education and transmission

In Companion to Ancient Israel. Edited by Susan Niditch. Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming.

EDUCATION AND TRANSMISSION

Raymond F. Person, Jr. Ohio Northern University

In any society, education and the transmission of culture begins in the

family home, where we learn our language from our parents and siblings and our

culture through such every day tasks as eating. Ancient Israel was no exception.

In fact, because ancient Israel was primarily an agrarian society, this was even

more so the case, because formal education was strictly limited. With increasing

urbanization and the related specialization, some ancient Israelites earned their

living in various trades associated with artisan and craftsman guilds, but even in

these settings education was primarily within the family business. Because of

this, the vast majority of education and the transmission of culture in ancient

Israel was oral, lacking any need of literacy.

An elite minority within the temple/palace bureaucracy received a formal

education that included reading and writing. However, even their education was

primarily oral in nature and the use of texts as a part of their curriculum was

primarily as mnemonic aids for the internalization of the culture. Thus, even

ancient Israelite scribes—the most literate members of their society—

approached the task of reading, writing, and copying texts in ways that differ

remarkably from how we, moderns, understand these same activities.

As the literate members of their society, scribes would have played an

important role in the public education of the people by their recitation by

memory and/or their public reading of traditional texts at various events such

Raymond F. Person, Jr. 2

as religious festivals. Thus, even the illiterate, especially those in urban areas,

nevertheless may have had some contact with literary texts in their public

education at such occasional events.

Education in the Family Household

In ancient Israel as now the most basic social unit was the family and the

task of education and the transmission of culture began in the family. In ancient Israel the family unit was referred to as the bet ab (b) tb), most literally the

“house of the father.” However, this term does not simply refer to the physical

structure, but to all of the humans, animals, plants, and land that together make

up the basic socio-economic unit. Thus, the most common translations are the

“household of the father” or the “patriarchal household.” However, Carol Meyers

has made a good argument based on comparative anthropology of agrarian

societies that a better translation is simply the “family household” (Meyers

1997:1-47). That is, although the biblical text often describes the bet ab in

patriarchal ways, the social reality behind the text may not have been so

patriarchal; rather, as in many other agrarian societies, even those in which

gender roles are sharply defined, the bet ab could only function well when the

work of both males and females were highly and equally valued. The survival of

the household required all family members to contribute significantly to the

household’s economy, including having important decision-making authority

over the various gendered household tasks. Therefore, an androcentric

denigration of work associated with women would have had serious negative

consequences for the entire household and was probably not the reality in the

typical bet ab.

Like modern Israel, ancient Israel had a remarkable geographical diversity

within its borders, so that various ecological niches existed and change from


one to another could occur rapidly within short distances. Nevertheless, the

general agricultural subsistence strategy throughout ancient Israel remained

within the “Mediterranean agricultural pattern” that produced the major crops

of grain, wine, and oil as well as a variety of legumes, fruits, nuts, herbs, and

vegetables and included sheep and goat herding (Meyers 1997:10-11). Because

of this tremendous ecological diversity, “virtually every family household

experienced a different set of challenges in establishing a productive

subsistence strategy” (Meyers 1997:19-20). Thus, the vital connection

between the family’s land and the knowledge concerning the best subsistence

strategies for that land led to patrilineal and patrilocal traditions of ancient

Israel, including levirate marriage (Deut 25:5-6). Because of the close

connections between the family and its land, “[t]he identity of any family unit

was thus inseparable from its land, which was the material basis of its survival”

(Meyers 1997:21).

The bet ab depended on maximizing the labor of the entire family for its

survival and this was differentiated to some degree according to both age and

gender (Meyers 1997:22-32). Some seasonal tasks, such as the harvesting and

storage of the main crops, required all able-bodied members of the household to

assist; some ongoing tasks such as tending orchards and vineyards or milking

the animals may have been shared. Other tasks were probably differentiated.

