Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible Review

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(More customer reviews)With the exception of the book of Daniel, the Hebrew Bible, says Van der Toorn, was the product of streams of tradition recorded and edited by scribes who were Levites connected to the Temple in Jerusalem. These Levites descended from the priesthood in Israel that had migrated to Judah after the Assyrian conquest and became integrated into the ranks of priests as the scribes. Consequently, Van der Toorn asserts that it is anachronism to refer to the Bible as a collection of books. Books are separate items with an author who designs parts to produce a whole and intends this product to be appreciated by an audience. Books thus presume authors, a book trade, and a literate public. Study of such books can appropriately focus on authenticity of authorship and the general intentions and message of the author. But, according to Van der Toorn, books and authors did not come into existence until the Hellenistic period. Before then the materials that evolved into the Hebrew Bible were streams of tradition recorded on various scrolls by an organized group of scribes. The scrolls represented the product of oral traditions mixed with the editorial activity of the scribes. The way to study the Hebrew Bible, then, is to trace the signs within documents that point to scribal editing. Based on this method, Van der Toorn argues there were four editions of the book of Deuteronomy that came approximately at forty year intervals as the scribes replaced the master copy of the book with an updated edition.
Van der Toorn uses Mesopotamian and Egyptian archeology and literature as he argues that Jewish scribes were part of a Middle Eastern phenomenon. Scribes were usually attached to the palace of the ruler and important temples. Van der Toorn believes that the key work on the Bible was done at the Jerusalem temple. He argues that Mesopotamian scribes were the first to claim that written documents represented authoritative revelation which superseded oral traditions. He says this transition happened in Mesopotamia around 1150 B.C.E. That transition happened in Judah, he maintains, with the Josiah reform of 622 when a written version of Deuteronomy was used as the basis for overruling oral tradition. Thenceforward written documents began to be viewed as revelation and the oral tradition was downgraded. Eventually the doctrine took hold that the era of prophecy had come to a close with the work of Ezra, who is credited with publishing the five books of the Torah as Jewish law, thus representing the closing of the canon as it relates to the Pentateuch. In the final analysis, the books that were included in the Hebrew Bible were those that were considered prior to the prophetic activity of Ezra. The books of prophecy that were admitted to the Masoretic canon derived from streams of tradition prior to Ezra with the exception of Daniel which was the only example of pseudepigraphy that was accepted as legitimately by an ancient prophet.
Van der Toorn goes into the books of Deuteronomy and Jeremiah to show in detail how the scribal procedures resulted in editions of Torah and prophets. Among the interesting facts that are revealed are that Jeremiah denounces the discovery of Deuteronomy in the temple under Josiah as a fraud perpetrated by the scribes; that Malachi was an invented prophet needed to bring the scroll of minor prophets to the perfect number twelve; and that Daniel was erroneously accepted as a legitimate traditional prophet when the book was definitely pseudonymous. He also argues that there was no closure of the canon at a particular time and place. Rather, the scribes were concerned with the closure of the canonization period, which is to say they accepted books that were regarded as reflecting material up to the life of Ezra, whose work was regarded as bringing to an end the age of prophesy. From that time onward, the scribes and their successors in Judaism maintained that revelation could only be found by studying the texts that became the Hebrew Bible.
Van der Toorn's book is very readable and full of provocative insights. Anyone interested in the development of the Hebrew Bible will find this work to be very worthwhile.


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We think of the Hebrew Bible as the Book--and yet it was produced by a largely nonliterate culture in which writing, editing, copying, interpretation, and public reading were the work of a professional elite. The scribes of ancient Israel are indeed the main figures behind the Hebrew Bible, and in this book Karel van der Toorn tells their story for the first time. His book considers the Bible in very specific historical terms, as the output of the scribal workshop of the Second Temple active in the period 500-200 BCE. Drawing comparisons with the scribal practices of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, van der Toorn clearly details the methods, the assumptions, and the material means of production that gave rise to biblical texts; then he brings his observations to bear on two important texts, Deuteronomy and Jeremiah.

Traditionally seen as the copycats of antiquity, the scribes emerge here as the literate elite who held the key to the production as well as the transmission of texts. Van der Toorn's account of scribal culture opens a new perspective on the origins of the Hebrew Bible, revealing how the individual books of the Bible and the authors associated with them were products of the social and intellectual world of the scribes. By taking us inside that world, this book yields a new and arresting appreciation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
(20070901)

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