Clay Inscriptions Indicate That Bible Was Written Much Earlier Than Believed

Inscriptions that are dated back to 600 B.C. show that most of the Hebrew Bible was written much before the death of the ancient Kingdom of Judah, also suggesting that literacy was more widespread then.

Led by Tel Aviv University (TAU) Professors Israel Finkelstein and Eliezer Piasetzky, it sets to rest some debates on when the first major phase of the Bible was composed before or after the destruction of Jerusalem, Judah's capital city, in 586 B.C.

A number of literate individuals in Judah helped to compile the biblical works that formed the basis of Judahite history and theology, including the early version of the books of Deuteronomy to Second Kings.

"There's a heated discussion regarding the timing of the composition of a critical mass of biblical texts," said Finkelstein, a professor in TAU's Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations. "But to answer this, one must ask a broader question: What were the literacy rates in Judah at the end of the First Temple period? And what were the literacy rates later on, under Persian rule?"

With computerized image processing and machine learning tools, researchers studied 16 inscriptions discovered at an excavation in the remote fort of Arad.

The ceramic shards or ostraca were written by at least six authors. They include some communication exchanged among military officials on the movement of troops and provision of wine, oil and flour among the men. It also shows that literacy existed throughout the military chain of command, from the highest echelon right down to the deputy quartermaster of the fort.

"We designed an algorithm to distinguish between different authors, then composed a statistical mechanism to assess our findings," explained Barak Sober, one of the study researchers. "Through probability analysis, we eliminated the likelihood that the texts were written by a single author."

The inscriptions show that there was a high literacy rate in Judah's administrative apparatus. They also offer a good background for composing biblical texts.

"We found indirect evidence of the existence of an educational infrastructure, which could have enabled the composition of biblical texts," said Piasetzky, a professor from TAU's School of Physics and Astronomy. "Literacy existed at all levels of the administrative, military and priestly systems of Judah. Reading and writing were not limited to a tiny elite."

Hence, the first Judahite biblical texts are thought to have been written  in Jerusalem by priests and officials in King Josiah's entourage.

"Now our job is to extrapolate from Arad to a broader area," Finkelstein said. "Adding what we know about Arad to other forts and administrative localities across ancient Judah, we can estimate that many people could read and write during the last phase of the First Temple period. We assume that in a kingdom of some 100,000 people, at least several hundred were literate."

This was assumed as only literacy could help more people to access the political and theological ideologies of their authors.

"Following the fall of Judah, there was a large gap in production of Hebrew inscriptions until the second century B.C., the next period with evidence for widespread literacy," Finkelstein added. "This reduces the odds for a compilation of substantial biblical literature in Jerusalem between ca. 586 and 200 B.C."

Their study was recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.