Most likely the men were primarily responsible for the growing of the field crops,

clearing fields, building terraces, constructing homes, and the making and

repairing of tools. The women were primarily responsible for childcare, tending

the gardens and livestock near the home, textile production, and food

preservation and production. The children helped out with many of the light but

time-consuming household tasks under the guidance of the women until they

reached the age when they could assume their roles with the adults. This


division of labor along gender lines meant that, on the one hand, the ecological

knowledge necessary for growing the field crops was primarily male knowledge

and, on the other hand, the technological knowledge of food preparation and

textile production was primarily female knowledge. Thus, a patrilineal and

patrilocal system strengthened both gendered realms of knowledge in that the

male knowledge that was necessarily connected to the household’s specific

ecological niche remained on the land and the female knowledge that depended

less on geographical factors was transported to the households of their

husbands, thereby sharing any newfound strategies with other households. Both

of these gendered realms of knowledge were closely interconnected—for

example, the male knowledge that produced the grains in the field and the

female knowledge that could store and prepare it for food—and both were

necessarily valued highly, since the family’s survival depended on them both.

The demands of subsistence farming meant that formal education—that

is, the children leaving the home to attend a school taught by a professional

teacher—was not only unnecessary, but strongly discouraged. The economics of

the system simply did not allow for such formal education. Not only would the

cost of loosing the children’s labor be devastating to the survival of the

household, but the households in the villages would also not be able to afford

the luxury of paying a teacher. Thus, the education and transmission of the

culture occurred naturally in the context of the daily activities of the household and by extension to the village, the mispahah (hxp#m), especially when the

various interrelated households came together for religious celebrations.

Furthermore, even within agrarian societies, some degree of specialization

probably existed within village life, so that, for example, midwives would have

been important health care providers with some specialized skills not found in

every household (Meyers 1999:164-65). Because the Hebrew Bible is written by


urban male elites, such specialists tend to be portrayed in ways that minimize

how important women may have been in activities beyond the household. That

is, even though some specialists may have been gender-specific—for example,

“women singers, dancers, composers, mourners, and even reciters of proverbs

or traditional sayings” (Meyers 1999:179)—such gender differentiation does

not necessarily suggest a degradation of the value of such women specialists, at

least within the village setting. Such specialists and their guilds, no matter how

informal and occasional their “professional” gatherings may have been, certainly

required at least some type of informal education within these guilds, most

likely passing knowledge and skills from one generation to another within the

family, while at the same time sharing any new-found knowledge from one

practitioner to another. Thus, within the agrarian households and villages of

ancient Israel, education would have been an integral part of everyday life. In

fact, James Crenshaw insightfully concluded, “Indirectly, the entire adult

population contributed to moral training, for parents used communal insights,

often formulated in maxims, to persuade their children that the teachings had

wider sanctions than that of the individual household” (Crenshaw 279). Thus,

societal norms were taught by parents to their children by drawing from the

communal insights of the villages and the professional skills were taught within

the family and other informal groups within the villages.

Although it remained primarily an agrarian society throughout its

history, ancient Israel also developed into something of a nation-state. As in

other ancient Near Eastern societies, specialization developed further with

increasing urbanization and centralization. Therefore, although the majority of

the populace received their primary education in the agrarian bet ab, not all

household economies, especially in later periods, were based on subsistence

farming, so that some families’ primary source of income came from various


trades, including pottery, textiles, stone masonry, and carpentry, especially in

the urban areas (Crenshaw 86; Rollston 123). New technological developments

aided specialization—for example, the processing of grain into flour was an

important task that women provided in the bet ab by hand-grinding; however,

with the development of milling technologies during the Hellenistic period this

task that had been performed by women in the home became the task of men

in a public business (Meyers 2008). Specialization did not always have the

consequence of removing tasks previously associated with women in the home

to those associated with men in the marketplace—for example, the

specialization of midwifery continued as a woman-only guild (Meyers 1999:

164-65; Meyers 2008:300)—but more often than not this was the likely

consequence at least within urban society. Whatever the impact of the

technology and the resulting specialization, the same principle for education

remained—that is, the knowledge necessary for the continuation of the trade

from one generation to the next and the success of the economic enterprise

itself depended on the contribution and cooperation of various family members

and the inheritance of the business from parent to child. Even for the vast

majority of trades, formal education remained unnecessary and undesirable;

rather, children learned from their parents in the natural environment of the

family business, for just as the location of the family business of subsistence

farming was the home, the location of the family business for most (if not all) of

the specialized trades was also in the home or nearby.

