Who Really Wrote the Bible: The Story of the Scribes

by William M. Schniedewind

A groundbreaking new account of the writing of the Hebrew Bible

Who wrote the Bible? Its books have no bylines. Tradition long identified Moses as the author of the Pentateuch, with Ezra as editor. Ancient readers also suggested that David wrote the psalms and Solomon wrote Proverbs and Qohelet. Although the Hebrew Bible rarely speaks of its authors, people have been fascinated by the question of its authorship since ancient times. In Who Really Wrote the Bible , William Schniedewind offers a bold new the Bible was not written by a single author, or by a series of single authors, but by communities of scribes. The Bible does not name its authors because authorship itself was an idea enshrined in a later era by the ancient Greeks. In the pre-Hellenistic world of ancient Near-Eastern literature, books were produced, preserved, and passed on by scribal communities.

Schniedewind draws on ancient inscriptions, archaeology, and anthropology, as well as a close reading of the biblical text itself, to trace the communal origin of biblical literature. Scribes were educated through apprenticeship rather than in schools. The prophet Isaiah, for example, has his “disciples”; Elisha has his “apprentice.” This mode of learning emphasized the need to pass along the traditions of a community of practice rather than to individuate and invent. Schniedewind shows that it is anachronistic to impose our ideas about individual authorship and authors on the writing of the Bible. Ancient Israelites didn’t live in books, he writes, but along dusty highways and byways. Who Really Wrote the Bible describes how scribes and their apprentices actually worked in ancient Jerusalem and Judah.

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction, Scripture, Biblical Studies, Judaism

360 pages, Hardcover

Published June 18, 2024

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Smoothly written book that provides some insight into who the authors were behind the Hebrew Bible and related writings. ‘Authors’ is a misleading term here, because we spontaneously think of individual writers. And although the books of the Bible are often attributed to a specific author (the Prophets, for example), there usually is a tangle of scribal communities behind them. William Schniedewind (° 1962 University of California, Los Angeles) is an expert in the archaeology of Israel and the study of ancient Hebrew. And his focus in this book is to outline exactly how the scribal communities in Israel/Palestine and the diaspora evolved and what role they played in the creation of the biblical texts. It is a commendable and very interesting approach that provides a good insight into how ancient cultures in the Ancient Near East and specifically the Levant functioned. But also how limited our view is of the specific scribal communities behind the Bible. Ultimately, I found that Schniedewind’s approach doesn’t add much to the whole debate about the historical value of the books of the Bible. More in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Sense of History]

Viewed from a distance, scientific work often proceeds in pendulum movements that simultaneously have the shape of a spiral: a certain vision is argued and becomes mainstream, then a counter-movement starts that challenges, relativizes or even sweeps aside the previous vision; the focus shifts (often as a result of new methodologies) and again a cycle of vision and counter-vision follows that partly recycles the previous debate and brings it to a different level, after which another shift takes place. I am presenting it here in a very schematic way, a bit too much reminding of classic dialects; in practice such evolutions are much more complex and messier.

The whole debate about the historical value of the biblical texts has been going on for about 150 years now, and it is a perfect illustration of what I wrote above. In the last 50 years, the discussion has focused on what archaeology and the study of non-biblical texts can contribute. In practice, this translated into a movement of minimalists in the academic world (especially around the so-called Copenhagen school) who see the Hebrew Bible primarily as a collection of theological-literary texts, with a highly fabricated character and therefore without much historical value. This in turn led to a counter-movement of scholars (often called maximalists) who do try to extract as much historical value as possible from the biblical texts and who mainly argue that everything that cannot be refuted is at least plausible. (note that I'm not even referring to the non-academic debate)

William Schniedewind (in this book) does not really take sides with either of the two extremes. He shifts the focus of the debate, in order to clear the fog. And that focus is the scribal communities that, according to him, became operational quite early in the history of Ancient Israel, first in the service of the early states of Israel (Samaria) and Judah. “By focusing on these scribal communities, I offer a simple and powerful framework for understanding the formation of biblical literature,” he claims. His central thesis is that the core of most biblical texts was already committed to paper in the late 8th and early 7th centuries BCE, and not in the Persian or Hellenic period (5th-3rd centuries BCE) as the minimalists claim. His main arguments for this are that after the conquest of Samaria by the Assyrians (ca 720 BCE) the scribal community of that city fled to Judah and committed their rich tradition to paper (papyrus) so that it would not be lost; and secondly, that Jerusalem was so small in the Persian period that it could not have supported a scribal community of any size. Of course, I am not in a position to really judge his view on the merits, but my feeling is that it does not sound entirely convincing. There are still so many uncertainties in his story (for instance, our knowledge of the scribal community in Judah in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE still is very limited) that the last word can not been said (yet). And so the scholarly debate can continue. Fascinating!

