Scribal Training Research Articles

The Literate Education of Early Christians, and Some of Its Unintended Consequences for Christian Exegesis

The landscape of education under the early Roman principate was very diverse, but the teaching of literacy was dominated by scribal training or Graeco-Roman enkyklios paideia, “literate education”. This essay asks what kind of education the earliest Christian writers had, and offers some neglected evidence, which, it suggests, may also be evidence for Hellenistic Jewish education. It considers the role of imitation in Christian education, and how early Christian imitation is distinctive. Finally, it illustrates how the increasingly sophisticated education of some Christians influenced the way they read and interpreted their own earliest and most authoritative texts.

The Bible in the Aramaic Bowls: Between Memorization, Orality, and Writtenness

Abstract The Jewish Aramaic incantation bowls from talmudic Babylonia quoted biblical material as part of their written spells, in order to bolster the apotropaic ritual. Current scholarship is making it increasingly apparent that these spells were part of the Jewish “mainstream,” rather than its margins. The bowl spells were often (sometimes?) produced by professional scribes many of whom—as I argue here —were also steeped in Jewish Scripture and liturgy. Moreover, given the high number of artifacts found, the spells can be considered representative of widespread religious practices and beliefs. The quotations are thus an unparalleled (and the only Babylonian epigraphic) source for the study of pre-Masoretic Bible traditions. The orthographic practices encountered in the biblical quotations become a lens through which to view attitudes to the Bible’s “writtenness” and the functions of writtenness, orality, and different types of memory. On the one hand, many spells provide evidence for the prominence of orality and memorization in Bible transmission and its reproduction. On the other, many bowls also imply a conceptual prestige of writtenness, alongside scribal training. At the same time, most bowls suggest a degree of self-sufficiency of the Bible as an oral, memorized, and liturgical text. While the Bible was construed as a written authority by the rabbis, in practice, its written component was likely neither always present, nor strictly necessary for achieving spiritual efficacy within the spells.

Personal names in medievallibri vitæas a sociolinguistic resource

AbstractThis paper explores the potential of using a historical sociolinguistic approach to interrogate the extensive lists of personal names found in medievallibri vitæ. So far, these lists have mainly been exploited in historical and a few onomastic studies, with a focus on name etymology and personal naming practices. Both the linguistics of the names and sociolinguistic perspectives remain to date underexamined. In this contribution, we explore possible sociolinguistic research questions, and present methodological challenges and preliminary results on the basis of four case studies from two examples, thelibri vitæof Thorney Abbey and Reichenau. The case studies examine autographs, choice of script and language, and dialect adaptation. Our main interest lies in the modelling and explanation of graphic and linguistic variation in the names. Our particular focus is on the status of the respective vernacular languages involved (Old English and Old High German) and in the conclusions we can draw from these documents about their underlying writing traditions in general, and scribal training and practices in particular.

George Kiraz and Sabine Schmidtke, eds. Scribal Habits in Near Eastern Manuscript Traditions

George Kiraz and Sabine Schmidtke, eds. <i>Scribal Habits in Near Eastern Manuscript Traditions</i>