Literacy in Ancient Israel

In the bet ab, education did not require reading and writing, for

subsistence farming does not require these skills. This would also be the case

for the majority of the guilds, in which education was also primarily based in the


family. Therefore, for the vast majority of the populace formal education,

including literacy, was not only unnecessary but undesirable in light of the

economic resources of time and money that it required. However, the

development of a centralized state and its corresponding urbanization required

various specialized skills, including the scribal skills of reading and writing.

Therefore, even in the early monarchic period of ancient Israel, scribal guilds

probably existed and scribal education occurred within the confines of these

guilds. Much like the structure for the other trades, scribes most likely inherited

the family business from their fathers. In contrast to some of the other trades,

however, the scribal profession was more closely connected to the royal/temple

administration of the capital city. Certainly, scribes could be found in some

other urban areas and some may even have worked in private commerce, but

even these scribes likely understood themselves and were perceived by others

as having an origin in or close relationship to the central bureaucracy (Rollston

89, 113).

The discussion among scholars concerning literacy and especially the

existence of schools open to the public includes, on the one hand, the argument

that every major city in preexilic Judah had schools open to the masses so that

literacy was widespread (Lemaire) and, on the other hand, claims that schools

did not exist at all in ancient Israel, so that literacy was limited to a small elite

group of bureaucrats (Whybray). Despite this variety, there appears to be a

movement towards a more minimalist view of literacy and schools for

instruction in ancient Israel, so much so that even as early as 1995 Graham

Davies could conclude that “viewed as a whole, the tenor of scholarly discussion

has moved from confident assertion [of the existence of schools] to doubt and

even denial in recent years” (G. Davies 1995). Nevertheless, most scholars have

concluded that some form of scribal training, even as early as the monarchic


period, was probable on the basis of the following types of evidence: (1) The

Hebrew Bible contains narratives concerning professional scribes (for example, 2

Kgs 22:8–13)(Carr 2005: 112, 116-22; Rollston 88-90; van der Toorn, 76-77;

Young); references to source materials, presumably from royal archives (for

example, 1 Kgs 14:19)(Carr 2005:112; P. Davies 86); and a technical

vocabulary of scribalism (Rollston 112). (2) The complexity of the institution of

the monarchy required scribal activity and, therefore, was necessarily involved

in the education of scribes (P. Davies 15-19; Niditch 1996:4; Dell 132). (3)

Since scribal schools existed throughout the ancient Near East, ancient Israel by

analogy may also have had scribal schools (Carr 2005:111-12; P. Davies 15-30;

Rollston 85-88; van der Toorn 76). (4) Archaeological evidence, especially

epigraphic sources, strongly suggests a professional class of scribes with

standardized education (Carr 2005: 112, 122-24; Crenshaw 34-35; P. Davies 7-

78). The recent contribution to the discussion by Christopher Rollston is the

most judicious and thorough. Based to some degree on all four types of

evidence but most significantly on the epigraphic data, Rollston concluded that

literacy in ancient Israel was restricted to a small group of elites, who had

received formal, standardized education in reading and writing as is evident in

the epigraphic record, especially with regards to standardized practices of

writing. Rollston carefully avoids the problematic language of “schools,” insisting

rather that “formal, standardized education” most likely occurred within the

scribal guilds themselves (Rollston 94-95). In this sense, to some degree this

“formal, standardized education” involving reading and writing is simply an

extension of the type of education found in the other trades, in that scribal

guilds were probably significantly based on “scribal families” (Rollston 122-25).

