Image by NORMAND BLOUIN/AFP/Getty Images

By Talya Zax April 12, 2016

For a text commonly thought of as foundational, it can feel odd to think that there was a time when it didn’t really exist. The Bible, though, has a birthday, and no one knows quite when it is.

On Monday, a group of scholars from Tel Aviv University published a new guess.

, appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, approaches the question from the angle of literacy. When a population becomes widely literate, it’s natural to imagine that teachings previously accessible only as oral texts would be transition into writing. “Proliferation of literacy is considered a precondition for the creation of such texts,” the paper’s abstract explains.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

The researchers based their study on 16 shards of inscribed pottery discovered in an excavation of a fort in Arad. Dated to 600 B.C.E., the shards – known as ostracons – come from a compelling point in the timeline examined by scholars exploring when Biblical texts were first written down. The destruction of the First Temple and subsequent expulsion of the Jews from Judah occurred only fourteen years later, in 586 B.C.E.; the question of whether Biblical texts were first written and distributed before or after that date is one of the most prominent in the field.

Analyzing the handwriting and content of the ostracons, the team decided they’d been penned by at least 6 distinct authors. For a fort that the New York Times estimates would have only housed around 30 soldiers, that’s a lot; if a similarly high ratio of literacy was present in Judah’s entire population, there would have been more than enough literate people to warrant written circulation of biblical texts.

An environment like that, the abstract explains, “provides a possible stage setting for compilation of biblical texts,” lending support to the idea that Biblical texts might have first been written down before the destruction of the First Temple.

For scholars outside the Tel Aviv University group, the new evidence is interesting but inconclusive. Speaking to the New York Times, Professor Edward Greenstein of Bar-Ilan University explained that widespread literacy wasn’t the only possible catalyst for the first written versions of the Bible.

“Biblical texts did not have to have been written by many people, or read by many people, to have been written down,” he said, posing as an alternative the idea that scribes might have begun recording the oral tradition as a memory aid.

Regardless of how this new study influences the debate, it provides an intriguing opening to understandings of how our far-removed ancestors lived and thought.

“There is an understanding of the power of literacy,” Professor Israel Finkelstein, one of the project’s leaders, told the New York Times. “And they wrote well, with hardly any mistakes.”

Talya Zax is the Forward’s culture intern. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @TalyaZax.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount