texts,” 52, suggests on the basis of shared vocabulary that 4Q420, 4Q421, 4Q424, 4Q425, and 4Q426 may turn out to be parts of a single work. 32. S. J. Pfann, “4Q298: The Maskil’s Address to All Sons of Dawn,” JQR 85 (1994): 203–35. As Collins notes (Jewish Wisdom, 128), specifically eschatological elements only appear at the end of the text. 33. Harrington, Wisdom Texts, 65–66. 34. The reference to “heart” in 4Q298 1 again echoes a focus on the shaping of the mind and heart in early instruction, particularly in Egyptian but also in other instructional literatures. Some other prominent references to the “heart” in Qumran instructional literature include 4QBarki Napshic (4Q436) 1 I, 4 (discussed later) and 4QSapiential-Didactic Work B (Q425) frags. 1 and 3, lines 2 and 8. 35. For the errors see Lange, “Die Weisheitstexte aus Qumran,” 12. This criterion might be applied to other Qumran manuscripts as well. 36. See Sarah Tanzer, “The Sages at Qumran: Wisdom in the Hodayot” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1987); Newsom, “Functions of the Mas´kıˆl,” 378–81; Lange, Weisheit und Pra¨destination, 195–232. On links to the “mystery that will be” and other motifs see Daniel Harrington, “Ten Reasons Why the Qumran Wisdom Texts Are Important,” DSD 4 (1997): 253. Lange (Weisheit und Pra¨destination, 128–30) also shows links to the two-

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cus Document opens with a wisdom-like exhortation to those who have entered the covenant (CD II,2–13).37 And the later redactions of the Qumran community rule include the “teaching of the two spirits” (1QS III,13–IV,26//4QpapSc [4Q257] V–VI). As found at Qumran, this teaching is both an integral part of the community’s own texts and a probable example of pre-Qumran wisdom. As Armin Lange has argued, the teaching lacks key vocabulary of the surrounding community rule and is marked as a distinct corpus within community rule manuscripts by a preceding space and prologue (1QS III, 13–18).38 The text builds on and extends the dualism and revelatory wisdom found in books like 4QInstruction and the Book of Mysteries, speaking once again of God’s “mystery” (raz). Now incorporated into the community rule, it stands as a bridge example of the relation between the Qumran community and pre-Qumran wisdom. It is a probable pre-Qumran instructional text that eventually was included in specifically Qumran community material to play a strategic introductory role.

Instructional Use of Other Forms of Literature So far, however, the foregoing discussion has been limited to texts at Qumran that feature vocabulary or genres found in Proverbs-like “wisdom” material. As we have seen in the case of non-Israelite cultures, many other forms of literature besides gnomic or “wisdom” material were used in educationenculturation: epic narratives, prose history, hymns, and so on. Moreover, in chapter 6 I presented evidence of instructional use of other materials in preHellenistic Israel: the Mosaic “Teaching”/Torah, historical books, prophets, psalms, and other literature. Already we have seen several indicators that Second Temple Jews likewise used a variety of materials in instruction. Ben Sira attests to the primacy of Mosaic Torah as an instructional text, perhaps reflecting an interaction with Greek concepts of the primacy of Homer in the Hellenistic curriculum. He also includes prophetic and liturgical genres in his instruction. In addition, many of the Qumran texts surveyed earlier testify to the problem with attempts to isolate “wisdom” texts from other genres. Those texts often equate Torah and Wisdom (e.g. 4Q184 15; 4Q185; 4Q525; and 11QPsa XVIII, 1–16), and several of them combine “wisdom” features with “priestly” or “prophetic” elements.39

spirits teaching, which he argues is a pre-Qumran wisdom text as well. T. Elgvin, “The Reconstruction of Sapiential Work A,” RevQ 16 (1995): 561–62, provides a useful survey of parallels in language between 4QInstruction and specifically Qumran works. 37. This is preserved in ten copies from Qumran, along with two from the Cairo Geniza. For discussion of the wisdom elements and other issues in this passage see Lange, Weisheit und Pra¨destination, 233–70. 38. On the redactional evidence regarding this text see Sarianna Metso, The Textual Development of the Qumran Community Rule, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah (Leiden: Brill, 1997), esp. 147–48. On the probable pre-Qumran origins see Lange, Weisheit und Pra¨destination, 127–28. 39. For more specific citations of these and other texts, along with discussion, see Harrington, “Ten Reasons,” 249.

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These texts indicate that the function of “identifiable” wisdom material changed in Israel, especially by the time of Ben Sira and Qumran. Earlier such “wisdom” materials probably served—as in many non-Israelite cultures—as a key part of the early education of a wide variety of Israelite officials: priests, scribes, royal officials, and so on. Yet from the seventh century onward the Mosaic Torah appears to have increasingly assumed the introductory role once served by “wisdom writings,” a development already signaled by texts like Deuteronomy 4:6. Later, not only is Torah study placed at the beginning of education by sources like Ben Sira and the Qumran community documents40 but Torah is increasingly identified with the “wisdom” figure of earlier instructional literature. Increasingly, “wisdom” represents a revealed interpretation of Torah or a form of higher learning. As is evident in the large corpus of “wisdom”like instructional material at Qumran, this foregrounding of Torah does not mean that wisdom material is discarded, but rather that such “wisdom” material no longer serves the discrete, introductory function in education it once did. As a result, wisdom vocabulary, genres, and conceptuality are more easily combined with forms of literature used at various stages in education in Second Temple Judaism. It becomes more difficult to identify specifically “wisdom” texts. A vast variety of texts is used for instruction, and the “wisdom” elements once concentrated at the outset of education are now strewn across the literary-instructional corpus. The more we realize the limits of categorizing “wisdom” texts as the product of some sort of separate “sapiential” group, the more we can use finds like those discussed earlier to illuminate the background of the Hellenistic-period tradents of biblical traditions. Some suggestive work along these lines has already been done by Lange. He finds indicators that pre-Qumran, probable priestly works like 4QInstruction and 4QMysteries show a knowledge of the book of Qohelet yet an ideology closest to elements of Qohelet, like its second epilogue (Qoh 12:12–14) that often are identified as part of its late redaction. Both such redactional elements and the pre-Qumran wisdom (priestly?) works share a dualistic perspective, Torah orientation, and focus on future judgment. Building on these observations, Lange suggests that materials like 4QInstruction and 4QMysteries may provide us with a broader view into the priestly institutional setting (Sitz im Leben) and dualistic ideology of the tradents of Qohelet.41 Furthermore, in another study Lange finds similar indicators of the

40. This generalization about early placement of Torah instruction might seem to be contradicted by 4Q298, the instruction for the “sons of dawn,” a text meant for early stages of Qumran education and a text characterized by a predominance of “wisdom” instructional exhortation and vocabulary. Yet even 4Q298 may not be a counterexample to this phenomenon of displacement of “wisdom” to later stages of education. As Lemaire has pointed out (“L’Enseignement Esse´nien,” 201–2), both Qumran literature and Josephus focus primarily on the problem of induction of adult members into the community. If this was indeed the primary focus at Qumran, 4Q298 may not have been designed for the initial instruction of children but instead would have been meant for adult novices, men being more likely to have had a preliminary education in the Torah before joining. 41. For the most comprehensive presentation of the argument see Armin Lange, “In Diskussion mit dem

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ideology of 4QInstruction and 4QMysteries in elements of the redaction of the Psalter adopted by the Massoretic tradition. In this case, he argues that the Qumran instructional texts provide potential additional background to a dualistic ideology used by priestly tradents of the Psalms in the early second century, right around the time of the Hasmonean revolt.42 Such work suggests that the pre-Qumran instructional materials found at Qumran may provide a glimpse into the scribal workshops where some scriptural books received their final formation. Given the diversity of Second Temple instructional materials, we must be careful not to form too unilinear a view of such scribal workshops. Nevertheless, this work on the late formation of books like Qohelet and Psalms may be extended more broadly. For example, one of the most prominent characteristics of the ideology of pre-Qumran instructional literature is the prominence of eschatological dualism in it. Whether in Enoch or in 4QInstruction, it appears that some priestly groups of the third and second centuries increasingly saw their world divided into the righteous who would be rewarded in a future divine intervention and the wicked who would be punished. Interestingly, as Joseph Blenkinsopp points out, the same perspective appears to be reflected in the final redaction of several prophetic books, particularly those, like Isaiah, that conclude with extensive sections on the distinction between the destinies of the righteous and the wicked.43 Such insights, moreover, may not be limited to Hebrew instructional literature. Already in his discussion of (pre)Qumran wisdom and Qohelet, Lange notes affinities between the ideology of the Wisdom of Solomon, on the one hand, and the ideology of 4QInstruction and 4QMysteries on the other.44 The Wisdom of Solomon is particularly interesting in this context because it represents another critical response to Qohelet, this time in Greek. In particular, the first part of the Wisdom of Solomon responds point by point to Qohelet’s perspectives on the finality of death, the role of wisdom in securing life, and the importance of seeking moderate pleasure as a major end in life.45 Moreover, it uses the specific terminology of “mystery” that was featured prominently in

Temple: Zur Auseinandersetzung zwischen Kohelet und weisheitlichen Kreisen am Jerusalemer Tempel,” in Qohelet in the Context of Wisdom, ed. A. Schoors (Louvain: Peeters, 1998), 113–59. An abbreviated English version of the argument is given in Armin Lange, “Eschatological Wisdom in the Book of Qohelet and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years After Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20–25, 1997, ed. Lawrence Schiffman (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2000), 817–25. 42. Armin Lange, “Die Endgestalt des protomasoretischen Psalters und die Toraweisheit,” in Der Psalter in Judentum und Christentum, ed. E. Zenger (Freiburg: Herder, 1998), 101–36. For a critical response to Lange’s presuppositions about the priestly origins of 4QInstruction and 4QMysteries see Torleif Elgvin, “Priestly Sages?” Elgvin presupposes broader circles of education than my work does. Yet in the process of judiciously considering the hypothesis of priestly background of Qumran instructional materials, he brings up several additional texts that support the hypothesis he is critiquing. 43. For an illuminating recent discussion of the final redaction of prophetic books and dualism (and discussion of some earlier literature) see Joseph Blenkinsopp, “The Formation of the Hebrew Bible Canon: Isaiah as a Test Case,” in The Canon Debate: On the Origins and Formation of the Bible, ed. Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), 65–66. 44. Lange, “Endgestalt,” 143–44. 45. For a summary of arguments and citation of literature see Carr, From D to Q, 159–61.

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4QInstruction and other early—probably priestly—instructional and apocalyptic materials (Wis 2:22).46 This does not mean that the Wisdom of Solomon necessarily originated in priestly circles, though that is not impossible.47 Nevertheless, the Qumran finds of instructional literature like 4QInstruction are broadening and deepening our understanding of the preoccupations of the largely priestly literati of the Second Temple period. This means that we now can see connections to Hebrew instructional literature even in Greek literature like the Wisdom of Solomon. Such work on correlation of Qumran finds with the formation of biblical compositions is necessarily quite preliminary. Many of the texts have been published only recently, and much remains to be done on basic issues of identifying the contours of previously unknown documents at Qumran, correlating them with each other and previously known literature, and developing a more solid picture of how they correlate with social structures of the Second Temple period. Nevertheless, it is already becoming evident that the finds at Qumran provide potential access to the preoccupations and ideologies of the late tradents of biblical literature. Moreover, these finds of “wisdom” literature, with their mixture of a variety of genres and general focus on Torah, show the need for a reconceptualization of what it means to speak of “wisdom,” especially in the Second Temple period.

Instructional Use of the Mosaic Torah and Para-Torah Texts This reconceptualization of instructional literature could have a significant impact on our perception of the character of the texts found at Qumran. The more we begin to perceive how a variety of genres were used in educationsocialization, the more we can explore the potential instructional use of a variety of texts found at Qumran: the Pentateuchal Torah first and foremost but other texts as well. One example of this can be found in early copies of the Ten Commandments found at Qumran and elsewhere. In chapter 6 I argued that texts like the Ten Commandments were intended from the outset for instructional use, with their ten-fold numbering schemes facilitating memorization through use of the fingers. Now early copies of this Pentateuchal text at Qumran (4QPhyl G [4Q134], 8QPhyl [8Q3] and 4Qmez A [4Q149]), along with other early versions (Philo; Papyrus Nash), provide concrete evidence of such oral memorization of a part of the Mosaic Torah. Innocent Himbaza argues in a recent article that the types of textual divergences in these copies indicate that

46. For discussion of the use of “mystery” (muste¯ria) in Wis 2:21–24 and similarities and differences between 4QInstruction and the Wisdom of Solomon see John J. Collins, “The Mysteries of God: Creation and Eschatology in 4QInstruction and the Wisdom of Solomon,” in Martı´nez, Wisdom and Apocalypticism, 287–305. 47. Any assumption that priests could not write in Greek is refuted by examples like the Egyptian Manetho. Still, if the Wisdom of Solomon was written by a priest, he appears to direct his wisdom at a broader audience, like Ben Sira, and there are no specific indications of priestly cultic or calendrical concerns.

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they do not follow a clear text type and were probably produced from memory.48 Thus, in the instance of these variant written copies of the Ten Commandments, oral memorization appears to have been supported by writing, but the memory component was important as well. The evidence for instructional use of the Torah is not limited to such obvious examples as the ten commandments. Some Qumran texts display the sorts of nonsignificant variants that are typical of texts transmitted—at least in part—through human memory. This is particularly true of quotations of the Torah in non-Torah texts,49 but it is also pointed to in a few of the divergent manuscript traditions themselves. For example, as Edward Greenstein points out, one prominent characteristic of memorized quotations is the contamination of one passage with wording from another.50 Such contamination is found on a small scale in a variety of quotations at Qumran of biblical passages. But we see such a phenomenon on a broader level as well in the various sorts of conflationary Pentateuchal manuscripts, where elements of Deuteronomy are inserted into their parallel contexts in Exodus, and vice versa (often labeled “proto-Samaritan”). Certainly, these and other Qumran manuscripts also show numerous signs of visual errors, attesting to the fact that visual copying was a crucial part of the transmission process by the time of the Qumran community. Nevertheless, the nonstemmatic character of some Qumran manuscripts and their witness to contamination by divergent traditions may point back to earlier stages of manuscript transmission when visual copying was not as dominant as it appears to have been in the later Second Temple period.51 Yet it is extremely difficult within this brief compass to analyze the entire Qumran corpus from the perspective of ancient education and textuality. It is large, and many parts of it are still being identified and analyzed. Therefore, I will focus here on one block of materials at Qumran with the most demonstrably educational use: texts associated with Moses and the Mosaic Torah/ teaching. As we have seen, the Qumran documents themselves testify to the importance of study of Torah, perhaps also known as the “scroll of recitation/ meditation.” The specifically Qumran documents clearly indicate that this scroll was crucial for both probationary and ongoing members. Moreover, the number of copies of Torah books at Qumran corroborate this emphasis. Not

48. Innocent Himbaza, “Le De´calogue du Papyrus Nash, Philon, 4Qphyl G, 8QPhyl 3 et 4Qmez,” RevQ 79 (2002): 411–28. 49. For examples see J. De Waard, A Comparative Study of the Old Testament Text in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah (Leiden: Brill, 1965), 63–64; Edward Greenstein, “Misquotation of Scripture in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Frank Talmage Memorial Volume, ed. Barry Walfish (Haifa: Haifa University Press, 1993), 76–78. 50. Greenstein, “Misquotation,” esp. 76. 51. For the impossibility of classifying Qumran documents in different manuscript families see now Shemaryahu Talmon, “The Transmission History of the Text of the Hebrew Bible in the Light of Biblical Manuscripts from Qumran and Other Sites in the Judean Desert,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years After Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20–25, 1997, ed. Lawrence Schiffman, Emanuel Tov, and James C. Vanderkam (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2000), 45.

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only is Deuteronomy one of the most widely attested individual books in the finds at Qumran, but the incidence of scrolls with multiple Torah books on them indicates that at least some Qumran copies of individual books of the Torah may be part of copies of broader parts of the Torah, if not the entire Torah. Even not taking that sort of reasoning into account, Tov notes that approximately 44 percent of all biblical manuscripts at Qumran were copies of one or more books from the Torah.52 Several aspects of the Qumran finds confirm that such written Torah traditions were used as part of an oral-written process of memorizationeducation. First, it is difficult to establish set text types for Torah manuscripts, and many may have been produced from memory rather than from visual copying.53 The possible scribal exercise identified by Tov, 4QGenf (4Q6), is an example of such a text, in this case one that was poorly written. Many other Torah scrolls probably were produced through visual copying or dictation from a visually read scroll, in order to ensure accuracy in production of copies for reference and study. This may not always have been the case, however. As noted earlier, conflationary Pentateuchal manuscripts, though eventually copied visually, may have been products of an oral-written environment where written material was supplemented with memorized material from other loci. Second, the quotations of the Torah in Qumran literature point to a broader phenomenon of memorization. These quotations are only sometimes formally introduced through a formula like “as it is written.” Such quotation formulae are more typical of a writing culture like our own. Yet in a variety of additional cases, biblical passages are woven continually into the fabric of a given writing.54 In addition, analysis of such weavings shows that use of the Torah and other texts occurred across a gradual continuum, extending from close use of an extended passage to more fluid use of a pre-text’s language, imagery, or conceptuality. In this sense, the writers of texts found at Qumran—whether from the community itself or before it—appear to have gained thorough enough mastery of the biblical corpus that they could speak its language in a variety of registers.55 Finally, treatments of the textual character of Torah and other quotations have highlighted their nonstandardized character. Rather than being visual copies of a given manuscript tradition or even “contextual variants” created by an author adapting a text to a purpose, most biblical quotations found at Qumran appear to be variant versions of a memorized tradition. This

52. Emanuel Tov, “The Biblical Texts from the Judaean Desert: An Overview and Analysis of the Published Texts,” in The Bible as Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judaean Desert Discoveries, ed. Edward D. Herbert and Emanuel Tov (Newcastle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2002), 141. 53. For arguments against the idea of text types in the Qumran manuscripts see Eugene Ulrich, “The Qumran Biblical Scrolls: The Scriptures of Late Second Temple Judaism,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context, ed. Timothy H. Lim (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 2000), 67–87. 54. Timothy Lim, Holy Scripture in the Qumran Commentaries and the Pauline Letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 164–68. 55. Jonathan G. Campbell, The Use of Scripture in the Damascus Document 1–8, 19–20, BZAW (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1995), esp. 176–77.

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would correlate with the predominance of memorized quotations in other ancient literatures. People had memorized them anyway as part of their education-enculturation, and scrolls were just too cumbersome to consult for the specifics on a given text.56 Third, the paragraph structure of Torah manuscripts at Qumran suggests their use in an oral-written environment of study and recitation. Josef Oesch’s studies of open and closed paragraphs, Revell’s study of pausal forms, and Emanuel Tov’s and others’ studies of paragraph markers have shown that many Torah (and other) manuscripts at Qumran feature divisions into reading sections that anticipate similar sorts of divisions later found in the Samaritan, Jewish, and Christian traditions.57 In at least the Jewish and Christian instances, such divisions helped split up larger corpora for use in oral-written educational and liturgical environments. Yet use of such divisions for oralwritten education and recitation is more ancient as well. We saw similar divisions of educational texts in ancient Egypt, where they served to break up a long text into recitable and learnable units.58 Notably, such divisions are not used typically in documentary texts like receipts, legal documents, and other texts written and deposited for visual reference.59 Within the Sumero-Akkadian and Egyptian literatures, we found documented evidence of gradual growth and augmentation of the educational curriculum, and that is evident in the Torah traditions at Qumran as well. We find several examples of a pre-Samaritan textual tradition harmonizing Deuteronomic and Tetrateuchal traditions, the so-called Proto-Samaritan manuscripts. In addition, the 4QRP texts represent a significant expansion of the Mosaic Torah to include items like an expanded speech of Miriam and the festival of wood.60 And the Temple Scroll represents a yet more radical, probably earlier,

56. For an overview of possible examples, citation of earlier literature, and correlation with rabbinic and patristic evidence see Greenstein, “Misquotation.” 57. See esp. E. J. Revell, “Biblical Punctuation and Chant in the Second Temple Period,” JSJ 7 (1976): 181– 98; Oesch, “Textgliederung im Alten Testament und in den Qumranhandschriften,” Henoch 5 (1983): 289–321; G. H. Wilson, The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter, SBLDS (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985), 93–96; David Rothstein, “From Bible to Murabaat: Studies in the Literary, Textual and Scribal Features of Phylacteries and Mezuzot in Ancient Israel and Early Judaism” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1992), 215–44; Emanuel Tov, “Scribal Markings in the Texts from the Judaean Desert,” in Current Research and Technological Developments on the Dead Sea Scrolls: Conference on the Texts from the Judaean Desert, Jerusalem, 30 April 1995, ed. Donald W. Perry and Stephen D. Ricks (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 44–53. Late in the process of finishing this book Eugene Ulrich notified me of an article he wrote on this that critiques some of the foregoing and establishes the distinction between the Qumran systems and later ones: Eugene Ulrich, “Impressions and Intuition: Sense Divisions in Ancient Manuscripts of Isaiah,” in Unit Delimitation in Biblical Hebrew and Northwest Semitic Literature, ed. Marco C. A. Korpel and Josef M. Oesch (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003), 279–307. 58. See chapter 4, p. 77–78. 59. Emanuel Tov, “Scribal Practices Reflected in the Texts from the Judaean Desert,” in Flint and Vanderkam, Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty Years, vol. 1, 425–26. 60. For the textual linkages of the latter tradition see Emanuel Tov, “The Textual Status of 4Q364–367 (4QRP),” in The Madrid Qumran Congress: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. J. Trebolle Barrera and Montaner L. Vegas (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 43–82, and the summary in Emanuel Tov and Sydney White, “Reworked Pentateuch,” in Qumran Cave 4 (VIII): Parabiblical Texts, Part 1, ed. H. Attridge et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 192–96.

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revision of Mosaic Torah, one including extensive additional material and changing the voice of Deuteronomic sections from Moses’s to God’s.61 All of these represent progressive scribal redactions and reformulations of the Pentateuchal tradition from a very early period. Yet—despite their early date—they were not adopted by later communities, with the minor exception of the adoption of a revised form of the “proto-Samaritan” recension of the Torah by the Samaritans. Indeed, in this respect the Torah traditions of early Judaism appear to have been fixed earlier than their non-Torah counterparts. Both Qumran manuscripts and the Septuagint show that the Jewish Bible contains a later form of several non-Torah books (e.g., Joshua, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and so on), but the relatively nonconflationary form of the Torah included in the Jewish Bible is the earliest one attested in the manuscripts at Qumran. Furthermore, the foregoing discussion of the Pentateuchal traditions does not yet exhaust the multiple ways in which Mosaic instruction is prominent in the manuscripts found at Qumran. In his overview of parabiblical prophetic texts, George Brooke lists seven para-Moses texts, including a cache of five copies of one manuscript entitled “Pseudo-Moses.”62 It is possible that such fragmentary documents from Qumran that feature Torah texts or figures were intended at some point to be part of the Mosaic corpus, much like early Greek lyric poetry was once understood to stand under the heading of “Homer.”63 The Qumran community even may have participated in this process of augmentation of the Mosaic corpus. “Sepher Mosheh,” 4Q249, is written in the cryptic writing seen in the initial instruction to the “sons of light” and may have been a community instruction attributed to Moses that was likewise meant for probationary members. Moreover, this and many other “parabiblical” Torah (and other) documents do not show the level of verbatim, spellinglevel agreement that is produced through visual copying. Indeed, even the earliest expansionist versions of Torah documents need not have been produced through visual copying. Rather, the author-tradents of these traditions could supplement the manuscript they were producing by drawing on Torah material they had memorized from elsewhere. All this is not to suggest that most Torah (or other) manuscripts at Qumran were produced from memory or that such texts were used exclusively in education. Already we saw in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and elsewhere how scribes often produced manuscripts through visual copying, and that appears to have been the case for most Qumran Torah manuscripts as well. Many errors in manuscripts are of the type produced by reading, and thus testify to either visual copying or at least production of a text through dictation. In addition,

61. For discussion and presentation of several parallel texts illustrating the types of expansions in these traditions see Carr, “Method,” 115–26, 131–39. 62. George Brooke, “Parabiblical Prophetic Narratives,” in Flint and Vanderkam, Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty Years, vol. 1, 273–74. 63. See especially Most, “Canon Fathers,” 48–49. For one good recent discussion of the anachronistic character of the present distinctions of “biblical” and “parabiblical” see George J. Brooke, “The Rewritten Law, Prophets and Psalms,” in Herbert and Tov, Bible as Book, 31–40, esp. 36.

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the Qumran finds include some Torah manuscripts that bear the specific orthographic and textual characteristics of a given tradition—pre-Samaritan and protorabbinic—thus suggesting a process that included visual reading and copying rather than pure memorization. Furthermore, Tov has noted some additional features of many such scrolls that suggest they were produced not by students but by accomplished scribes for ongoing reference. He has identified a series of what he terms “de luxe editions” characterized by large top and bottom margins, fine writing, (generally) minimal corrections, and the predominance of the protorabbinic text type. Yet even these scrolls can be correlated with education. Tov (following on earlier discussions by Liebermann) plausibly suggests that this type of manuscript may be the exact copies meant in the Talmud, when it says: “when you teach your son, teach him from a corrected copy.”64 Notably, over half of the de luxe copies of biblical manuscripts at Qumran are copies of books from the Torah or parabiblical Torah compositions.65 Thus the Qumran finds provide us with previously unparalleled access to information about the development and use of early Torah traditions. The origins of many traditions now found at Qumran probably lie well before the Qumran community. If the arguments summarized in earlier chapters are correct, many texts now at Qumran probably originated in the Jerusalem temple. The Damascus document (CD) VII, 15–17 appears to describe even the removal of texts from the temple, allegorically interpreting Amos 5:26–27 as referring to the taking of the “law” and the “prophets” from “Jerusalem” to Damascus” by the teacher of righteousness: As [God] said, “I will send into exile the Sikkut of your King and the Kiyyun of your images from tent to Damascus.” [Amos 5:26–27] The scrolls of the Torah are the Sikkut of the king, as it is said, “I will raise up the fallen booth [Sukkat] of David.” [Amos 9:11] . . . And the Kiyyune of images, “and the Kiyyun of the images,” are the scrolls of the prophets whose words Israel despised. Here the “scrolls” of the Torah and prophets are described as “going into exile” to “Damascus,” possibly an oblique reference to the transfer of scrolls from the Jerusalem temple (or similar deposit) to the Qumran community (or a precursor group). Whether or not the founders of the Qumran community actually removed Torah exemplars from the Jerusalem temple, we have seen that Qumran apparently had a number of priests who had access to various

64. Tov, “Biblical Texts from the Judean Desert,” 145–46, 160; “The Text of the Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek Bible Used in the Ancient Synagogues,” in The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins until 200 C.E: Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University, October 14–17, 2001, ed. Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 2003), 245–50. 65. Tov, “Biblical Texts from the Judean Desert,” 158 (seven out of twelve). Tov also lists eight de luxe copies of texts not in the Jewish or Christian Bibles, out of which three are refractions of Torah traditions (1QapGen; 4QComm Genc [4Q254]; 4QapocrLevib [4Q541]). No such nonbiblical texts were found in de luxe editions at other sites such as Murrabaat, Nahfi al H fi ever, or Massada. For a survey of the latter see Tov, “Ancient Synagogues,” 244.

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copies of Mosaic instruction. Some of these, such as 4QRP and 11QTemple, were redactions and reformulations of the Torah that were not generally followed by later communities. Still other forms, such as the pre-Samaritan or protorabbinic manuscripts, were adopted or augmented by later Jewish communities. Furthermore, Tov has argued plausibly that the paleo-Hebrew copies of both the Torah and the book of Job may represent “Sadducee” copies of a Mosaic corpus that included Job (cf. b. B.Bat. 14b–15a).66 Certainly, it is clear that many Torah and para-Torah texts were copied in the Qumran community itself. Thus many features of the finds at Qumran—the oral nature of many manuscript errors and Torah quotes at Qumran, reading divisions in Torah manuscripts, and production of new formulations of Torah traditions through use of prior memorized versions—all these elements would reflect the phenomenon of memorization of Torah in priestly scribal circles prior to the community’s emergence and in the community’s intensive educational process itself.

Instructional Use of Other Texts Besides “Wisdom” and Torah Texts As is well known, the Qumran community, though focused on Torah, explicitly recognized the importance of other documents as well. One way this is clear is the presence of some formulations that endorse the study of not only Torah but “prophets” as well. The very outset of the community rule talks of what God commanded through Moses and “his servants the prophets” (1QS 1:2–3), and the same pairing appears after the passage discussed earlier about “preparing the way,” making this equivalent to study of the “torah which God commanded through the hand of Moses in order to act in compliance with what has been revealed from age to age and according to what has been revealed through the prophets.” Earlier I cited a text, CD VII, 15–17, which likewise features the “scrolls of the prophets” prominently next to “scrolls of the Torah” in a discussion of the “exile” of such scrolls to Damascus for interpretation by the “Interpreter of the Torah.”67 Yet we must be careful about how we understand this category of “prophet.” Though many have been tempted to identify these “prophets” at

66. Tov, “Biblical Texts from the Judean Desert,” 151 (with citation of earlier arguments). Tov also notes that Job follows immediately on the Torah in some Peshitta manuscripts. For arguments that the Qumran community should be more specifically linked with the Sadducees see Lawrence Schiffman, “The New Halakhic Letter (4QMMT) and the Origins of the Dead Sea Sect,” BA 53 (1990): 64–73; Lawrence Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism, the Background of Christianity, the Lost Library of Qumran (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 83–89; cf. James Vanderkam, “The People of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Essenes or Sadducees?” BRev 7 (1991): 42–47. Alternatively to Tov’s interpretation, such manuscripts may derive from a Zadokite priestly cache that precedes any split between the Qumran Zadokites and an identifiable “Sadducee” (cf. Zadokite) group. 67. Other relevant references to the [Torah and] Prophets include 4Q381 (4Qnon-Canonical Psalmsb) frag. 69, lines 4–5, and 4Q504 (4QWords of the Luminariesa) 1–2, III, 12–13.