So once again the family appears to be the primary context for education and

transmission of cultural and professional knowledge.


In summary, the evidence nevertheless strongly suggests that some

type of formal education existed in ancient Israel, including during the

monarchy, for the purpose of training a small cadre of professional scribes to

serve the administrative bureaucracy of the state. Certainly some scribes would

have been low level functionaries involved in reading and writing more mundane,

administrative texts (for example, letters, tax records, inventories), but the

comparative evidence from Mesopotamia and Egypt combined with the biblical

evidence strongly suggests that scribes were also part of the royal officials,

whose tasks were not only related to the act of reading and writing but also to

providing advice and counsel (Blenkinsopp; Carr 2008:116-22; van der Toorn

51-108). Thus, Leo Perdue can conclude:

The scribes (rps) and sages (Mkh) of Israel and Judah comprised a professional social class of intellectuals, composers, officials, and clerks from their origins in the monarchic period until the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism during the early centuries of the Common Era (the Tannaitic and Amoraic periods)(Perdue 2008:3).

This group of elites, most importantly the scribal guilds, produced the

literature preserved in the Hebrew Bible. However, we must nevertheless note

that some (if not most) of this literature has deep roots in the broader tradition

of transmitting the culture in the context of the family and village, in the

context of oral traditional culture. For example, although certainly the Book of

Proverbs is elite literature probably produced under the influence of ancient

Egyptian wisdom literature for the purpose of training scribes and sages for the

royal bureaucracy, the book itself is a compilation of proverbs and admonitions,

many of which probably derive from the agrarian culture of the bet ab and,

therefore, represent common wisdom (Perdue 2007:37-76). Although the Book

of Judges can be understood as literature undergirding the ideology of the


monarchy, the book itself nevertheless draws significantly from the genre of

folktales that is most often associated with oral traditions (Niditch 2008). That

is, the urban literati had an influence on the preservation and transmission of

the cultural legacy of ancient Israel, but to some degree their literature

remained dependent on the rich oral traditional literature that not only preceded

the written tradition but also probably dwarfed it in comparison. Therefore, even

the scribes, the most literate individuals of ancient Israel, lived and worked in a

primary oral society, so that they undertook even their most literate activities—

that is, reading and writing texts—in ways that nevertheless were significantly

influenced by the primary orality of their culture (Person 2010:41-68).

Texts as Mnemonic Aids

The vast majority of education and the transmission of culture occurred

in the household, whether the family business was subsistence farming or one of

the specialized trades. This would probably be the case for scribal education as

well, for there is some evidence for scribal families—for example, 1 Chron 2:55

refers to “the families of the scribes that dwell at Jabez: the Tirathites, the

Shimeathites, and the Sucathites” (Blenkinsopp 309-10; Rollston 122-26). Even

though scribal guilds probably coincided significantly with scribal families, the

formal education that scribes received was probably more state-sponsored than

that of the other trades. In fact, the epigraphic evidence, especially the

consistency of the Old Hebrew script and the use of the Egyptian hieratic

numeric system, strongly suggests the necessity of a formal, standardized

educational system that most likely could only come from a centralized state

(Rollston 112-13). Rollston concluded, “I contend that those capable of

conveying the necessary data to the Old Hebrew scribal students would have

been a scribal teacher associated with the national Old Hebrew apparatus”


(Rollston 113). Therefore, even though he avoids the term “school,” Rollston

nevertheless argues convincingly for state-sponsored formal, standardized

education for scribes. Even though such formal education may have been

extremely limited in terms of who the students were, the rest of this chapter

concerns this formal education, the only education in ancient Israel that

probably included the teaching of reading and writing. Before turning more

explicitly to the form of this education, we should explore further the function

of texts in the ancient world, especially since literacy is what sets such scribal

training apart from the education of those in the other trades.

