Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 63:4 (Dec 2020)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

JETS 63:4 (December 2020) p. 845

Book Reviews

The Finger of the Scribe: How Scribes Learned to Write the Bible. By William M. Schniedewind. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019, x + 236 pp., $34.95.

The Finger of the Scribe: How Scribes Learned to Write the Bible examines the training of the scribes who wrote the Bible. William M. Schniedewind’s thesis is that Levantine scribes learned their craft using cuneiform teaching methods from Mesopotamia. The book is organized into seven chapters.

Chapter 1 summarizes the Akkadian system of pedagogy and suggests this was the template for teaching scribal practices across the ANE. Schniedewind focuses upon the writing exercises used to teach cuneiform and asserts these traditions were “operating in Canaan until the end of the second millennium BCE” (p. 20).

Chapter 2 uses the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscriptions as a rubric for explaining the process of scribal education in Canaan. Schniedewind suggests that Pithos A, the famous “Yahweh and Asherah inscription,” was not a religious inscription but a writing exercise practicing a formal letter opening (p. 37).

Chapter 3 outlines the development of the alphabet and moves into the mnemonic writing exercises used by Egyptian scribes to teach the halaḥam alphabet (p. 53). Schniedewind discusses the role abecedaries played in acrostic poetry. Several biblical texts are investigated as possible scribal exercises that reinforced “alphabetic thinking” (p.66).

Chapter 4 looks at copying lists as a means to train scribes to think in common categories (pp.70–71). The author delves into the Gezer calendar (pp. 79–82) and Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon (pp. 85–87), treating them as school exercises, and discusses biblical lists as extending scribal exercise (pp. 88–94).

Chapter 5 focuses on the next tier in scribal education, the model letter, and particularly the letters found at Ugarit (pp. 98–104). Schniedewind ends the chapter by suggesting prophetic discourse adapted the letter genre (p. 116).

Chapter 6 describes the importance of proverbs to scribal practice and diplomatic correspondence (p.120). The author takes Papyrus Amherst 63, which adapts Psalm 20, and concludes these parallels came from scribal curriculum (p. 126). Then he analyzes The Instruction of Amenemope with Proverbs 22; he states the two are textually unconnected, but that Egyptian sayings were transmitted orally into the culture, adopted into scribal curriculum, and “integrated into the literary framework of the Book of Proverbs” (p. 129).

The final chapter d...