‘By the waters of Babylon … we hung up our harps’, but many scholars believe the exiles then took up their pens and energetically wrote books! Schniedewind does not! From Babylonia there are poems and prophecies but no ‘sustained prose account’ of the period. Yet Jehoiachin seems to receive special attention at the close of Kings and his fate is linked to the accounts of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, so Schniedewind claims he ‘was behind the writing of the Bible during the exile’ (149). His family provided ‘the only social setting suitable for writing substantive literature during the exile’ and it preserved older literature which Zerubbabel took back to Jerusalem. In depopulated Judah, where the remnant barely subsisted, ‘intense and creative literary activity’ was hardly likely in the exilic period. Biblical texts began to take shape in the days of prosperity under Hezekiah, the author argues, taking his cue from the scribes mentioned in Proverbs 25:1. Creating a body of literature was part of the royal ideology of the house of David after the fall of Samaria, so ‘historical work, the collection of Mosaic and probably priestly traditions, and the writing down of the prophetic traditions, including Isaiah of Jerusalem, Amos, and Hosea’ was generated then (76) and Kings began to be formed. A century later, under Josiah, the written text became authoritative, with writing central to Deuteronomy as it is not to the rest of the Pentateuch.

Those citations show the tenor and some of the positions Schniedewind takes. Starting from the question, ‘When was literacy sufficiently well established in ancient Israel for the writing of biblical books?’, he looks at the origins of writing and its place in surrounding cultures, finding it developed and was practised by professional scribes in palaces and temples. In Canaan the El-Amarna Letters and other cuneiform tablets indicate the activity of scribes in small principalities, where literary works were part of the scribal education. David and Solomon would have had secretaries for accountancy, letter writing and keeping royal annals (63). However, the reviewer maintains, the absence of documents of that sort, or any longer compositions, from the 10th century bc. does not mean they did not exist. Recognising that perishable papyrus would have been used for any lengthy texts is essential in this discussion. While it is certainly ‘difficult to prove’ that David’s clerks could also create extended prose narratives, or write poetry (63), it is hard to understand why they may not have done, allowing for the historicity of David’s reign. The only available specimens of early alphabetic writing are written on hard surfaces and cannot adequately represent the amount or scope of writing done in Canaan or early Israel.

At the other end of biblical history, Schniedewind emphasises the role of oral tradition in the early Church following W. H. Kelber, asserting a discontinuity when Jesus’ teachings were put into writing. Yet the presence of some who could read and write in Jesus’ circle deserves acknowledgement and the co-existence of oral and written throughout ancient times deserves more attention, for the written was authoritative.

Schniedewind has produced a refreshing study, countering some of the extreme ideas of so-called ‘minimalists’ and offering a stimulus to further investigation of the uses of writing in biblical times. The footnotes give extensive bibliographical help, but this book presupposes some knowledge of biblical criticism.

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