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Qumran with the rabbinic collection of “former and latter prophets,” this seems increasingly unlikely. 11QPsa XXVII, 11 includes a passage that, like some other Second Temple texts, identifies David as a “prophet” and thus takes Psalm compositions as “prophetic.”68 Overall, the Qumran texts, like other streams of Judaism I will discuss later, treat a wide range of our “prophetic” and non-“prophetic” books in a similar way.69 For example, the finds included a number of eschatological commentaries on books now found in the prophets section of the Bible: for example, the Nahum, Habbakuk, and Isaiah pesharim, but also a pesher on Psalms (4Q171) and a pesher on the apocalypse of weeks (4Q247), thus suggesting that a group at Qumran treated these (now) nonprophetic texts as prophetic divinatory literature.70 Moreover, the Qumran texts contain formal citations and allusions to a wide range of traditions, both those that are now part of the later rabbinic Bible and some that are not.71 The finds included more copies of books like Enoch and Jubilees than of many books that later found their way into the Hebrew Bible. Finally, these manuscripts of books that did/did not get included in the Hebrew Bible are not distinguished from each other by different scribal practices at Qumran. Rather, the scribes who produced the bulk of the Qumran manuscripts follow many of the same conventions in copying now nonbiblical books that later rabbinic traditions reserved for treatment of specifically biblical traditions. If our present biblical books were separated from these others, it is not reflected clearly in separate scribal practices for them.72 This is not to say that all texts at Qumran were equally important. We have already seen the primacy of Torah there. Certain other texts in the Jewish Bible, like Isaiah and Psalms, were copied and cited particularly often, while some other texts found at Qumran appear in only one copy and are rarely cited, if at all. Many texts now found in our Bible are already present in standardized text

68. The relevant primary texts and secondary literature are surveyed in David M. Carr, “Canonization in the Context of Community: An Outline of the Formation of the Tanakh and the Christian Bible,” in A Gift of God in Due Season: Essays on Scripture and Community in Honor of James A. Sanders, ed. Richard D. Weis and David M. Carr (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1996), 40–41. 69. I will discuss this phenomenon in other forms of Judaism later in chapter 11, pp. 264–67. 70. Eugene Ulrich, “From Literature to Scripture: Reflections on the Growth of a Text’s Authoritativeness,” DSD 10 (2003): 11. For an excellent survey of “mantic wisdom” at Qumran see James Vanderkam, “Mantic Wisdom in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” DSD 4 (1997): 336–53. For broader discussion of the phenomenon of revelatory interpretation of prophetic literature in Israel and nearby cultures see Armin Lange, “Interpretation als Offenbarung: Zum Verha¨ltnis von Schriftauslegung und Offenbarung in apokalyptischer und nichtapokalyptischer Literature,” in Wisdom and Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Biblical Tradition, ed. F. Garcı´a Martı´nez (Louvain, Belgium: Louvain University Press, 2003), 17–33. 71. Just a few examples include the reference to the Apocryphon of Joshua in 4Q175 (4QTestimonia) 22– 23, the citations of Jubilees in 4Q228 1, I, 9–10 and CD XIV, 3–4 (⫽4Q270 6 III, 17; 4Q271 4, II, 5) and allusions to (now) nonbiblical works in 4QAdmonFlood (4Q370) II.5–9 and 4Q Sapiential Work (4Q185) II, 3. See Eugene Ulrich, “The Status of the Biblical Texts in the Qumran Corpus and the Canonical Process,” in Herbert and Tov, Bible as Book, 22–24, and Armin Lange, “From Literature to Scripture: The Unity and Plurality of the Hebrew Scriptures in Light of the Qumran Library,” in One Scripture or Many? Canon from Biblical, Theological, and Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Chr. Helmer and Chr. Landmesser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), for these examples and others. 72. See Tov, “Scribal Practices,” 425–26; Tov, “Biblical Texts from the Judean Desert”; Tov, “Scribal Practices,” 425–26, esp. 144.

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forms, while other texts—particularly documents adapted or produced for direct regulation of the community (e.g., 1QM, 1QS)—seem to have been open to ongoing modification.73 The point is the following: the more we learn about the Qumran finds, the clearer it becomes that their concept of revelatory, oftenused, non-Torah books—“prophets”—was identical neither with the “Prophets” nor the “Prophets” and “Writings” sections of the later rabbinic, tripartite canon.74 The Torah of Moses—as interpreted by the community—was primary, while a variety of non-Torah books were also used widely in education, study, and recitation, whether books found in later Bibles (e.g. Isaiah, Jeremiah) or books that were not included in most Bibles (e.g. Enoch, Jubilees, 4QInstruction).75 As we look in a very brief way at these non-(Moses) Torah works, they show some of the characteristics of memorization and recitation seen in the Torah works discussed earlier. In particular, quotations of prophetic and other books often illustrate the transmission of these texts by way of memory, though some manuscript variants show evidence of visual copying as well. In some cases, we see evidence for variant editions of non-Torah works, again probably produced through reformulation—whether slight or radical—of works memorized verbatim rather than through supplementation of a visually copied work. Indeed, some works now labeled “parabiblical” may have been conceptualized as potentially authoritative performances or extensions of the biblical works they resemble, thus representing variant editions of those works. They, along with clearer examples of such variant editions, such as the MT of Joshua, as compared with the earlier 4QJosa, reflect an apparent continuing fluidity in the standardization of “biblical” traditions.76 At the same time, some traditions seem to have been preserved in a special way. As in the case of the Torah manuscripts, there are some de luxe editions of non-Torah works, probably used for reference in recitation and education.77 In addition, some manuscripts preserve reading divisions, again facilitating the study and memorization of

73. For the community rule see especially Metso, Textual Development, esp. 146–47. For the war scroll see the earlier study by C. H. Hunzinger, “Fragmente einer a¨lteren Fassung des Buches Milhama¯ aus Ho¨hle 4 von Qumran,” ZAW 69 (1957): 131–51, but cf. the updated overview of manuscripts in M. Baillet, “Les manuscrits de la regle de la guerre´,” RevQ 14 (1972): 217–26, and the argument for a more complex model of relationship between the manuscripts in J. Duhaine, “Etude comparative de 4QMa,” RevQ 77 (1990): 459–72. There is also a very helpful tabular comparison of parallel parts of CD in Jonathan G. Campbell, Use of Scripture, 153–55, that provides hard documentation of textual growth. Note, however, the apparent attempt to end modification of CD through labeling it as the “final interpretation” of Torah (4QDa 11 20–21//4QDe 7 II, 15; cf. CD XX, 6). 74. I will discuss the often-cited quotation from 4QMMT C10 in chapter 11, 265–66. 75. On this see the range of publications on Scripture and canon at Qumran by E. Ulrich, key early examples of which are collected in his book The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible, Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999); note also his “Qumran Biblical Scrolls,” along with discussions of Scripture by JamesVanderKam—recently “The Wording of Biblical Citations in Some Rewritten Scriptural Works,” in Herbert and Tov, Bible as Book, 41–56—and Armin Lange, “Status of the Biblical Texts,” “Literature to Scripture.” See the latter for a full overview of the rich literature on Scripture and Qumran. 76. This assertion, of course, does not presuppose that the variant versions of such texts found at Qumran are later than their (proto)MT counterparts. 77. Tov, “Biblical Texts from the Judean Desert,” 158–60.

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discrete units. More work needs to be done to explore the exact character of these parabiblical works and the extent to which their relationship with (now) biblical works can be explained by oral-written dynamics. Finally, we continue to see oral-written instructional themes in such nonTorah works, much as we did in books like Proverbs, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. For example, 4Q435–438, 4QBarki Napshi, is a liturgical-poetic work of the sort often memorized in early education, with four copies dated to the first century b.c.e. It contains references, particularly in 4Q436, to the educational process of memorization-ingestion of texts: You have preserved your law before me And your covenant has been confirmed for me, And you have prevailed over my heart . . . to walk in your paths You called my heart to attention and my kidneys you sharpened, So that they did not forget your laws. (4QBarki Napshi 1 I, 4–5)78 This passage plays on the word used in Deut 6:7 for constant recitation of Torah, shnn, in describing how God has sharpened, shnnth, the speaker’s kidneys so that he does not forget God’s laws. In this way the orality of the memorizing process is invoked by describing the divine process by which God inscribes God’s (written Torah) laws on the inward parts of the singer. Space does not allow a full analysis of other literature found at Qumran in order to assess possible links to the education-memorization process. Nevertheless, the broader body of work found there correlates well with the characteristics of educational-enculturational curricula seen elsewhere: transmitted in part through the still exclusive and numinous technology of writing, written in an ancient, noncontemporary idiom (Hebrew),79 yet memorized and (occasionally) augmented and reformulated by those who gain mastery of it. In addition, there are a number of innovations we have seen as particularly characteristic of the Hellenistic period: as in Egypt and the Mesopotamian Berossus, the central instructional works found at Qumran are attributed to figures from a far distant time: Moses, Enoch, and so on. The writings are understood to be divinely inspired. And the hyperarchaic language of new documents demonstrates both the difficulty of maintaining the indigenous language in the new environment and a nationalistic determination to do so.80

78. The translation is adapted slightly from that in Florentino Garcı´a Martı´nez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 915. 79. Exceptions would include Aramaic documents like Enoch, the Genesis Apocryphon, and so on, along with a few Greek manuscripts and texts. 80. Schniedewind, “Qumran Antilanguage” and “Linguistic Ideology in Qumran Hebrew,” in Diggers at the Well: Proceedings of a Third International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira, ed. T. Muraoka and J. F. Elwolde (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 245–55. More broadly on the use of Hebrew see Schwartz, “Language, Power and Identity.”

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Qumran Community, Textuality, and Hybridity One might conclude from the archaizing and intensely Hebrew elements of Qumran textuality that the community was a pure reaction against the GrecoRoman elements of the culture from which it had separated, but a closer look at the evidence shows that conclusion to be off the mark. Though the founders at Qumran may have been hostile toward some Hasmonean leaders or priests who may have introduced clearly Hellenistic elements into the temple and commonwealth, there are numerous aspects of the Qumran community itself that reflect Hellenistic structures of association and textuality. For example, Weinfeld has been foremost in showing ways in which the Qumran community resembles Hellenistic associations in its regulations surrounding the ruling council, high officials, ranking of members, probation and other processes for new members, and so on. Though Qumran has some features not found in such associations (e.g., the strong moral rhetoric, blessing/curse) and lacks some features often found in such associations (e.g., regulations surrounding burial, dues), it appears that the Qumran community is an exemplar of a Jewish community separate from the temple which adopted a form quite like that of a Hellenistic association. Weinfeld’s observations have been reinforced in recent years through Klinghardt’s and Smith’s observations of how the communal meal at Qumran resembled the common meal of a Hellenistic association, including the prominent use of sung texts and study-discussion during the period after the meal.81 Such after-meal use of texts at Qumran is just one way in which the circulation of texts there resembled that found elsewhere in the Hellenistic world. The overall structure of the curriculum also appears quite similar to the Hellenistic curriculum best attested in Egypt: proceeding from the alphabet through alphabetized name lists to literary texts. We even see at Qumran texts that generically correspond to the compilations of excerpts often used in GrecoRoman rhetoric. These include not only the “excerpted” biblical manuscripts found at Qumran but also and primarily the concatenations of biblical quotes— sometimes with brief interpretational notes added—such as those that go under the label of 4QTestimonia or 4QFloreligium. Though these compilations—like the community in which they were found—are not identical to their Greco-Roman counterparts, they are quite similar. They would support the focused ingestion of certain texts for the purpose of recitation, study, and debate.82 Thus, once again, as in the case of Ben Sira, we find in Qumran an example

81. Matthias Klinghardt, Gemeinschaftsmahl und Mahlgemeinschaft: Soziologie und Liturgie fru¨hchristlicher Mahlfeiern, Texte und Arbeiten zum neutestamentlichen Zeitalter (Tu¨bingen: Francke Verlag, 1996), 217–49; Dennis Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 152–58. 82. For an evocative comparison of Tanhfi umim (4Q176) with note extracts in Greco-Roman education and consideration of their role in an oral-written context see C. D. Stanley, “The Importance of 4QTanhumim (4Q176),” RevQ 15 (1992): 578–81.

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of cultural hybridity. The community apparently revered the Mosaic Torah and a broader corpus of ostensibly pre-Hellenistic writings and hyperarchaic Hebrew writings by their founder and subsequent authoritative leaders. Yet it did so within the context of a community with significant Hellenistic traits, including the way it structured education in those texts and used those texts in after-meal discussion and debate. In addition, like Ben Sira, the Qumran community seems to have participated in the ongoing privileging of the Mosaic Torah, giving it a special status much like that Homer enjoyed within the Hellenistic corpus. Such a privileging of Mosaic Torah had, of course, been known before in the depiction of Josiah’s reform or Ezra’s reading, but it appears to have received an additional impetus as Judaism encountered Hellenism and its Homer-centric curriculum. One other possible area of hybridity lies in the existence of the library itself. It stands as yet another example of the comprehensive collection of indigenous texts in the eastern Hellenistic world, alongside examples discussed in chapter 8 such as the Egyptian temples of Edfu, Tanis, and Tebtynus. Such temple libraries with their defined lists of authentic texts reflected an intensification of preservation of native traditions in a context where Greek texts, education, and royal display collections (e.g., the Alexandrian library) were dominant. Indeed, as argued earlier, the Qumran library itself may be, in part, derived from the Jerusalem temple library or at least the related libraries of its priestly leaders. As we have seen, indigenous textuality of the sort we see at Qumran (along with Egypt, Mesopotamia, and other Near Eastern cultures) was preserved in temples and among priests during the Hellenistic period under discussion here. Perhaps most important, Qumran represents a crucial model of one way a particularly radical Second Temple Jewish community structured its life apart from the temple. The early Qumran community is somewhat unusual for its time in renouncing participation in the Jerusalem temple.83 Yet in formulating a communal life as a Hebrew-archaizing Hellenistic association, Qumran models one example of nontemple Jewish life that will have partial parallels in later periods. It is dated to periods in both the centuries before the common era and the first century c.e. I turn now to a look at other forms of Second Temple Jewish textuality and education as attested at the latter end of that time, toward the very end of the Second Temple period.

83. E. P. Sanders, “The Dead Sea Sect and Other Jews: Commonalities, Overlaps and Differences,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context, ed. Timothy H. Lim (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 2000), 16–17.

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10 Synagogue, Sabbath, and Scripture New Forms of Hellenistic Jewish Textuality and Education Beyond the Temple

So far I have focused my discussion on forms of Hellenistic Jewish textuality and education that were either primarily based in the temple or (largely) implemented by former temple elites. At least some level of temple or priest connection persists in every sort of early Jewish textuality. Nevertheless, as this chapter will demonstrate, we also see—by the first century c.e. at the latest—an increasing distribution of non-temple-based forms of textuality in early Judaism, forms often linked with Sabbath gatherings at early synagogues. These forms are not opposed to the temple. Indeed priests are privileged insofar as they are present, and the Torah texts used in these contexts may well be checked against temple exemplars. Nevertheless, these contexts represent what might be termed emergent transtemple textuality and education: linked with the temple in important ways but increasingly sited outside the temple and staffed by nonpriests. Moreover, by the first century c.e. at the latest, we see the emergence of a hardened, clearly defined corpus of “Hebrew Scriptures” used in these and other contexts, a corpus generally referred to as “Torah and Prophets.”1 In the next chapter I will argue that the origins of this system, in fact, lie earlier. But I turn first to the clearest evidence for the contours of this system, evidence concentrated in the first century c.e. and immediately afterward.

1. I will address in the next chapter the often-argued position that a third group like the later “writings” category is already attested by this point.

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Initial Indicators from Archaeology and the New Testament of a Broadening of Textuality In the first century c.e., we see an impressive distribution of evidence of textuality and education outside Jerusalem. Numerous abecedaries and some slightly higher-level exercises have been found from the first and early second century c.e. Some such texts, such as the partial abecedary inside the lid of ossuary 6 at Jericho, probably reflect the attempts of some to use the magical qualities of writing to protect the contents of the tombs. Yet this does not mean that all such tomb abecedaries are magical. We also saw attestation in Egypt of education in funerary contexts, and it is possible that some abecedaries found in the walls or other visual surfaces of later Jewish tombs were part of education taking place in them, for example, the alphabetic inscription at Nahfi al Mihfi mas.2 In addition, we see several clearly educational exercises at Murabaat: a palimpsest with an abecedary and an account (10B), another parchment with an abecedary (11), and four ostraca with abecedaries revealing different levels of writing ability (73, 78–80). The Herodian has yet another abecedary (53), and Greek abecedaries were found at Masada (782– 783).3 Some higher-level exercises are attested also, once again ordered by the all-important alphabet. Puech has published an ostracon that he dates to the early second century c.e. that contains an abecedary along with a list of names ordered by the letters of the alphabet.4 A similar alphabetized list has also been found on two ostraca at Masada (608–609). Such standard lists of alphabetized names parallel the use, discussed earlier, of such lists in Greek Hellenistic education.5 Indeed, specifically Greek education is reflected in first-century Palestine as well, not only in the Greek abecedary from Masada but also in mentions of Homer and Greek education in early rabbinic texts.6 Such evi-

2. See two other late examples: the complete abecedary in the third-century c.e. catacomb 25 at Bet She
arim and the third- or fourth-century c.e. alphabet inscription on the wall at Khirbet Eitun. For citations and discussion see Hezser, Jewish Literacy, 85–86. 3. Hezser, Jewish Literacy, 85–88. 4. E. Puech, “Abecedarie et liste alphabe´tique de noms he´breux du de´but du IIe S. a.d.,” RB 87 (1980): 118–26. 5. Again, much of the foregoing builds on C. Heszer’s superb overview of the evidence in her Jewish Literacy, 85–88. Though her caution about identifying all finds as scribal exercises is well taken, her generalization of this skepticism to cover these finds as a whole is, I would argue, an overcorrection. The widespread documentation of the use of abecedaries in education, the poor quality of the writing in several examples, and the attestation of the use of alphabetized names in Hellenistic education suggest that most of these examples, particularly those on parchment and ostraca, are reflections of training in writing. Furthermore, we have no evidence of ancient training in reading that did not involve at least some practice in writing. There are no good precedents for the model she proposes of limited training in reading without some training in writing, and there are many contrary examples. 6. For brief mention of the rabbinic references to Jewish schools of Greek see Pieter van der Horst, “Jewish Poetical Tomb Inscriptions,” in Studies in Early Jewish Epigraphy, ed. Jan Willem van Henten, Pieter van der Horst (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 136–38, who also discusses several Jewish tomb inscriptions that show echoes of

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dence suggests that, despite the emergence and persistence of anti-Greek themes in Judaism, Greek education existed alongside Hebrew education in the late Second Temple period, perhaps often—as in the case of Josephus—in the same person. Archaeological evidence and texts from the New Testament confirm the sense that an increasing amount of reading and study took place outside the temple context. As a series of new studies of early synagogues has shown, the first century is the first time we see clear archaeological evidence for the emergence of synagogues. There is some yet earlier evidence for “houses of prayer” in Egypt, but it is unclear whether they functioned like later synagogues, or whether they originated as loci for a Diaspora sacrificial cult and evolved later into sites for study and prayer.7 By the first century, however, we see multiple sites of probable synagogues, and these appear to be major sites for reading and education outside the temple. Scrolls of Ezekiel and Deuteronomy were found in a synagogue at Masada.8 Moreover, the New Testament contains numerous references to Jesus and others “teaching” in the synagogue, including references to Sabbath reading in the synagogue of the Mosaic Torah (Acts 15:21), the Sabbath reading and exposition of Isaiah (Luke 4:16–27), and the Sabbath reading of “law and prophets” (Acts 13:15).9 There is some evidence of a synagogue or synagogues in Jerusalem as well. The famous Theodotus inscription comes from first-century Jerusalem10 and dedicates a synagogue constructed “for the reading of the law, and education in the precepts,” as well as for hospitality for foreigners.11 This synagogue may or may not have been identical with the “synagogue of the freedmen” described in Acts 6:9 or the synagogue of “Alexandrians” mentioned in Tosefta Megillah 2:17.12 This mix of evidence testifies to an apparent expansion in textuality and education outside the immediate temple circles so predominant in earlier Second Temple Jewish texts. Nevertheless, each sort of evidence mentioned so far

Homer (perhaps produced by artisans hired by Jews rather than reflecting Jewish education of the families themselves). For discussion of rabbinic references to Homer see Hezser, Jewish Literacy, 71. 7. J. Gwyn Griffiths, “Egypt and the Rise of the Synagogue,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 3–16; Runesson, Synagogue, 403–41. 8. For a survey of the relevant publications and discussion see Tov, “Ancient Synagogues,” 238–40. As Hezser points out, scrolls were not necessarily stored as a matter of course in early synagogues (Jewish Literacy, 163–64), so we should not presuppose that all synagogues would contain such remnants. 9. Other explicit references to reading and study of Scripture in the synagogue include Acts 17:2–3 and 10–11. For other references to Jesus and his apostles teaching in synagogues see Mark 1:21–28 (//Luke 4:31–37; cf. Matt 7:28–29); Mark 1:39 (//Matt 4:23; Luke 4:44); Mark 6:1–2 (//Matt 13:53–54); Matt 9:35; Luke 6:6 (cf. Mark 3:1; Matt 12:9); 13:10; John 6:59; 18:20; Acts 9:20; 13:5; 14:1; 17:2–3, 10–11, 17; 18:4–6, 26; 19:8. Still other references to synagogues can be found in loci such as Mark 5:22 (//Luke 8:41; Matt 9:18); Luke 7:5; John 9:22; 12:42; 16:2; Acts 22:19; 24:12; 26:11. 10. The dating has been disputed, but decisive arguments for a Second Temple dating are amassed in John S. Kloppenborg, “Dating Theodotus (CIJ II 1404),” JJS 51 (2000): 243–80. 11. CIJ II, 1404, lines 4–8. 12. These are often identified, yet Runesson (Synagogue, 226) notes that the synagogue in Acts is limited to freedmen who he understands to be immigrants permanently residing in Jerusalem.

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is problematic. It is often difficult to distinguish precisely when a given archaeological find is a “synagogue,” and—unless texts or inkwells are found there—it is usually impossible to specify what was done in such potential “synagogues.”13 The New Testament is more specific about what was done there, but the references are brief, and the narrators have occasionally faulty knowledge about what actually went on in Jewish communities. An inscription like the Theodotus one is more helpful, but it still says little about the process of education or the occasions of reading. So I turn now to a more extended look at education and textuality in Philo and Josephus, our two most extensive witnesses to late Second Temple Judaism.

Philo, Education and Scripture Though Philo is located in Egypt, he provides potential evidence about various forms of Jewish textuality toward the middle of the first century. One example that links to the preceding chapter of this book is his brief comments on “Essenes.” The ones Philo knew lived away from cities in villages and studied constantly. According to him, they set aside the Sabbath for special study— both reading and allegorical interpretation—at “holy places they call synagogues” (Good Person 80–83). The way Philo expresses this, he appears to think of “synagogue” as a relatively new term to his audience, but other texts make clear that he sees Sabbath study as an ancient and general Jewish practice, if not at a “synagogue” at least at a “place of prayer” (proseuche¯). In his “Life of Moses” he comments on Moses’ ancient institution of the Sabbath, noting that Jews dedicate the day to study of the “philosophy of our fathers” up to the present, gathering in “houses of prayer” (proseukte¯ria), which are, he says, “schools” (didaskaleia) of various virtues (Moses 2.216). In his allegorical study of creation, he again asserts that Moses established the Sabbath, “impressing it on the minds of all who were set under him,” to keep it holy by abstaining from work and dedicating the day to character-improving philosophy (Creation 128; Colson and Whitaker, LCL). Elsewhere, in his Special Laws, he comments yet again on the institution of Sabbath by Moses, depicting it as a day devoted to study of “philosophy” (philosophein), particularly the truths of duty to God and humanity, for all those “guided by his sacred instruction” (Spec. Laws 2.60–64). In Hypothetica, a study of priestly instruction, Philo goes further. He argues that Moses instituted the Sabbath in order that the entire people, not just the priests, would have “expert knowledge of their ancestral laws and customs” and be able to answer easily anyone who questioned them about their laws. Therefore, Philo says, Moses instructed them to “assemble” (sunagesthai) in the same place and hear the “laws” read and expounded by a “priest who is present or

13. Even when writings or writing implements are found in an archaelogical context, there is room for debate about what such findings tell us. But there is, at least, more to debate in such instances.

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one of the elders.” They were equipped for such assemblies by education in the family, where a husband teaches knowledge of “the laws” (tous nomous) to his wife, the father to his children, and the master to his slave (Hypothetica 7.10–13). Philo’s other mentions of the Sabbath indicate that he perceived both its practice and Judaism in general as under threat. Even as he articulates the purposes of Sabbath and Sabbath gatherings in Hellenistic terms like “philosophy” and “schools” promoting virtue, elsewhere he mentions Greek attacks on its practice (Dreams 2.123–129), and he argues that such attacks are violations of the Jews’ ancient right to practice their “ancestral customs” (ta patria), particularly their right to have “schools of temperance and virtue” in “synagogues,” as ensured through rulers like Augustus (Embassy 311–313). So also, in Embassy 155–157 he mentions protection of the rights of the Jews of Rome, permitting them to meet in their “places of prayer,” particularly on the Sabbath, when they “receive a training in their ancestral philosophy” (te¯n patrion paideuontai philosophian) and “receive instructions in the laws” (tas to¯n nomo¯n huphe¯ge¯seis). Still earlier in Embassy, Philo mentions that Gaius persecuted the Jews alone because they had opposed him, grounded as they were in “the sacred laws and unwritten customs.” This training led them to acknowledge God rather than flatter the falsely deified Gaius and to die willingly rather than break even one of their “ancestral traditions” (Embassy 115–117). As we look back on Philo’s descriptions of Jewish study and education, they appear to be shaped both by the actualities of Judaism of his time and by his wish to describe such actualities in a way that was intelligible and even attractive to his Greek audience. He is writing in Greek in a context where Judaism is under threat, and he describes Jewish synagogues/schools as Hellenistic-like cultivators of virtue, asserting that their focus is “philosophy.” Nevertheless, it is clear that the textual practices he describes here are not primarily Greek.14 The focus of these Sabbath gatherings is study not of Greek texts, but of Hebrew ones, especially the Torah. Philo himself focuses almost exclusively on the Torah in his own writings, citing it forty times as often as non-Torah biblical texts.15 His specific descriptions of the Sabbath curriculum often mention study of “laws,” “sacred laws,” or “laws of the fathers,” and he identifies Jews as those guided by Moses’ “sacred instruction” (Spec. Laws 2.64)—a probable reference to Mosaic Torah/teaching.16 To be sure, though Philo focuses on Torah, he knows non-Torah Jewish texts and knows of groups who emphasize them more. Not only does Philo himself occasionally cite non-Torah texts, but he also describes Essenes as a group who read broadly, depicting them as focusing on “the books” (tas biblous), rather than using the word “laws” or similar expressions he often uses else-

14. As mentioned in chapter 7, p. 198, Philo does redescribe Greek educational processes in Jewish terms in contexts like his Mating of the Species, but such texts are not under discussion here. 15. W. L. Knox, “A Note on Philo’s Use of the Old Testament,” Journal of Theological Studies 41 (1940): 30. 16. Philo also knows of a festival at Pharos dedicated to celebration of the translation of the Torah into Greek (Moses 2.41–43).

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where for Mosaic Torah (e.g. “the books,”Good Person 82). Furthermore, in the Contemplative Life he describes the Therapeutae, who keep the “memory of God alive and [do] not forget it” by taking with them into a cell “laws and oracles delivered through the mouth of prophets, and psalms, and anything else which fosters and perfects knowledge and piety”(Contempl. Life 25). Some scholars have considered the latter text about the Therapeutae to be evidence of the early existence of the rabbinic tripartite Bible, but it actually does not serve this function well.17 Rather Philo’s description of a loose, four-part categorization of books revered by the Therapeutae more resembles the permeable collection of books seen in Ben Sira and at Qumran, a collection that is headed by Torah and includes prophets and psalms but also contains other books that “foster and perfect knowledge.” Notably, as Klinghardt and Smith have argued, Philo’s Therapeutae also resemble the Qumran Essenes in their focus on a symposium-like common meal.18

Josephus, Education and Scripture We see a much more definite picture of scriptural boundaries at one point in Josephus, who writes toward the end of the first century. Nevertheless, in order to put this picture of Scripture in context, I turn first to an overview of what Josephus has to say about textuality and education. Like Philo, Josephus associates the Sabbath with study of texts. In Antiquities he describes how Moses established the Sabbath as a day devoted to learning the customs and the law (Ant. 16.43). In Against Apion he asserts that Moses ordained that Jews desert their other work and study “the Law” every week (Ag. Ap. 2.175). In his Jewish War, he again mentions such weekly meetings, along with the presence of a Torah scroll in a synagogue, when he tells about an incident in which Jews who had been attacked on the Sabbath in Caesarea removed “the laws” from the synagogue and withdrew to safety a few miles away (J.W. 2.289–292).19 In addition, Josephus singles out the Essenes as particularly interested in “(constitutional) writings of the ancients” (peri ta to¯n palaio¯n suntagmata; J.W. 2.136), and notes that they make new members swear to preserve the books of the sect (J.W. 2.142). As Lemaire points out, these mentions, along with those in Philo, suggest that the Essenes were distinguished from other Jews by their unusual level of interest in books.20

17. See, for example, Beckwith, Old Testament of the New Testament Church, 117–18; Julio C. Trebolle Barrera, “Origins of a Tripartite Old Testament Canon,” in McDonald and Sanders, Canon Debate, 130–31. 18. Klinghardt, Gemeinschaftsmahl, 183–216; Dennis Smith, Symposium to Eucharist, 158–59. 19. In addition, in his autobiography he mentions a typical midday meal on the Sabbath, an occasion that may have involved a symposium-like after-meal discussion of texts, but this is not explicitly mentioned (Life, 277–279). 20. Lemaire, “L’Enseignement Esse´nien,” 192.

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Josephus is most explicit about education, both his own and that of other Jews. He himself claims in his autobiography to have “excellent memory and understanding.” More specifically, he describes being educated—along with his brother—by his priestly father, Matthias, winning accolades for his “love of letters” (to philogrammaton) and being consulted by priests and other leaders for information about the law (Life 7–9). He thus excelled in Jewish learning, possessing “expert knowledge” of “the laws”/“customs of the fathers” (Life 198), “exact knowledge of the law,” and ability to interpret “holy scriptures” (Ant. 20.264). But he also excelled in his knowledge of Greek prose and poetry (Ant. 20.263).21 Josephus’s more general comments about Jewish education are the most explicit so far in claiming universal Jewish learning of the law, a learning that— as in Philo—is often depicted as grounding an unwavering Jewish obedience to the law. In Against Apion, a clearly polemical work, he insists that Jews pride themselves above all in their education of children, which involves observance of the laws and pious practices (Ag.Ap. 1.60). Toward this end, “the Law” requires that all children “be taught letters” (grammata paideuein) and “learn both the laws and deeds of their forefathers, in order that they may imitate the latter, and, being grounded in the former, may neither transgress nor have any excuse for being ignorant of them” (Ag.Ap. 2.204; Thackeray, LCL).22 This sort of explicit assertion of universal Jewish literacy is new in Judaism. Earlier we saw biblical texts in Deuteronomy and elsewhere that posed universal Torah memorization as an ideal but did not yet speak specifically of instruction in reading. Even Philo speaks only of general education in the laws of Moses. But in this work Josephus now speaks of a universal Jewish literacy that has its closest parallels in Hellenistic ideals of the same. As Baumgarten, Hezser, and others have argued, Josephus probably represents more an emergent ideal than reality.23 We saw a similar phenomenon of ideal versus reality in Hellenistic education.24 Still, Josephus, combined with less explicit statements about general education in Philo, represents a new level of emphasis, appearing for the first time in Judaism, on the idea of universal (male) education within the people of God. Elsewhere Josephus’s descriptions often focus on education in the “law,” which he asserts is the beginning point of education (Ant. 4.211). As a result of their education, Josephus claims, Jews can recite the laws “more readily than their own name.” Their thorough grounding in law from early on has ensured that the laws are “engraven on [their] souls”(Ag. Ap. 2.178). So also, in

21. In this he parallels earlier claims in the Letter of Aristeas (121–122) for the abilities of the translators of the Septuagint. 22. Translation from H.S.J. Thackeray, trans., Josephus I: The Life, Against Apion, LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 375. 23. Albert I. Baumgarten, “The Torah as Public Document in Judaism,” Studies in Religion 14 (1985): 18– 19; Flourishing of Jewish Sects, 121; Hezser, Jewish Literacy, 41–47, esp. 46–47. 24. See the discussion in chapter 7, pp. 187–90.

