Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 50:4 (Dec 2007)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible. By Karel van der Toorn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007, x + 401 pp., $35.00.

In September 2006 Karel van der Toorn became the president of the Universiteit van Amsterdam and the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. Thorough understanding and insight into the languages and cultures of Mesopotamia and ancient Israel mark van der Toorn’s past writings, and Scribal Culture is no exception. In many ways this volume is a culmination of his research into both of these areas.

Van der Toorn covers considerable ground in this volume. He surveys literacy and authorship in the ancient world, the culture and vocation of scribes, production of the Moses and prophetic traditions, and the issues of revelation and canon. Van der Toorn believes that literacy in ancient Israel was fairly unaffected by the innovation of the alphabetic script and comparable to literacy within Mesopotamia, which employed a far more complex writing system (p. 11). While robust literacy was probably fairly low, there are hints that functional literacy, especially in the upper echelons of society, was not as scarce as some scholars assert. Van der Toorn highlights evidence for literacy in ancient Israel (pp. 178–82), although he does not discuss the fact that Jdg 8:14 can be interpreted as an instance of comic relief instead of evidence for the ability of young men to write down names. Furthermore, he states that ancient writings had many functions such as memory aids for messengers; archival purposes; support for oral performances; and monuments. However, he contends that the concept of books is anachronistic; the documents that compose the Bible should be thought of as discrete works instead that received the appearance of cohesion through later redactors (p. 16).

In a break from his typically careful treatments, van der Toorn presents a rather quirky reconstruction of the text history of Deuteronomy. He states that starting with Josiah, there was only one copy of the book in existence (aside from perhaps the king’s copy). The temple scribes did not permit copies in order to prevent the proliferation of variant texts: “If no copies existed but the master copy, the priests were in full control of the text, its transmission, and its editions—including the scribes who worked under priestly patronage” (pp. 147–48). However, with use scrolls eventually wear out and van der Toorn estimates that a scroll could last around forty years. Analogous to subsequent recessions of the Epic ofGilgamesh, van der Toorn proposes that each time the scribes replaced the scroll they made additions and engaged in other editorial/authorial activity to produce a new edition of Deut...

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