The Bible is older than we thought, study finds
An analysis of biblical texts recovered from the Judahite desert fortress of Arad and dated back to approximately 600 BCE reveals that literacy was widespread at the time that the Old Testament was completed, a team of researchers from Tel Aviv University revealed in a new study.
According to the authors of the new paper, which was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scholars have long agreed that several key biblical texts were written starting in the 7th century BCE, but there has long been a debate over the precise date of their completion – were they finished before the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE?
“There’s a heated discussion regarding the timing of the composition of a critical mass of biblical texts,” co-lead investigator Professor Israel Finkelstein from TAU’s Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations, explained in a statement. “To answer this, one must ask a broader question: What were the literacy rates in Judah at the end of the First Temple period? And what were the literacy rates later on, under Persian rule?”
Professor Finkelstein and his colleagues analyzed 16 inscriptions from the fortress of Arad using image processing techniques, machine learning algorithms, and other methods, and found at least six different authors were responsible for the inscriptions. As the fort was a remote outpost, the researchers concluded that basic literacy must have spread throughout the military, with even lower-ranked personnel being able to effectively read and write.
This indicates that an educational infrastructure capable of widespread literacy was present in the Kingdom of Judah prior to the destruction of the first Temple, the researchers reported. It would be another 400 years (circa 200 BCE) before a comparable level of literacy would once again be found in this region, narrowing down when the biblical texts may have been completed.
‘Several hundred’ people may have been literate during First Temple period
The content of the inscriptions, as well as the fact that six different authors were responsible for their creation, indicates that the ability to read and write existed throughout the military chain of command, study co-author Barak Sober explained. Machine-learning algorithms allowed Sober’s team to eliminate the possibility that a single individual wrote all of the texts.
Those inscriptions included a series of instructions for troop movements and the registration of expenses for food, and the tone and nature of the commands indicate that they were not written by professional scribes specializing in the craft. Based on the remote location of the fortress, the small army that would have been stationed there and the narrow time period of the writings, the researchers concluded that the literacy rate among the garrison must have been high.
“We found indirect evidence of the existence of an educational infrastructure, which could have enabled the composition of biblical texts,” said co-author Professor Eli Piasetzky with the TAU School of Physics and Astronomy. “Literacy existed at all levels of the administrative, military and priestly systems of Judah. Reading and writing were not limited to a tiny elite.”
“Now our job is to extrapolate from Arad to a broader area,” Finkelstein noted. “Adding what we know about Arad to other forts and administrative localities across ancient Judah, we can estimate that many people could read and write during the last phase of the First Temple period. We assume that in a kingdom of some 100,000 people, at least several hundred were literate.”
“Following the fall of Judah, there was a large gap in production of Hebrew inscriptions until the second century BCE, the next period with evidence for widespread literacy,” he added. “This reduces the odds for a compilation of substantial Biblical literature in Jerusalem between ca. 586 and 200 BCE.”
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Image credit: Tel Aviv University
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