Even as the most literate members of their society, scribes nevertheless

lived and functioned in a primary oral culture, so that their understanding of

written texts differed markedly from our own modern notions and more closely

reflects the transmission of oral traditions. We will see that this is the case by

examining comparative data on memory and its relationship to written texts, by

observing that textual plurality and multiformity was the standard in the ancient

world, and by contrasting our modern notion of “text” with the ancient

understanding of writing.

In his comparative study of literature in the ancient Near East, David

Carr concluded that the visual presentation of ancient texts required so much of

the readers that they most likely were already familiar with the content of

literature and may have even memorized it, especially with regards to the “long-

duration texts like the Bible, Gilgamesh, or Homer’s works” (Carr 2008:5). In

fact, such literature represented the culture that should be internalized, which

was the goal of scribal education. Carr wrote that

such written copies were a subsidiary part of a much broader literate matrix, where the focus was as much or more on the transmission of texts from mind to mind as on transmission of texts in written form.


Both writing and oral performance fed into the process of indoctrination/education/enculturation. (Carr 2008:5).

Thus, the written texts functioned as mnemonic aids rather than the primary

repository of memory. The primary repository was the collective mind of the

community (preserved most carefully by the scribes) and the use of texts was

simply one means to strengthen the transmission of culture, which was primarily

oral in nature.

Carr’s understanding of ancient literature as mnemonic aids relates well

to the understanding of memory in the comparative study of oral traditions as

summarized in the following five conclusions by John Miles Foley:

First, memory in oral tradition is emphatically not a static retrieval mechanism for data. Second, it is very often a kinetic, emergent, creative activity. Third, in many cases it is linked to performance, without which it has no meaning. Fourth, memory typically entails an oral/aural communication requiring an auditor or audience. Fifth, and as a consequence of the first four qualities, memory in oral tradition is phenomenologically distinct from “our memory.” (Foley 84).

Drawing upon the work of Foley and others, Raymond Person has concluded that

the interplay between the oral and the written in the biblical description of oral instruction, writing, and memory … strongly suggests that Foley’s five conclusions … also applies to the Hebrew Bible, including the role that texts played in the collective memory. (Person 2011:547).

For example, the oral and written characteristics of the Mosaic law work

together to insure the proper internalization of God’s law, as is illustrated in

Deut 11:19-20: “Teach them [these words] to your children, talking about them

when you are in your house and when you are on the road, when you lie down

and when you get up. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your

gates.” Just as Moses recited the law to the people, the people should


constantly recite them to their children, including settings in which it would be

highly improbable for them to be carrying heavy scrolls. Since “these words”

(Deut 11:18) refers to God’s “every commandment” (Deut 11:13), the

command to “write them on the doorposts” obviously is referring to selected

commandments that symbolically represent the whole of the law. Furthermore,

this quote brings us back to the above observation that education occurred

within the family, even though the references here to writing probably reflect

the ideology of the elite scribes more so than common practice by a literate

population. Therefore, this quote illustrates well how memory associated with

the law is, in Foley’s words, a “kinetic, emergent, creative activity … linked to

performance … [that] is phenomenologically distinct from ‘our memory’” (Foley

84; Person 2011).

This phenomenologically distinct memory is also reflected in the textual

plurality and multiformity of the extant texts of the Hebrew Bible. Carr

introduced the term “memory variants,” which are “the sort of variants that

happen when a tradent modifies elements of texts in the process of citing or

otherwise reproducing it from memory” (Carr 2011:17) such as “exchange of

synonymous words, word order variation, [and] presence and absence of

conjunctions and minor modifiers” (Carr 2011:33; see similarly Person 1998).

He provided numerous examples from the Gilgamesh epic, the Temple Scroll,

parallels between Samuel–Kings//Chronicles, and parallel proverbs. Based on

comparisons of so-called “biblical” and “non-biblical” works at Qumran as well as

the so-called “reworked” or “rewritten” texts, Sidnie Crawford concluded that

most Jewish groups during the Second Temple period “did not insist upon a

single textual tradition, but were willing to accept a certain amount of textual

flux, even to the point of accepting two parallel literary editions of the same


text as valid Scripture” (Crawford 37). Similarly, Person concluded that both the

Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles

may best be understood as limited instantiations of the broader tradition in which an interplay of texts and communal memory exists, an ancient tradition that has been lost to us except as witnessed by these two competing historiographies and the textual plurality in which they exist. (Person 2010:160).