Making a Case: The Practical Roots of Biblical Law by Sara J. Milstein

Reviewed by: Making a Case: The Practical Roots of Biblical Law by Sara J. Milstein Jessie DeGrado Sara J. Milstein. Making a Case: The Practical Roots of Biblical Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. 216 pp. Sara Milstein’s new book provides a stimulating challenge to the hypothesis that the non-Priestly laws of Exodus and Deuteronomy were directly inspired by Mesopotamian law collections such as the Laws of Hammurabi (LH). Milstein argues instead that the laws preserved in Exodus 21–22 and Deuteronomy 12–23 reflect a complex process of adapting and expanding materials produced for scribal education in Israel and Judah during the Iron II–III periods (roughly 850–586 BCE). The introduction surveys Mesopotamian law collections and legal pedagogical texts from the third and second millennia BCE. Over the past fifty years, scholars have increasingly recognized that law collections, once referred to as law codes, neither record specific verdicts nor provide binding precedent. Rather, they both express an idealized form of justice that might indirectly inform decisions and, equally significant, function as political propaganda for the king who promulgated them. In addition to the scholarship cited by Milstein (6–12), interested readers can consult Pamela Barmash’s recently released monograph, The Laws of Hammurabi: At the Confluence of Royal and Scribal Traditions (Oxford: OUP, 2020). Chapter 1 further sketches the contents of the Mesopotamian scribal curriculum in the Old Babylonian period. This includes legal phrasebooks containing lists of contractual clauses, which students copied to gain facility with common legal phraseology, and model contracts. Also included in school curricula were fictional court cases (sometimes called model cases), which Milstein argues were used to teach legal formulations and phraseology in a livelier and more playful form. Finally, scribes in training often copied lists of casuistic laws, which were often excerpted from longer law collections but could also be innovated around a specific topic, such as rented oxen. The bulk of the work is devoted to identifying pentateuchal texts that embed pedagogical genres like those found in the Old Babylonian scribal curriculum. In chapter 2, Milstein identifies several clusters of laws in Exodus and Deuteronomy that exhibit features like the Mesopotamian fictional cases. Special attention is given to what Milstein terms the “slandered bride cluster” (Deut 22:13–19), the “manslaughter cluster” (Deut 19:4–13), and the “illicit intercourse cluster” (Deut 22:23–29). Each example embeds a longer base case featuring an innocent party, followed by several more laconic casuistic laws that cover guilty verdicts. Milstein terms the base cases Hebrew legal fictions (HLFs), which she considers an “analogous group to the Mesopotamian fictional cases” (72). These longer laws would have been independently drawn from scribal exercises and supplemented with short laws exploring guilty outcomes. Milstein identifies several potential indicators of an original pedagogical function for the base cases, including the use of dialogue, [End Page 176] colorful scenarios, and contract language. The latter point is fleshed out in more detail in chapter 3, which compares language from the HLFs to phrases attested in contracts from the Late Bronze Age city of Emar. Chapter 4 presents an ambitious reappraisal of the relationship (or lack thereof) between the legal material in Exodus 21:18–22:16 and Mesopotamian law collections. Milstein advances two separate lines of argument in this chapter. First, she observes that the compilation of laws in Exodus is both shorter than Mesopotamian law collections and covers a more restricted set of topics. In this respect, Exodus 21:18–22:16 resembles the extracts or lists of laws used in Mesopotamian scribal training more than the lengthier compositions we refer to as law collections. This leads Milstein to a second argument, which is that discontinuities and errors constitute further evidence of dependence on scribal pedagogical texts. These include a case concerning self-defense and home burglary that interrupts a law concerning stolen animals (Exod 21:37–22:3) and the placement of general talionic principles immediately after the law of accidental miscarriage (Exod 21:22–25). Overall, Milstein’s book provides an important critique of atomistic comparison between Exodus 21:1–23:5 and the Laws of Hammurabi. Namely, even if one postulates that Judean scribes accessed...

Nominal Compounds in Old English Meter and Prosody

What is the lexicon’s role in licensing the selection of phonologically-marked structures in Old English verse? Specifically, what is its role in the avoidance of certain nominal compounds in verse, even though the same compounds are used apparently freely in prose (Terasawa 1994)? Using a simulation of the Old English lexicon, we offer a statistical analysis of the poetic use of nominal compounds compared to the availability of relevant prosodic structures in the ambient language. In the process, we unify Terasawa’s separate constraints and demonstrate a new way of addressing the complex interplay between Old English prosody and the structure of Old English alliterative meter. Our results endorse Terasawa’s position: We find that the dispreference for nominal compounds of the XX-LX type is a general but noncategorical property of Old English. We attribute their highly restricted usage in verse to the demands of poetic diction and their incompatibility with the metrical templates that scops and scribes replicate. Additionally, while syllable weight factors into metrical organization, it does so less for stress placement, which remains morphologically grounded; this asymmetry in the ranking value of weight between poetry and prose is considered briefly in the context of the Old English monastic scribal training.

EDUCAZIONE ELEMENTARE E FORMAZIONE SCRIBALEIN LINGUA ARAMAICA A ELEFANTINA-SIENE

This paper aims to provide a more detailed interpretation of the dynamics related to the elementary education and the advanced scribal training in Aramaic language that took placeatElephantine-Syeneduring the V century B.C.E.by analyzing specific documents and reviewing other data already known to scholars

