Posted on 04/11/2016 5:41:52 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Based on a statistical analysis of the results, and taking into account the content of the texts that were chosen for the sample, the researchers concluded that at least six different hands had written the 18 missives at around the same time. Even soldiers in the lower ranks of the Judahite army, it appears, could read and write...
The study was based on a trove of about 100 letters inscribed in ink on pieces of pottery, known as ostracons, that were unearthed near the Dead Sea in an excavation of the Arad fort decades ago and dated from about 600 B.C. That was shortly before Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah, and the exile of its elite to Babylon -- and before many scholars believe the major part of the biblical texts, including the five books of Moses, also known as the Pentateuch, were written down in any cohesive form.
The Arad citadel was small, far-flung and on an active front, close to the border with the rival kingdom of Edom. The fort itself was only about half an acre in size, and probably would have accommodated about 30 soldiers. The wealth of texts found there, recording troop movements, provisions and other daily activities, were created within a short time, making them a valuable sample for looking at how many different hands wrote them...
But if the literacy rates in the Arad fortress were repeated across the kingdom of Judah, which had about 100,000 people, there would have been hundreds of literate people...
...after the destruction and exile, up until 200 B.C., Professor Finkelstein said, there is almost no archaeological evidence of inscriptions in Hebrew... more important texts, like biblical ones, had been done on perishable materials such as parchment or papyrus.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Letters inscribed on pottery, known as ostracons, which were unearthed in an excavation of a fort in Arad, Israel, and dated to about 600 B.C., shortly before Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem. Credit Michael Cordonsky/Israel Antiquities Authority
“and before many scholars believe the major part of the biblical texts, including the five books of Moses”
Joseph, who predated Moses by 400 years, was Prime Minister of Egypt. And Moses was raised as a prince, a member of Pharaoh’s household.
Are we to be told those people couldn’t write, or that they couldn’t have had set down all the records that they wished?
The question is - did they have proportional fonts?
Hey, because I guess the Israelites were the *original* Bible-thumpers...when they weren't committing apostasy and whoring after foreign gods, that is...
Good thing the writing wasn’t in cursive.
The New testament was written 50 to 110 years after the Resurrection.
Or maybe somewhat earlier, especially the Pauline epistles.
That's a major liberal view of the Old Testament that is discounted in so many ways. The bottom line is that a more biblical (and archeological view) has the Pentateuch written by about 1400 or 1250 depending on one's view of the pharaoh at the time of the Exodus.
Hard to read without the Masoretic dots, and because the images are so small. The small one in the middle at the bottom seems to be saying something about Ovaltine, but hard to be sure since they didn’t write the vowels.
Hard to read without the Masoretic dots, and because the images are so small. The small one in the middle at the bottom seems to be saying something about Ovaltine, but hard to be sure since they didn’t write the vowels.
I disagree . They were mush later because of historical reference. 90 % were 3rd and 4th level hearsay.
No. They weren’t. Even hardcore Biblical textual heretics, I mean scholars, have shifted the dates far to the left.
One piece of evidence is that Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple. If scripture was written after AD 70, it would be listed as fulfilled prophesy.
From Judges Judges 8:13-14.
“Then Gideon the son of Joash returned from the battle by the ascent of Heres. And he captured a youth from Succoth and questioned him. Then the youth wrote down for him the princes of Succoth and its elders, seventy-seven men.”
Which would argue that Gideon was able to read and the boy from Succoth could both read and write.
It is my belief that God deliberately chose the time to send His Son for several reasons, all due to the Roman Empire. At the time of Jesus, the Empire was beginning the period of the Pax Romana. The civil wars that created the unified Empire had ended a few years eralier. The Empire was at peace and prosperous. It also encompassed more of the known world than any other polity before or since. You could travel in relative safety from the cataracts of the Nile to the north of England without crossing a national border. Greek and Latin were universal languages in the western and eastern Empire. Literacy was, as this article notes, at a fairly high level. From our time, we don’t think it all that unusual that Jesus, the son of a simple tradesman, could rise in the synagogue and read from Isaiah, nor apparently was it unusual then, either. But in the history of the world, that is an uncommonly high level of literacy. And in such a time of peace and prosperity, add to it a high level of public health standards due to aqueducts and sewers.
So what better time for God to send His Son, to deliver his message of love and redemption, that all could hear and understand, and that it spread to the ends of the earth.
That is its own quiet and not generally appreciated miracle.
..., the researchers concluded that at least six different hands had written the 18 missives at around the same time.
The fort itself was only about half an acre in size, and probably would have accommodated about 30 soldiers.
But if the literacy rates in the Arad fortress were repeated across the kingdom of Judah, which had about 100,000 people, there would have been hundreds of literate people...
Wouldn’t that at least be ‘thousands’ even if only one of the writers was assumed to be local? Tens of thousands, if 6 of 30.
While there is a fair amount of subjectivity available – that “Destruction of the Temple” seems a pretty firm marker for the most recent plausible time for any of the writing.
It would indeed, about 20K — but presumably the fort population was entirely adult, which would skew the percentage at least a bit.
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