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  • 5 - The Scribal World

  • from Part I - The Context of Wisdom Literature
  • Edited by Katherine J. Dell, University of Cambridge
  • Edited in association with Suzanna R. Millar, University of Edinburgh, Arthur Jan Keefer
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Wisdom Literature
    Published online:
    28 July 2022
    Print publication:
    09 June 2022, pp 76-95

  • Summary

    Mark Sneed introduces readers to the world of scribes. Drawing first on some of the earliest developments of Sumerian scribalism, he gives an overview of how scribes trained and worked in the ancient Near East more broadly. In Egypt and elsewhere, scribal training began at an early age and involved a wide range of curricula, including wisdom literature, which scribes copied and memorized, as it played a significant role in scribal education. Although concrete evidence for Israelite schools is lacking, Sneed finds reason to believe that similar scribal practices existed there, where wisdom literature too served technical and ethical purposes. Scribes, then, existed in ancient Israel, and for Sneed could be identified in various ways: priests, prophets, and sages. Behind each of these lies the “scribe” as one who composed the texts themselves. Thus Sneed finds far more that is common than different among the biblical materials, wisdom texts included, and conceives of the scribe as holding a wide-ranging professional role in Israel that was not tied down to a single genre of literature.