Abstract
Drawing from recent work in media studies as applied to the ancient world, I will argue that all epigraphic evidence and all literary texts that may have their roots in Iron Age Judah must be understood as having a metonymic function because the ancients understood written texts as simple representations of broader messages that had been or would have been delivered in some oral form. I will illustrate this assertion by discussing representations of epigraphic materials in Deuteronomy (phylacteries, mezuzot, stelae), text-critical variants in the manuscript evidence of Deuteronomy, and the Lachish letters. I will conclude that the Lachish letters did not necessarily contain the full messages, and the courier of the ostraca would deliver a more elaborate oral communication. This metonymic function of documentary literature may have contributed to the development of the collective scribal memory that preserves the fullness of the traditional literary texts, a fullness that no one manuscript could possibly preserve since the traditional literature was transmitted with textual fluidity so that it existed in textual plurality.
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