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5 - The Scribal World

from Part I - The Context of Wisdom Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2022

By
Mark Sneed
Edited by
Katherine J. Dell
Edited in association with
Suzanna R. Millar  and
Arthur Jan Keefer
Katherine J. Dell
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Suzanna R. Millar
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Arthur Jan Keefer
Affiliation:
Eton College
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Summary

Mark Sneed introduces readers to the world of scribes. Drawing first on some of the earliest developments of Sumerian scribalism, he gives an overview of how scribes trained and worked in the ancient Near East more broadly. In Egypt and elsewhere, scribal training began at an early age and involved a wide range of curricula, including wisdom literature, which scribes copied and memorized, as it played a significant role in scribal education. Although concrete evidence for Israelite schools is lacking, Sneed finds reason to believe that similar scribal practices existed there, where wisdom literature too served technical and ethical purposes. Scribes, then, existed in ancient Israel, and for Sneed could be identified in various ways: priests, prophets, and sages. Behind each of these lies the “scribe” as one who composed the texts themselves. Thus Sneed finds far more that is common than different among the biblical materials, wisdom texts included, and conceives of the scribe as holding a wide-ranging professional role in Israel that was not tied down to a single genre of literature.

Keywords

scribesSumeriaschoolseducationcurriculumpriestsprophetssagesIsraelite professions
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Wisdom Literature , pp. 76 - 95
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Further Reading

Carr, David M. Writing on the Tablets of the Heart. Oxford: 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Yoram. The Scribes and Scholars of the City of Emar in the Late Bronze Age. HSS 59. Winona Lake: 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Yoram. Wisdom from the Late Bronze Age. Writing from the Ancient World 29. Atlanta: 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, Philip R., and Römer, Thomas, eds. Writing the Bible: Scribes, Scribalism and Script. Bible World. New York: 2015.Google Scholar
Rollston, Christopher A. Writing and Literacy of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age. Archaeology and Biblical Studies 11. Atlanta: 2010.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Brian B., ed. Contextualizing Israel’s Sacred Writings: Ancient Literacy Orality, and Literary Production. AIL 22. Atlanta: 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sneed, Mark. ‘Is the “Wisdom Tradition” a Tradition?’ CBQ 73 (2011): 50–71.Google Scholar
Sneed, Mark. The Politics of Pessimism in Ecclesiastes: A Social-Science Perspective. AIL 12. Atlanta: 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sneed, Mark. The Social World of the Sages: An Introduction to Israelite and Jewish Wisdom Literature. Minneapolis: 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sneed, Mark. ed. Was There a Wisdom Tradition? New Prospects in Israelite Wisdom Studies. AIL 23. Atlanta: 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sneed, Mark. ‘A Taste for Wisdom: Aesthetics, Moral Discernment, and Social Class in Proverbs’. Pages 111–126 in Imagined World and Constructed Differences in the Hebrew Bible. Edited by Cataldo, Jeremiah W.. LHBOTS 677. London, 2019.Google Scholar
Sneed, Mark. ‘Inspired Sages: Massa’ and the Confluence of Wisdom and Prophecy’. In Scribes as Sages and Prophets. Edited by Krispenz, Jutta. BZAW 496. Berlin: 2020, 15–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, Anne. Poetic Ethics in Proverbs: Wisdom Literature and the Shaping of the Moral Self. Cambridge: 2016.Google Scholar
Toorn, Karel van der. Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible. Cambridge: 2007.Google Scholar

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