The Writings: Psalms

The WritingsPsalms Christopher T. Begg, David A. Bosworth, Bradley C. Gregory, OSST J. Edward Owens, Thomas Hieke, and Paul R. Redditt 433. [Psalms; Lutheran Tradition] Christopher König, "David as Example: Psalm Exegesis and Secular Authority in Early Modern Lutheranism," NTT 72 (2018) 153-70. K.'s article analyzes the depiction of the biblical King David in the political thought of M. Luther and early Lutheranism. Luther drew his images of David primarily from his exegesis of various psalms. For Luther, David's faith made him the premier biblical model of a monarch. Early Lutheran sermons depict David as an example of a good administrator. The sermons considered by K. admonish Lutheran magistrates and princes to support the church and to obey the law, thus legitimating, while also circumscribing, secular government and princely rule. The example of David also provided early Lutheran preachers with a means for criticizing unlawful or despotic rulership and thereby contributed to the early modern history of the concept of freedom. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 434. [Psalms] June Dickie, "Singing the Psalms: Applying Principles of African Music to Bible Translation," Scrip 116 (2017) 74-89. The psalms were composed in order to be sung, and translated psalms should also be rendered in such a way as to be easily singable. To do this requires an understanding of the characteristics of indigenous song and rhythm. Against this background, D.'s article seeks to synthesize some important principles of African (particularly Zulu) music, and notes certain errors made by previous translators in their renditions of biblical texts intended for singing by African congregations. Next, D. cites various examples drawn from a recent study that attempts to apply the principles previously presented by her to the translation of a number of psalms into isiZulu. The hope is that sensitivity to features of African (Zulu) music will facilitate a translation of the psalms that communicates the aesthetic beauty, rhetorical power, and memorability of the originals to the fullest extent possible. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] [End Page 132] 435. [Psalms of Lament] June Dickie, "African Youth Engage with Psalms of Lament to Find Their Own Voice of Lament," JTSoA 160 (2018) 4-20. The biblical psalms of lament show certain characteristics that can assist African youth struggling with various issues to voice their own laments. In this empirical study, "pain-bearers" from various sectors in South Africa (refugees, AIDS sufferers, and members of the LGBT community) participated in short workshops where they studied Psalms 3 and 13. They then composed their own laments using features of biblical laments: complaints, petitions, requests for justice, and an honest expression of their mood (often oscillating between negative and positive statements). Analysis of the biblical and contemporary lament compositions shows that they include elements considered essential by trauma therapists (establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and restoring connections with one's community) and lament researchers (restoring the voice of a subject, providing a sense of justice, and connecting with God), and thus could result in biological healing, a possible application of the work of neuroresearchers. One might then suggest that the expression of lament has the potential to promote wholeness for sufferers. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 436. [Psalms] Ko Ming-him, "Torah Meditation: A Theological Theme for the Editing of the Psalter," Jian Dao 50 (2018) 1-16 (Chinese). As a "Torah in miniature," the Psalter has a redactional orientation that invites the reader to enter into a meditation on the Torah that brings about a transformation of life. Against this background, this paper discusses Sumero-Akkadian scribal education, exploring how this training was designed to influence the religious beliefs of the scribes in training. It further suggests that the Levitical singers who were responsible for editing the Psalter can be situated in a context similar to that of Mesopotamian scribal training. The paper argues as well that the invitation to Torah meditation was one of the prime concerns of those who edited the Psalter, as becomes clear in Psalms 1, 19, and 119. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 437. [Psalms] Ruth Poser, "Ja...

(bn) a͗ gpṯr / (Binu) Agapṯarri’s House

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; When organized into functional categories, the set of texts found in the Ugaritic archive in the “Maison du prêtre-magicien” manifests a clear raison d’être as a collection. Of the twelve main categories of texts from this deposit, the most significant serve to justify various forms of magical praxis and detail how to carry them out. Almost the entire collection of Ugaritic offering texts is found here, since all include a purification rite of the king, the responsibility of the magician priest as mḥll, whose function is stated in KTU 1.119. This fact had been ignored up to now. In addition, the main texts setting out the royal ideology were entrusted to this magician priest, thus reflecting their magical-cultic nature. Additional texts belong to the realm of scribal training, another responsibility of this public official. The adjacent library with a wide variety of Akkadian texts was of fundamental value in this latter connection.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

Nonadministrative Documents from Archaic Ur and from Early Dynastic I–II Mesopotamia: A New Textual and Archaeological Analysis

The present paper addresses a subgroup of cuneiform documents from the so-called Archaic Texts from Ur in Mesopotamia. The documents in this subgroup can be isolated within the bulk of the Archaic Texts due to their nonadministrative content. A fresh textual analysis of this dataset is combined with a discussion of the archaeological context of their provenance to highlight patterns in early Ur scribal training methods. The results of this integrated analysis are used to frame more precisely the significance of “Archaic Ur” scribal traditions, dating to the first part of the Early Dynastic period, within the cultural transition from the Late Uruk to the Early Dynastic III (“Fāra”) period in Mesopotamia.

TEACHING THE CHILDREN HOW TO READ: THE SYLLABARY

This article charts the astonishing breadth and depth of the syllabary or syllabarium, a central component in elementary education in the West from early archaic Greece through to the nineteenth century, and also explores possible antecedents in the traditions of scribal training in cuneiform in the second millenium. The question of why the syllabary was so long accepted by educators as a critical component in the elementary curriculum is also discussed, in terms practical (systematic exercise), cognitive (training theeye to see groups of letters) and phonological (learning sound combinations in their actual contexts).

TEACHING THE CHILDREN HOW TO READ: THE SYLLABARY

This article charts the astonishing breadth and depth of the syllabary or syllabarium, a central component in elementary education in the West from early archaic Greece through to the nineteenth century, and also explores possible antecedents in the traditions of scribal training in cuneiform in the second millenium. The question of why the syllabary was so long accepted by educators as a critical component in the elementary curriculum is also discussed, in terms practical (systematic exercise), cognitive (training theeye to see groups of letters) and phonological (learning sound combinations in their actual contexts).