The long-held consensus model of the textual production and transmission of

ancient literature—that is, an authoritative text that determines future copies

or becomes a “source” text for a “vulgar” text—has been seriously undermined

by the thorough re-examination of text-critical evidence, especially in light of

the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The ancient notion of literature, whether it

exists primarily as “oral literature” or as written texts, differs significantly from

our modern notion of a literary text, because it allows for a high degree of

multiformity that led to what from our modern perspective is a plurality of texts

but what from an ancient perspective might best be understood as a collection

of texts not one of which can re-present the tradition in its fullness but each

one is nevertheless faithful to some degree to that tradition.

Scribal Guilds as Vehicles of Education and Transmission

Scribal education—that is, teaching both the writing and reading of

texts—would have occurred primarily (if not exclusively) within the centralized

bureaucracy of the state, most likely in the capital city, for the purpose of

training scribes to meet the recording, storing, and retrieving of administrative

data as well as to provide a means for a certain degree of state-controlled

propaganda through the selective transmission of cultural traditions, including

religious texts. This statement is not inconsistent with the above observation

that scribal training probably occurred within scribal families, for the scribal


families themselves were situated within the central bureaucracy. Of course, the

scribal families may have not always wholeheartedly accepted the cultural

propaganda of the state, so that sometimes they may have written texts with

ideologies critical of the (present or past) state bureaucracy (for example, 1

Samuel 8) or of the dominant ideology (for example, the Book of Job or the

Book of Jonah). Nevertheless, the training of scribes served the administrative

needs of the central government and thereby determined much of the

curriculum. The curriculum then in turn determined to a large degree the public

curriculum that the scribes as transmitters of culture presented in their

recitations and education of the people.

Since the state sponsored scribal training to meet its own administrative

needs, these very needs probably determined much of the curriculum. Scribes

would thus learn about record-keeping and letter-writing as two of the most

important administrative uses of reading and writing and these activities would

have been standardized to ease the communication that they provided,

especially since these are the types of texts that were less written as aids to

memorization and were more like “static retrieval mechanism[s] for data” (Foley

84). The standardization would have included the script itself and the layout of

the writing on the writing surface (margins, lines, letter size, spacing of letters)

as well as learning certain formal characteristics, such as epistolary formulas

(Rollston 91-115). Of course, in order to learn how to write, the ancient scribes

must have the knowledge of producing much of their own supplies, including

pen and ink (Rollston 112). Furthermore, such administrative tasks often

required the recording of quantitative data; therefore, the scribes must learn

some formal, standardized numeric system and from the epigraphic record this

system was based on the Egyptian hieratic numeric system (Rollston 110).

Thus, Rollston described the abilities of a trained scribe as follows: “the


production of Old Hebrew texts in the standard script of the period, the

standard orthography of the period, the capability of using a dominant numeric

system, and the capability of employing a standard format (e.g., for letters,

deeds, and so on)” (Rollston 113; see also Tov 13-14). Some scribes obviously

must have been proficient in various foreign languages and scripts as well, since

correspondence with other nation-states was necessary, especially when one

was the vassal within a larger empire, and the biblical text itself shows

significant influence of other literature, even to the point of some literary

dependence (Perdue 2007).