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Antiquities, Josephus describes the seventh-year reading of the law to all the people at the Feast of Tabernacles as resulting in its being “graven on their hearts and stored in the memory so that they can never be effaced” or “so graven on their hearts through the hearing of that which they command that they will for ever carry within their breasts the principles of the code”(Ant. 4.210–211). In these ways Josephus appropriates ancient language for memorization in education to describe how Jewish ingestion of law results in steadfast Torah obedience. Josephus’s fullest description of Jewish Scriptures is the following oft-cited passage in Against Apion: We do not possess myriads of inconsistent books, conflicting with one another; but our books, those which are justly believed, are only twenty-two, and contain the record of all time. Of these, five are the books of Moses. . . . From the death of Moses down to Artaxerxes who followed Xerxes as king of Persia, the prophets after Moses wrote the events of their own times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life. . . . We have given practical proof of our reverence for our own Scriptures. For although such long ages have now passed, no one has ventured to add, or to remove, or to alter anything, and it is an instinct with every Jew, from the day of his birth, to regard them as the decrees of God, to abide by them, and (if need be) cheerfully die for them. Time and again ere now the sight has been witnessed of prisoners enduring tortures and death in every form in the theaters, rather than utter a single word against the laws and the things written with these. (Thackeray, LCL, Ag.Ap. 1.38–41, adapted)25 Several aspects of this quotation are not new, either with respect to Josephus or to other descriptions of Jewish literature or of Near Eastern educational curricula. The formula of neither adding nor subtracting from a collection was already seen in the Sumero-Akkadian curriculum and a Deuteronomic refraction of it.26 As elsewhere in Judaism, this body of literature is headed by the Mosaic Torah and consists of the unchanging “decrees of God.” And in the next chapter I will present earlier precedents for the delimitation of the Scriptures to include only those “prophets” from the death of Moses to the time of Artaxerxes.27 Even Josephus’s final categorization of the works—“laws and the things written with these” (tous nomous kai tas meta touto¯n anagraphas)—corresponds to bipartite descriptions of Jewish literature as made up of Torah and

25. Thackeray, Josephus I, 179, 181. 26. Note also that Josephus claims a similar unchanging character for the Greek translation of the Torah, asserting that it has been carefully corrected back to the original whenever copies deviated. Ant. 12.108–9. 27. This is discussed more in chapter 11, pp. 264–65.

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non-Torah works (e.g., Ben Sira, Qumran).28 Finally, Josephus’s assertion that all Jews revere these texts from birth is consistent with his strong assertions elsewhere of general Jewish education. What is unprecedented about Josephus’s description here is that he numbers and lists the books included in this Jewish body of literature, and he contrasts this clearly bounded Jewish Scripture with the more fluid and contradictory Hellenistic body of literature. As we saw, the Hellenistic curriculum was fairly defined already, focused particularly on Homer and a small group of oft-used works, though including a scattering of less-used works as well. Yet there were some examples of a more clearly delimited indigenous curriculum in Hellenistic Egypt, where Egyptian priests apparently went further than the Greek teachers in defining a bounded literature at the heart of their scribal apparatus, a numbered list of ancient Egyptian works collected in their temples. Josephus’s arguments here are a similar promotion of a sharply defined indigenous scriptural collection. He asserts that Judaism exceeds Hellenism in revering a clearly defined group of works, twenty-two in number, that has not changed through “long ages.” The number 22, significantly, corresponds to the numbering of the Hebrew alphabet.29 This connection is made explicit in a number of early church fathers, several of whom, like Origen, knew Hebrew or were in contact with Jewish authorities, and some of whom quote a Greek form of Jubilees that apparently included a likening of the number of books in the Jewish canon to the number of letters in the alphabet, for example, “all the works are together 22, equal in number with the 22 Hebrew letters and the 22 Hebrew books and the 22 founding fathers from Adam to Jacob as is stated in the Little Genesis.”30 Many of these church fathers long postdate the Second Temple period under discussion here. Nevertheless, as Roger Beckwith argues, it is unlikely that these theologians would have made up a tradition that the Old Testament would correspond to the twenty-two-letter Hebrew alphabet since most of them were writing in Greek, a language with a twenty-four-letter alphabet. Moreover, they appear to be quoting from a common Greek translation of Jubilees, indeed a translation that had not yet been corrected to a shorter Hebrew text of the sort found at Qumran. Beckwith argues that this longer Greek translation of Jubi-

28. Some have wished to see in his initial three-part description of the contents of this twenty-two-book Scriptures—five books of Moses, thirteen books of prophetic history, four books of hymns and precepts—evidence for the existence of the rabbinic tripartite collections of Torah, prophets, and writings. As others have pointed out, however, Josephus’s numbering and description of contents of these three parts do not correspond to those of the rabbinic Tanak (see recently, Steve Mason, “Josephus and His Twenty-Two-Book Canon,” in McDonald and Sanders, Canon Debate, 110–27). Instead, Josephus’s overview of the materials contained in what he later characterizes as the “Torah and allied documents” appears intended to clarify the contents of this collection to a Greek audience unfamiliar with any of the books. For more discussion see Carr, “Canonization in Community,” 52–53. 29. In this numbering, the letter shin/sin is counted as one unpointed letter. 30. The quotation (from Georgius Syncellus) is from Beckwith, Old Testament of the New Testament Church, 237. Beckwith includes an extensive discussion of the earlier treatment of these quotations by Charles, along with correlation of those older arguments with the fragments of Jubilees from Qumran (235–40).

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lees, if it existed, probably dates to the first century b.c.e. and thus provides evidence that the twenty-two-letter numbering of the Hebrew Scriptures was already current in the Hasmonean (or early Herodian) period. This is potentially significant for my discussion in the next chapter of the emergence of these Scriptures.31 What is important here is the idea that Josephus’s presentation of a twentytwo-book scriptural corpus links to the alphabetic principle standing at the outset of and interwoven through Hellenistic Jewish and Greek education: abecedaries, alphabetized lists of names, and acrostics. The numbering cited in Josephus (and possibly in Greek Jubilees) takes an alphabetic principle common to both Greek and Hebrew education and allows polemicists like him to claim a more ancient origin for the Jewish Scriptures than that of the body of Greco-Roman literature. Moreover, the numinous qualities of the alphabetic system in an oral-written culture—such as are seen in the use of abecedaries as wards in funerary contexts—may have buttressed claims like Josephus’s for the antiquity and unchanged character of Jewish Scriptures. Later writers did not always agree in how they construed the Jewish Scriptures as made up of twenty-two books, but ongoing influence of the principle of a twenty-two -book, alphabet-like numbering is demonstrated by their various attempts.32 Preserved in 2 Esdras, 4 Ezra provides additional evidence for a Jewish scriptural corpus numbering twenty-something books, though it presumes the numbering of twenty-four books seen in later rabbinic tradition rather than the twenty-two seen in Josephus.33 In this work Ezra, the legendary recipient of the Mosaic Torah, reports how he was given a drink that increased his wisdom and memory, after which he dictated to five men a set of ninety-four books, writing in a script—probably Hebrew—that they did not know (2 Esd 14:38–42). Of these ninety-four books, he was instructed by God to make twenty-four publicly available, while keeping the remaining seventy for “the wise among your people”(2 Esd 14:45–46). The overall focus of the passage is on justifying the higher learning found in the seventy private books of revelation, which contain “the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the river of knowledge”(2 Esd 14:47). Nevertheless, the passage acknowledges in passing the existence of a public twenty-four-book body of Scriptures, one available not just to the “wise” but to the “worthy and unworthy.” Strangely enough, the number 24 in 4 Ezra and later (Hebrew) rabbinic texts corresponds to the twenty-four-letter numbering of the Greek alphabet, even as the numbering of twenty-two in Josephus and the Greek fathers cor-

31. Beckwith, Old Testament of the New Testament Church, 235–36. 32. For a survey of some of the attempts see Duane Christensen, “Josephus and the Twenty-Two-Book Canon of Sacred Scripture,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 29 (1986): 38–44. Christensen argues that Esther was a particularly problematic book up into the later period and that the number of twenty-four was partly spurred by the need for an alternative numbering that could incorporate Esther. 33. For citation of relevant mentions of twenty-four books in Jewish Scriptures in Jerome (as an alternative numbering) and various rabbinic texts see Ludwig Blau, Zur Einleitung in die Heilige Schrift (Budapest: Adolf Alkalay, 1894), 6–9; Beckwith, Old Testament of the New Testament Church, 120, 240.

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responds to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.34 Nevertheless, the numbers twenty-two and twenty-four are close to each other, and both correspond to the alphabetic principle so central to education in both the Greek and Hebrew systems. Moreover, the emphasis in 4 Ezra on the public character of the twenty-four books corresponds to Josephus’s strong claims for the antiquity and widespread character of the twenty-two book Jewish scriptural canon. To be sure, there is still some fluidity. The numbering of books is not yet fixed— twenty-two versus twenty-four—and the emphasis on the greater wisdom in the seventy secret books reflects ongoing debate about the significance of this body of public Scriptures. Still, the correlation of 4 Ezra and Josephus on the alphabet-like numbering and public character of Jewish Scriptures is significant. This comparison with 4 Ezra shows that it would be wrong to attribute Josephus’s entire presentation of Jewish education and literature to his polemical aims. To be sure, writing in Greek and in conflictual settings, Josephus— like Philo—often molds his presentation to present Judaism positively in terms of Hellenistic education and textuality. Nevertheless, instances like the aforementioned correlation with 4 Ezra suggest that some of Josephus’s claims reflect a broader situation, one in which relatively disparate groups in the Judaism of his time already accept a similar body of Jewish Scripture, numbered in correspondence with one or another alphabetic scheme and including both Torah and a body of non-Torah books. Furthermore, Josephus appears to think he can make credible claims for the antiquity of this alphabetically defined body of scriptures, claims that would disqualify other points he makes in his arguments against Apion if they could be disproven easily.35 Therefore, we should not assume that this twenty-two- or twenty-four-book body of Scripture first emerged in the late first century, although it is most clearly attested then. I turn now to discussion of the most probable context for the initial establishment of this hardened, alphabetically based concept of Jewish Scriptures: the events surrounding the emergence of the Hasmonean monarchy and its expansion into previously non-Judean areas.

34. Beckwith (Old Testament of the New Testament Church, 250–52) decisively links the twenty-two-book numbering to the numbering of the Hebrew alphabet (perhaps because of the possible citations from Greek Jubilees), despite its attestation primarily in Greek-language works. Nevertheless, he rejects the idea that the twenty-four-book numbering is linked to the numbering of the Greek alphabet because of the lack of attestation of twenty-four books in works of Alexandrian origin (esp. Philo) and certain considerations regarding the probable ways in which the Alexandrian Jews would have counted their books. Since we have no explicit statement that the twenty-four-book numbering of the Jewish Scriptures is linked to the Greek alphabet, it is more difficult to prove that there was such a link. Nevertheless, we also should not presuppose such a chasm between “Greek speaking Jews” and “Aramaic speaking Jews” (Beckwith, Old Testament of the New Testament Church, 250) that it would be impossible for Jewish scholars of the Roman period, even Jews who knew Aramaic or Hebrew (and often Greek), to prefer a numbering corresponding to the Greek alphabet to list the Hebrew Scriptures prominent in Jewish education. As Hezser shows (Jewish Literacy, 85, 90–94), there is good evidence for education in Greek alongside education in Hebrew, even in contexts like Masada and well into the rabbinic period. This produced figures like Josephus, who were thoroughly shaped by both Hebrew and Greek alphabetically based education. 35. For this point and other discussion of this passage in the broader context of Josephus’s writings see Mason, “Josephus and His Canon.”

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11 The Origins of Scripture as a Hellenistic-Style Anti-Hellenistic Curriculum

In an article I wrote in 1996, I argued that the destruction of the temple and its immediate aftermath was the key period for the consolidation of the Scriptures reflected in Josephus and 4 Ezra;1 this chapter will modify that position somewhat. I will argue here that the origins of (1) widespread Hebrew study outside the temple and (2) hardened Scriptures lie earlier. Both developments were integrally connected to the Hasmoneans’ promotion of a purportedly antiGreek and pro-Jewish culture, a highly hybrid construction that reflected forms of Greek culture even as it—initially—opposed that culture. Though some forms of Judaism did not accept key parts of this construction (e.g., the anti-Hasmonean, Qumran community), the textual-educational system that was part of it was decisive in shaping much of subsequent Judaism. Since this argument is complex, I start with an anticipation of its main point and parts. I will be arguing in what follows that the emergent Jewish Scriptures—like those seen in Egypt—originated as a hybrid, indigenous response of Judean royal-temple elites to Greek textuality and education. More specifically, the Jewish Bible, so clearly established in the first century c.e., originated in the second century b.c.e. as a purportedly pre-Hellenistic deposit of sacred Hebrew texts, a deposit initially standing opposed to and distinguished from the corpus of Greek educational texts. This collection of “Hebrew Scriptures” was promoted by the Hasmonean royal priesthood as part of a broader consolidation of their culturally diverse kingdom, a consolidation that was partly made possible through 1. Cf. Carr, “Canonization in Community,” 34–58.

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the specification of a clearly bounded Hebrew educational curriculum consisting of Torah (above all) and a defined group of non-Torah texts understood as “Prophets” but including books like Psalms that are not included in the later rabbinic “Prophets” section of the Tanach. As we see in cases like the Qumran Essenes, this attempt at textual consolidation did not succeed equally with all groups. Moreover, it appears to have existed alongside ongoing Greek and Greek-like cultural forms in Judaism, including ongoing Jewish participation in Greek education and textuality. Nevertheless, this broader Torah-Prophets Hebrew scriptural collection becomes—by the first century c.e. at the latest—a point of orientation for diverse groups in Judaism, groups by that point hostilely engaged with another empire, Rome.

The Issue of “Greek” versus “ ‘Hebrew” in Early Second-Century Sources It should be made clear at the outset that several recent studies have argued for the patently constructed character of literary depictions of the Hasmonean presentation of their rebellion as anti-Hellenistic (e.g., 1 and 2 Maccabees). As one important study notes, “the cultural contest, in short, has been overplayed.”2 The reasons for skepticism about the prominence of anti-Hellenism as a factor in the Maccabean rebellion are various. As Heinemann already argued in the 1930s, there is a significant discrepancy between the most clearly “Hellenistic” initiatives of Jason in the mid-170s and the rebellion under Judas Maccabeus in the early 160s. If “Hellenism” was so problematic, why does rebellion only occur under Menelaus, who is accused of many crimes in 1 and 2 Maccabees but not explicitly Hellenistic measures? In addition, even Jason’s Hellenism appears to have been overblown in the sources, starting with the mere founding of a gymnasium and the wearing of Greek-style hats in 2 Maccabees, before new crimes of nudeness and the reversal of circumcision are added in sources like 1 Maccabees, Jubilees, and Josephus. Once the rebellion is actually underway, the sources appear to depict it as a battle for Judaism rather than an attack on Hellenists. The Hasmoneans themselves appear to rise to power through studied collaboration with Seleucid rulers, and their supporters appear to be drawn broadly from various groups of the time. Indeed, even the supposedly anti-Hellenist Hasideans appear to have been willing to ally with the “Hellenist” priest Alcimus (1 Macc 7:13–18), and other figures associated with the Hasmoneans, such as Eupolemus, would have been thoroughly educated in Hellenistic texts and rhetoric, so that they could function successfully as liaisons to the Romans (1 Macc 8:17; 2 Macc 4:11). Numerous aspects of the Hasmonean movement are thoroughly imbued with Hellenism, including but not confined to their development of a fake genealogy linking

2. Erich S. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 9.

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the Judeans to Sparta,3 the engraving of the resolution of 140 b.c.e. on tablets, the minting of coins, and the use of Greek documents like 2 Maccabees in royal propaganda. Yet the Hasmonean kings, despite their Torah observance, are untraditional in many respects, taking on the high priesthood despite their exposure to corpse impurity and lack of Zadokite lineage. Such aspects, it is argued, would not be typical of a monarchy founded primarily on a traditionalist opposition to “Hellenism.”4 These arguments have merit, but there are indicators that such an approach would be mistaken insofar as it posits that opposition to Hellenistic culture was no factor at all in the emergence of the Hasmoneans. On the contrary, it appears to have been important on two levels. First, Hellenistic textuality and enculturation appear to have been one important factor in the emergence of the Hasmonean monarchy. Second, and more important, the construct “anti-Hellenism” appears to have been key in the Hasmoneans’ own presentation of themselves, even as their monarchy bore many clear—to our eyes—links to Hellenistic culture.5 I start with several indicators that Hellenistic enculturation and textuality probably were important elements in the eventual emergence of the Hasmonean monarchy. In my discussion of Egypt I pointed to indicators of a culture clash organized along the lines of Greek versus non-Greek. On the one hand, there was evidence of Greek disdain for non-Greeks. On the other hand, we saw the solidification of indigenous non-Greek temple collections and the emergence of priestly anti-Greek literature. Such opposition to overlords had long been present in Egypt (and elsewhere), but it received a new anti-Greek coloring in Ptolemaic- and Roman-period Egyptian resistance documents. With the possible exception of early layers of Enoch, such opposition to Hellenism does not appear to have been as prominent in third-century Ptolemaic Palestine. Nevertheless, it appears to have received a new impetus with the shift of Jerusalem/Judah to Seleucid rule and, in particular, Antiochus IV’s introduction—mostly in the Syrian area—of the older Hellenistic practice of city foundings. Though such foundings do not appear to have been prominent in the immediate area of Palestine, they probably formed the background both for (1) the attempt of Jerusalem elites like Jason to seize the moment and take steps toward transferring Jerusalem to a more open Hellenized city model and (2) Antiochus IV’s later readiness—perhaps following the lead of some local au-

3. Shaye Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 139. See 1 Macc 12:5–23; Josephus Ant. 12.225–227. 4. The foregoing is a brief overview of more detailed arguments to be found in Eddy, King Is Dead, 238– 44; Jonathan Goldstein, “Jewish Acceptance and Rejection of Hellenism,” in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, ed. E. P. Sanders et al. (London: SCM, 1981), 64–87; Robert Doran, “Jason’s Gymnasium,” in Of Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible, Intertestamental Judaism, and Christian Origins Presented to John Strugnell on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Harold W. Attridge, John J. Collins, and Thomas H. Tobin (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990), 106–8; Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism, 1–40; Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 33–35. 5. A point made well in T. Rajak, “The Hasmoneans and the Uses of Hellenism,” in A Tribute to Geza Vermes: Essays on Jewish and Christian literature and History, ed. Philip R. Davies and Richard T. White (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 261–80.

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thorities—to enforce the Hellenization of Jerusalem through a thoroughgoing attack on Torah-observant Judaism. There is precedent elsewhere in the Hellenistic world of indigenous cultures self-deconstructing through the adoption of Greek identity and culture by their local elites.6 Moreover, more detailed analyses of the Hellenistic crisis by Bickerman, Martin Hengel, and Robert Doran have argued persuasively that 1 and 2 Maccabees reflect a similar initiative in Judaism.7 We already saw in the last chapter how the gymnasium was an organizing center and pinnacle of Hellenized communities in Egypt and elsewhere, such that Jason’s founding of such an institution would have represented a crucial step forward in the education-enculturation of the Jerusalem elite as Hellenists. Furthermore, 1 and 2 Maccabees depict these leaders in ways that suggest that their aim was the education-enculturation of the elite of Jerusalem away from the separatist aims of Torah and toward the world citizenship typical of Hellenistic education: “Let us go and make a covenant with the Gentiles round about us, for since we separated from them many evils have come on us” (1 Macc 1:11).8 Though later sources like 1 Maccabees and Josephus caricature this initiative in terms drawn from the biblical tradition, Doran persuasively argues that the thing at issue here is the gymnasium as a symbol of a broader process of education-enculturation that includes both the athletic elements so central to the Hellenistic gymnasium and the textual elements associated with both gymnasiums and the rest of the Hellenistic educational system. The emergence of the Jerusalem gymnasium was the culmination of a longer process of gradual and largely unproblematic adoption of Greek textuality in Jewish culture, not only in the Diaspora but also in Palestine; not only in nonpriestly circles but also—as in Jason’s case—in (Zadokite) priestly groups. The founding of a gymnasium would not be the beginning of the establishment of a Greek education-enculturational system, but its culmination and consolidation through the adoption of the one element that most distinguished Hellenistic from Jewish education: athletics.9 The impetus toward overcoming Jewish separatism through intensified institutionalization of Hellenistic enculturation did not end with Jason’s departure. There is no report of the closing of the gymnasium under Menelaus, and Josephus depicts him as supported by the Hellenized Tobiads and respon-

6. Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 25–27. 7. Elias Joseph Bickerman, The God of the Maccabees: Studies on the Meaning and Origin of the Maccabean Revolt, trans. Horst R. Moehring (Leiden: Brill, 1979 [originally 1937]); Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 267–309; Doran, “Jason’s Gymnasium,” and “The High Cost of a Good Education,” in Hellenism in the Land of Israel, ed. John J. Collins and Gregory E. Sterling (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 94–115. The material that follows represents a synthesis of some insights from the studies cited earlier. For a helpful overview and assessment of the debate see Lester Grabbe, The Persian and Greek Periods, vol.1 of Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 247–58. 8. Bickerman, God of the Maccabees, 84–86; Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 299–300. 9. Doran, “Jason’s Gymnasium”; “High Cost,” 106–15. Note also the discussion of the depiction of this conflict in 2 Maccabees by Martha Himmelfarb, “Judaism and Hellenism in 2 Maccabees,” Poetics Today 19 (1998): 27–30.

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sible for instigating Antiochus IV’s attack on Judaism (Ant. 12.384–385).10 In addition, Bickerman and Hengel argue persuasively that only the initiative of a local party schooled in the importance of specifically Jewish traditions could explain the peculiar turn of Antiochus IV’s attack on Jewish observance, an attack that conspicuously contrasts with the treatment of similarly Jewish communities like the one in Samaria.11 Notably, this attack appears to have focused not only on Jewish practices like avoiding pork but also on Jewish textuality. Both 1 and 2 Maccabees report an order by Antiochus for the Jews to forsake the laws of their fathers/God (1 Macc 1:49; 2 Macc 6:1), and 1 Maccabees reports that those who forsook the law attempted to systematically destroy all copies of the Torah (1:56) and kill anyone possessing a copy or obeying it (1:57–58). In sum, these sources appear to reflect the unfolding of an increasingly hostile encounter that included a conflict between two forms of text-supported education-enculturation: (1) some form of Jewish education-enculturation into Torah observance, and (2) education-enculturation into a more broadly defined Hellenistic identity. Such education-enculturation seems to have coexisted in earlier Palestine, at least among its more elite groups, and Hellenistic education appears to have continued after the revolt, despite the anti-Hellenistic protestations of some post-Hasmonean documents.12 What was new was this: the movement under Jason to make Greek education-enculturation more central in Jerusalem, and the eventual push by Antiochus IV—with the cooperation and even initiative of certain elites like Menelaus—to eradicate Torahfocused, Hebrew identity. However much this is true—and many aspects of the foregoing outline have long been available in works like Bickerman’s and Hengel’s—what is even more clear is that the Hasmoneans and some of their supporters stylized their own monarchy as an anti-Hellenizing construct. It may be clear to us now just how “Hellenized” the Hasmoneans and their supporters were. We may realize now that the “Hellenistic crisis” was more confined than and differently focused from the version of it that is presented in books like 1 and 2 Maccabees. Nevertheless, key aspects of the Hasmoneans’ self-presentation suggest that they found it useful to develop or augment the concept of “Hel-

10. Cf., however, Klaus Bringmann, Hellenistische Reform und Religionsverfolgung in Juda¨a: Eine Untersuchung zur ju¨disch-hellenistischen Geschichte (175–163 v. Chr.), Abhandlungen der Akadamie der Wissenschaften (Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1983), 93–96, who argues that the Hellenistic reform ended with Jason’s departure and Menelaus’s accession to the high priesthood. He argues this from the silence about the gymnasion in the rest of Maccabees and on the basis of his reading of the letter in 2 Macc 11:27–33, which departs from typical Hellenistic expressions in referring to the local council of leaders and encourages them to follow Menelaus in returning to Jewish foods and laws. This letter certainly does presuppose that the elements of persecution of Jewish observance are over, but much of Bringmann’s argument depends on the silence of the texts rather than explicit testimony that Menelaus ended earlier initiatives. Bringmann (esp. 130–32) does emphasize Menelaus’s role in bringing about the persecution through replacing worship of YHWH with worship of the Syrian Lord of Heaven revered by the locally stationed Syrian troups but argues that this was exclusively a desparation measure by a leader who had lost every possible form of support from the local populace. 11. For discussion see Bickerman, God of the Maccabees, 108–11; Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 283–89 (with citation of other representatives of this view in vol. 2, 192, n. 203). 12. Here again C. Hezser’s survey is important (Jewish Literacy, 90–94).

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lenizer” as a key opponent in their founding myths. Multiple aspects of Hasmonean rule appear to reflect an emerging form of Hellenized, anti“Hellenistic,” Torah-observant Judaism. As such they represent a particularly hybrid mix of (1) anti-Greek propaganda along with promotion and extension of a stylized non-Greek indigenous culture, and (2) the use of Greek forms to advance such propaganda and culture within a monarchy adopting significant elements of Hellenistic culture. Indeed, it may be that the prominent antiHellenism of later Hasmonean and Jewish traditions may have been prompted in part by anxiety about their ongoing and broad linkage to Hellenistic cultural forms.13 Others have surveyed the anti-Hellenizing elements of the Hasmonean self-presentation. Space does not allow a full review here. Instead, in what follows I will focus particularly on those traditions surrounding Hasmonean rule that bear particularly on how this hybrid Hellenistic/anti-Hellenism mix shaped emergent Jewish education and textuality. My argument is that this peculiar mix provided a crucial impetus for at least two developments: (1) the shaping and hardening of the Jewish Scriptures into a purportedly preHellenistic collection, and (2) the studied use of this hardened collection as the focal point of a Greek-like, but Hebrew, educational process, a process privileging Judean elites and others educated in Hebrew Scriptures amid an increasingly expansive Hasmonean kingdom. As Martha Himmelfarb and Tessa Rajak have shown, the foregoing postulated contradictions between Hellenistic and anti-Hellenistic elements emerge with particular clarity in 2 Maccabees. The text is written in Greek and reflects the author’s thorough education in the Greek literary tradition. It is saturated with Greek literary genres, and it promotes—albeit with Hebrew examples and constant echoes of Jewish Scriptures like the Aqedah—Greek educational and character values like nobility, reason, beauty, self-control, and the ability to sacrifice familial relationships.14 Moreover, the author presents his own Greek text as a possible focus for memorization of the type we have seen elsewhere in Greek education, with the author styling the story so it “delights the ears” (15:39) and shaping it “to please those who wish to read, to make it easy for those who are inclined to memorize, and to profit all readers” (2 Macc 2:25). In these ways, 2 Maccabees is a Jewish example, from the Hasmonean period, of Greek-language oral-written textuality. This text, however, depicts the entire sequence of events leading up to the defeat of Nicanor as originating in a misguided attempt to Hellenize the Jewish people, starting with Jason’s shift of the people “to the Greek way of life” (pros ton helle¯nikon charakte¯ra) and concomitant forsaking of the law (2 Macc 4:10–17; cf. 1:7). This then precedes Lysias’s (eventual) attempt to make Jerusalem “a home for Greeks” (2 Macc 11:2) and—after Lysias’s defeat—Antiochus V’s purported recognition of the Jewish preference of their ancestral ways to “our father’s

13. Note in particular the nuanced balance of these perspectives in Rajak, “Uses of Hellenism.” 14. One particularly helpful survey is Himmelfarb, “Judaism and Hellenism,” 32–40.

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change to Greek customs” (2 Macc 11:24).15 Overall, 2 Maccabees presents an account of unsuccessful attempts to destroy Jewish life and promote Greek customs by greedy Greek rulers, attempts prompted by unscrupulous Jewish elites like Jason and successfully resisted by Torah-observant, “God-fearing” characters like Eleazar (6:18–31; cf. Ben Sira). In addition, prophetic texts are involved. Though the resistance is focused on preserving Torah observance, 2 Maccabees depicts Judas encouraging his followers from both the “law and the prophets” (2 Macc 15:9), and he is depicted repeatedly citing the narrative— found in 2 Kings and Isaiah—of God’s miraculous destruction of the enemies of the Jews during the time of Sennacherib (2 Macc 8:19; 15:22; 2 Kgs 19:35//Isa 37:36).16 Though a Greek text, 2 Maccabees combines with other sources from the period in testifying to the emergence of the Hebrew language as a key symbol of indigenous culture, a symbol opposed to the Greek culture promoted by figures like Jason or enforced by Antiochus IV. Twice in the central narrative of the martyrdom of the seven brothers and their mother, characters speak to each other in the “language of [their] fathers” (7:8, 27), a construct that is linked here with the Mosaic “law of the fathers” so central throughout the narrative (e.g. 7:37). Judas later exhorts his troops in the “language of their fathers” (12: 37).17 This, then, correlates with the fact that the other major pro-Hasmonean account of the origins of the monarchy, 1 Maccabees, was written in archaizing Hebrew.18 So also, Hasmonean coins—though minted following Hellenistic custom—feature Hebrew inscriptions in paleo-Hebrew writing. This nationalistic focus on Hebrew is not something confined to the Hasmoneans. Seth Schwartz surveys precursors to it in third-century materials. In addition, we see a similar focus on Hebrew in streams of Judaism that promoted the solar calendar, apparently opposed to the lunar one used by the Hasmoneans. Jubilees describes how Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, was taught both Hebrew and Hebrew Scriptures by an angel during the rainy season (Jub 12:25–27).19 Schniedewind has shown that Qumran Hebrew is a hyperarchaic form of the language. Indeed, certain Qumran community documents promote their form of the holy language as yet more correct than that of their opponents.20 Thus any promotion of Hebrew by the Hasmoneans took place within a broader context where such promotion was compelling. What are important here are two things: (1) this focus on Hebrew in the Hellenistic period would represent a form of hybrid cultural resistance to a textual-

15. For discussion of various assertions in the sources that Antiochus IV also instituted Greek worship in the temple (e.g. 2 Macc 6:2) see the survey of literature in Grabbe, Judaism,258–59. 16. Note also the citation of para-Jeremiah traditions in 2 Macc 2:1–8 and the vision of Jeremiah in 2 Macc 15:14–16. 17. Schwartz, “Language, Power and Identity,” 26. 18. Jonathan Goldstein, 1 Maccabees: A New Translation, with Introduction and Commentary, AB (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 4–26 (see 14 for his comments on the Hebrew). 19. For full discussion see Schwartz, “Language, Power and Identity,” 25–31. 20. Schniedewind, “Qumran Antilanguage,” and Schniedewind, “Linguistic Ideology in Qumran,” esp. 246–47.