Literarische sumerische Texte aus den hethitischen Archiven aus paläographischer Sicht – Teil II

This article discusses some aspects of the literary texts in or with parts written in the Sumerian language from the Hittite archives - focusing questions of textual traditions and the role these texts play in the context of the scribal training in the Hittite capital. A second aim is to demonstrate that palaeography and the study of the orthography of these texts are valuable methods in helping us to understand more about this interesting material. What can we learn from these examples is that obviously there are a lot of different aspects vis-a-vis the interests of Hittite scholars in foreign textual materials.

Sumerian Literary Catalogues and the Scribal Curriculum

In recent reconstructions of the Old Babylonian Sumerian scribal curriculum it has been proposed that at the beginning of the second or advanced phase of scribal training pupils learned a group of ten literary compositions called the Decad. These reconstructions are based primarily on the assumption that two OB incipit lists, known as the Nippur and Louvre catalogues, list the content and sequence of the advanced curriculum. In this article this assumption is re-evaluated, and it is argued that the Nippur and Louvre catalogues are inventories and not curricular lists.

À l’école des palais : les maîtrises de l’écrit parmi les mamelouks des beys de Tunis, des années 1770 aux années 1860

In 1840, the governor of Tunis, Ahmed Bey, established a military school within his palace of Bardo allowing some of the servants, the youngest mamlūks, to attend its courses. The Military School combined European military knowledge that was already known to the regular army under mamlūks command, and an Islamic education that had been strengthened within the palace in the 1810s and 1820s. During the first years of the school’s existence, the graduates would not distinguish themselves from the governor’s eldest servants, who benefited from his support and were sometimes autodidacts. Nevertheless, a servant’s rise in rank would usually depend on his individual merits rather than on the academic credentials obtained by his generation. The graduates of Bardo would eventually rise to power, not so much by criticizing the despotic authority, but by transforming the structure of administrative tasks in such a way that the fragmented system of apprenticeship and scribal training was increasingly set aside.

Royal hermeneutics: Observations on the commentaries from Ashurbanipal's libraries at Nineveh

The British excavations at Nineveh, initiated in 1845 by Austen Henry Layard, produced about 30,000 clay tablets or fragments of tablets, most of them coming from the citadel mound of Kuyunjik. This textual material can be divided into two main groups: on the one hand, library tablets, consisting of literary, lexical and historical texts, rituals, medical compendia, Sumerian prayers and above all omen texts, and on the other, archival documents, such as letters, contracts and administrative notes. The great, and rather unique, potential of the texts from Kuyunjik lies in the fact that they reveal to us, more than any other repository of cuneiform tablets ever found, how culture, represented by the first group of texts, and politics, represented by the second, were related to each other in ancient Mesopotamia.While the archival documents from Kuyunjik date to the reigns of several Assyrian rulers from the eighth and seventh centuries, the library texts seem to belong mostly, though not exclusively, to the reign of a single Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal (669 to about 630), a man deeply interested in the scribal arts of ancient Mesopotamia. His enthusiasm for reading and writing, which he seems to have shared with his wife, Libbāli-šarrat, can be traced back to his youth. From an autobiographical sketch about his intellectual socialization, we know that Ashurbanipal had received the education of a future scholar. In a passage somewhat reminiscent of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, Ashurbanipal described the scribal training of his early years as follows:I learnt the craft of Adapa the sage, the hidden mystery of the scribal art. I used to watch the signs of heaven and earth and to study them in the assembly of the scholars. Together with the able experts in oil-divination, I deliberated upon (the tablet) “If the liver is a mirror of heaven”. … I looked at cuneiform signs on stones from before the flood.

Scribal Training in Ancient Egypt

Dedicated to the memory of Wm. F. Edgerton, revered teacher and friend This paper was presented as one of four contributions to a panel discussion on the topic Aspects of Education in the Ancient Near East during the meeting of the AOS held at Baltimore in 1970. The requirements of a highly complex governmental administration in Egypt led to the development in the mid-third millennium of methods of training youths as scribes to enter the civil service. In addition to the much later Greek descriptions of the educational system in ancient Egypt, there are scattered references to it in Egyptian biographical and literary texts. These are few in number in the early periods, but soon become more plentiful. The didactic treatises beginning in the Old Kingdom and the compositions specially designed for scribal use, together with the innumerable school texts written mostly on ostraca, afford valuable evidence for the content of the young scribe's curriculum. The nature of the elementary instruction during the first four years may be deduced, as well as the advanced training which was of a more specialized nature. The text books employed in the instruction of students are also known to us. Finally, the attitude of the Egyptians themselves to the efficacy of educational methods finds expression in their literature.