The scribal skills necessary to serve these administrative purposes

transferred well to the preservation and transmission of literature. Such cultural

transmission may have been a secondary concern of the state, especially since

the primary oral character of the society continued long after the introduction

of writing (and arguably until the invention of printing presses with moveable

type); however, the state apparatus of writing may have been a somewhat

effective tool for the centralization and standardization of the culture by the

state. At least, the biblical text strongly suggests that this was attempted,

even though Schniedewind and others (for example, Schaper) make too much of

this in their advocating that during the monarchic period “textualization” had

already transformed the oral religious culture into a “religion of the book.” For

example, Deuteronomy required every Israelite to write the law on their

doorposts (Deut 11:20), something that was probably beyond the writing skills

of the populace. Furthermore, at times we see complaints about the efforts of

scribes controlling the message, as when Jeremiah referred to the lying pen of

the scribes (Jer 8:8). Nevertheless, the comparative and biblical evidence

strongly suggests that literary texts were primarily mnemonic devices for the

purpose of the internalization/memorization of the tradition (Carr 2008).


However, we must constantly remind ourselves that such memorization was not

rote memorization, but an internalization of the meaning of the literature that

nevertheless allowed for a high degree of multiformity, so much so that our

modern division between composition and transmission of texts is itself

anachronistic.

The above distinction between administrative texts and literature must

also not be understood as mutually exclusive. Administrative texts such as royal

annals and letters may be some of the sources behind the literature of the

Hebrew Bible. For example, the Deuteronomic History may include source

material from preexilic royal archives. In fact, if the copying of texts was an

important part of scribal training, then such examples suggest a close

connection between such administrative documents and some of the religious

literature that later comprised the Hebrew Bible.

Despite the widespread acceptance that such scribal training must have

occurred in ancient Israel, little epigraphic evidence of the training itself exists.

Nevertheless, Rollston discussed epigraphic evidence that he finds convincing as

an abecedary and a student exercise text (Rollston 111, 120-22). Although

such earlier evidence is often lacking, Emanuel Tov has described such scribal

exercises among the Qumran materials and concluded that similar practices

must have occurred during the earlier periods, including the monarchy (Tov 14,

261).

As noted above, the scribes/sages were “a professional social class of

intellectuals, composers, officials, and clerks” (Perdue 2008:3) that served in

various capacities (Rollston 129; Young). Therefore, as was the case in Egypt

(Williams), most likely the education one received within the Jerusalem

bureaucracy began with a basic curriculum (emphasizing reading, writing, and

arithmetic), which led to more specialized studies, preparing for the different


leadership roles within the temple and royal complexes such as priests, royal

officials, and possibly cult prophets. Which texts were memorized by the

advanced students may have differed, depending on what specific leadership

roles the students were preparing for within the different family guilds. For

example, some subjects such as medicine may have been limited to specific

specialists. Furthermore, the specific core texts that were taught most likely

differed at least to some degree from one period to another. Such historical

variety and the differentiation between the various guilds of specialists may

help explain the variety of literary texts found in the collection we call the

Hebrew Bible, many of which were likely produced in such educational settings.

However, we must acknowledge that what has survived of the written

curriculum of ancient Israel’s scribal education is primarily (if not exclusively)

those literary works that had meaning for the broader culture, so that they were

much more than curricular materials. Those texts that were primarily used in the

context of such scribal training (for example, exercise texts) have with a very

few exceptions been lost forever or remain buried in the vast area of Jerusalem

that has not been excavated.

How did the teachers approach the task of teaching their students? We

should remember that such education probably occurred within scribal families,

so that the use of “father”/“son” imagery in Proverbs for instruction probably

reflects such a setting. Just as raising children is portrayed in Proverbs as

involving corporeal punishment (Prov 13:24), difficult students were probably

beaten vigorously. In order to keep the students’ interest, the teachers

probably encouraged debate and dialogue. Furthermore, since scribal students

and their teachers were almost exclusively male, teachers spiced things up a bit

with liberal uses of sexual innuendo (Crenshaw 117). In addition to the

internalizing of literary texts and probably memorizing various proverbs and


admonitions, students were encouraged to learn from their observations upon

nature and human culture and by analogy apply their observations to new

situations (Crenshaw 120-26).

