Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Peter,

> We can only guess, as we know almost nothing about the Israelite 
> community of that time except for what is written in the Bible. 
> Anything based on other communities of the time is highly 
> speculative because we know that at least a few centuries later the 
> Jewish community was much more literate than many surrounding 
> peoples, and that distinction might date back to your period. The 
> stronger limitation would probably have been whether people had 
> copies; there would probably have been few copies in existence, and 
> quite possibly only the priestly community had direct access to them.

HH: Since it is standard to hear, as Yigal said, that literary was 
low in ancient times, Kenneth Kitchen surprised me, in his recent 
book _On the Reliability of the Old Testament_, when he claimed that 
archeological finds suggest that even in pre-exilic times there may 
have been some functional literary widely spread through the 
population.

                                Yours,
                                Harold Holmyard