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educational system focused on gaining competence in Greek, and (2) this ideological focus on Hebrew begins to be widespread in the years following the founding of the Hasmonean monarchy, even in dissident communities like that at Qumran. Meanwhile, as Shaye Cohen has argued, we see another hybrid development associated with the Hasmonean monarchy: the emergence for the first time of a Jewish identity not exclusively based in ethnic affiliation. It is around the early second century that we first see stories of “conversion” to Judaism and other indicators that Jewish identity, like Hellenistic “Greek” identity, is becoming a way of life, a politeia, rather than national identity. Before, “Jewish” meant “Judean,” just as many other peoples were defined by their ethnic identity. Yet, as we saw earlier on, Hellenism introduced the idea of a transethnic “Greek” identity defined by whether or not an individual had taken on Greek culture, including undergoing some form of (Hellenistic) Greek educationenculturation. Cohen shows that it is in the time of the purportedly antiHellenistic Hasmoneans that we first see the emergence of a similar formation in Judaism: the idea of a Jewish identity based on a Torah-focused politeia (along with circumcision) in addition to ethnic origin. This emergent Jewish politeia allowed the incorporation by the Hasmoneans of non-Judean but circumcised peoples like the Idumaeans and Ituraeans into their expanding regional empire. Cohen explicitly compares this development to contemporary examples of cultural hybridity, where those in a colonized people who have been most affected by colonial culture are the first to take up the tools of that culture and use those tools to resist it.21

The Emergence of “Hebrew Scriptures” Consisting of “Torah and Prophets” in the Hasmonean Period Interestingly, Cohen does not connect the emergence of this Greek-like “Jewish” identity with education or the mastery of Hebrew and Hebrew literature. Indeed, he explicitly rejects the idea that this identity included a focus on Hebrew analogous to the focus on “Greek” in its Hellenic counterpart.22 Yet an increasing number of studies are pointing to exactly this period as the key time for the emergence of a more defined collection of Scriptures. Indeed, the Scriptures that emerge at this point appear to consist almost exclusively of documents written in Hebrew, the language newly ideologized by the Hasmoneans, among others. In the following section, I build on this insight to argue the following: that the Hebrew-language nationalism Schwartz focuses on and the emergent Torah-based Jewish politeia Cohen studies both issued in a specifically “Jewish” form of enculturation-education with “Hebrew” Scriptures at its center. Thus, just as elite Hellenic identity appears to have been

21. See Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 109–39, esp. 135–39. 22. Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 132–35.

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shaped by education and participation in a culture defined by Greek literature, the Hasmonean period saw the emergence and gradual diffusion of an emergent elite Jewish identity shaped by a sharply defined collection of Hebrew texts. Greek cultural forms were now opposed, balanced, and/or supplemented by a distinctively Jewish, purportedly pre-Hellenistic Hebrew form of politeia based—at least for elites—in a Hebrew paideia. I start with several indicators that a group of texts emerged as Scripture in the early second century b.c.e., a collection like the Bible described by Josephus (Ant. 1.38–41) and assumed by 4 Ezra (14:38–47). First, as Arie Van der Kooij in particular has observed, there is a significant shift from the kind of curriculum described by Ben Sira himself in 39:1–3 and his grandson’s reference to “Torah, Prophets, and [other writings” several times in the prologue to his book. Ben Sira’s own curriculum description is written somewhere around the turn from the third to the second century and includes Torah, wisdom, prophecies, parables, and proverbs, including material gleaned from foreign travels (39:1–4). In contrast, his grandson repeatedly refers to three items, two of which are phrased in exactly the same way each time, “Torah” and “prophets,” and a third group whose designation varies: “others that followed them”/ “other books of our fathers”/“rest of the books.”23 Later I will return to discuss this variable third category, but this quotation is significant here because it stands as one of the first clear mentions of “Torah and Prophets” as a standard pair and because it contrasts with the contents of the text it introduces.24 We see similar references to “Torah and Prophets” in 1 and 2 Maccabees, Qumran, and a variety of first-century texts. This group of “prophets,” moreover, appears to be newly defined in this period. The first reference to the idea that prophecy had ceased, thus setting a probable limit to the books that might be contained in such “prophets,” occurs in 1 Maccabees (1 Macc 9:27; cf. 4:44–46; 14:41).25 Finally, there are two other shifts that suggest an increased focus on a stabilized group of Scriptures in the second century b.c.e. In a forthcoming article Lange shows a significant reduction in allusions to parabiblical texts in Second Temple Jewish writings and the appearance of citations of scriptural books as texts (rather than mere allusions to their contents).26 Moreover, Moses Segal, Moshe Greenberg, Dominique Barthe´lemy, and others observed long ago an increasing stabilization of the Hebrew biblical text beginning by the first century b.c.e.27 These indicators will be discussed in more detail later. What is crucial

23. Van der Kooij, “Canonization,” 33–36. 24. As Goshen-Gottstein suggests, this division between “Torah and Prophets” is anticipated in the division between Torah and post-Torah books in Ben Sira’s overview of specifically Israelite “fathers” (“Ben Sira’s Praise of the Fathers”). 25. William Schniedewind, The Word of God in Transition: From Prophet to Exegete in the Second Temple Period, JSOTSup (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 241–49, puts the move somewhat earlier. For discussion of the relevant texts see Chapman, Law and the Prophets, 264–66. 26. A. Lange, “From Literature to Scripture: The Unity and Plurality of the Hebrew Scriptures in Light of the Qumran Library.” In One Scripture or Many? Canon from Biblical, Theological, and Philosophical Perspectives, ed. C. Helmer and C. Landmesser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 27. M. H. Segal, “The Promulgation of the Authoritative Text of the Hebrew Bible,” JBL 72 (1953): 35–47; Moshe Greenberg, “The Stabilization of the Text of the Hebrew Bible,” JAOS 76 (1956): 157–67; Dominique

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at this point is the way they point toward the early second century b.c.e. as a significant turning point in the establishment of a more clearly defined collection of Hebrew Scriptures, a collection made up at least of “Torah and Prophets.” To suggest that the Hebrew Scriptures emerged in the early second century is not new. Neither is a hypothesis that links this development with the Hasmoneans,28 nor one that links the Hebrew Scriptures in some way with antiHellenism29 or with education.30 What I will attempt in what follows is to put these ideas together with other emphases in this book and present the more specific thesis that the Jewish Hebrew Scriptures were defined and functioned within the regional empire of the Hasmoneans as part of a project of specifically Hebrew (and non-Greek) education-enculturation to create a “Jewish” identity. This identity was analogous yet opposed to the emergent, transnational “Hellenistic” identity of the Hellenistic educational system. My starting point is the fact that the Hasmoneans took on the mantle of the high priesthood, thus placing themselves at the center of textuality in late Second Temple Judaism. In addition, their promotion of Hebrew textuality parallels the preservation of indigenous textuality by priests in Hellenistic Egypt and elsewhere. More specifically, the books of 1 and 2 Maccabees each indicate that textuality was a key part of the Hasmoneans’ broader ideological program.31 In 1 Maccabees the Hasmoneans are depicted successfully defeating those who would destroy or forsake the Torah (1:56–57), while they themselves shape their whole resistance in accordance with the “book of the law” (3:46–

Barthe´lemy, Les devanciers d’Aquila: premie`re publication inte´grale du texte des fragments du Dode´caprophe´ton trouve´s dans le de´sert de Juda, VTSup (Leiden: Brill, 1963) and the more recent comments in James A. Sanders, “The Issue of Closure in the Canonical Process,” in McDonald and Sanders, Canon Debate, 254–55, and Tov, “Ancient Synagogues,” 245–55. 28. For example, Ludwig Blau, Studien zum althebra¨ischen Buchwesen und zur biblischen Literatur- und Textgeschichte (Strasbourg: Karl Tru¨bner, 1902), 107; Segal, “Promulgation,” 40; Greenberg, “Stabilization,” 160– 61; Shnaver Z. Leiman, The Canonization of Hebrew Scripture: The Talmudic and Midrashic Evidence, Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1976), 131–35; Beckwith, Old Testament of the New Testament Church,151–53; Philip R. Davies, Scribes and Schools, 177–82; “The Jewish Scriptural Canon in Cultural Perspective,” in McDonald and Sanders, Canon Debate, 49–50; van der Kooij, “Canonization,” 37– 38; “Canonization of Ancient Hebrew Books and Hasmonean Politics,” in The Biblical Canons, ed. J-M. Auwers and H. J. De Jonge (Louvain, Belgium: Louvain University Press, 2003), 27–38; Lange, “From Literature to Scripture.” 29. For example, Bickerman, Jews in the Greek Age, 170–74. 30. Examples include Nathan Morris, The Jewish School: An Introduction to the History of Jewish Education (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1937), 11–12, 37–47; Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, 27; Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 77–83; Baumgarten, Flourishing of Jewish Sects, 118–21; Philip R. Davies, “Jewish Scriptural Canon,” 39–41. Note also Bickerman’s arguments, linking (Pharisaic) Jewish education with Hellenistic patterns, Elias Joseph Bickerman, From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees: Foundations of Post-Biblical Judaism, ed. Moses Hadas (New York: Schocken, 1962 [orig. 1949]), 160–65. 31. The relationship of 2 Maccabees to the Hasmoneans is a debated topic. Jonathan Goldstein (1 Maccabees, 78–89; 2 Maccabees: A New Translation, with Introduction and Commentary, AB [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983], 82) argues that the limited scope of the text, its numerous disagreements with the pro-Hasmonean account in 1 Maccabees, and other features in it suggest opposition to the policies of John Hyrcanus and his successors. Himmelfarb (“Judaism and Hellenism,” 21, n. 4), among others, finds such arguments unconvincing. The clear promotion of Judas Maccabeus in 2 Maccabees makes Goldstein’s position implausible to me.

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60).32 The account in 2 Maccabees lacks parallels to the textual focus of these narratives, but it depicts Judas exhorting his troops from the Torah and prophets (2 Macc 15:9; cf. 15:22), and he is represented as reconstituting the temple library, a library purportedly originally collected by Nehemiah but dispersed under the Hellenizers:33 The same things are reported in the records and in the memoirs of Nehemiah, and also that he founded a library and collected the books about the kings and prophets, and the writings of David, and letters of kings about votive offerings. In the same way Judas also collected all the books that had been lost on account of the war which had come on us, and they are in our possession. So if you have need of them, send people to get them for you. (2 Macc 2:13– 14, NRSV) To be sure, the collection described here is not equivalent to mentions elsewhere of “Torah and “Prophets” (e.g., “the books about the kings and prophets . . . and letters of kings about votive offerings”), and the Judas of this passage is no Ezra. None of these traditions attribute to Judas or any other Hasmonean the responsibility of originally constituting an authoritative collection. That would contradict their claim to be restorers of a pre-Hellenistic deposit of divine traditions. Nevertheless, the quotation likens Judas to Nehemiah as a restorer of ancient traditions after their loss amid crisis (exile and Hellenistic attack on Judaism).34 Several indicators suggest that the boundaries and character of the present Hebrew Scriptures were given their final shape by the Hasmoneans, though they built—as seen in chapter 6—on a corpus of texts already shaped by long use in pre-Hellenistic Jewish education-enculturation. Consistent with the Hasmoneans’ ideological promotion of Hebrew, the Jewish Scriptures that are consolidated in the later Second Temple period are almost exclusively in Hebrew. They contain no Greek sections and only small fragments of Aramaic in specific contexts.35 Furthermore, the chronological confines of the Hebrew Scriptures correspond to the Hasmoneans’ purported anti-Hellenistic bias. The identified authors, from Moses to Ezra, all precede Hellenistic domination of the area. Explicitly later works like Ben Sira are excluded, despite the fact that they apparently were revered by various groups late into the rabbinic period.

32. As Schwartz points out (“Language, Power and Identity,” 59), 2 Maccabees lacks these descriptions. As will be noted later, 1 Macc 7:16–17 quotes Psalm 79:2–3 as an accurate prophecy of the killing of the Hasidim by Alcimus. 33. For other arguments see Schwartz’s discussion of the “simplification and consolidation” of this dual symbolic system amid the Antiochan persecution, “Language, Power and Identity,” 21–25. 34. On the purposes of the passage and its distinction from specifically “canonical” issues see Mechthild Kellermann, “ ‘Wenn ihr nun eines von diesen Bu¨chern braucht, so lasst es euch holen’ (2 Makk. 2, 15): Eine antike Aufforderung zur Fernleihe,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Pala¨stina-Vereins 98 (1982): 107–9. 35. To be sure, there are several potential Greek loan words, particularly in later writings, but no continuous stretches of Greek.

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To be sure, the Hebrew Bible contains various works—for example, Qohelet, Daniel—and sections of works—for example, portions of Isaiah and Psalms— that were probably written after the Hellenistic conquest of the region. Nevertheless, they appear to have been included by virtue of their association with pre-Hellenistic authors. Finally, the entire chronological system of the protoMassoretic textual tradition of the historical books is structured so that the Hasmoneans’ rededication of the temple falls exactly four thousand years after Creation, with the Exodus occurring in year 2666 after Creation—two-thirds of the way to the temple rededication.36 This chronological system—distinct from ancient parallels in the Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch—probably reflects the fact that the Hasmoneans were responsible for the choice, final shaping, and (re)production of reference copies of the Jewish Scriptures, copies deposited in the temple and later taken as the authoritative reference point for posttemple, rabbinic scholars. The vast majority of early references to the Hebrew Scriptures define it as a collection consisting of the Torah on the one hand and a collection of nonTorah, pre-Hellenistic works labeled “Prophets” on the other. The latter group of works did not consist only of the “prophets” now found in the “Prophets” section of the rabbinic Bible. Rather it included authors of all non-Torah, preHellenistic works included in the Hasmonean collection (and sometimes more—as in the case of Qumran). In 1 Maccabees 7:16–17 Psalm 79:2–3 is cited as an accurate prophecy of the killing of Hasidim by Alcimus. In 11QPsa XXVII:11 there is explicit reference to David as a prophet in talking of his authorship of the Psalms. Earlier, I mentioned that 4 Maccabees cites Daniel, David, and Solomon as prophets (4 Macc 18:10–19). Furthermore, the Psalms and other parts of the writings are often used as prophetic texts in the New Testament. This “prophecy,” however, is understood by many to be a reality of the preHellenistic past. The text under discussion with the clearest links to Hasmonean politics, 1 Maccabees, has the first unambiguous reference to the idea that “prophecy” ceased in the time of Ezra, the defining end-point of the Jewish (purportedly) pre-Hellenistic Scriptures (1 Macc 4:44–46; 9:27; 14:41).37 These Hellenistic-period traditions about an “end to prophecy” happening in the Persian period may reflect yet another way the Hasmoneans defined the limits of their pre-Hellenistic Hebrew scriptural corpus. And once again, this definition is hybrid: appropriating Hellenistic cultural forms in the process of opposing them. Already we have seen how late-third/early second-century Alexandrian scholars like Aristophanes consolidated older Greek traditions of lists of the

36. Jeremy Hughes, Secrets of the Times: Myth and History in Biblical Chronology, JSOTSup (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 233–37, provides a discussion of how the MT tradition deviates from other systems and possible problems with reading it as linked to the Hasmonean rededication. 37. For discussion of other possible references to this idea see Chapman, Law and the Prophets, 264–66. For response to critiques of the hypothesis of the ceasing of prophecy see Benjamin Sommer, “Did Prophecy Cease? Evaluating a Reevaluation,” JBL 115 (1996): 31–47, who cites other references in early Jewish and rabbinic literature.

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best older authors of various genres in the Greek tradition.38 The Hasmoneans created a similar author-focused list, this time focusing on Hebrew “prophetic” authors from before the time of the Hellenistic conquest. Through this norm they excluded Hellenistic-period works like Ben Sira as postprophetic, despite claims like Ben Sira 24:33 that his book is on a par with the stream of prophecy. This redefinition of the limits of useful teaching may explain why Ben Sira’s grandson emphasizes how his father gained wisdom from studying postprophetic books like his own. He emphasizes how the sage, Ben Sira, gained wisdom from studying “the other writers succeeding [the prophets]”/“other books of the fathers”/“other books.” Contrary to the typical interpretation of this passage, I would argue that this prologue emphasizing Ben Sira’s broader studies is not endorsing a category of Scripture like the later “Writings” of the rabbinic Tanach. Instead, he is prefacing his translation of Ben Sira with an endorsement of the ongoing worth of study of Hellenistic-period works like the book of Ben Sira itself. This endorsement, made around 130 b.c.e., would have been particularly urgent in the wake of the recent ascendance of the Hasmonean monarchy in Palestine and their early promotion of an emergent “Torah and Prophets” Hebrew scriptural collection, one that excluded Hellenistic period works by “father”-teachers like Ben Sira because they were postprophetic. In other words, the prologue to Ben Sira is not an endorsement of a protorabbinic canon of “Torah, Prophets and [Writings].” Rather, it is one of the first testimonies of Jewish resistance to a Hebrew collection of Scripture promoted by the Hasmoneans and (much like the one) used by the rabbis. Such resistance does not appear to have been successful. As noted earlier, most witnesses of the time appear to work with a broad categorization of “Torah” and “Prophets” or related categories (e.g., Josephus’s “Torah and things written with these”) in referring to the Scriptures they knew. Aside from the prologue to Ben Sira (discussed above), the only remaining candidates for references to a tripartite Scripture are the isolated reference in Luke 24:44 to “Torah, Prophets and Psalms” and the now highly questionable reading of “Torah, Prophets and writings of David” that seekers for a tripartite canon find in 4QMMT C10.39 Neither text is usable as evidence for a tripartite scriptural corpus. Luke 24:44 follows closely on a reference to a bipartite corpus in Luke 24:27, and it does not refer to a third category of “writings” but to Psalms, possibly giving that scroll an elevated status vis-a`-vis other non-Torah writings.40 Moreover, the reading of 4QMMT C10 is now in question, and—even if read as typically reconstructed—it does not unequivocally support the idea

38. See chapter 7, pp. 185–86. 39. See the preceding pages for discussion of oft-cited texts that are interpreted—wrongly in my opinion— as testimonies to a tripartite scriptural corpus: chapter 10, pp. 248–49 and note 28 (on Josephus Apion 1.38–41) and p. 246 (on Philo Contempl. 25). 40. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Prophecy and Canon: A Contribution to the Study of Jewish Origins (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), 126–27, suggests that Psalms may be highlighted because of liturgical usage. Swanson, “Closing,” 256, suggests that the special mention of Psalms here may be a reflex of a particular focus on messianic predictions at this point.

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of a tripartite scriptural corpus.41 Even the Mishnah exclusively refers to Scripture as “Torah and Prophets.” We first see a tripartite division of Scripture in rabbinic writings in a revision of a Mishnah saying found in the Tosefta (t. Rosˇ Hasˇ 4.6; cf. m. Rosˇ Hasˇ. 4.6). By then, the new “writings” category for some books previously regarded as prophetic—for example, Psalms—appears to reflect their status as books not included in the emergent haftorah reading cycle of rabbinic Judaism (readings from “the prophets”). These books are—in this sense—truly “writings,” that is, are not read as part of the regular homiletical cycle.42 The book of Daniel is an anomaly that illustrates both the operation of the aforesaid dynamics and their limits. Although it is one of the latest books in the present Hebrew Bible, it is attributed to a figure, Daniel, who is located in the exile. And though it includes significant Aramaic sections, it may have been included because of its links to the crisis that led to the emergence of the Hasmoneans and even more because of its most important figure. The Daniel featured in it is a well-known figure from ancient Canaan, cited as a prophet in the New Testament and mentioned as the “greatest of the prophets” by Josephus (Ant. 10.266–288). Written shortly before the emergence of the Hasmonean monarchy, the book of Daniel is a marker of a terminus ad quem for the definition of the broader scriptural collection that includes it. It is not yet known to Ben Sira but was probably important to the Hasmoneans: sections of it (e.g., Daniel 3 and 6) appear to anticipate the victory of the Maccabeans, and Daniel is included in a list of heroes in a speech of Mattathias reported in 1 Maccabees (1 Macc 2:59–60), a quintessentially pro-Hasmonean work.43 Yet there are signs that some did not recognize its authority, perhaps partly because it was such a borderline case of inclusion, both late and partially Aramaic. For example, Lange suggests that sections of Daniel are rejected in key parts of the Qumran 4QMysteries instruction.44 Thus Daniel stands as a key example of possible criteria for inclusion—attribution to a pre-Hellenistic “prophet” (versus Ben Sira) and linkage to the ideology of the Hasmoneans (versus Enoch). Nevertheless, its mixed linguistic character and partial acceptance make it a

41. Timothy Lim, “The Alleged Reference to the Tripartite Division of the Hebrew Bible,” RevQ 77 (2001): 23–37; James A. Sanders, “Closure,” 252–53; Eugene Ulrich, “The Non-Attestation of a Tripartite Canon in 4QMMT,” CBQ 65 (2003): 202–14; “Qumran and the Canon of the Old Testament,” in Auwers and De Jonge, Biblical Canons, 67–69. 42. Carr, “Canonization in Community,” 57–58. Cf. Jack N. Lightstone, “The Rabbis’ Bible: The Canon of the Hebrew Bible and the Early Rabbinic Guild,” in McDonald and Sanders, Canon Debate, 180. Note that it is only “Torah” and “Prophets” that are the focal point for the axial shift Fishbane discusses in the shift of Judaism toward access to the divine by means of textual mediation. See M. Fishbane, “From Scribalism to Rabbinism,” in The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed. JohnG. Gammie and Leo Perdue (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 440–45. 43. On the dating of Daniel just prior to the Hasmoneans’ emergence and placement of it in wisdom circles see John J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 61–70. For a survey of early references to Daniel see Beckwith, Old Testament of the New Testament Church, 355–56. 44. 4QMysteries in 4Q300. A. Lange, “From Literature to Scripture.”

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useful illustration of the shady borderline on the edge of a consolidating collection.

The Enculturation Function of Hebrew Scriptures in the Hasmonean Period If this interpretation of data pointing to a Hasmonean dating of the Hebrew Scriptures is sound, what would have been its function? I propose the following: this emergent, pre-Hellenistic collection would have been the focal point for nationalistic, non-Greek education of elites in the Hasmoneans’ fragile yet increasingly expanded kingdom. Schwartz’s recent work has been particularly helpful in emphasizing the remarkable expansion of the Hasmonean kingdom, an expansion that apparently took the form of Judaizing the areas of peoples who were circumcised and not explicitly “Greek” (e.g. Samaritans/Shechem, Idumea, Galilee) combined with destruction of Greek cities (e.g., Samaria, Beth-Shean/Scythopolis). This expansion meant a rise in the power of nonJerusalem elites combined with an undermining of prior priestly monopolies on power in the Persian and pre-Maccabean periods.45 In earlier periods discussed already, larger expansions of power—for example, in the Sargonid Mesopotamian or Egyptian Middle empires—were occasions for the development or reinforcement of systems of text-supported education. So also, the most likely occasion for the finalization and export of a clearly defined Hebrew scriptural collection is the emergence of an increasingly expansive, emphatically pro-Jewish Hasmonean miniempire. Jews in the Persian and Ptolemaic periods appear to have been satisfied with a more purely temple-focused indigenous Hebrew textuality. In the late Second Temple period, rulers like Herod were no longer the immediate head of the temple apparatus, and education-textuality appears already dispersed enough that it is difficult to know who could or would want to inaugurate and enforce a clearly defined Hebrew collection. Certainly the first century c.e., with its diverse groups, is an unlikely time for the initiation of such a broadly recognized collection. Rather, the Hasmonean monarchy, with its royal power base, priestly monarchs (1 Macc 2:1; 10:20; 11:27), documented expansionist efforts (including destruction of Greek cities), and pro-Jewish, anti-Greek ideology, is the prime candidate for the sharp definition of purportedly pre-Hellenistic Hebrew Scriptures and the promotion of this sharply defined collection as a focal point for education-enculturation in its broader, increasingly complex, and specifically Jewish kingdom. Since our data for use of texts by the Hasmoneans are confined to elements like Judas’s reconstitution of the temple library and descriptions of his use of the “Torah” and “Prophets” to encourage his troops, our main indicators of the use of such a broad collection must come from the better documented

45. Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 36–42.

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examples of textuality surveyed in previous chapters. These examples suggest that long-duration collections of the sort seen in the Hebrew Scriptures emerged and were used particularly in the education-enculturation of youth, along with other reinforcing forms of cultural circulation like festival and smaller banquet performances (e.g., the symposium). Nevertheless, there is a specific context for the emergence of a more sharply defined collection of the sort we see in the Hebrew Bible: the isolation and protection of indigenous educational-enculturational literatures by temple priests in the Hellenistic period. Such temple-based efforts, which appear to have died out at various points in the various areas of the eastern Hellenistic kingdoms, prolonged indigenous literatures (e.g., Egyptian, Sumero-Akkadian) amid the increasingly dominant Hellenistic system of Greek education of elites. What is different in late Second Temple Judaism is the following: this indigenous (Hebrew) education appears to have moved from being confined to the temple (or groups like Qumran with prominent priestly leadership) to being a temple-enabled process of indigenous education of a broader group of readers in the newly Jewish areas. The broader scope of this Jewish education resembled the scope of the contemporary system of Hellenistic education.46 It was temple-enabled in the sense that the Hasmoneans, as high priests, were in the position to extend the system of education, the temple was the most likely site for the creation and storage of reference copies for any broader system of education, and priests and priestly born characters like Josephus would have remained at the top of the Hebrew textual system. Gradually education in the Torah and other Hebrew Scriptures appears to have become less confined to the temple. Josephus and Philo testify to the broader ideals of education in Hebrew literacy by the end of the second temple period, ideals that correspond in their move beyond the temple to the broad, non-temple-centered scope of Hellenistic education.47 Whether all elites coopted and recruited by the Hasmoneans underwent education-enculturation in Hebrew Scriptures is highly questionable. Nevertheless, the promotion of a specifically Hebrew system of education-enculturation within the Hasmonean kingdom would have lent a certain amount of prestige to Judeans who possessed such an education, and it would have increased the future prospects of any children, including non-Judean children, educated in the Hebrew system, however much such children also received a Greek education.48 Thus, through

46. Bickerman, Jews in the Greek Age, 170–74, stresses the uniqueness of this move toward a broader audience. He is too narrow, however, in arguing that it was the alphabetic character of Hebrew education that was decisive in encouraging this move. There were other alphabetic indigenous literatures that did not survive. What was unique in the Jewish instance was the successful development, during the brief period of the Hasmoneans, of a hybrid Greek-like, anti-Greek system of education in purportedly pre-Hellenistic Hebrew texts. The alphabetic character of the Hebrew Scriptures may have made these efforts easier but was not the prompt for the expansion, promotion, and enforcement of this emergent Scripture. 47. See the discussion in Baumgarten, Flourishing of Jewish Sects, 121. 48. Josephus would be an obvious example of a Palestinian Jew who received education in both Greek and Hebrew Scriptures, and the existence of a Hellenistic-period, Jewish Palestinian writing in Greek (e.g. 2

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(re)collecting Hebrew works in the temple (2 Macc 2:14) and promoting Hebrew Scriptures, the Hasmoneans set up a gravitational pull that (1) privileged forms of Hebrew textuality over which their Jerusalem temple had ultimate control, and (2) countered analogous, Greek-focused systems in the surrounding areas. The interplay of temple and nontemple is illustrated by the case of the gradual and piecemeal standardization of the text of the Bible manifest toward the end of the Second Temple period. On the one hand, dissident groups like Qumran seem to have worked with a variety of texts, manifesting little orientation to a clear “text type.” On the other hand, both the first-century b.c.e. Minor Prophets scroll and later finds of manuscripts at a variety of first-century c.e. (and later) loci (e.g., Murabbaat, Nahfi al H fi ever, Wadi Sdeir, Nahfi al Seelim) manifest a strikingly precise similarity to later rabbinic manuscripts. Furthermore, many of the Hebrew examples are what Tov terms de luxe editions of biblical manuscripts, manifesting various graphic indicators of standardization and elevated status. On the basis of this and other evidence, Tov argues persuasively that these more narrowly “proto-rabbinic” de luxe editions are corrected copies of exemplars of the given biblical texts stored originally in the Temple. Though most—though not all—examples are found after the destruction of the temple and may derive from an exemplar stored in a new Jewish center, such exact textual standardization is only possible with reference to single exemplars of the relevant texts, exemplars almost certainly kept originally in the temple. As elsewhere in the Hellenistic-period Near East, the temple was the first repository for indigenous language exemplars of texts like the Hebrew Scriptures. Nevertheless, from the first century b.c.e. (and possibly before), these temple exemplars appear to have been used as the basis for editions of the Hebrew Scriptures that were used in synagogues and other reading loci outside Jerusalem.49 Such “Hebrew Scriptures” formed a counterpoint to Greek textuality in a monarchy that cultivated a pro-Torah, anti-Hellenistic image—however fictional. At least as an ideal, education in these Hebrew Scriptures—particularly the Torah—spread to encompass nonpriestly Jews, aiming at an audience as

Maccabees) testifies to the existence of other such educated Jews as well. For a survey of later evidence for Jewish education in Greek see Hezser, Jewish Literacy, 90–94. For an earlier proposal of expansion of education under the Hasmoneans see Baumgarten, Flourishing of Jewish Sects, 122–23. Hengel is one of the earlier proponents of the idea that Jewish education emerged around this time as a counter to Hellenistic influence (Judaism and Hellenism, 80). 49. Tov, “Ancient Synagogues,” 245–55. Tov identifies only a couple possible examples of such a standardized text at Qumran, 4QGenb and 4QProvb. Such texts then are to be distinguished from a broader group of manuscripts at Qumran that bear lesser similarities to the MT tradition (243–44; cf. the cautions about identification of text-types at Qumran in Ulrich, “Qumran Biblical Scrolls”). For earlier discussion of textual standardization among Jewish elites prior to the first century see especially Greenberg, “Stabilization,” 162–66. He argues persuasively that fluidity in the Qumran finds is not a good index for dating standardization, since such manuscripts were kept and copied in an outlying Jewish group. Biblical manuscripts found at loci like Masada may not reflect more standardization because they are later but because they are the possession of groups associated with more central Jewish leader-elites (e.g. Akiba).

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broad (or broader than) that seen in Hellenistic education. In doing this, the promoters of this emergent scripture could build on ideals that we have seen in Hebrew Scripture itself, where every child was to be educated in Torah and the people was to be a nation of priests. Yet even this highly protected indigenous system was hybrid. It borrowed Greek techniques for textual standardization to protect the emergent standardization of the Hebrew text. It used Greek-like paragraph markers to mark pericopes in the Hebrew corpus. It drew boundaries around the text that were modeled on yet surpassed the relatively sharp contours of the Hellenistic curriculum. It often was designated in Hellenistic categories like “ancestral laws,” even as those categories were modified in often radical ways to fit the emergent Judaean way of life.50 And this hardened scriptural collection provided the basis for a broadly aimed educational process that corresponded to the broader, non-temple-focused aims of Hellenistic education. Like other products of what might be termed “resistance hybridity,” this body of indigenous Hebrew texts appears to have represented a hyperversion of the Greek forms of textuality it opposed. Its advocates focused on a corpus with sharper boundaries than its Greek counterpart, they claimed a yet more ancient origin for this corpus, and they aimed at yet broader Jewish literacy than was attained in the already broad Hellenistic Greek system.51 We have two types of indicators that the twenty-two-book, alphabetic numbering was already in force at this point. First, as already discussed in the last chapter, we have the potentially first-century b.c.e. reference to the twentytwo books and the alphabet in a form of the Greek Jubilees. The problem with this reference is that it is based on late sources that can be linked to the first century only by tenuous argumentation.52 Second, and more important, the alphabetic principle implicit in the twenty-two-book numbering is related to the education-enculturational principles discussed throughout this chapter and this study. Insofar as a consolidated collection of Hebrew Scriptures under the Hasmoneans did follow this numbering, it would have produced a Hebrew curriculum encompassed by the alphabetic principle: anchored at the early end by learning the alphabet and extending ultimately to mastery of a Hebrew corpus defined by the alphabet’s numbering. We have repeatedly seen the prominence of the alphabet throughout the educational and textual processes of both Greek and Hebrew cultures, with acrostics, alphabetically organized name lists, and alphabetic schemes for memorization of material.