Those scribes who reached a higher level of training—that is, they had

been most successful in internalizing the cultural meanings of the (oral and

written) texts and other forms of instruction—probably participated in some

public educational events sponsored by the central bureaucracy. At least this

can be inferred from the fact that all of the major characters of both the

Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles are portrayed as having scribal

skills and participating in the public recitation of important texts (Person

2010:51-65). For example, Moses (Deut 32:45), Joshua (8:32-35), Josiah (2

Kgs 22-23//2 Chr 34-35), and Ezra (Neh 8:2-8) all recited the law to the

people, taught them what it required, and led them in their ritual obedience to

the law. Therefore, the education that the scribes received also provided for the

accomplished scribal leaders who in turn participated in the education of the

masses by the public recitation of religious texts, especially during festivals in

the capital city. In this way, the central bureaucracy could influence to some

degree the primary oral culture of ancient Israel first through the formal,

standardized training that specialists, especially scribes, received and then by

the scribal leaders imparting the cultural traditions that they received within

their guilds to the people on behalf of the temple and/or palace.

Blenkinsopp, J. The sage, the scribe, and scribalism in the Chronicler’s Work. In

J. G. Gammie and L. G. Perdue (Eds). The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East (pp. 307-15). Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990.

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Carr, D. M. Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Crawford, S. W. Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.

Crenshaw, J. L. Education in Ancient Israel. New York: Doubleday, 1998. Davies, G. I. Were there schools in Ancient Israel? In J. Day, R. P. Gordon, and H.

G. M. Williamson (Eds). Wisdom in Ancient Israel: Essays in Honor of J. A. Emerton (pp. 199-211). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Davies, P. Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998.

Dell, K. Scribes, sages, and seers in the First Temple. In L. G. Perdue (Ed). Scribes, Sages, and Seers: The Sage in the Eastern Mediterranean World (pp. 125-44). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008.

Foley, J. M. Memory in Oral Tradition. In R. A. Horsley, J. A. Draper, J. M. Foley (Eds). Performing the Gospel: Orality, Memory, and Mark: Essays in Honor of Werner Kelber. Minneapolis: Fortress 2006.

Lemaire, A. The sage in school and temple. In J. G. Gammie and L. G. Perdue (Eds). The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East (pp. 165-81). Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990.

Meyers, C. L. Guilds and Gatherings: Women’s Groups in Ancient Israel. In P. H. Williams, Jr. and T. Hiebert (Eds). Realia Dei: Essays in Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation in Honor of Edward F. Campbell, Jr. at His Retirement (pp. 154-84). Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999.

Meyers, C. L. The family in early Israel. In L. G. Perdue et al. (Eds). Families in Ancient Israel (pp. 1-47). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997.

Meyers, C. L. From house to House of Yahweh: women’s religious culture in Ancient Israel. In A. Lemaire (Ed). Congress Volume: Basel 2001 (pp. 277-303). Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002.

Meyers, C. L. Grinding to a halt: gender and the changing technology of flour production in Roman Galilee. In S. Montón-Subias and M. Sánchez-Romero (Eds). Engendering Social Dynamics: The Archaeology of Maintenance Activities (pp. 65-74). Oxford: Archaeopress, 2008.

Niditch, S. Judges: A Commentary. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008. Niditch, S. Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature. Louisville:

Westminster John Knox Press, 1996.


Perdue, L. G. The Israelite and early Jewish family: summary and conclusions. In L. G. Perdue et al. (Eds). Families in Ancient Israel (pp. 163-222). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997.

Perdue, L. G. Sages, scribes, and seers in Israel and the ancient Near East: an introduction. In L. G. Perdue (Ed). Scribes, Sages, and Seers: The Sage in the Eastern Mediterranean World (pp. 1-34). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008.

Perdue, L. G. Wisdom Literature: A Theological History. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007.

Person, R. F. Jr. The ancient Israelite scribe as performer. Journal of Biblical Literature 117 (1998): 601-09.

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Whybray, R. The sage in the Israelite royal court. In J. G. Gammie and L. G. Perdue (Eds). The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East (pp. 133-39). Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990.

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