How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel

by William M. Schniedewind

• ISBN13: 9780521536226
• ISBN10: 0521536227
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-08-22
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

How the Bible Became a Book combines recent archaeological discoveries in the Middle East with insights culled from the history of writing to address how the Bible was written and evolved into sacred Scripture. Written for general readers as well as scholars, the book provides rich insight into how these texts came to possess the authority of Scripture and explores why Ancient Israel, an oral culture, began to write literature. It describes an emerging literate society in ancient Israel that challenges the assertion that literacy first arose in Greece during the fifth century BCE. Hb ISBN (2004) 0-521-82946-1

Author Biography

William M. Schniedewind is a professor of biblical studies and Northwest Semitic languages and the chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA

Table of Contents

1. How the Bible became a book

2. The Numinous power of writing

3. Writing and the state

4. Writing in the Early Israelite state

5. Hezekiah and the spread of writing

6. Josiah and the text revolution

7. How the Torah became a text

8. Writing in exile

9. Scripture in the shadow of the Temple

10. Epilogue

11. Further reading.