¨ berlieferungen als patrioi nomoi: ‘Hel50. On this see particularly Hans G. Kippenberg, “Die ju¨dischen U lenization of an unknown entity,’ ” in Die Restauration der Go¨tter: Antike Religion und Neo-Paganismus, ed. R. Faber and R. Schlesier (Wu¨rzburg: Ko¨nigshausen and Neumann, 1986), 45–60, who also notes (49) occasional distinctions between references to “ancestral laws” and the traditions found in our written texts. 51. Once again, such claims for breadth of literacy in the Hellenistic Greek system are merely relative to earlier levels of literacy. There was no general literacy in the ancient world, whether Greek or non-Greek. Still, even Harris’s cautious reckoning of levels of ancient Greek literacy notes that the data are most plentiful for elite and even craft literacy in certain areas of Hellenistic culture. Harris, Ancient Literacy, 139–46. 52. For this argumentation see Beckwith, Old Testament of the New Testament Church, 235–40.

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The alphabet was the water in which the student swam throughout his education, in both the Greek and Hebrew systems. Within this context, the creation of a Hebrew collection of Scriptures, with a numbering corresponding to the letters of the alphabet, would have been an ultimate manifestation of a more broadly attested alphabetic principle. Indeed, it would represent another Hebrew hyperversion of alphabetic forms prominent in Hellenistic education as well. We may even have fragments of Jewish memory of this expansion in some rabbinic texts. The most often cited texts for the emergence of a system of education beyond the family, b. B.Bat. 21a and y. Ketub. 8:11.32c, may refer to the Hasmonean period—albeit in terms more appropriate to their context centuries later. Y. Ketub. 8:11.32c asserts that the first century b.c.e. figure of Shimon b. Shetach was responsible for instituting the requirement that all children attend a “school” (bet sepher), thus putting this development around the late Hasmonean/early Herodian period. In b. B.Bat. 21a a twostage process of expansion beyond familial education is depicted, starting with the appointment of teachers in every “district” for boys of sixteen or seventeen years and culminating in a first-century high priest, Jehoshua b. Gamla (63–65 c.e.). As Rainer Riesner points out, this specification of age for starting school, sixteen or seventeen, is strange. It corresponds not to a typical time for entering elementary school but to the age for ephebes to enter the gymnasium. Given the history of gymnasia in Judah, he speculates that the middle portion of this early rabbinic saying preserves a memory of the establishment of Hebrew schools in reaction to Jason’s gymnasium, so that sons of ephebe age would attend a Torah-centered Hebrew school instead of the Jerusalem gymnasium.53 To be sure, as David Goodblatt in particular has argued, these rabbinic traditions are separated from the events they describe by hundreds of years and often represent ideals rather than reality. Other rabbinic and epigraphic evidence suggests it is unlikely that teachers were appointed in all villages or that children—whether seventeen or seven— were required to attend “schools” during the Second Temple period.54 Nevertheless, such fragments—particularly when they contain anomalous elements like the ephebe age of attending school in b.B.Bat. 21a—should not be dismissed out of hand. They—like the rabbinic recollections of templecentered textuality discussed earlier—may represent distant recollections of a broadening of education beyond a temple-scribal elite already in the second or first century b.c.e.55

53. Riesner, Jesus als Lehrer, 206. See also Collins, Jewish Wisdom, 36. 54. David Goodblatt, “The Talmudic Sources on the Origins of Organized Jewish Education [Heb.],” Studies in the History of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel 5 (1980): 89–90, who dates the tradition to the second or early third century. 55. See p. 214. On attribution of the b. B. Bat. 21a version to Yehoshua b. Perachiah in the time of John Hyrcanus see Wilhelm Bacher, “Das altju¨dische Schulwesen,” Jahrbuch fu¨r Judisch Geschicte und Literatur 6 (1903): 58–59.

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Final Matters: The Scope of the Scriptural Collection and the Limits of Its Recognition In all this, let me be clear: our evidence does not suggest that the Hasmoneans successfully introduced an educational system or set of Scriptures that all Jewish groups recognized, nor that their system was created ex nihilo. Second Temple Jewish groups all had the Mosaic Torah in common, and most communities maintained a greater or lesser focus on it. Indeed the Samaritans (and perhaps the Sadducees) focused exclusively on Mosaic traditions.56 Meanwhile, marginalized groups like the Qumran Essenes appear to have worked with a more fluid concept of scriptural non-Torah books and with some nonstandard manuscripts. So also, the endorsement of seventy additional books in 2 Esdras testifies to continuing resistance in some circles of the first century c.e. to a restricted, semialphabetically numbered collection of scriptural books, even as it also attests to the public predominance of such a collection. And there is a good chance that Jewish groups diverged somewhat on which books they considered part of a twenty-two-book collection, much as later Christian writers did. Furthermore, the limits appear to have been focused on indigenous Hebrew education, not the texts in Greek translation. When Jewish groups used scriptural works in Greek translation they appear to have included a wider range of works outside the initial twenty-two-book collection. For example, the early Christian movement, in its initial stages a Jewish sect, appears to have worked with a set of Scriptures that—at least in the case of Jude 14–15—included the book of Enoch. This fits with the case argued earlier that the forces leading to a hardened scriptural collection were focused on the establishment and preservation of an indigenous, Hebrew cultural system. Though I will show in the next chapter how the collection at the heart of this system had some effect on the eventual definition of a corresponding Greek collection in the church, we would not expect to see the hardened collection exactly reproduced when Jews used Greek versions of Jewish writings. In sum, we cannot postulate a universally recognized “canon” of Hebrew Scriptures—let alone a clearly defined “LXX”—in the Second Temple period, or in the Hasmonean period, or even in the late first century. Nevertheless, I am arguing that the indicators surveyed here are sufficient to assign a high probability to the idea that the Hasmoneans were responsible for consolidating a hardened (purportedly) pre-Hellenistic Hebrew collection consisting of books now included in the Jewish Tanach, a collection used in education and ostensibly having a number corresponding to one or another numbering of the Hebrew alphabet. It is this Hasmonean-originated collection that Josephus believes preceded him by “long ages.”

56. For discussion see Carr, “Canonization in Community,” 35–38. As I argued there, there are indications that some Egyptian Jews, such as Philo, worked with a virtually exclusive focus on Torah, but there are important exceptions. On this see Lange, “Literature to Scripture.” For Enochic Judaism as a possible exception to this statement about universal acceptance of Torah see Nicklesburg, “Enochic Wisdom.”

12 Concluding Reflections on the Hellenistic Shaping of Jewish Scripture From Temple to Synagogue and Church

The preceding chapter explored the origins of the hardened Hebrew collection of Scriptures and emergent transtemple educationaltextual system. Both developments are distinctive vis-a`-vis earlier Second Temple Judaism. Earlier I surveyed testimony of Ben Sira and others—up to the first century c.e.—to forms of textuality and education that were deeply linked to the temple. In chapter 9, I argued that Qumran represented a crucial window both to the templeand priest-dominated textuality of the pre-Hasmonean period and to a hybrid Jewish example of nontemple textuality shaped by Hellenistic community models and the Hellenistic meal. Yet the Qumran settlement, apparently founded in part by priests who split off from the temple with the rise of the Hasmonean priesthood, does not yet reflect the sharply defined collection of Hebrew Scriptures testified to by sources like Josephus and 4 Ezra. Rather, I have argued that the pre-Hellenistic contents, Hebrew focus, alphabet-like numbering, and other features of the Hebrew Scriptures are best set in the context of the Hasmonean priest-kings’ promotion of distinctively Hebrew culture in their widening kingdom. I have acknowledged that these kings had their opponents, such as those found at Qumran, and they did not command the assent of all Diaspora groups or even peripheral groups—for example, the Samaritans—within their miniempire. Nevertheless, the Hasmoneans are the most likely agents to have had the power and motivation to make this move. They not only collected older Hebrew writings within the temple they controlled (2 Macc 2:14) but also promoted a specific collection of those writings for use outside the temple—a collection that was eventually characterized by increasingly standardized text forms based on temple exemplars—as part of their consolidation of their

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kingdom. This set of writings was almost exclusively Hebrew—except for the quoted letters in Ezra and the Aramaic in (the special case of ) Daniel, and it consisted of the Torah and a collection of (purportedly) pre-Hellenistic, nonTorah writings that were usually designated as “Prophets.”

From the Hasmoneans to the First Century c.e. What I have not clarified here is the journey of such Scriptures from the Hasmonean period onward. Even after the Hasmonean period, some Jewish groups appear to have persisted in focusing exclusively or almost exclusively on the Torah, while others like those at Qumran treated a broader collection of writings as inspired and worthy of copying and study. Nevertheless, once the Hasmonean priest-kings had set this temple-based system of broader education in motion, its temple connections would have supported its continuance during the Roman period, even when rulers like Herod appointed high priests but were not high priests themselves. Indeed, Herod’s initiatives may have strengthened links between the temple and the broader Jewish Diaspora. As Schwartz has argued, Herod invested considerable sums and influence in defending the interests of Jewish communities outside Palestine, while building up the Jerusalem temple complex to the point where it was a magnet for large-scale pilgrimages.1 This context would have been conducive to the continuance and reinforcement of the temple-centric but broadly focused system of Hebrew education inaugurated by the Hasmoneans. The consolidation of these links to the Diaspora may explain the gradual emergence of a Greek set of Scripture translations highly parallel in content to the Hebrew Scriptures, though not as sharply defined. This is not yet a clearly defined “Septuagint” that goes beyond the Torah. That broader Greek Bible only appears as the “Old Testament” portion of later Christian Scriptures. But this emergent collection of Greek Jewish Scriptures is referred to in terminology—“Torah and Prophets”—that is parallel to that seen for the Hebrew Scriptures, and its core appears determined by the contents of the Hebrew Scriptures. Despite such ways Greek-language expressions of Judaism corresponded to and promoted Hebrew Scriptures, anti-Greek tendencies within Judaism did not cease with the Hasmoneans. Rather, such tendencies merely refocused, as Palestinian Jews clashed with the Romans in a series of incidents leading to the Jewish revolts, while Diaspora Jews like those in Alexandria fought with the “Greek” communities of their cities. Within this context we see examples like Josephus’s promotion—in Greek and on Greek terms—of Hebrew Scriptures as superior to those of the Greeks. There are even significant anti-Greek sayings in rabbinic literature, sayings that stand alongside nonjudgmental

1. Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 40–47.

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rabbinic references to Homer and assertions of the existence of schools of Greek run by rabbis. At each stage we see a similar mix of pro-Hebrew, antiGreek rhetoric combined with Greek and significant influence in other ways of Greek culture. This hybrid opposition to “Hellenists” and “Hellenizers” only solidified and consolidated a focus on Hebrew Scriptures, particularly the Torah. Thus the phenomenon, especially within Judaism, of Scripture as a tightly bounded concept is a phenomenon of cultural resistance. Like most forms of cultural resistance, it is integrally bound up with the elements and forms of the culture it resists. It is hybrid, yet it is resistance nevertheless. At the outset of the period, we saw Ben Sira drawing freely from various sources for his teaching—Hebrew Scriptures above all, but also Greek and possibly Demotic wisdom. And such a mix of Scripture and other sources continues in Jewish Greek teachings like the Wisdom of Solomon. But we also see the emergence over time of a focus on Hebrew, not other languages; on these books, not those. As I have argued, these sharp definitions are a hyperversion of the already defined Hellenistic curriculum. They represent the perceived need of Jewish elites to build their educational coherence around a set of (purportedly) preHellenistic texts not tainted by the influence of Hellenism. To be sure, we must distinguish throughout between the actual threat of Hellenism and the manufacturing of a threat of Hellenism to serve other interests. Many elites find it convenient to manufacture a common enemy in order to unite people under them, and this appears to have been the case with the thoroughly “Hellenized,” anti-Hellenistic Hasmoneans. Through focusing on a “Greek” attempt to eradicate Judaism—including internal collaborators— the Hasmoneans could unite as “non-Greek” the otherwise disparate people of the Palestinian area. Indeed this story of Greek threat becomes the centerpoint of their founding histories (1 and 2 Maccabees), a key part of the “cultural memory” that reinforced the short-lived Hasmonean kingdom. Of course, in defining this threat the Hasmoneans could build on a deep ambivalence about foreign influence already seen in the Hebrew biblical tradition, particularly streams influenced by Hosea and Deuteronomy. Yet I have argued that they went beyond Deuteronomy in promoting a broader anti-Greek collection of Hebrew Scriptures, including both “Torah” and a broad group of “prophets” that encompassed books like Psalms and even Proverbs. This new manifestation of the longstanding definition of Judaism over against the “peoples”—the creation of a sharply boundaried collection of Scriptures—was foundational long after the demise of the Hasmonean kingdom. Indeed, as sources like Josephus testify, the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly the Torah, remained central to Jewish culture after the destruction of the Second Temple. Though the temple base for promotion and consolidation of the scriptural collection had been lost, the enculturation system and its textual corpus was already established enough that it formed the center of the emergent rabbinic movement. Yet even here, we see pale reflections of the earlier templecentered forms of Hebrew textuality. As I showed in chapter 8, numerous

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rabbinic writings still testify to the original storage of Torah scrolls in specific parts of the temple, speak of Hebrew as “the language of the temple,” and specify that elementary education should begin with Leviticus. Be that as it may, we should be clear in conclusion that the Hebrew Scriptures that formed the core of study in this semi-Hellenistic, broadened form of Jewish education were not a “canon,” neither in terminology nor function. Indeed, as Assmann and others have shown, the Greek word kano¯n was not applied to a list of authoritative books until the church synod decisions of the late fourth centuries. Prior to that the term was used in at least four ways, to designate: (1) an artistic guide to be imitated; (2) a limited group of literary works to be used as exact models for further compositions; (3) laws (or creeds) to be used as a norm to judge all decisions of the highest human authorities; and (4) nonnormative lists like Roman period tables of astronomers. With the church synod decisions, kano¯n was used for the first time to designate a list of books (meaning 4) and law to be used as guide (meaning 3), thus creating a law-like collection of Scriptures designated as kano¯n.2 Though Jews had long since had such a normative and bounded collection of books in the form of the Torah, they did not use the term kano¯n (or a Hebrew equivalent) for it, and they certainly would not have applied the term to a broader collection of Torah and Prophets. Given the variety of functions of this broader collection within the education-enculturation system of semielites in Second Temple Judaism, it probably does not make sense to use the term “canon” or even “protocanon” to describe it. Rather, the emergent Hebrew collection is—as its users often suggest—a collection of “scriptures”: numinous, divinely inspired writings that were a crucial part of a process of education-enculturation, writings to be kept on the mouth and written on the heart, so that Jews from Judas to Josephus could remain Torah-observant and resist the onslaught of the Greco-Roman world. It is only with the subsequent journey of these texts into the Greek and Christian context that we see the application of the term “canon” to them as part of a broader Christian Bible. Somewhat later the rabbis incorporated these “Scriptures” into a broader, graded group of writings, now combined with collections like the Mishnah and two Talmuds, which were designated as records of an originally nonwritten, oral Torah from Moses. I will now take a brief look at each of these contexts—rabbinic and Christian—before moving in the final chapter to some conclusions.

Scriptures Moving Forward In the original concept of this book I planned to include a full chapter on textuality and education in the early rabbinic and Christian movements. Though I knew of the mass of information in both areas, I wanted to include

2. Assmann, Kulturelle Geda¨chtnis, 103–29.

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at least a brief overview of major sources and works that showed the continuation of dynamics discussed in the preceding chapters. Nevertheless, the earlier portions of this project grew to be more extensive than I intended, and I discovered a mix of older and more recent works that already do a good job of surveying the evidence for Christian and Jewish education and textuality. They show that lines pursued here continue forward in various refractions in the Jewish and Christian traditions. The following is merely a sketch of some possible connections. On the Jewish side, Catherine Hezser’s monumental Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (2001) is now the starting point for collection and critical analysis of the data for textuality and education in early Judaism.3 In this book and related articles, she shows that Judaism maintained the sort of small-scale, family- or pseudofamily-based educational process that has been described in previous chapters. Though some have posited the early advent of separate “schools” in Judaism, Hezser shows that there is little reliable evidence for the existence of such schools. Where many have followed rabbinic traditions in assuming virtually universal male literacy in early Judaism, Hezser uses techniques best known from Harris’s work on the Greco-Roman world to argue that literacy in early Judaism was, in fact, much more limited. Whatever literacy did exist was focused on competence in reading and performing Torah, and it was limited primarily to those who had a father with such competence. Yet even as Torah was a crucial symbol of Jewish identity and a focal point for the emergent synagogue, Hezser also points to other forms of oral-written Jewish instruction, particularly the non-Torah-based Mishnah that is itself ingested. Students memorized the Mishnah much as students in the Greco-Roman world memorized the Roman law codes. So also, both Hezser and Jaffee have pointed to a similar oral-written dynamic in the development, ingestion, and performance of the Jerusalem Talmud tradition, again profitably using models from the Greco-Roman world. These bodies of early Jewish literature—the Mishnah and the Yerushalmi—come from a period where rabbinic teaching is taken to be specifically “oral,” even thematized as part of the “oral torah.” Indeed, there are clear strictures against the formation of comprehensive records of these traditions. There are a few references to the use of tablets or notebooks for temporary recording of rabbinic rulings, but even these are clearly distinguished from literary records by their media—tablets or codices rather than higher prestige scrolls—and the ambivalence of the rabbinic sources toward the use of even these limited written media for the recording of the emergent rabbinic legal traditions.4 Nevertheless, despite this ambivalence toward writing in early Judaism, it

3. Hezser, Jewish Literacy. 4. See the qualifications regarding the dating of references to such notes and their nature in Hezser, “Mishnah and Book Production,” 178–79. For critical discussion of traditions about writing things down see also Jacob Neusner, “The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before AD 70: The Problem of Oral Transmission,” JJS 22 (1971): 1–18.

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plays a role. Hezser, Martin Jaffee, and others have uncovered phenomena within early rabbinic Judaism that mirror the oral-written dynamics of the Greco-Roman culture. They find phenomena—including but not limited to the references to notetaking in early rabbinic traditions—that point to a process of rabbinic education-enculturation.5 Such education, to be sure, was limited to a fairly confined Jewish intellectual elite. Nevertheless, those who progressed far in the emergent, initially small rabbinic intellectual hierarchy did so by learning to perform, ingest, and exegete both biblical and postbiblical rabbinic traditions. At some point, perhaps earlier than officially recognized, these latter rabbinic traditions—though ideologically distinguished from Scripture by their predominantly “oral” character—were stabilized through the technique of writing. At the very least, by around 200 c.e. we see a written edition of the Mishnah, and this is followed by written versions of various other rabbinic corpora: Midrashim, Talmudim, and so on.6 Later rabbinic Judaism ends up with a graded set of Scriptures. The written Mosaic Torah stands at the symbolic center of these Scriptures, surrounded by the Prophets and Writings of the rest of the Tanach. Yet, as many studies have shown, the now written “Oral Torah” plays as important or more important a role in the emergent discourse of the rabbinic movement. Students still had to master the texts of the Tanach, Torah above all, but their true learning was often measured by their ability to ingest and discuss a broader scope of postbiblical written traditions: the Mishnah, Talmudim, and Midrashim, along with other authoritative rabbinic traditions. The oral-written process of educationenculturation continued, and it continued to define an intellectual elite—ideally all of Israel, but in reality still an elite defined by their oral-written, cognitive-performative mastery of the communal tradition.7 Meanwhile, a Jewish male’s (and increasingly today, female’s) entry into adulthood is marked not by demonstrated mastery of the whole corpus but by his (or her) public reading performance of a single reading from an unpointed text of the Torah. This performance demonstrates the youth’s memorized mastery of the vocal tradition of that Torah portion. It stands as a microcosmic symbol of the broader mastery of the tradition held up as an ideal for all.

5. See in particular, Martin Jaffee, “A Rabbinic Ontology of the Written and Spoken Word: On Discipleship,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65 (1997): 534–35, and Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 100–152, for arguments that the “oral” character of rabbinic tradition referred more to how it was performed than to how it was transmitted. 6. For more nuanced analysis and discussion of evidence for different levels of orality in different rabbinic corpora, see work by Yaakov Elman, including his Authority and Tradition: Toseftan Baraitot in Talmudic Babylonia (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV, 1994) and “Orality and the Transmission of Tosefta Pisha in Talmudic Literature,” in Introducing Tosefta: Textual, Intratextual and Intertextual Studies, ed. Harry Fox and R. Meacham (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV, 1999), 123–180. See also the broader discussion of these issues in Yaakov Elman and Israel Gershoni, “Introduction,” in Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Diffusion, ed. Yaakov Elman and Israel Gershoni (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 1–26 and Steven D. Fraade, “Literary Composition and Oral Performance in Early Midrashim,” Oral Tradition 14.1 (March, 1999): 33–51. 7. On the small-scale intellectual elite discussed here see Catherine Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine, Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum (Tu¨bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997).

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As others have observed and is evident from this study as well, this culture form has much in common with institutions of Hellenistic education and higher learning. Though the central traditions are in Hebrew, they are mastered in ways analogous to the mastery of Greek traditions in Hellenistic education. Moreover, scholars such as Liebermann, Goldin, and others have found many similarities between the sorts of exegetical operations performed by rabbinic masters on scriptural texts and the sorts of exegetical operations performed on Homer and other key Greek educational texts. Finally, as Liebermann originally argued, Jewish scribes appear to have adopted some of the techniques of the Alexandrian grammarians to preserve the integrity of their central texts.8 Parts of early Christianity emphasized orality in ways similar to their rabbinic Jewish counterparts.9 Like their rabbinic counterparts, early Christians appear to have mastered the written Jewish Scriptures, albeit in Greek form. They also resembled their counterparts in relying heavily on memorized forms of that written tradition in their quotation of it. Indeed, Frances Young, building on Peter Katz, has uncovered ways in which the written media of early Christianity point to a construal of Scripture as an oral-like deposit of traditions relating to the risen Lord. She points out that the early Christian use of the codex form—generally used in the Hellenistic world for notes and business records—involves a downgrading of Jewish scriptural tradition in favor of a heightened focus on Jesus, the understood referent of the Jewish Scriptures. Where their rabbinic counterparts were sanctifying the scriptural tradition with scrolls and using note forms for occasional recording of oral rabbinic sayings, Christians were using the codex form for Scriptures in a largely oral liturgical context focused on veneration of Jesus Christ, the “Word made flesh.” This relative flexibility vis-a`-vis the Jewish written tradition was reflected as well in early Christian openness toward the translation of Jewish (and later on, Christian) traditions into various languages. The holiness resided not in the written text or the language in which it was written but in the Christological reality to which it witnessed.10 Moreover, because Christians used the Greek form of Jewish Scriptures rather than the more sharply defined, purportedly pre-Hellenistic Hebrew Scriptures, they freely used texts like a Greek translation of Enoch or the Wisdom of Solomon that were not el-

8. Liebermann, Hellenism 20–27; J. Goldin, “A Philosophical Session in a Tannaite Academy,” Traditio 21 (1965): 1–21; “Several Sidelights of a Torah Education in Tannaite and Early Amoraic Times,” in Exploring the Talmud: Education, ed. Haim Z. Dimitrovsky (New York: KTAV, 1976), 3–18. 9. This limited discussion is not the place for speculation on the possibility that Jesus of Nazareth and his immediate circle saw him(self ) primarily as a “teacher.” For proposals moving in this direction see Riesner, Jesus als Lehrer; Riesner, “Jesus as Preacher and Teacher,” in Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition, ed. Henry Wansbrough (Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 185–210; Samuel Byrskog, Jesus the Only Teacher: Didactic Authority and Transmission in Ancient Israel, Ancient Judaism, and the Matthean Community, Coniectanea Biblica: New Testament Series (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1994). 10. Barton, Spirit and the Letter, 79–104; Frances M. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 12–16.

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igible for inclusion in the specifically Hebrew curriculum of rabbinic Judaism. The Jewish texts, to be sure, are still written, but early Christians record these texts with materials usually used for temporary records and treat them with a flexibility typical of oral tradition. New traditions of the early Christian movement appear to have been transmitted in different ways. Q, Thomas, and other early sayings traditions witness to the development of oral-written Christian gnomic material, perhaps meant for use in elementary instruction of converts—on analogy with the similar use of such gnomic material in early education in other cultural contexts.11 Elsewhere such material was used in an intensely oral-written context, and that appears to be the case with Christian sayings material as well. For example, the variants between versions of Q sayings in Matthew, Luke, and other parallels often show the dynamics of gnomic material that was transmitted in oral or oral-written form. Though there is significant verbatim overlap, there is also semantic overlap amid verbal variation: synonyms, variant word orders, small phrases or words appear in one variant and not the other. Consider, for example, the following example from Jesus’ saying about anxiety. Luke 12:25: tis de ex humo¯n merimno¯n dunatai epi te¯n he¯likian autou prostheinai pe¯chun Which of you, being anxious, can to his span of life add a cubit? Matt 6:27: tis de ex humo¯n merimno¯n dunatai prostheinai epi te¯n he¯likian autou pe¯chun Which of you, being anxious, can add to his span of life a cubit hena single? In this example, a section with close verbal agreement just appears rearranged, with a slight additional element, hena (single), in the Matthean version. In the next verse, there is a combination of semantic overlap and verbal agreement. Matt 6:28*: kai peri endumatos ti merimnate; katamathete ta krina tou agrou po¯s auxanousin and about clothing, why are you anxious? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. Luke 12:26–27*: ti peri to¯n loipo¯n merimnate; katnoe¯sate ta krina po¯s auxanei Why are you anxious about the remaining things? Consider the lilies how they grow. 11. A classic early study linking Q with such gnomic material is James M. Robinson, “LOGOI SOPHON: On the Gattung of Q,” in James Robinson and Helmut Koester, Trajectories Through Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971), 71–113. For further study of the wisdom elements of Q see particularly John S. Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q: Trajectories in Ancient Wisdom Collections (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987).

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Here we see slight variants—endumatos/to¯n loipo¯n (“clothing”/“other things”), katamathete/katnoe¯sate (“consider”), auxanousin/auxanei (“grow”)— and the presence of a slight additional phrase in Matthew (tou agrou, “the field”). The variants do not affect the meaning; they are technically “insignificant.” But in another sense these and other variants are quite significant: they point to a probable oral-written process of transmission. The level of verbal agreement here and elsewhere in Jesus’ sayings suggests that writing is playing some role in stabilizing the tradition. Nevertheless, the presence of significant variation suggests a prominent role for oral memory as well. If this is so, the tradition manifest in sources like Matthew, Luke, and other materials has not yet reached a stage of exclusively written transmission where an ur-text can be established. Though we may sometimes be able to speculate about specific variants caused by the preferences of Matthew, Luke, or other “performers” of such Jesus instructional material, it appears that the sayings tradition manifest in Matthew, Luke, and so on had not attained a stability allowing for secure reconstruction of the wording of the sayings. The sorts of variants just surveyed suggest that this early Christian instructional material is being transmitted—at least in part—in the memories of authoritative early Christian tradents.12 The work of Werner Kelber has been particularly helpful in showing an ambivalence in some early Christian traditions about oral-written instructional textuality of the sort seen in Q. Indicators of this include Paul and Mark’s apparent avoidance of such sayings material, Mark’s negative depiction of the predominant candidates for the authoritative transmission of such oral-written sayings material (the disciples and Jesus’ family), and the eventual replacement of the separate sayings genre (e.g. Q) by gospels that incorporated that genre into a broader narrative framework (especially Matthew and Luke).13 Meanwhile, narrative gospels like Mark—apparently ambivalent about the oralwritten gnomic tradition—represent an important textualization of early Christian narratives about Jesus. As Kelber and others have argued, the stories preceding Mark bear signs of having been transmitted in oral form. Following others, Kelber suggests that this textualization of these oral narratives, apparently occurring around 68–90 c.e., may have been prompted by the destruction

12. Here I am modifying my earlier views on the feasibility of more precise Q reconstruction. Cf. treatment of this very passage in Q in Carr, From D to Q, 208. 13. Werner H. Kelber, The Oral and Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul and Q (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 90–183. Note also Loveday Alexander, “The Living Voice: Skepticism Towards the Written Word in Early Christian and in Graeco-Roman Texts,” in The Bible in Three Dimensions: Essays in Celebration of Forty Years of Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield, ed. David J. A. Clines, Stephen E. Fowl, and Stanley E. Porter (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), 221–47. As Kelber points out, by the early centuries c.e., traditions like Thomas are relegated to groups outside the ascendant streams of Christianity. For arguments that the Nag Hammadi materials are remnants of an antiheretical library of Christians see Torgny Sa¨ve-So¨derbergh, “Holy Scriptures or Apologetic Documentations? The ‘Sitz im Leben’ of the Nag Hammadi Library,” in Les textes de Nag Hammadi: Colloque du centre d’histoire des religions (Strasbourg, 23–25 octobre 1974), ed. Jacques-E´. Me´nard (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 3–14.

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of the temple and the perceived threat to oral continuity represented by the dispersal of institutions housed in Jerusalem.14 Like the early rabbinic tradition, the earliest generation of Christians insisted on the orality of their specifically Christian traditions, even as some strata of the gospels witness to an emergent (oral-)written tradition. Thus, for example, we find slightly variant forms of Mark in the Gospel of Mark proper and embedded in Matthew and Luke. Some have used such “minor agreements” to argue against the two-source hypothesis, but I would argue that these variants—often showing an effort to improve Mark’s Greek—betray a still fluid process of variation in such traditions as they are used in oral-written early Christian education-enculturation. These now stand alongside the sorts of sayings traditions discussed earlier (e.g. Q), likewise characterized by word-order changes, word substitutions not affecting meaning, and other “insignificant variants” that point to a process of oral-written transmission. Though such sayings were probably used in instruction, they do not stand alone as separate “wisdom” materials circulated among a discrete sapiential strain of Christianity. Throughout this study I have shown how such “wisdom” materials typically stood alongside other materials in instruction, including and especially in early Judaism of the sort seen at Qumran and elsewhere. Rather, materials of the sort designated as “Q” stand alongside variant versions of Mark, an emergent epistolary collection associated with Paul, and other early Christian materials as part of a broader early Christian oral-written instructional corpus. Whatever the origins of these texts in other uses (e.g., Paul’s letters), they entered the Christian stream of tradition as diverse recognized foci for Christian teaching.15 Only with time would such early Christian materials be solidified, defined and circumscribed, on analogy with the Jewish Scriptures. Only later would they (and not other Christian texts) become part of an authoritative Christian Scripture, a Bible with a Greek Old Testament on the one hand and a clearly defined Christian New Testament on the other. Though it is disputed, this renewed emphasis on scripturalization in early Christianity probably was an attempt to enforce stability amid a proliferation of divergent groups in early Christianity, gnostic and other. By this point in the study we have seen this phenomenon before. From the early kingdoms of Mesopotamia to the consolidating Egyptian monarchy of the Middle Kingdom to an ascendant Athens of the fifth century to expansionist periods in Israel’s history in the late preexilic and then Hasmonean periods, in these contexts and more we have seen expansion and consolidation of writing-supported education-enculturation con-

14. Kelber, Oral and Written Gospel, 211. 15. For survey of evidence of early Christian textuality (a critique of Kelber’s over-emphasis on exclusive orality in early Christianity) see Harry Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 28–32. In the same book (esp. 205–30), Gamble emphasizes liturgy as a primary context for early use of Christian texts (alongside private reading and magical uses). As in the Jewish instance, such public “liturgical” reading was a teaching event that was part of a broader oral-written process of education.

