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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Literature and literacy contemporary to the Torah.
  • Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 08:57:07 -0500

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




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