Scribes in the Post-Exilic Temple: A Social Perspective
Lester L Grabbe2021, Chronicles and the Priestly Literature of the Hebrew Bible
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Abstract
The basic question asked in this conference relates to how the priestly writings developed. This is a scribal question but one on which we have little information. The standard traditio-historical analysis is used by a number of papers in this volume, based on principles developed over a long time. The problem is that the results are hypothetical and depend on colleagues' accepting the result as plausible. What I want to do in this paper is go back to the basics and ask about what we can know about how scribes work. Can we support our traditio-historical results by actual evidence about how scribes carried out their duties? Thus, in order to throw light on how literature such as Chronicles and the priestly writings may have arisen, an important consideration is the duties of scribes and how they carried them out. Yet a perennial problem is that our actual knowledge of the detailed workings of the Jerusalem temple1 in practically any period is very small. On the other hand, scribes functioned in Egypt and Mesopotamian and also in Judah in the later Second Temple period. They also produced a great deal of literature that became conventional, if not canonical. This study will, first, assemble the few data that we have on scribes in the temple and, then, attempt to fill out the picture by cross-cultural comparisons with the work of scribes elsewhere in the ancient Near East. What happened in Judah can only be surmised, but surmise must be based on as much evidence as can be assembled. One important question is whether this literature is a scribal product, if there was widespread literacy. A recent study suggested that the military hierarchy was literate down to the level of quartermaster.2 This study invites a major discussion, 1 It is assumed here that the Jerusalem temple was probably the main place of worship and the location of the largest number of priests and scribes. Other temples also existed in pre-exilic times and are well catalogued for the Persian and Greek periods: Gerizim, Leontopolis, perhaps even Iraq al-Amir across the Jordan.
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