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nected to reinforced, centralized institutions of cultural power. So also it appears that early Christian traditions too were consolidated as part of a broader centralization of Christian institutional authority, marginalization of perceived deviant groups, and the consolidation of hierarchical lines of authority. Only at this point do we finally see a clear delineation of boundaried “Greek Scriptures,” the Greek Old and New Testaments that formed the emergent Christian Bible.16 Thus toward the end of the second century we see the emergence of a defined corpus of a Christian Bible—Old and New Testaments—that serves as the increasingly stable curriculum of the institutional church. Moreover, we also see increasing emphasis on authorized ways to read this complex corpus, ways that construe the whole as integrally interrelated “prophecy” of the fulfillment of the “new covenant” proclaimed by Jeremiah, a record of the—now superseded—covenant with the Jews and a pointer to the reality of Jesus Christ.17 In this way, the development and construal of the early Christian biblical-educational corpus not only consolidated Christianity vis-a`-vis unauthorized Christian groups but also consolidated it vis-a`-vis the opposing educational use of similar Scriptures within the contemporary rabbinic Jewish context. And this process of the use of writing and instruction to establish and consolidate Christianity only accelerated in the fourth and fifth centuries with the linkage of institutional Christianity and the Constantinian empire.18 Early Christians used other texts for education as well, especially the Greek classics. Though there was some ambivalence about such ongoing study of classics, it is clear that central streams of elite Christian intellectual life presupposed Greek learning. For example, thoroughly educated scholars like Origen illustrate an interplay of two forms of oral-written educationenculturation: the Greek Bible and the Greco-Roman classics.19 And even where Christian theologians criticized the use of Greek classics for education of Christians, they often did so using highly learned tropes and themes already present in the Greek tradition itself.20 In this way, as in others, the Christian movement blended with its Greco-Roman environment at loci where its Jewish counterpart, at least as defined by the rabbinic movement, preserved more distinctiveness. Though rabbinic Judaism itself thoroughly adopted various Hellenistic cultural forms and some Jews pursued Greek and Latin learning,

16. For fuller discussion see Carr, “Canonization in Community,” 58–63. 17. For a compelling case for this approach see Frances M. Young, Exegesis and Culture, 49–69. 18. On this see in particular the suggestive study of early Christian scribal practices by Kim Haines-Eitzen (Guardians of Letters, 37–40, 91–94, 152), particularly her observations on shifts from the small scale and relative fluidity of such practices in the second to third centuries to greater standardization and consolidation in the fourth and (particularly) fifth centuries. On early Christian literacy and textuality see also P. J. Botha, “GrecoRoman Literacy as Setting for New Testament Writings,” Neotestamentica 26 (1992): 195–215, and Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church. 19. The classic study of use of the classics in early Christian education is Marrou, History of Education, 314–39. For more recent discussion see Sara Rappe, “The New Math: How to Add and to Subtract Pagan Elements in Christian Education,” in Education in Greek and Latin Antiquity, ed. Yun Lee Too (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 405– 32. 20. For a subtle overview of this interplay and related issues see Rappe, “New Math.”

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specifically rabbinic education-enculturation remained a Hebrew (and some Aramaic) enterprise, while the Christians—aside from exceptions like Jerome—more consistently combined education in (Greek) biblical traditions with education in the Greek classics. Judaism and Christianity were also distinguished in the way they drew on cultural models in the ancient Mediterranean. Hellenistic education and textuality particularly emphasized two sites for ongoing education and formation: (1) the often private or small-scale “school” process—focused particularly on the formation of children—and (2) the reinforcement and elaboration of such formation through performance and discussion of key texts in the symposiummeal context of the Hellenistic association—an adult institution. Various forms of Second Temple Judaism appear to have featured both forms of textuality, both Hellenistic-like Jewish schools of Hebrew and Greek and Jewish organizations like the Qumran Essenes or the Therapeutae (see also Ben Sira) that resembled Hellenistic associations with their meals and associated text discussions.21 The two cultural-religious forms that successfully emerge from Second Temple–period Judaism—rabbinic Judaism and Christianity—preserve both elements, but in different measures. Rabbinic Judaism emphasizes Jewish counterparts to the Hellenistic early and advanced schools. It reflects the meal elements of the Hellenistic association primarily in the traditions surrounding Passover.22 Christianity has some such school elements and develops them more over time. Nevertheless, it put the (Symposium) meal—now theologized as Eucharist—at the center of its communal life. Much Christian textuality, then, becomes connected with this meal.23 Perhaps this difference in emphasis reflects a general difference in how each community conceived its primary source of new members. Rabbinic Judaism was oriented toward the education of (some) children born into the community for higher forms of adult discourse about written biblical and oral(-written) rabbinic traditions. Therefore, it focused more exclusively on the educational-enculturational side of Hellenistic culture. Early Christianity incorporated parts of the Hellenistic educational system, but it was oriented more toward the incorporation of adult converts into a sacral meal–like fellowship led by a small minority of masters of the oral-written Jewish (and early Christian) heritage. So a Christian counterpart to the symposium meal, not the school, took center stage in Christian communal life. Thus, by the end of this study, we end up with three originally Mediterranean streams of text-supported, oral-written education-enculturation that persist into late antiquity: (1) ongoing education-enculturation in Greek and Latin materials, (2) Christian education-enculturation in those materials along with Greek biblical (Old and New Testaments) and other specifically Christian catechetical texts, and (3) the rabbinic Jewish combination of older forms of

21. Klinghardt, Gemeinschaftsmahl, 183–249; Smith, Symposium to Eucharist, 133–72. 22. Klinghardt, Gemeinschaftsmahl, 251–61; Smith, Symposium to Eucharist, 144–50. 23. Klinghardt, Gemeinschaftsmahl, 269–522; Smith, Symposium to Eucharist, 173–277.

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Judean education-enculturation in Hebrew scriptural texts with ingestion and study of an increasing body of oral(-written?) rabbinic traditions. Each of these enculturational systems form a social identity that is transnational: Christian, Jewish, and—increasingly defined vis-a`-vis the others—“Pagan.” These three systems do not just enculturate someone into a geographically and ethnically defined social body but actively—at least at some point—incorporate diverse peoples into a social whole that extends beyond traditional boundaries. Although this move was anticipated by the somewhat international character and scope of early educational systems like the Sumero-Akkadian, it was first fully executed by the emergent Hellenistic educational system, a system that was used to shape citizens of a city into citizens of the world. As we saw, at least during the Maccabean period, it appears that Judaism developed its own form of transnational system to unite its regional empire, now a system based on pre-Hellenistic, Hebrew texts. And though Judaism did not continue this push much beyond the Hasmonean period, that extension and transformation of Israelite identity was continued in another way in the expansion of the Christian cultural system, an expansion that likewise featured a Bible often blended with Hellenistic educational materials, at least for the elite minority of Christians who attained higher theological learning.24 These transnational systems of education-enculturation then form the backdrop for a concept of “religion” apart from localized ethnic identity, a concept that is so prominent in the West and contemporary academic study of these traditions. This is an identity based in an education-enculturation apart from/in addition to one’s formation as an Egyptian, Italian, Argentinian, Japanese, and so on. It is this writing-supported education-enculturation that brings a person—whether young child or adult—over the boundary into the confines of the transnational identity of the “people of Israel,” “church,” and so on and keeps him or her there. The transnational identity that is thus formed and reinforced—both through text-supported and other means—is an identifiable “religion” that stands distinct from—though always related to—the culture of the participants. The written text, whether readable by many or not, provides both an emblem of continuity and a stable means for ensuring the stability of the cultural formation into the next generation. Nevertheless, the main point, always, is to make sure that the sacred text is written on the tablet of the heart of those leaders who are responsible for ensuring the persistence and adaptation of the transnational social body as it moves across time.

24. Cf. Frances M. Young, Exegesis and Culture, esp. 69. Though I have learned from Young’s overview, I reverse her proposed development. Rather than Christianity being the first of these transnational identities, I see Hellenistic-Greek education standing at the outset and the form of transethnic Judaism initially advanced in the Hasmonean period as second, with Christianity as an extension of that cultural phenomenon.

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13 Conclusion

In the preceding chapters I hope I have demonstrated the potential benefits of comparatively analyzing ancient long-duration texts from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Israel as oral-written, numinous literature cognitively mastered for socialization and ongoing enculturation. Such literature was originally used for formation of elites, but this usage was expanded—at least in ideal—in different ways in the Hellenistic period. At that point we see an increasing move toward broader education of free citizens in certain urban quarters of the Hellenistic world. In addition, in response to the unusual circumstances of the anti-Jewish persecution by the Seleucids, we see the development of a resistant counterliteracy in Hellenistic-period Judaism: a literacy focused on cognitive mastery of the Hebrew Torah and other pre-Hellenistic “prophetic” books, a literacy that encompassed—ideally—all Jewish males. This approach can be advocated in more and less thoroughgoing versions. The more thoroughgoing version would take all longduration texts like the Bible as (almost) exclusively used for oralwritten education and ongoing enculturation of ancient elites. Building on a tradition of sociological analysis associated with Emile Durkheim, it would identify (virtually) all uses of such texts in the ancient world—whether explicitly educational or liturgical, ceremonial, and so on—as intellectually shaping and marking off a group of people from others. This shaping, of course, happened to different extents with different elites (e.g., kings only irregularly achieved much mastery of the tradition), and several cultures also attest to the idea of an exclusively oral shaping of nonliterate others through periodic performances of the cultural tradition for the broader public. The less thoroughgoing version of this theory would not insist

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as much on the education-enculturation roles of texts in every aspect of their usage but would maintain that oral-written mastery of the tradition was achieved at least by those who played leading roles in the cultural life of a given people. Although many elite leaders might not achieve significant mastery of the oral-written tradition, we would still recognize that the scribe/priests/teachers who stood at the top of the educational pyramid did achieve such mastery. Long-duration texts like Gilgamesh, the Instruction of Kheti, Homer, and the Jewish Bible might be used for a variety of worship, artistic, or other purposes, but their chief tradents were marked as cultural elites by their superlative oralwritten mastery of the given tradition. The influence of such texts on other groups might be envisioned as a series of concentric circles. The inner circle would be dominated by those elites who had achieved the ideal of relatively comprehensive mastery of the tradition. Yet there might be an outer circle of sub-elites distinguished (at a minimum) by their mastery of a microcosmic fragment of the tradition (e.g., mastery of a Bar Mitzvah Torah portion). Still farther out would be circles of others exposed to the literary tradition through periodic performances at banquets or public festivals. It might seem from parts of this book that I have been arguing only for the more intense version of the theory, but in actuality I recognize that both versions have their place, particularly when looking at ideal and reality in different cultures and different periods. If I have seemed to insist on educational usage of long-duration texts, even to the exclusion of other forms of enculturation and cultural circulation, it has been to emphasize the importance of often overlooked dimensions of cognitive mastery and oral-written performance. Throughout I have maintained that past discussions of textuality and education in Israel and nearby cultures too often have been dominated by assumptions about orality versus literacy or even a continuum with orality on one end and literacy on the other. And though traditions ranging from Plato’s Phaedrus to early Christian and rabbinic texts testify to occasional opposition between the oral and written, this study suggests that most cultural usage of written traditions has involved significant elements of both oral performance and cognitive mastery.1 As a result, whether one opts in a given instance for a more or less intense version of the approach being advocated here, both versions insist on the interplay of the oral and written in the performance and transmission of ancient literature, along with the achievement—at least among the chief tradents of the cultural tradition—of cognitive mastery of that tradition. The ideal, at least, was the writing of the tradition “on the tablet of the heart,” whether or not many people in a given time achieved that ideal. The texts bear the signs of having been created by such cognitive masters of the tradition for oral-written transmission to and consumption by others. Furthermore, whether defining a broader socialcultural elite or just the masters of the tradition, cognitive mastery of texts like Gilgamesh or the Bible played a key role in sociocultural stratification.

1. This is my chief objection to the recent work, so helpful in this study, of Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book.

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These are the key emphases throughout the book, but there are other elements that warrant more attention as important parts of the oral-written literary matrix. For example, only inconsistently have I taken space to discuss the role of what might be termed “elevated language” in the incising of traditions on the mind—especially the role of singing or canting the tradition and of patterned language that might be broadly termed “poetic.” Multiple cultures appear to have found that the use of “poetic” and “musical” modes in the performance of tradition more indelibly impressed it on the mind than mere rote reading. So also, I could have highlighted more consistently the material, graphic elements of writing in the use of texts for cultural reproduction. As others have emphasized, predominantly nonliterate cultures have a particular appreciation for the technology of writing, and often they treat copies of cultural texts with particular reverence. Moreover, the antiquity and specialness of such writings is marked not just by their often archaic language and forms but also by particular scripts, written media, and formatting of the script on the page. Indeed, as M. T. Clanchy, Katharine O’Keefe, and others have argued, the typographic representation of words on a page often serves the end of memorizing and performing a cultural tradition.2 These and other dimensions deserve more consistent and nuanced treatment in a more focused study of the oral-written use of literature for socialization and enculturation than I could give here. Some may object that this study has failed sufficiently to recognize an important distinction between the literatures under discussion: the sharp divide between a “literary corpus” on the one hand and a holy “scriptural corpus” on the other.3 Certainly within recent times there has been a distinction between the religious use of a text like the Bible and the way texts like the Greek classics were treated as secular literature in a Christian culture that no longer recognized the Greek gods. Texts like the Bible, so the argument runs, are treated as divinely inspired and a source of sacred norms. In contrast, a literary corpus like the Greek classics—or later classics of English, German, or other literature—is treated as a nonsacred source of elevated language and a possible means of instilling certain character traits. Such a distinction is not purely modern. As I have noted along the way, there are important distinctions to be made between the Jewish scriptural corpus—with its hardened boundaries, normative authority, and construal of it as divine revelation—and many of the other corpora under discussion here. Despite the clear worth of distinguishing between how different corpora function in their respective societies, I maintain that this distinction between literary and scriptural corpora should not be overemphasized. Our contemporary distinction between “literature” and “Scripture” can obscure more than it illuminates the study of how these texts functioned in antiquity. Merely by

2. See esp. Clanchy, Memory to Record, 142–43; O’Keeffe, Visible Song, 14–15. 3. In fact, people often speak of a “literary canon” and “scriptural canon,” but I have elided the issue of “canon” in my summary here as anachronistic.

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virtue of being written, all these cultural texts bore a numinous, semidivine quality in the cultures where they were transmitted, and this was reinforced by archaic elements of their language, purported authors, material presentation, and performance. At least by later periods, we see the presentation of such texts in multiple cultures as authored or inspired by the divine. For example, we already see the assertion of divine authorship of the Erra epic in Mesopotamia, and the Greeks depicted their cultural literature as inspired by the Muses. Moreover, all of these literatures appear to have played a key role in moral formation, even if they did not achieve the role of supraroyal constitution that the Jewish Scriptures apparently did. In light of these overlaps and the key points of continuity in the use of such texts for the shaping of cultural elites, I argue for the heuristic worth of blurring—at least temporarily—the boundaries we often presuppose between a secular “literary corpus” and religious “Scripture.” After all, the gods were an integral part of all these textual corpora, and religion infused life in each culture where they were used. Would the ancient Greeks, Mesopotamians, or Egyptians have seen the sharp distinction of literary corpus and religious scripture that we do? Lacking our sharp distinction between religion and culture, I suggest that they would not. Terms like “authoritative literature” or “canon” are most useful when highlighting the normative functions of specific corpora in this broader arena, functions that correspond to the use of the term for text lists in later Christian usage and for other cultural areas in earlier Greek culture. For example, terms like “canon” or “protocanonical” are especially appropriate for highlighting the authoritative function of Jewish writings, especially the Mosaic Torah, in some circles of Judaism from the late preexilic period onward. Such writings do appear to have served as set-apart, community-guiding texts long before Christians applied the term “canon” to their own, later collection of these and other texts. Yet even in the Jewish instance, excessive focus on “canon” per se can obscure the broader range of uses of Jewish Scriptures in this period and later. Though Jewish texts like the Torah functioned as normative, canon-like texts, they were part of a web of education-enculturation literature that served a broader and more pervasive function in the shaping of the language and thought of elites, and eventually peoples. As we look at how the Torah and other writings were used, we see that certainly they were cited as authoritative. Nevertheless, just as often they were used as a fluid storehouse of phrases, practices, concepts, and plots for scribes who had them written on their hearts. Therefore, especially in the Jewish instance, I propose that the English term “scripture” may be more appropriate for designating the complex range of uses of authoritative texts rather than the later and narrower term “canon.” “Scripture” has semidivine connotations. It can designate normative literature but encompasses broader uses as well. And it explicitly includes an emphasis on writing—“script”—that is so crucial to the broader enterprise of oral-written shaping of both individuals and a broader community. In the past some scholars—including some who have been important in educating-enculturating me—urged a focus on the Bible as canon or urged the

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practice of “canonical criticism.” In doing so, they focused on some of the same issues emphasized in this book, for example, the shaping and use of biblical traditions in communities of faith, the dynamics surrounding the consolidation and hardening of biblical tradition, and the construal of its parts in relation to one another. Yet, given the foregoing reflections on terminology, I would urge the use of the designation “scriptural criticism” rather than “canonical criticism” to characterize study of the phenomenology of the early formation and use of biblical texts. Moreover, such “scriptural criticism” would not focus on theological elements to the extent of work done by Brevard Childs, James Sanders, and those pursuing similar approaches. Instead, as exemplified in this study, a “scripture-critical” approach to the Bible also would emphasize a broad range of nontheological dynamics surrounding scripture—for example, the social dynamics surrounding the textuality, language, graphic presentation, and often archaic character of biblical texts.

Possible Implications of This Approach for Biblical Studies Much analysis remains to be done of the phenomenology of the Bible and other literatures as oral-written education and socialization literature. Given more space and time, I would have focused much more than I did here on the way in which various educational and enculturational structures specifically focus on and simultaneously construct social groups defined by gender, race, and other categories. Past work has often stressed the occasional presence of women in educational structures, but so far most work on the role of educationenculturation in constructing social categories has been done in Classics. In addition, this study joins others in pointing to the importance of study of the character of variants and quotations in early transmission of cultural texts. Most such texts have been published in scholarly editions, where “variants” are noted in an apparatus. But this and other studies show the need to look more broadly at the phenomena of variants, not as a distraction from reconstructing an ur-exemplar, but as crucial access points to a process of textual mastery and performance not always measured by central reference copies. In addition, my work for this book has underlined the special importance of the Qumran finds for scholarship of the Hebrew Bible. Up until recent years much of the emphasis has been on the relevance of the Dead Sea Scrolls as background to early Christianity, but the recent publication of cave 4 materials has revealed more clearly the unparalleled value of the scrolls in providing access to non-Qumran religious, instructional, and scribal practices. We have only begun to scratch the surface of the importance of these materials for study of early Judaism and the Hebrew Bible. In addition, this work has led me to reevaluate broader methods in biblical studies. As indicated in the chapter on textuality and education in preHellenistic Israel, I maintain that biblical scholars should reckon with the likelihood of oral transmission of oral-written biblical traditions, especially at times like the exile where versions of biblical traditions may have been reproduced

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from memory by scribal masters who no longer had access to written versions of that tradition. This study has reinforced my skepticism about text-critical attempts to reconstruct an eclectic ur-text of biblical books for times preceding the identification of authoritative reference copies against which other texts written in the same tradition could be corrected. One can speculate about individual readings of the tradition in earlier periods, but the fluid dynamics of textual transmission in such periods render impossible a methodologically controlled reconstruction of a broader textual tradition before such authorization of a single textual tradition occurred.4 As a form-critic, I now look first to the process of education and other forms of cultural reproduction as the Sitz im Leben (“institutional setting”) for the formation and transmission of all texts—not just “wisdom texts”—in the biblical stream of tradition. Though such texts often had a previous oral or written prehistory, they entered the stream of ongoing written tradition as part of a matrix of socializationenculturation literature, whether for a specific occupational subgroup (e.g. preforms of Leviticus 1–7) or a broader (usually male) public (e.g. collections in Proverbs or the Deuteronomic Torah). If this is true, it would suggest the particular productivity of those sociological and anthropological approaches to the Bible that stress the social functions of textuality itself, the social significance of the mastery of linguistic repertoires (e.g. Hebrew or subgroup idioms represented in Deuteronomic and Priestly literatures), and the social dimensions of visual and material aspects of such scriptural texts—script, media (papyrus versus parchment, scroll versus codex), and scribal practices. Overall, I have found little evidence that the sorts of broader ideological structures focused on in biblical theology were of central concern to those who shaped and consolidated biblical literature. Such theological preoccupations appear far more important to Protestants seeking a theology in their sola scriptura (and others building on their work) than they were to the early author-tradents who formed and used the Bible. The model advocated in this book also has implications for approaches to the Bible that draw on literary studies outside the Bible, such as “new” literary criticism, structuralism, formalism, and narratological approaches. The strength of such approaches has been that they helped focus the attention of scholars on the present form of the text, including concentric and other patterns that may have played a prominent role in their memorization and performance. In addition, the literary concept of “intertextuality” often is a more accurate designation of scribal masters’ highly fluid use of preceding textual materials than older concepts of “inner-biblical exegesis” or “allusion.” At the same time, the oral-written educational-enculturational model advocated here highlights some important differences between ancient literature like the Bible and the contemporary literary works that are the original focus of literary criticism. Ancient corpora like the Bible were shaped for oral-written memo-

4. This phenomenon renders problematic the Oxford project of reconstruction of a broader eclectic text of the Hebrew Bible preceding the proto-Massoretic tradition.

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rization and performance and education-enculturation. Contemporary literature, especially narrative prose, is shaped for the pleasures of a predominantly silent and individual reading environment. Insofar as a literary approach aims to uncover literary dimensions that would have been recognizable to ancient writers, performers, or hearers, it must be attentive to the oral-written dimension of such texts and the aesthetics peculiar to such literature. Finally, the model advocated here links in particularly productive ways with two streams of more recent scholarship on the Bible: postcolonial and gender approaches. The links with postcolonial theory should be evident already in my depiction of various indigenous Hellenistic literatures as “hybrid” acts of cultural resistance to Hellenistic culture and domination. Vis-a`-vis gender, the model advocated here suggests the benefits of focusing more on how scriptures like the Bible were shaped to instill a particular gender identity in the (predominantly male) Jewish elites they helped to form. For example, Teresa Morgan has suggested that a hidden element of Hellenistic Greek curricula was its training of (predominantly male) students to suppress their own interests and passions through forcing them to memorize the educational curriculum by rote. This process prepared male students for administrative and higher posts by teaching them to rule their passions and obey the strictures of an impersonal system. Given the relative paucity of explicit evidence for oral-written education of women in early Judaism, it appears that the Hebrew Bible was part of an even more exclusively male process of education and enculturation. A gendertheoretical approach to the Bible could explore ways in which it was used to shape and engender elite Jewish men: both directly, through teaching them certain perspectives on honor, Jewish practices, and so on, and indirectly, through teaching them skills like writing and Hebrew or through instilling in them certain affective dispositions and capabilities. The foregoing is an incomplete sampling of some ways I find myself looking at my own discipline of Biblical studies differently in light of this study and those on which it builds. These are more theses toward further exploration than finished thoughts. Such further exploration is best pursued in other contexts, especially as this approach is evaluated and further refined.

Ancient and Contemporary Education and Enculturation So far, this study has focused primarily on ancient dynamics of education and enculturation. In particular, I have emphasized ways in which ancient enculturational literature often hearkens back to an earlier time, draws power from its patently archaic language and obscure themes, and frequently serves as a written bulwark against contemporary cultural shifts. More specifically, I have argued that the Hebrew Bible—in its origins and repeated usage—functioned as a numinous, (mostly) Hebrew written deposit of revelation from a preHellenistic time when there was still “prophecy” in Israel. Its very power derived from the ways it was not immediately accessible to its Aramaic-speaking audience and diverged from its Greek counterparts. Both earlier and later oral-

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written enculturation literatures and scriptures have similarly drawn their power from their status as esoteric, archaic literature, mastered particularly by elites who surpassed their peers in their possession of cultural capital from a bygone age. Though there are important differences, many of these dynamics persist today, including the use of esoteric texts to form social elites and subgroups. This is not just an issue of “fundamentalists” or others who are devoted to particular interpretations of the Tanach, Christian Bible, or Koran. We see similar emphasis on mastery of restricted cultural capital in the use of tests like the SAT for gatekeeping to elite colleges, tests that measure students’ mastery of often esoteric, arcane vocabulary and math concepts rarely used in everyday life. Such dynamics also may be reflected in the push in some quarters toward reshaping college education around a “core curriculum,” where students gain mastery of a new corpus of archaic cultural classics—one now including a mix of biblical, Greco-Roman, and more recent European literature. Motivated by a variety of factors, this push toward a new form of “cultural literacy” resembles ancient efforts to distinguish elites by their knowledge of oral-written literatures—whether Sumero-Akkadian, Middle Egyptian, Homeric Greek, or pre-Hellenistic Hebrew. Apparently there was and is a magic in mastery of such older, esoteric written cultural artifacts that has persisted for over four thousand years, from the emergence of such oral-written curricula in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures to today.5 My scholarly peers and I are not immune to this magic. This whole study, focused as it is on recovery of the origins and uses of ancient texts, betrays the fact that I too have been ensorcelled by the attraction of older cultural artifacts. Indeed, my own guild of biblical scholars is defined by our mastery of such esoteric knowledge—command of a range of ancient languages and historical methods and control of more recent upper-level discourses of literary and ideological theory. From time to time one hears critiques of biblical or other scholarship for its frequent distance from the practices of contemporary communities, its inaccessibility to the broader public, and the frequent obscurity of its historical and theoretical discourses. Yet this study suggests that such distance from the contemporary world is a central part of the cultural phenomenon of much intellectual discourse, particularly in the humanities. Already four thousand years ago, a key part of the phenomenon of elite enculturation was the ongoing work by specialists to enshrine archaic and obscure literature and preserve the distance between such literature and a broader public. To be sure, the resulting intellectual hierarchy (ancient or contemporary) may be particularly validated and supported by those who populate the top of it—whether the intellectual elite who wrote many of the texts that are our primary access to antiquity or those who populate upper-level institutions now. Yet these dynamics of education and enculturation are important to the extent that they orga-

5. Bourdieu, of course, traces many more subtle ways in which “cultural capital” plays a key role in the organization and interplay between social groups; Bourdieu, Distinction.

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nize broader groups of people into stratified elites through initiating them— or not initiating them—into select bodies of inherently esoteric and impractical knowledge. More specifically, the discipline of historical-critical study of the Bible can be seen as a way in which more recent religio-intellectual institutions have cultivated the archaic and esoteric character of key texts, preserving and deepening the distance between them and the contemporary scene in which they are used. The upper levels of my discipline of biblical scholarship—and, I would argue, some other disciplines in the humanities as well—are populated by intellectual elites who plausibly can claim the possession of knowledge inaccessible to broader publics, a knowledge that they/we then mediate to various, carefully defined subgroups. Furthermore, this study has documented the particular magic of esoteric antiquity in the study of texts like the Bible. Though there are various types of arcane knowledge (e.g., contemporary science, math, statistics, knowledge of various languages), elite knowledge of texts frequently consists of elite knowledge of traditions distinguished by their antiquity from elements of contemporary culture. Given this, it should be no surprise that historical-critical approaches to the Bible that highlight its antiquity have persisted and are gaining renewed dominance, despite past pronouncements by some that such approaches had been superseded by literary, ideological, and other methods that ignore or undermine the supposed separation of the Bible from contemporary discourses. This is not a context where such dynamics can be discussed in depth. I mention them here, however briefly, because their existence points to the need for a broader study of Bible as scripture, and of scripture as a particular instance of different uses of various written resources, from early times onward, for social organization and stratification. The more we know about the dynamics surrounding the origins and ongoing use of such texts, the less unconscious we need be about imperatives that drive scholarship, teaching, and institutional and guild politics. I will take my own discipline of biblical studies as an example, particularly biblical studies as it is practiced in institutions aiding in the training of pastors, rabbis, and other religious professionals. Many professional biblical scholars readily critique students’ use of the King James Version of the Bible, often without a consciousness of the way the poetic, older English language of that translation represents a crucial way in which contemporary communities of faith experience the ancient otherness of the scriptural text. Similar dynamics surround the use of Hebrew in Jewish synagogues, Latin in Roman Catholic contexts, and Greek in the Orthodox tradition. As we have seen in this study, the foreignness and antiquity of language has often been a crucial component in the use of such texts as educational-enculturational literature. Yet this example points to a problem: how much should anyone perpetuate ancient modes of elevating literature like the Bible, Greek classics, or other purportedly special educational corpora? Should biblical scholars encourage their students to use the King James Version? Should we encourage a return to memorization of biblical texts, uncritical affirmation of their divine

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inspiration, and so on? I, for one, am not ready to do so. Nevertheless, those biblical scholars like myself who aim—at least in part—to serve religious communities could become more conscious of and attentive to the dynamics surrounding scripture. We might give more attention to the oral performance dimensions of texts, the frequent importance of music as a part of such performance (often in a poetic-musical idiom powerful to the religious participants), and the profound importance of multiple ways in which a corpus of scriptures with their ancient resonances functions to shape the discourse and practices of a community, including preaching in many traditions, but also liturgy. In the end, this work has given me as many questions as answers. To be sure, first and foremost there are many questions to be raised about this oralwritten education-enculturation model itself, particularly insofar as it may overemphasize the social functions of long-duration textual corpora and the importance of education and ongoing cultural reproduction as their setting. Nevertheless, insofar as this model holds true, it raises significant questions for me. I came to my profession and I stay in it because of my ongoing fascination with and appreciation of the Hebrew Scriptures. I would be the first to affirm the ongoing value of study of such ancient literature. Nevertheless, there are parts of this study that challenge that sense of vocation. I ask, for example, how much is the focused usage of the Bible and other texts for educationenculturation necessarily predicated on mystification—the affirmation of central things about the specialness of such texts that we now know to be false? Is such usage inherently linked to hierarchy and the formation of elites, whether elite subgroups in a society or a broader people who understands itself as religiously superior to others? To what extent is such use of long-duration texts inherently linked to forces of social conservatism and retrieval? Finally, this study has focused heavily on the link between cognitive mastery and the oral-musical dimensions of textuality. This raises some questions about the largely nonmusical, nonoral character of texts in many contemporary contexts, even in the appreciation of much modern poetry. This in turn leads to questions about the ongoing role of the performed oral-written text in contemporary enculturation and socialization. Some have asked me whether people are capable of extensive memorization in our contemporary media culture. In reply, I note that youths such as my teenage daughter and her peers—like their ancient counterparts—can recite and sing hundreds, if not thousands, of lines of text, in her case songs she has listened to repeatedly on her portable CD player (and whose lyrics she has often learned from printed CD inserts). Such youths are socialized into broader generational groups and subgroups by having such contents, rhythms, and musical idioms written on their hearts. Any community or (early) educational institution aiming to offer a different sort of formation must reckon with the immense power of joined music and text (along with image) to shape the hearts of the young and old. It is as if music and poetry (or poeticized, canted prose) is the indelible marker for writing words on the heart, while silent reading is pencil.

