The contributors to this volume examine how diverse scribal voices in the Second Temple period debate, support, and resonate with one another across the textual traditions of the Hebrew Bible, illuminating the social, institutional, and theological dynamics that shaped Scripture in the making.
The contributors to this volume investigate the scribal communities and literary practices that shaped the formation of the Hebrew Bible during the late Achaemenid-Persian and early Hellenistic periods, with particular attention to scribal activity in Yehud/Judea and the broader southern Levant. Drawing on redaction criticism, intertextual analysis, and socio-historical contextualization, the contributors collectively advance the thesis that biblical literature emerged not from solitary authorship or linear editorial progression, but from sustained negotiation among competing and collaborating scribal circles embedded in specific institutional, political, and theological contexts. The volume proceeds in two movements: methodological reflection on how scribal ideologies and practices are identified in biblical and post-biblical texts, followed by case studies examining concrete instances of scribal discourse across the Pentateuch and prophetic literature. The studies converge on a central claim: textual plurality was a structural feature of Second Temple scriptural transmission, not an aberration - as analysis of the competing redactional layers in Deuteronomy, Numbers, Genesis, the prophetic corpus, and the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrates. The relationship between Judean and Samarian scribal circles - whether characterized by rivalry, family ties, or negotiated compromise - emerges as a generative axis of inquiry. The contributors also examine how post-exilic circumstances, including diaspora, colonial administration, and priestly competition, left identifiable traces in Pentateuchal and prophetic redaction. By bringing together specialists across previously compartmentalized subdisciplines, they model an integrative approach to Fortschreibung, theocratic redaction, and the social history of Scripture.
Table of contents:
Jaeyoung Jeon: Orality and Performance in Scribal Culture: Some Methodological Considerations on the Formation of the Bible -
Attila Bodor: Deuteronomistic Scribal Concerns: Behind the (Pre-)Samaritan Editorial Interventions -
Reinhard Achenbach: God's Covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17 and Genesis 15: A Comparative and a Complementary Reading of a Scribal Composition -
Kishiya Hidaka: The Anti-Diaspora Scribal Group and the Formation of the Pentateuchal Wilderness Narrative -
Louis C. Jonker: Theocratic Redaction in the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Period? Exploring its Possible Connections to Chronicles -
Dany Nocquet: The Restoration of Northern Israel and its Unity with Judah: Reflections about Literary Developments in the Prophets during the Persian Period -
Diana Edelman: The Ties that Bind: Scribal Families Working on Mt. Gerizim and in Jerusalem? -
Eckart Otto: Was there a Compromise between Scribal Scholars in Jerusalem and on Mount Gerizim in the Post-exilic Hexateuch and Pentateuch? -
Mark G. Brett: Mapping Scribal Self-Interest and Compromise in the Pentateuch -
Taylor O. Gray: Nascent Jewish Scribal Theology and the Assembly of the Pentateuch