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So, in this sense, this academic book is—as it should be—a work written in pencil. It is a preliminary attempt to pull together a number of approaches into an overall vision of long-duration literature like the Bible. My hope is that this work—preliminary as it is—will serve as a prod toward further exploration of a vein of inquiry that I have found to be unusually profitable.

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Appendix The Relation of This Study to Earlier Research

The footnotes to the preceding study only incompletely indicate its relationship to previous research. This appendix is intended to point to the most important precursors of which I am aware and briefly indicate how I see this work as building on and diverging from them. Since the works by authors discussed here are listed in the bibliography and often cited in the footnotes, I will not give additional footnotes for most of them here. The exceptions will be places where I highlight a given work in this discussion or cite it by page. I start with a particularly brief survey of how I have built on the work of scholarship outside my own area of biblical studies. The survey is brief because my main dependencies are already indicated in the footnotes of the relevant chapters, and these chapters synthesize the work of others. That said, there are four main bodies of scholarship, sometimes overlapping, on which I have drawn for the sections of this book ranging beyond biblical studies. The first is the important body of work on orality, textuality and their interplay, for example, Walter Ong, Eric Havelock, Jack Goody, Ruth Finnegan, John Foley, M. T. Clanchy, and the authors of several shorter studies responding to their work. As indicated throughout, I have been most influenced by those parts of the work by Goody, Finnegan, and others on the interplay of orality and (written) textuality, but I have been more influenced than is explicitly evident by Foley’s emphasis on performance, word-power, and the use of oral-written texts to establish a “register” of shared semiotic elements amid a society or subgroup in it.1

1. See particularly John Miles Foley, The Singer of Tales in Performance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 3–56. My main issue with his evocative discussion here (and elsewhere) is its focus on communication. As we have seen, oral-written texts often function for social formation even when they are not understood by those learning to perform them.

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My separate chapters on Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece build on the work of a number of specialists in those areas who have advanced the discussion of education, textuality, orality, and related matters. For example, my emphasis on orality-textuality and social formation in the Sumero-Akkadian system is built on the work of scholars like Vanstiphout, Michalowski, Jerrold Cooper, Bendt Alster, and Niek Veldhuis, who draw explicitly on earlier scholarship regarding these issues. My chapter on Egypt similarly draws on a range of scholars working through similar issues, figures such as Assmann, Baines, Eyre, and Morenz, among many others. And I was initially set on this path of study of orality, literacy and social formation by reading Rosalind Thomas’s study Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece. In my subsequent work on the Greek world I benefited much from work on social formation, orality, literacy, and other issues by classicists like Harris, Cribiore, and Morgan, along with two specific works focused on memorization in the Greek and medieval periods, Carruthers’s Book of Memory and Small’s Wax Tablets of the Mind.2 This is only a selection of scholars discussing the particular complex of issues emphasized in this book. As indicated in the footnotes, I have found a much broader range of scholarly work indispensable in outlining ancient education, enculturation, and textuality in the cultures they studied. At its best, I hope to have presented a fair range of useful work done along similar lines in different culture areas and thus provided a resource—both in my discussion and my notes—that may be useful in facilitating more dialogue across disciplinary lines. The main new idea, though already suggested in Assmann’s and Veldhuis’s work, is that certain types of long-duration texts found in written form—whether on tablet, papyrus, or parchment— were intended to be used primarily for writing on the mind and hearts of elite students, a memorization reinforced through poetry and musical modes and demonstrated and corrected through the use of written copies. My precursors in biblical scholarship are numerous and varied. Indeed, enough people have done work on the Bible over the last centuries that it is difficult to propose a plausible approach that has not been advocated previously in some form. That is true in this case too. Already when I was well into this study, I found that a German scholar, Leopold Du¨rr, proposed a thesis quite similar to mine over seventy years ago. Building on a range of comparative evidence available to him, he argued that all biblical literature had its origins in familial or pseudofamilial forms of elite education in the Persian and earlier periods, with such education being expanded in the Hellenistic period as indicated by rabbinic traditions. Writing in the 1930s, he had no access to later discussions of orality-literacy, and so he talks little of the interplay between performance, memorization, and the numinous qualities of writing in a largely nonliterate culture. Moreover, I am less dependent than he was on rabbinic discussions of Hellenistic education. Instead, in writing those sections of this book, I could draw on a broad range of Israelite and non-Israelite materials unavailable to him. That said, Du¨rr represents an important precursor to many central ideas in this book.3 The footnotes to chapter 6 only begin to indicate the much broader range of scholarship that was helpful to me in locating texts, identifying important epigraphic material, and producing an overall picture of education and textuality in ancient Israel. Much

2. Carruthers, Book of Memory; Small, Wax Tablets. 3. I admit some trepidation in noting this intellectual precursor, since I have little access to knowledge of his relationship to the national socialist movement in Germany of the 1930s and 1940s. I cite him not to give authority to my work or to identify an early guiding force but as an act of intellectual honesty in recognizing that key ideas of mine had been published by a scholar prior to myself.

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of this work was already done in studies by scholars such as Ludwig Blau, Aaron Demsky, Hans-Ju¨rgen Hermisson, Crenshaw, Philip Davies, Michael Fox, Menahem Haran, Lemaire, and Puech. Many have argued in the past for situating parts of the Bible in ancient Israelite education, particularly wisdom literature (e.g. Bernhard Lang, Hermisson, Olivier, Shupak), but also prophets (e.g. Fichtner, Whedbee, and Gevaryahu), Deuteronomy (e.g. Weinfeld, Lohfink, Fischer, Braulik, Sonnet), and Psalms (e.g. Joseph Reindl). Of these works, I note in particular the often overlooked article by Gevaryahu on Baruch. Building on comparative materials and detailed work with Israelite prophetic material, his essay presents the book of Jeremiah as an important example of early Israelite education and a model of how prophetic texts in general might have been developed in a school context much like that seen in Mesopotamia or Egypt.4 Andre´ Lemaire’s work is an even more important precursor to mine, representing an important revival of the idea (seen in Du¨rr) that Israel’s biblical traditions originated in a process of education. Lemaire’s book and ongoing work, however, go beyond Du¨rr in offering a thorough review of epigraphic evidence to date and a more comprehensive and critical analysis of relevant biblical materials. My study has benefited immeasurably from this work, even as it has diverged from it on several points. I list four here. First, Lemaire’s focus on “schools” (e´coles) and occasional discussion of school tuition, personnel, and potential architecture has sometimes distracted from his explicit recognition that such schools were not separately institutionalized and that education was integrated thoroughly into other social processes.5 As a result, his approach has been criticized, somewhat wrongly I believe, for advocating anachronistic views that he does not hold.6 Because of this, in this book I have avoided the terms “school” or “teachers” and focused instead on educational practices and processes. Second, building on epigraphic evidence, Lemaire posits a level of general literacy in preexilic Israel that is implausible for a premodern society. In chapter 6 I have agreed with him and others that the epigraphic and other evidence does suggest a significant increase in literacy among administrators, army officers, and other officials during the late preexilic periods. Nevertheless, I have argued—largely in light of recent studies of the sociology of literacy— that such literacy was restricted, particularly the kind of literacy that is of most concern here: mastery of scriptures central to Israel. In Deuteronomy and some other texts we see an emergent ideal that the nation as a whole might achieve such literacy, but it is not until later periods that we see significant evidence that broader swathes of nonelite Israelites achieved such literacy in (proto)biblical traditions. Third, one key period that I emphasize more than Lemaire is the later Second Temple period, when I argue that the Hebrew Bible was consolidated as part of a Hellenistic-like reaction to Hellenism within the context of the Hasmoneans’ expanding empire. General literacy was not achieved even in this later period. Nevertheless, I argue that older Israelite ideals of general education in Scripture received a new impetus in reaction to similar ideals in Hellenism and that we see the reflection of this in heretofore unprecedented assertions of general education in literacy in an author like Josephus. A fourth significant difference from Lemaire’s work lies in the increased emphasis in this study on the complex dynamics surrounding orality, literacy, performance, and so on. Lemaire does cite several

4. This article, along with others by the author on the subject, are now collected in Haim Gevaryahu’s The Practice of Bible Scribes (Jerusalem: Gevaryahu Family, 2000). 5. See already Lemaire, Les Ecoles,51–52. 6. Here I am thinking of Golka, in particular Golka, “Israelitische Weisheitsschule,” translated as Golka, “Israelite Wisdom School.”

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relevant texts in Proverbs regarding memorization.7 This study, however, goes further in arguing that written biblical texts in general were but the numinous, written reference points for a predominantly oral-cognitive process of writing the traditions on the minds of elite Israelites, and later Israelites in general. Moving to study of later Israelite, Jewish education, I have benefited from a broad range of works. Many scholars in individual culture areas have pointed out the way indigenous education and textuality was housed in temples in the Hellenistic period, though the main place I have seen an overview of such indigenous culture as a reaction to Hellenism is Samuel Eddy’s older study The King Is Dead.8 As indicated in chapter 8, I have been particularly helped in filling out the Israelite side of this temple-centered, Hellenistic-period indigenous textuality through a still-unpublished essay by Steven Fraade, which argues for the centering of the vast bulk of Second Temple Israelite textuality in the temple and various subgroups of its personnel.9 My detailed dependencies on earlier work on Ben Sira, the Pseudepigrapha, Qumran, and other works are indicated in the footnotes to the relevant chapters. These indicate my particular reliance on work by scholars such as Tov, Lange, Collins, Newsom, Lemaire, and Fraade. Works by Cohen and Schwartz were particularly important in providing the groundwork for the proposal in chapter 11 about the consolidation of Hebrew Scripture as a part of the expansion of the Hasmonean empire. And I benefited significantly from Hezser’s impressive survey of evidence for later Jewish education, along with Birger Gerhardsson’s still useful exploration of the oral-written dimensions of early Jewish textuality and education.10 Both studies focus primarily on early Jewish materials postdating the temporal boundaries of this study, and both diverge somewhat from this study in emphasis, with Gerhardsson more dependent than myself on later rabbinic materials and Hezser arguing against the existence of much instruction in writing. On the Christian side, two other important, again different, works that preceded and anticipate mine are Kelber’s study of orality and textuality in early Christian traditions, and Kim Haines-Hetzon’s study of early scribal networks. The former tends to work with a more consistent and stronger opposition between orality and textuality than my study does. Moreover, partly because of my emphasis on crosscultural analysis of the ongoing cultural functions of writing per se, I have ended up focusing more on what Kelber terms in a recent essay “cold memorization”—word-for-word—rather than on a more dynamic recollection and recomposition of traditions, his “hot memorization.”11 Haines-Hetzon’s book is distinguished from mine by her particularly detailed attention to early Christian epigraphic

7. Lemaire, Les Ecoles, 61–62. 8. Eddy, King Is Dead. 9. Fraade, “Priests, Scribes, and Sages.” His discussion was anticipated by the brief but very evocative comments in Baumgarten, Flourishing of Jewish Sects, 118–23. Cf. also the comparison of New Testament depictions of scribes with other sources in M. D. Goodman, “Texts, Scribes and Power in Roman Judea,” in Literacy and Power in the Ancient World, ed. Alan K. Bowman and Greg Woolf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 103–7. 10. Gerhardsson’s study was harshly critiqued by Morton Smith and Jacob Neusner for uncritical use of rabbinic material. But see now Jacob Neusner’s retraction of his critique in Jacob Neusner, Forword to Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity—with Tradition and Transmission in Early Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), xxv– xxxii. 11. The study is “The Two-Source Hypothesis: Oral Tradition, the Poetics of Gospel Narrativity, and Memorial Arbitration,” unpublished essay (2004). I thank Professor Kelber for permission to read and cite this essay and await its publication to engage in further dialogue with it.

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data and what it tells us about the often informal networks of Christian, multipurpose scribes who transmitted Christian writings. Another book focusing on later Jewish education and textuality is Philip Davies’s Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures, along with a followup essay, “The Jewish Scriptural Canon in Cultural Perspective.”12 In these pieces, Davies focuses on a similar range of comparative materials to that focused on here, highlights many characteristics of educational-enculturational texts (antiquity, divine authorship, and so on) similar to those highlighted here, speaks of the importance of the school as a locus for the development of the Hebrew “canon,” and even focuses on the Hasmonean monarchy as the central locus for the consolidation of Hebrew Scriptures. Yet these ideas are mixed in Scribes and Schools with a multitude of specific theories about the Bible and surrounding cultures that are less compelling to me. Some of these include his treatment of cultures surrounding Israel in a way that is not attentive enough to differences between them and differences across time, an implausibly late dating of the phenomenon of Israelite textuality and education,13 and a number of specific yet relatively undeveloped theories regarding biblical texts and various scribal circles that distract from the more plausible parts of the book. Moreover, I maintain that Davies’s work, like a similar proposal by Haran before him, confuses the different, though overlapping, purposes of archive, library, and educational-enculturational corpus.14 As I have argued, with the exception of Ashurbanipal’s library and later Hellenistic examples, archives and libraries were not separate in the ancient world. When we see a preponderance of works that we might term a “library,” it is usually a cache of the culture’s educational-enculturational corpus, meant for oral-written inscription on the hearts and minds of elite subgroups (and later elite “peoples”). The Hebrew Bible, I would argue, is an example of such an educational corpus, not the remnants of a library. Davies’s lack of focus on this dimension of oral-cognitive mastery of written texts meant that he missed the crucial distinction between library/archive and scripture. My work has been informed by a range of studies that have highlighted the oral dimension of biblical texts and cognitive mastery of them. This emphasis on the orality of biblical tradition is often associated with the Scandinavian school of tradition history, where figures like Engell and Eduard Nielson argued that much of the Biblical tradition was oral, not written, until a very late stage.15 This emphasis on exclusively oral transmission has little in common with this study. Nevertheless, another Scandinavian, Geo Widengren, anticipated key aspects of the oral-written model in a very suggestive study of oral-written dynamics in Mesopotamia, early Islam, and the Bible, Literary and Psychological Aspects of the Hebrew Prophets (1948).16 Likewise, Yehoshua Gitay noted the oral-written character of prophecy in an article published in 1980,17 and Antony Campbell raised similar possibilities in a 1989 article, “The Reported Story,” in which he proposed that biblical texts were not meant to be read or even performed as is but instead

12. Davies, “Jewish Scriptural Canon.” 13. This is particularly true of the book, not of the article. 14. On Haran, I am thinking in particular of his proposal in “Biblical Books,” 54–55. 15. E.g., Eduard Nielson, Oral Tradition: A Modern Problem in Old Testament Introduction (Chicago: Allenson, 1954 [orig. 1952]). For a fuller survey see Douglas A. Knight, Rediscovering the Traditions of Israel: The Development of the Traditio-Historical Research of the Old Testament, with Special Consideration of Scandinavian Contributions, SBLDS (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975), 215–382. 16. Widengren, Hebrew Prophets. Note also the still useful study, Helmer Ringgren, “Oral and Written Transmission in the Old Testament: Some Observations,” Studia Theologica 3 (1949): 34–59. 17. Yehoshua Gitay, “Deutero-Isaiah: Oral or Written?” JBL 99 (1980): 185–197. See also his Prophecy and Persuasion: A Study of Isaiah 40–48, Forum theologiae linguisticae (Bonn: Linguistica Biblica, 1981), 45.

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were written notes to be expanded on in oral performance.18 In a suggestive article, Conrad notes that literary presentations of the writing-reading process in the Bible tend to stress the intense orality of revelatory documents, they are heard and written down, then read aloud to audiences,19 and his work was extended by James Watts’s more detailed study of literary depictions of law readings.20 These works hinted at the way written biblical materials might function in a primarily oral environment. Pride of place in recent study of orality and textuality, however, goes to Niditch, whose 1996 book Oral World and Written Word did much to introduce me and other biblical scholars to broader discourses about orality and literacy.21 I cite this work here, there, and elsewhere, inadequately illustrating the extent to which she has raised crucial questions and gathered intriguing evidence to answer them. Yet, as mentioned in the introduction, she seems ambivalent in her work about the relationship between orality and textuality. She is clearly aware of interplay between the oral and written, but much of her book still seems to partake of an older idea of intense opposition between orality and textuality, or a divide between an “oral mentality” and a more literate one.22 As I was midway through this work, I encountered Raymond Person’s book The Deuteronomic School, which was my first exposure to materials (now in slightly revised form) previously published as part of his dissertation on Deutero-Zechariah. In these books, Person argues for an exilic and postexilic Deuteronomic “school” as the probable context for the oral-written transmission and development of the Deuteronomistic history, along with prophetic material like Deutero-Zechariah and Jeremiah.23 I have benefited from Person’s work, and my book obviously pursues a hypothesis similar to his. The main differences I presently see are as follows. My book is more specific in outlining and distinguishing between different dynamics of education and textuality in various cultures, my treatment of textuality and education in Israel is broader in its chronological range, I apply my thesis to more biblical materials, and I focus even more than Person on the cognitive and elite-formation dimensions of the oral-written interface in Israel and elsewhere. These sorts of questions about education on the one hand and orality-textuality on the other appear to be “in the air” in biblical and other ancient studies. Scholarship in the more distant past was excessively determined by unreflected assumptions from print culture and by a too consistent a contrast between oral and written forms of cultural transmission. Thanks to studies of the interplay of orality and textuality in a variety of cultural contexts, contemporary scholars of antiquity are more equipped than before to explore ways ancient texts were embedded in broader social processes: oral-cognitive

18. See Antony Campbell, “The Reported Story: Midway Between Oral Performance and Literary Art,” Semeia 46 (1989): 77–85. Cf. the revised version in Antony Campbell, “The Storyteller’s Role: Reported Story and Biblical Text,” CBQ 64 (2002): 427–41. 19. Conrad, “Representation of OT ‘Books.’ ” 20. Most recently published as James W. Watts, Reading Law, 15–31 (a revision of his “Public Readings and Pentateuchal Law,” VT 45 [1995]:540–57). Note also the useful remarks on orality, textual transmission, and social processes in Simon Parker, Stories in Scripture and Inscriptions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 9–11. 21. Niditch, Oral World and Written Word. 22. For an example of extended discussion of the interplay of these dimensions see Niditch, Oral World and Written Word, 99–107. For more discussion of Niditch’s apprarent allegiance to older models of exclusive orality see John Van Seters, “Review of Niditch, Oral World and Written Word,” JAOS 118 (1998): 436–37. 23. See Person, The Deuteronomic School. See the publication in earlier form of key portions of this book in Second Zechariah and the Deuteronomic School, JSOTSup (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 24–30, 40–59, 154–62, and “Scribe as Performer.”

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processes of group formation, cultural circulation, and the shaping of social identities. This book is one attempt to survey such recent efforts and advance them. In conclusion, I should emphasize that I do not see my main contribution to be a focus on the oral-written interface per se. Rather, my emphasis has been on how both writing and orality are parts of a deeper and more important writing-supported, performance-oriented process: shaping elite subgroups (and later broader groups) through writing (at least in ideal) certain ancient traditions on their hearts. With this key, I have gone on to advance some particular hypotheses about the emergence of protoscriptural traditions in Israel, and their hardening into an anti-Hellenistic construct in the later Second Temple period. I leave it now to my readers to decide on the usefulness of both this overall approach and the specific hypotheses advocated here.

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Select Bibliography

The following is a select bibliography of cited works, focused primarily on works cited across multiple chapters of the book. Readers interested in the full bibliography of cited works (several times this length) may consult the list posted at the author’s website (www.uts.columbia.edu/⬃dcarr). Alster, Bendt. “Interaction of Oral and Written Poetry in Early Mesopotamian Literature.” In Mesopotamian Epic Literature: Oral or Aural? edited by M. Vogelzang and H.L.J. Vanstiphout, 24–69. Lewiston, NY: Mellon, 1991. Assmann, Jan. “Fu¨nf Stufen auf dem Wege zum Kanon: Tradition und Schriftkulture im alten Israel und fru¨hen Judentum.” In Religion und kulturelles Geda¨chtni:. Zehn Studien, edited by Jan Assmann, 81–100. Munich: Beck, 2000. ———. Das kulturelle Geda¨chtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung, und politische Identita¨t in fru¨hen Hochkulturen. Munich: Beck, 1992. ———. “Kulturelle und literarische Texte.” In Ancient Egyptian Literature: History and Forms, edited by A. Loprieno, 60–82. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Baines, John. “Literacy and Ancient Egyptian Society.” Man 18 (1983): 572– 99. Baines, John, and Christopher Eyre. “Four Notes on Literacy.” Go¨ttinger Miszellen 61 (1983): 65–96. Barton, John. The Spirit and the Letter: Studies in Biblical Canon. London: SPCK, 1997. Baumgarten, Albert I. The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation. JSJ Supplements. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Beckwith, Roger. The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and Its Background in Early Judaism. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985. Bickel, Susanne, and Bernard Mathieu. “L’e´crivain Amennakht et son enseignement.” Bulletin de l’Institut Franc¸ais d’Arche´ologie Orientale 93 (1993): 33–51.

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Bickerman, Elias Joseph. The God of the Maccabees: Studies on the Meaning and Origin of the Maccabean Revolt. Translated by Horst R. Moehring. Leiden: Brill, 1979 (orig. 1937). Blau, Ludwig. Studien zum althebra¨ischen Buchwesen und zur biblischen Literatur- und Textgeschichte. Strasbourg: Karl Tru¨bner, 1902. Botha, P. J. “Greco-Roman Literacy as Setting for New Testament Writings.” Neotestamentica 26 (1992): 195–215. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984 (orig. 1979). Braulik, Georg. “Das Deuteronomium und die Geda¨chtniskultur Israels: Redaktionsgeschichtliche Beobachtungen zur Verwendung von lmd.” In Biblische Theologie und gesellschaftlucher Wandel: Fu¨r Norbert Lohfink SJ, edited by Georg Braulik,9– 31. Freiburg: Herder, 1993. Brunner, Helmut. Alta¨gyptische Erziehung. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1957. Bryan, Betsy. “Evidence for Female Literacy from Theban Tombs of the New Kingdom.” Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar 6 (1984). Bryce, Glendon E. A Legacy of Wisdom: the Egyptian Contribution to the Wisdom of Israel. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1979. Burr, Victor. Bibliothekarische Notizen zum Alten Testament. Forschungsstelle fu¨r Buchwissenschaft an der Universita¨tsbibliothek Bonn, Kleine Schriften. Bonn: H. Bouvier, 1969. Cancik, Hubert. Grundzu¨ge der hethitischen und alttestamentlichen Geschichtsschreibung. Abhandlungen des Deutschen Pala¨stinavereins. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1976. Carr, David M. “Canonization in the Context of Community: An Outline of the Formation of the Tanakh and the Christian Bible.” In A Gift of God in Due Season: Essays on Scripture and Community in Honor of James A. Sanders, edited by Richard D. Weis and David M. Carr, 22–64. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1996. ———. The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality and the Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. From D to Q: A Study of Early Jewish Interpretations of Solomon’s Dream at Gibeon. SBLMS. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1991. ———. “Method in Determination of Direction of Dependence: An Empirical Test of Criteria Applied to Exodus 34, 11–26 and its Parallels.” In Gottes Volk am Sinai: Untersuchungen zu Ex 32–34 und Dtn 9–10, vol.18, edited by Matthias Ko¨ckert and Erhard Blum. Vero¨ffentlichungen der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft fu¨r Theologie, 107–40. Gu¨tersloh: Kaiser, Gu¨tersloher Verlagshaus, 2001. ———. Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary Approaches. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1996. Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Chapman, Stephen. The Law and the Prophets: A Study in Old Testament Canon Formation. Forschungen zum Alten Testament. Tu¨bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000. Charpin, D. Le clerge´ d’Ur au sie`cle d’Hammurabi (XIXe–XVIIIe sie`cles av. J.-C.). Hautes e´tudes orientales. Geneva: Droz, 1986. Civil, Miguel. “Lexicography.” In Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen, edited by S. Liebermann, 123–57. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. Clanchy, M. T. From Memory to Written Record. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1979. Cohen, Shaye. The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

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Cole, S. “Could Greek Women Read and Write?” In Reflections of Women in Antiquity, edited by H. Foley, 219–45. New York: Gordon and Breach Science, 1981. Collins, John J. Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age. OTL. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1997. Conrad, E. W. “Heard but Not Seen: The Representation of ‘Books’ in the Old Testament.” JSOT 54 (1992): 45–59. Cooper, Jerrold. “Babbling on About Recovering Mesopotamian Orality.” In Mesopotamian Epic Literature: Oral or Aural? H.L.J. Vanstiphout and M. Vogelzang, 103– 22. Lewiston, NY: Mellon, 1991. ———. “Cuneiform.” In ABD, vol. 1, 1212–18, 1995. Crenshaw, James L. Education in Ancient Israel: Across the Deadening Silence. AB Reference. New York: Doubleday, 1998. Cribiore, Raffaella. Gymnastics of the Mind. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. ———. Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt. American Studies in Papyrology. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996. Davies, Anna Morpurgo. “Forms of Writing in the Ancient Mediterranean World.” In The Written Word: Literacy in Transition, edited by Gerd Baumann, 23–50. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Davies, Graham. “Were There Schools in Ancient Israel?” In Wisdom in Ancient Israel, edited by John Day et al., 199–211. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Davies, Philip R. “The Jewish Scriptural Canon in Cultural Perspective.” In The Canon Debate: On the Origins and Formation of the Bible, edited by Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders, 36–52. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002. ———. Scribes and Schools: the Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures. Library of Ancient Israel. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1998. Demsky, A. “Education, Jewish.” Encyclopaedia Judaica 6 (1971): 381–98. ———. “The Education of Canaanite Scribes in the Mesopotamian Cuneiform Tradition.” In Bar-Ilan Studies in Assyriology dedicated to Pinhfi as Artzi, edited by Jacob Klein and Aaron Skaist, 157–70. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1990. ———. “Writing in Ancient Israel (part 1).” In Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, edited by Martin Jan Mulder, 2–20. Philadelphia and Maastrich: Fortress and Van Gorcum Press, 1988. Denny, Peter. “Rational Thought in Oral Culture and Literate Decontextualization.” In Literacy and Orality, edited by David R. Olsen and Nancy Torrance, 66–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Doane, Alger N. “The Ethnography of Scribal Writing and Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Scribe as Performer.” Oral Tradition 9 (1994): 420–39. Du¨rr, Lorenz B. Das Erzeihungswesen im Alten Testament und im Antiken Orient. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1932. Eddy, Samuel K. The King Is Dead: Studies in the Near Eastern Resistance to Hellenism 334–31 BC. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961. Eyre, Christopher. “The Semna Stelae: Quotation, Genre, and Functions of Literature.” In Studies in Egyptology Presented to Miriam Lichtheim, vol. 1, edited by Sarah Israelit-Groll, 134–65. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990. Eyre, Christopher, and John Baines. “Interactions Between Orality and Literacy in Ancient Egypt.” In Literacy and Society, Karen Schousboe and Mogens Trolle Larsen, 91–119. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1989.

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Falkenstein, Adam. “Die babylonische Schule.” Saeculum 4 (1953): 126–37. Fichtner, Johannes. “Jesaja unter den Weisen.” Theologische Literaturzeitung 84 (1949): 75–80. Finnegan, Ruth. Literacy and Orality: Studies in the Technology of Communication. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988. ———. Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance, and Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Fischer, Georg, and Norbert Lohfink. “ ‘Diese Wo¨rte sollst du summen’: Dtn 6,7 wedibbarta¯ ba¯m: Ein verlorener Schlu¨ssel zur meditativen Kultur in Israel.” Theologie und Philosophie 62 (1987): 59–72. Fischer-Elfert, Hans-Werner. Die satirische Streitschrift des Papyrus Anastasi I, vol. 1, ¨ bersetzung und Kommentar. A ¨ gyptische Abhandlungen. Wiesbaden: HarrasoU witz, 1986. Fishbane, Michael. Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. Foley, John Miles. The Singer of Tales in Performance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Fowden, Garth. The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Fox, Michael V. “The Social Location of the Book of Proverbs.” In Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran, edited by Michael V. Fox et al., 227–39. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1996. ———. “Wisdom and the Self-Presentation of Wisdom Literature.” In Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of David J. A. Clines, edited by J. Cheryl Exum and H.G.M. Williamson. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003. Fraade, Steven D. “Interpretive Authority in the Studying Community at Qumran.” JJS 44 (1993): 46–69. ———. “ ‘They Shall Teach Your Statutes to Jacob’: Priests, Scribes, and Sages in Second Temple Times.” Unpublished essay, 2003. Gamble, Harry Y. Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. Gerhardsson, Birger. Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity. Translated by Eric Sharpe. Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksells, 1961. Gesche, Petra D. Schulunterricht in Babylonien im ersten Jahrtausend v. Chr. AOAT. Mu¨nster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2001. Gevaryahu, H.M.I. “Baruch, the Scribe [Heb.].” In Zalman Shazar Volume, edited by N. Avigad, 198–243. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1971. Gitay, Y. “Deutero-Isaiah: Oral or Written?” JBL 99 (1980): 185–197. Golka, F. W. “The Israelite Wisdom School, or ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes.’ ” In The Leopard’s Spots: Biblical and African Wisdom in Proverbs, edited by F. W. Golka. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. ———. “Die israelitische Weisheitsschule oder ‘des kaisers neue Kleider.’ ” VT 33 (1983): 257–70. Goodblatt, David. “The Talmudic Sources on the Origins of Organized Jewish Education [Heb.].” Studies in the History of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel 5 (1980): 83–103. Goody, Jack. The Interface Between the Written and the Oral. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

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Goshen-Gottstein, Alon. “Ben Sira’s Praise of the Fathers: A Canon-Conscious Reading.” In Ben Sira’s God: Proceedings of the International Ben Sira Conference (Durham 2001), vol. 321, edited by Renate Egger-Wenzel. BZAW. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001. Graham, William A. Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Greenberg, Moshe. “The Stabilization of the Text of the Hebrew Bible.” JAOS 76 (1956): 157–67. Greenstein, Edward. “Misquotation of Scripture in the Dead Sea Scrolls.” In The Frank Talmage Memorial Volume, edited by Barry Walfish, 71–83. Haifa: Haifa University Press, 1993. Gruen, Erich S. Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Haines-Eitzen, Kim. Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Hallo, William W. “The Concept of Canonicity in Cuneiform and Biblical Literature: A Comparative Appraisal.” In The Biblical Canon in Comparative Perspective, edited by K. L. Younger, W. W. Hallo, and B. F. Batto, 1–19. Lewiston, NY: Mellon, 1991. ———. “The Expansion of Cuneiform Literature.” Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 46–47 (1980): 307–22. ———. “The Syrian Contribution to Cuneiform Literature and Learning.” In New Horizons in the Study of Ancient Syria, edited by Mark W. Chavalas and John L. Hayes, 69–88. Malibu, CA: Undena, 1998. ———. “Toward a History of Sumerian Literature.” In Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen, edited by S. Lieberman, 181–203. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. Haran, M. “Archives, Libraries, and the Order of the Biblical Books.” Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University 22 (1993): 51–61. ———. “Book Scrolls in Israel in Pre-Exilic Times.” JSJ 33 (1982): 161–73. ———. “On the Diffusion of Literacy and Schools in Ancient Israel.” In Congress Volume: Jerusalem 1986, VTSup, 85–91. Leiden: Brill, 1988. Hardmeier, Christof. “Wahrhaftigkeit und Fehlorientierung bei Jeremia: Jer 5,1 und die divinatorische Expertise Jer 2–6* im Kontext der zeitgono¨ssischen Kontroversen um die politische Zukunft Jerusalems.” In Exegese vor Ort: Festschrift fu¨r Peter Welten zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Christl Maier, 121–44. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2001. Harris, W. V. Ancient Literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. Havelock, Eric A. Preface to Plato. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963. Hengel, Martin. Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine During the Early Hellenistic Period. Translated by John Bowden. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974. Hermisson, H. J. Studien zur israelitischen Spruchweisheit. WMANT. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1968. Hezser, Catherine. Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine. Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum. Tu¨bingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2001. ———. “The Mishnah and Ancient Book Production.” In The Mishnah in Contemporary Perspective, edited by Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner, 167–92. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Hogan, David. “Education and Class Formation: The Peculiarities of the Americas.”

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Index of Citations of Primary Texts

The following is a relatively complete index of specific citations of primary texts in the book, ordered as follows: Old and New Testament, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Jewish Inscriptions and Scrolls (outside Qumran), Qumran texts, Philo, Josephus, Rabbinic Literature, and Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greek texts. More prominent discussions are indicated by boldface page numbers. Citations exclusively in footnotes are indicated by the page number followed by n, e.g. 76n. Where the index indicates the discussion of a larger swath of text, there are not additional entries for specific citations on the same pages of sections of that text. The index of Old and New Testament books follows the order of the Protestant canon. Other indices are by alphabetical and (in the case of numbered Qumran documents) numeric order. For Qumran documents, the index starts with major named documents and documents where I cited texts from more than one cave (e.g. Mysteries). The rest of the Qumran index follows the order of the number. Full names of the latter texts are not included in the index, but usually are included in the citation on the given page. The rabbinic section starts alphabetically and then proceeds by order of mishnah tractate. Greek and Latin texts (other than above) are listed alphabetically by author, with the exception of two papyri, which are listed at the end.

biblical

Exodus

Genesis

15:1 163n 17:14 112n, 118, 133 19:6 172 18:13–26 136 20:22–23:33 137, 165, 167 20:12 129n 24:3–4 112n 24:7 112n, 118 24:12 112n 25:16 161 31:18 121 32:15–16 112n 32:16 121, 222

1–11 153 2:4–3:24 222 2:4 153n 3:6–7 60–61 5:1 112n, 153n 16:1–6 198 30:21 165n 34:1–31 165n 35:21–22a 165n 38 165n 39 88 49 165n

34:1 112n, 121 34:27–29 112n 34:28 118 39:30 118 Leviticus 1–7 292 5:18 223 11:24–28 14:10–32 14:49–53 24:13–23

152n 152n 152n 152n

Numbers 5:23–28

121

320

index of citations of primary texts

Numbers (continued ) 5:23 118, 152 6:24–26 166 11:11–17 136 11:16 117n 11:24–30 136 17:16–28 [ET 17:1– 13] 121 21:17 163n 30:6–15 222 Deuteronomy 1:9–18 136 1:13–15 119–20, 136 1:15 117n 4:1–49 136–7 4:2 160n 4:6–8 137, 172 4:6a 152, 167, 220, 226 4:13–14 112n 4:13 121 5–26 136 5:1 137 5:6–21 137 5:16 129n 6:4–25 135 6:5–6 140 6:5 138, 207 6:6–7 140 6:6 137, 148–9, 172 6:7 237 6:9 115, 121 7:9–10 166 9:10–11 112n 9:10 121 10:1–5 161 10:1 112n 10:2, 4 121 11:18–21 135–6 11:18–19 140 11:18 137, 148–9, 172 11:20 121 12–26 137–8 13:1 [ET 12:32] 160n 16:18 117n 17:9–12 120, 120n, 138, 152 17:14–20 138, 166 17:18–20 140 17:18 139 17:19 117n, 118, 139 18:9 138 20:5–9 117n 20:18 138 21:18–20 129–30n, 138 22:9–11 222 24:1–4 112, 115, 121 24:8 138

27:2–3 112n, 121 27:8 112n 28:58, 61 112n 29:9 [ET 29:10] 117n 30 138 30:10 112n 31:9–13 120, 138, 139, 161 31:9–11 118, 152 31:9 112n 31:10–13 120, 152 31:19–24 112n 31:19 132–3, 138 31:22 132–3 31:25–27 145, 161 31:26–29 139 31:28 117n 31:30 163n 32:44–46 132–3 33:1 203 33:10 120, 120n, 138 34:10–12 167 Joshua 1:7–8 139–40 1:8–9 210 1:8 112n, 153, 218 1:10 117n 3:2 117n 8:32–35 120, 161 8:32–34 112n 8:30–32 121 8:33 117n 10:12–13 163 10:13 112n 18:4 118 23:2 117n 23:6–16 140 23:6 112n 24:1–27 140 24:1 117n 24:26–27 112n Judges 5:14 8:14

118, 130, 163 115, 121, 163

1 Samuel 8:5 167 8:19–20 167 10:25 112n, 118 16:16, 23 124n 18:10 124n 2 Samuel 1:18–19 131 1:18 112n, 163

7:1–17 87 8:16 117n 8:17 87, 117, 130 11:14–15 112n, 117n 20:24 117n 20:25 87, 117, 130 1 Kings 2:3 112n 3:2–15 87, 140 3:9 127 4:3 87, 117, 117n, 130 4:2–6 117 5:9–14 [ET 4:29–34] 140 5:12–13 [ET 4:32–33] 131 5:12 [ET 4:32] 131 8:9, 21 161 9:16 85 11:14–40 85 11:41 112n 11:20 119, 130 12 85 12:8 119, 130 12:10 130 14:19, 29 112n 15:7, 23, 31 112n 16:5, 14, 20, 27 112n 21:8–11 112n, 120 22:39, 45 112n 2 Kings 1:18 112n 2:1–18 144, 145 2:3, 5 164 4:38 144, 145 5:5–7 112n 5:7 117n 6:1–7 144, 145 6:1–2 164 8:23 112n 10:1–11 164 10:1–8 119, 130 10:1, 5, 6 112n 10:7 117n 10:34 112n 12:3 119, 130 12:11–16 [ET 12:10–15] 12:19 112n 13:8, 12 112n 14:6 112n 14:15, 18, 28 112n 15:6, 11, 15, 21, 26, 31, 36 112n 16:19 112n 17:7–23 167 17:13, 23 167

117

index of citations of primary texts 17:37 112n, 121 18:18 117, 117n 18:26 123, 125, 156–7 18:37 117, 117n 19:2 117 19:14[9–13] 112n, 117n 19:35 259 20:12 112n 20:20 112n 21:10–15 167 21:17 112n 21:19–26 166 21:25 112n 22–23 166 22 141 22:2 140 22:3–23:3 140 22:3–14 117 22:3–8 161 23:1–3 112, 120, 172 23:2 117n 23:8–20 161 23:28 112n 24:2 167 24:5 112n 24:14 172 25:19 117–18 25:11–12 172 3 Kingdoms [LXX] 8:53a

163

1 Chronicles 2:55 9:1 16:40 18:15 18:16 23:4 24:6 25:2–6 26:29 27:1 29:29

118 112n 112n 117n 87, 117 117n 118 152 117n 117n 112n

2 Chronicles 5:12 9:29 12:15 13:22 16:11 19:8–11 20:34 23:18 24:11 24:27

152 112n 112n 112n 112n 120, 152 112n 112n 117 112n

25:4 112n 26:22 112n 27:7 112n 28:26 112n 30:1 112n 32:17 112n 32:32 112n 33:18–19 112n 34:8–21 117 34:8 117n 34:13 117n 34:30 117n 35:4 117n 35:26–27 112n 36:8 112n Ezra 2:55 118 3:2–4 112n 4:7–23 112n 7:6 119 7:11–26 112n 7:11 119 7:21 119 7:26 170 9:38 112n Nehemiah 6:1–9 112n 7:5 112n, 121 7:72b–8:18 [ET 7:73b–8: 18] 112, 120, 171, 172 8:1, 4 117n 8:8–9 120n, 152 8:9 117n 8:13 117n 8:8 118 9:3 120 10:1 121 10:36 112n 13:1 112n Esther 1:21–22 112n 3:13–14 112n 8:8–9 120n 9:20–23, 29 112n 10:2 112n Job 13:26 121 31:35 112nn, 121 36:22 129n 38 86n

Psalms 1:2 153, 210 9–10 125, 154 25 125, 154 34 125, 154 40:7–9 [ET 40:6–8] 154 40:9 [ET 40:8] 112n 45:2 [ET 45:1] 117, 119 71:15 121 78 154 78:1 127 79:2–3 263n, 264 87:6 121 104 86n 119 125, 154 119:99 129n 145 125, 154 Proverbs 1:1 128 1:8 129 2:2 127 2:10 127 3:1 127 3:3 127 4:3 129, 130n 4:4 127 4:21 127 4:27 138 5:1–23 129 5:12–14 129 5:13 129n 5:14 130 6:7 117n 6:20–21 127 6:20 129 6:21 127, 135 7 223 7:3 127, 135 7:25 138 9:9 119–20 10:1 127, 129n 10:8 119–20, 127 10:14 119–20 12:15 119–20 12:18 119–20 13:14 119–20 13:20 119–20 13:24 129 14:24 119–20 14:33 127 15:2 119–20 15:7 119–20 15:12 119–20 15:16 127n 15:20 129n 15:31 119–20

321

322

index of citations of primary texts

Proverbs (continued ) 15:33 210 16:21 119–20, 127 16:23 119–20 18:15 119–20 19:26 129n 20:20 129n 21:11 119–20 21:22 119–20 22:11 127 22:15 127, 129 22:17–21 126–7 22:17–24:34 85 22:21–24:34 127 22:29 117, 119 23:15 127 23:26 127 24:23 119–20 25:1 127, 128, 131, 140–1, 165 26:3 129 27:19 127 29:11 119–20 29:15 129n 29:17 129 30:1 128 30:6 160n 30:15–31 129 30:11 129n 30:17 129n 31:1 128, 130 31:10–31 125, 129, 129n Ecclesiastes/Qohelet 7:4 127 7:7 127 9:7–10 60 10:2 127 12:9–12[13–14] 144 12:9–12 128 12:12–14 226 Song of Songs 3:7–10 155n 8 155n Isaiah 1:10–20 145 5:1–7 145 5:21–24 119–20, 143, 146 5:21 131, 141 7:3 144 8:1–4 144 8:1 118, 121 8:5–15 143 8:16–22 144 8:16–18 143–4, 146, 151

8:16 59–60, 151 8:19–20 144 9:1–6 [ET 9:2–7] 145 9:5 [ET 9:6] 87 10:1–2 115, 118 10:19 115, 121 11:1–9 145 19:11–12 131n 22:15–25 117n 28:9–13 124–5, 143 29:11 121 29:14 119–20, 131n, 141, 143, 146 30–31 145 30:8 112n, 144–5, 145n, 151 30:9–11 144 30:20 129n, 144–5 34:4 112n 31:1–2 119–20, 143 31:2 144–5 36–39 142 36:3 117, 117n 36:11 123, 125, 156–7 36:22 117, 117n 37:2 117 37:14[9–13] 112n, 117n 37:36 259 38:9 117n 39:1 112n 44:5 121 48:17 150 50:1 112, 121 50:4–6 149–50 50:5 127, 138 54:13 150 Jeremiah 1:1–2 141 1:1 146 2–6 146n 2:18 85 2:36 85 3:8 121 4:22 131n 7:25 167 8:8–9 131n, 141, 146 8:8 118, 119–20, 141 10:7–9 131n 17:1–2 147–8 18:18 119–20, 141, 146, 152 22:30 121 24:8 85 26:4–6 167 26:21–23 85 26:24 117, 130, 141n, 148 29 112n 29:3 117, 130, 141n, 148

29:19 167 30:2 112n 31:31–34 148–9 31:33 149 32:10–14 112n 32:10–12 112 32:14 161 32:12–16 118, 120, 121 35:13–15 167 36 118, 146–7 36:1–3 151 36:2 112n, 120 36:4 120, 147, 149 36:10–19 141n, 148 36:10 117, 130 36:12 117 36:17–18 147, 149 36:18 87 36:20–21 117 36:25 150 36:27–32 147, 149 36:32 112n, 120, 149 37:15, 20 117n 39:14 117, 130 40:1–41:10 117, 130 40:1–16 141n, 148 41:1–10 117 44:1 85 44:4 167 43:3, 6 118 45:1–5 118 45:1 120, 147 45:3, 5 147 50:35 131n 51:57 131n 51:60–61 112n 52 142 52:25 117–18 Lamentations 1 125 2–4 125 Ezekiel 1:1 214n 1:3 149 2:8–9 112n 2:9–3:3 149 3:4–11 149 9:2 87 9:3 87 9:11 87 11:19 149 11:21 149 13:10–11 222 14:3–5 149 16:30 149

index of citations of primary texts 18:31 149 21:28 [ET 21:23] 24:1–2 112n 24:2 118 33:30–33 149 36:26 149 37:16–28 121 38:17 167 40:4 149 43:11 149 44:5 149 44:7 149 44:9 149

117n

12:25–7 24:44

280–1 265

John 7:28 8:2 8:20 18:20

213 213 213 213

Let. Aris. 46 213 176–177 213

Acts 6:9 13:152 15:21

243 243 243

Daniel 1–12 266–7 3 266 6 266 9:10 167

Romans

Hosea

14–15

4:6 120, 120n, 152 7:11 85 8:12 112n 9:6 85 14:10 [ET 14:9] 150–1

apocryphya and pseudepigrapha

3:7 167 5:26–27 233 Nahum 125n

Habakkuk 151 118, 145, 145n 129n

Zechariah 1:6 5:1 11:11

167 112n 150

Malachi 2:7

Jude 272

Ahiqar 119

3:9–4:4

210n, 211

12:3–4 203n 13:3–7 203n 14:1 203n 15:1 203n 39:2 203n 81 203 89:68–77 203n 90:17–20 203n 92:1 203, 203n 98:7–8 203n 104:2, 7, 10–13 203n 108 203

14:38–47

250, 261

Jubilees 280–1

Luke 2:46 213 4:16–27 243

1 Maccabees 1:11 256 1:49 257 1:56–8 257 1:56–7 262 2:1 267 2:59–60 266 3:46–60 262–3 4:44–6 261, 264 7:13–18 254 7:16–17 263n, 264 8:17 254 9:27 261, 264 10:20 267 11:27 267 12:5–23 255n 14:41 261, 264 14:49 213

Baruch

2 Esdras

213n

Matthew 6:27–8

111

1 Enoch

1:2–11

2:2–3 2:2 2:18

15:4

1:1

Amos

12:25–27 205, 259 19:14 205 30:18 205 31:15, 21–26 205 45:15 205

4:17–19 205 7:34–39 205 8:2–4 205 10:13–14 205 11:16 205

2 Maccabees 1:7 258 2:1–8 259n 2:13–14 263 2:14–15 213 2:14 268–9, 273 2:25 258 4:10–17 258 4:11 254 6:1 257 6:18–31 259 7:8 259 7:37 259 8:19 259 11:2 258 11:24 258–9 11:27–33 257n 12:37 259 15:9 259, 263 15:14–16 259n 15:22 259, 263 15:39 258 4 Maccabees 5:4 213 18:10–19

213, 264

323

324

index of citations of primary texts

Sirach (Ben Sira) Prologue 261, 265 1:26 210 3:1 208 3:21–24 207–8 3:29 208 6:23 208 6:33 208 6:35 208 6:37 210 7:29–31 207, 211 8:9 208 10:19 210 14:20–21 210 14:26 208 15:1 210, 210n 15:11–20 222 15:33 210 16:5 208 18:4–7 207–8 19:20 210 21:11 210 23:7 209 23:16–17 209 23:27 210n 24 212 24:1 209 24:23–33 210 24:23–27 210n 24:33–34 208 24:33 265 25:1–2 209 25:7–11 209 26:5–6 209n 26:28 209n 30:1 209 30:3–4 208 33:18–19 208 30:18 209 34:1–7 207–8 36:1–22 211 37:23 208 38:24 208 39:1–5 209 39:1–3 209, 211, 261 39:1 210 39:4 208, 209 39:12–35 211 39:32 208 41:8–9 211, 223 42:15–43:33 211 43:6–8 208n 44–49 211 44:1 209 44:16–45:26 209 46:1–49:16 209 45:6–25 207

45:1–5 207, 211 45:5 208, 211 45:17 211 47:8 209–10 47:17 208, 210 49:9 210 50:1–21 206–7 50:13 207 50:25–26 209n 50:27–29 208–9 51:1–12 211 51:13–30 125n, 209 51:13 209 51:23 201 Testament of Levi 13:1–3

205–6

Community Rule (4Q)

Testament of Reuben 6:5–8

III, 13–18 217, 225 III, 13 9 V, 2–3 216, 218 V, 9 218 V, 23–24 217 VI, 6–8 218 VI, 12–16 217 VI, 13–23 218n VI, 18 217, 218 VI, 21–22 218 VII, 18–21 218n VIII, 1–3 220 VIII, 13 218n VIII, 10–16 217–8 VIII, 20–25 218n IX, 12–X, 5 217

4QSd (4Q258) I, 1

217

206 Damascus Covenant (CD)

Wisdom of Solomon 2:22

228

non-biblical, jewish inscriptions and scrolls (aside from qumran) Arad 99

123

Herodian 53

242

I, 7 217 I, 9–11 217 II, 2–13 225 VI, 7 217 VII, 15–17 233, 234 VII, 18 217 XIII, 2–3 216 XIII, 7–9 219 XIII, 11–12 218 XIV, 3–6 220 XIV, 3–4 235n XIV, 6–8 216, 218, 219n XIV, 9–11 219 XX, 4 217 XX, 6 236n XX, 10,13 217

Lachish Damascus Covenant (4QD)

3 166 3:8–13 118, 124n 6:5,8–9,13 118 12:4 118

4QDa II, 20–21 4QDe 7 II, 15 Enoch, Giants

Masada 608–9 782–783

242

Murabaat

4QEnGiantsa VIII, 1–4 203n 4QEnGiantsb II, 14 203n Genesis Apocryphon

10b, 11, 73, 78–80

242

V, 20–29

205

Habakkuk Pesher

qumran Community Rule (1QS recension) I, 2–3 234 III, 13–IV, 26

236n 236n

224

II, 8–9 216 II, 7–10 217 VI, 15–VII, 5 217 VII, 4–5 216

325

index of citations of primary texts 224

Hodayot

4QSapiential Work (4Q185) 223, 225

Miqsfiat Maase ha-Torah (4QMMT; esp. 4Q397 and 398) C10

265–6

Mysteries, Book of 1Q27 VI, 2–3 223 4Q299 55:5 223 4Q299 69:1–2 223 4Q299 79:6–7 223 4Q300 266n 4Q300 266n Reworked Pentateuch (4QRP) 230–1 4Q365 23, I.6–8 Temple Scroll

170n 231–2

War Scroll X, 10

217

[by number]

II, 3

235n

1–2 III, 12–13 4Q228 1 I, 9–10 235n 4QExercitium Calami A (4Q234) 221 4Q247 (Apoc. Weeks Pesher) 235 232 4Qpap cryptA (4Q249a–i) 4QpapSc (4Q257) V–VI; 225 4Q264a Halacha B 223n 4QcryptA (4Q298) 224, 226n 1–2, 5 I, 3 3–4 II, 7

224 224

4QPapAdmonitory Parable (4Q302) 223 4QMeditation on Creation (4Q303–305) 224 4QExercitium Calami B (4Q360) 221 4QAdmonFlood (4Q370) 223n II, 5–9

235n

1QSa (1Q28a)

4Qnon-Canonical Psalmsb (4Q381)

I, 1–2 216 I, 3–16 219 I, 22–25 219

69, 4–5

1QSb (1Q28b) III, 23–24

216

2Q18 (Ben Sira) 223 230 4QGenf (4Q6) 236 4QJosa (4Q47) 4Qphyl G (4Q134) 228 4QMez A (4Q149) 228 4QpPsa (4Q171) 235 III, 15

216

4QFlor (4Q174) I, 11

217

4QTestimonia (4Q175) 22– 23 235n 4Qtanhfi umim (4Q176) 238n 4QWisda (4Q184) 1:14–15 211, 225 1:15 211 5:5 211

4Q The Two Ways (4Q473) 223 4QDibHama (4Q504)

234n

234n

4QBeat (4Q525) 3 II, 1–6

223, 225

211

8QPhyl (8Q3) 11QPsa (11Q5)

228

XVIII, 10–13 211 XVIII, 1–16 223, 225 XXI, 11–17 223 XXII, 1 223 XXVII, 11 235, 264

philo Contemplative Life 25

246

Creation 128

244

Dreams 2.123–29

245

Embassy 115–7, 155–7, 311–13

4QSapiential Hymn (4Q411) 224 4Qsap-Didacticaa (4Q412) 224 4Q413 224 4QInsta (4Q416) 2 III, 20–IV, 6 222 (4Q416) 2 IV, 7–10 222 (4Q417) 2 I, 14 211, 219, 222 (4Q418) 103 II, 6–9 222 4QWays of Righteousness (4Q420–21) 223 4Q424 222 4Qsap-Hymnicb (4Q425) 224 4Qsap-Hymnica (4Q426) 223 1:4

223–4

4QBarki Nafshi (4Q435– 438) 237 1 I, 4–5

237

Good Person 82

245–6

Hypothetica 7.10–13 244–5 7.13 213 Moses 2.41–43 2.216

245n 244

On the Preliminary Studies 198 Special Laws 2.60–64 244 2.64 245 4.188–192 213 Good Person 80–83

244

245

326

index of citations of primary texts

josephus Antiquities 1.60 247 3.38 213 4.211 247 4.302–304 213 4.304 213 5.51 213 5.61 8 (212) 6.66 213 10.57–58 213 10.57 213 10.266–88 266 12.108–9 248n 12.225–7 255n 12.384–5 256–7 14.194 213 16.43 246 20.263–4 247 Against Apion 1.28–29 213 1.38–41 247–248, 261 2.175 246 2.178 247 2.187 213 2.204 247 Life

m. Rosˇ Hasˇ.

UET 6:340–48

4.6

31

266

t. Rosˇ Hasˇ.

egyptian texts 4.6

266 Amenemope

t. Meg. 2:17

Jewish Wars 1.3 213 1.138 218n 2.136 220, 246 2.142 220, 246 2.289–92 246 3.352 213

8:11.32c m. Sotfiah

20.4–5 22.15–16

7:8 7:7

Book of the Heavenly Cow

214 214n

21a

Chester Beatty Papyrus

271

Verso 3,9

67

m. Yad. 3:5

Kagemeni

213–4n

2.4–5

74

mesopotamian texts

Kheti

Ashurbanipal Hymn (KAR 105)

3,9–4,1

30

III viii 9–16

35 74 50–51 67

30

Neferti Prophecy

CT 24, 46a 1–11

79

Merikare

Atrahasis

66–68

38–9

Descent of Ishtar

42–3

Ptahhotep

VII 145

51

30

84

Papyrus BM 10059

Enuma Elish

V 54–55

7:3

80

14b–15a; 234

Abot R. Nat.

Lev. Rab.

75 75

261–264 b. B.Bat.

Erra Epic

214n

Any (pKairo CG 58042)

271

rabbinic literature

6, 15

74 74 74

y. Ketub.

21–25

1–2(1–9) 213 7–9 247 39 (198) 213, 247

III:9–10 III:13–14 XXVII:6

243

81

74

Satiric Letter 30

10/9–11/3

Gilgamesh (Old Babylonian)

Wenamun

X iii 6–14

2,45–46 84 2,69 84

60

214n

8, 63, 73

Ishtar Hymn (RA 22:169–170)

[mishnah, tosefta and talmudim] m. Yoma 7:1

214, 214n

xiv

30

other greek and latin texts

Sˇuruppak 1–8 29 280–281

Aeschylus, Eumenides 29

273–275

98

index of citations of primary texts Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound

Herodas, Mime

Plato, Phaedrus

788–789 [cf. 460–461]

3 181 3:30–36

Herodotus, History

274e 64 274e–275b 64n 274c–275c 97 275e 64n

IV.78

Plato, Protagoras

98

180

Aeschines, Against Timarchus 9–12

96n, 97n

94n

Aristophanes, Frogs 1114–1119

Homer, Iliad

93

Aristophanes, Clouds 961–968 95 964 101 973 101 1353–1374 100 Aristophanes, Knights 188–189

95

1,1 4 6

107 212 8

Homer, Odyssey 1.1 107 1.10 107 8.481 107 8.488 107 Isocrates, Antidosis

958–960

181 97n 261–265 97n, 99n 266–267 97n 296–7 188n

Aristotle, Politics 1337b23ff.

97

Isocrates, Evagoras

X.453d

47–51

188n

Callimachus, Epigrams

Isocrates, Panegyricus

49

51

180

188n

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata

Pindar, Olympian Odes

VI, 4

10.1–3

196

Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History 40:3, 5

98, 127

Pliny the younger, Epistulae 7.9.15

Pollux, Onam. IV.18

180

Pseudo-Plutarch, Moralia 180

Quintilian, Inst. I.1.25–26 179 I.3 180 I.8.5–6 180 X.1.19 180 XI.2 180 Sophocles Frag. 597

97n

98

Xenophon, Laec. Constitution 1.10

97n

Plato, Euthydemus 276a

96–7

Xenophon, Symposium III.5

179

182

Plato, Cleitophon 407b–c

213n

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Comp. 25

376e–377d 97n 376e 95–6 377d 100 521d–e 96n

9e–f

Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 180

97

Plato, Republic

Aristophanes, Wasps 96

325d–326a 326a 101

101

Plato, Hipparchus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demosthenes

228b–c

52

Plato, Laws

P. Col. Zen. 66

769c–e 96n 795d 96 809b–c 97 810e–811a 96, 99, 100

19,21

Plato, Meno

P. Yale, 46

94b

col. i, l.13

179

Euripides Frag. 506 N.2

98

102

other [papyri]

188n

P.Oxy XX (1952) 2256 frag. 9a 21

98

(Aulus) Gellius, Attic Nights XIII.31 XIII.17

180 190n

327

96n

188n

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Index of Select Subjects

Acrostic, 73, 125, 129, 209 Alphabetic culture, 13, 54– 6, 99–104, 112–22, 268 (note 268), 270– 71. See literacy, extent of Alphabet at outset of education 250 defining the number of books in the Jewish canon, 249–51 Amenemope, Israelite adaptation of, 85, 127, 127n, 163 Amennakht, the Egyptian scribe, 70, 145 Ancient Language, central to Scripture, 184–85, 259–60, 263–64, 295– 96 Baruch (Jeremiah’s scribe), 118, 147, 151 Ben Sira, 206–212 Bilingual and multilingual education, 52–6, 156–7, 195, 242–43 Bipartite (Jewish) Bible, 209–210, 234–36, 234n, 248–49, 251, 259, 260–62, 264–67, 273–74 Canon, 12, 18, 158, 185–86, 276, 289–90

Chiasm 98, 152 Collective meals, 99–100, 238–39, 284 Core curriculum, 294 Cultural Memory, 10–11, 275 Cultural Texts, 64–65, 101– 102 Curricula, 99–102, 179–186 Deir- Alla, 151, 161 Editions, ancient, 37–38 Empire, 9, 33–34, 162, 165, 170–171, 267–69, 275, 283–84, 285 Enculturation. See socialization of elite Exercises, student, 17–19, 48–58, 65–67, 85, 91, 123n, 242–243 Family, center of education, 12–13, 20–21, 65–67, 129–130, 143–44, 203, 205–6, 208, 277, 284 Graphic elements of textuality, 289 Hittite historiography, didactic use of, 50, 142 Hybridity, 197–98, 211–12, 238–39, 254–60, 264–

65, 269–70, 274–75, 283–84 Iconography and textuality, 40, 92–94, 114, 124 Impracticality of Education, 21–22, 32, 53–55, 69, 82, 99–101 Indigenous culture, resistance, 194–95,212– 13, 262–63, 268–69 Intertextuality, 35–37, 79, 160, 292–93 Josephus, 246–51 Kadesh Barnea, exercises, 85, 122–3 Levites, 118, 120n, 138–9, 152, 161, 169, 205–6 Library, 18–19, 79–81, 107– 108, 195–96, 239, 263, 303 Literacy concepts of, 13, 103, 116, 190–91 extent of, 13, 20, 70–71 (n. 43), 102–104, 115– 122, 165–66, 172–73, 187–91, 247, 271, 278 ideal of universal literacy, 137, 172, 187–90, 247, 269–70, 271, 278, 287

330

index of select subjects

Literature (versus Scripture) 289–90 Lucian, 185 Marks of scripture, 29–30, 81– 82, 70–74, 79, 107, 158, 167, 237, 289–91 Memorization, indicators of, 6– 7, 27–28, 40, 64–65, 71–74, 79, 96–101, 125, 134–136, 137, 142, 152, 155–56, 180– 81, 205, 209, 223–4, 228–9, 230–34, 236–37, 247–48, 258, 280–82 Memory techniques, 73, 98–99, 125, 128–29, 137, 209. See acrostic, chiasm Mind at center, 6 Music, 28, 124, 152, 181, 289 Oral-written, overlap, 73–74, 95– 96, 104–106, 126–128, 132– 33, 138, 144–45, 146–147, 149, 303–304 Oral-written continuum, 4–8, 288

Parry-Lord school of oraltraditional composition, 6– 8, 104–106 Pedagogy of submission, 32, 76, 129, 149–150, 182 Philo of Alexandria, 198, 244–46 Priests and textuality, 152, 165–6, 169–70, 202–6, 216–217, 219–20, 226–27, 241. See also temples and textuality. Prophecy and education, 151 Prophets, as category of books, 167, 209–210, 213, 234–36, 264–67 Revision, textual, 34–46, 78–79, 137–138, 142, 146–147, 159– 161, 162–172, 231–32 Schools, 12–13, 66–68, 101, 113– 115, 134, 178, 283–84, 301 Scriptural criticism, 289–91 Sirach. See Ben Sira. Socialization of elite, 31–35, 55, 101–104, 114–115, 118–119,

130–131, 190–93, 278, 304– 305 Temples and textuality, 76–77, 79, 81, 108, 119, 160–61, 169–170, 172, 194–95, 198– 99, 201–214, 267–69, 274, 275–76 Testament genre, 133n, 203–206 Theology, Biblical, 289–92 Theognis, 212 Torah focus, 166, 207–211, 218– 19, 222, 225, 228–34, 269– 70, 272, 274–75, 278 Tripartite (Jewish) Bible, 209–10, 245–246, 248, 249 (note 28), 261, 264–65, 261–62, 265–64. See also bipartite (Jewish) Bible Wisdom literature, distinctive function in education, 22–3, 126, 132–134, 132n, 156–57, 222–25, 280–82 Women and literacy, 11–12, 94, 129–30, 190–91, 192–93