Disclaimer: This review is only about the Bible as a historical source, not about the theological value of the texts; these are two very different things.

[Jonathan Finley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Schniedewind covers the literary history of the Bible from the perspective of scribal communities. I particularly enjoyed the inscriptional evidence he presents, which demonstrates the history of Hebrew as a language and later scribal practice. Perhaps the book’s greatest contribution is the simple observation that writing in the ancient world was not taught in formal schools but rather through apprenticeships. Literacy was not restricted to a special profession of “scribe” but rather a skill necessary for many different professions with their own practices. I think Schniedewind makes his case very well, combining biblical, inscriptional, and archaeological evidence.

[History Today]

As sure as chickens come from eggs, books have authors. Knowing the author’s identity gives a book authority; that’s how we know it’s authentic. No wonder that so many people have asked the question in this book’s title. The traditional answer – it was God, obviously – may be theologically satisfying but doesn’t get you very far. Most of the Bible’s books were long linked by tradition to specific, big-name authors: Moses, David, Solomon, Paul. For centuries, scholars have been dismantling those attributions, often shredding biblical books into ribbons to tease out their different authors in heroic feats of textual analysis which it is quite impossible to prove either right or wrong. William Schniedewind’s book approaches the problem in a different way.

His scope is exclusively the Hebrew Bible, the ‘Old Testament’. There are also questions about the authorship of the New Testament, but that was written in Greek and Schniedewind sees ‘authorship’, in the modern sense, as a Greek idea that was a latecomer to Jewish culture. Almost none of the books of the Hebrew Bible claim to have an author, simply because that’s not how books were written in ancient Hebrew. They were the product of scribal communities, not individuals.

That is the book’s core idea, and while he shades and nuances it very expertly, the reader will have grasped the key point within the first five pages. It is not wholly original: the only wholly original ideas in biblical studies are mad. But it does allow Schniedewind to approach an old problem from an unusual perspective and, with careful analysis, to trace a non-traditional history of ancient Hebrew writing.

Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...

Alec Ryrie is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University.

[Joey Hyatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoroughly academic work that systematizes a lot of recent scholarship (including his own) into one accessible book. Perhaps worth passing over if not a student or scholar in the field (or an adjacent one) due to the nature of the subject and Schniedewind’s archaeological and epigraphic emphases. Even still, Schniedewind is enjoyably readable and offers a perspective somewhat different than the status quo.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A comprehensive look at the scribal communities that curated the material that eventually became the Hebrew Scriptures. Schniedewind pays close attention to the historical and geographical factors that determined the size of the scribal communities in Israel, Judah, and Samaria--including time spent in exile. He posits an early date for Deuteronomy--both its forerunners and the final edition. Especially interesting is his description of the yo-yo relationship between the Samarians and Jerusalemites. Well laid out, easy to read and follow, with interesting vignettes related to archeological records. Interesting and unresolved is the late date for following Torah rules suggested by Yohan Adler and the earlier date for its composition argued by Schniedewind. I'd like to know more about that discrepancy. I think it has to do with the slow uptake of Torah among most Jewish people between the Persian era and the 2nd century BCE.

[Cheryl Beseler · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of the scribal communities is intertwined with the history of Israel and Judah. This makes a strong case for the fact that there were no single authored books comprising the Hebrew Bible. This is also a tale of perseverance in that scribes were able to maintain the literature of Judah through various exiles and rule by entities such as the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians. It also paints a fuller picture of the scribal communities, linked to the temple and later synagogues, and those people living as peasants within the Levant. The narrative links the history with the evolving texts. This is an invaluable read for those interested in understanding the origins and history of the biblical text, and some of the reasons the stories are told the way they were, including why the appear to contradict history as well as their own writings.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

William M. Schniedewind thinks scholars and contemporary readers often ask the wrong questions when looking at the development of the biblical text. In his “Who Really Wrote the Bible: The Story of the Scribes” (Princeton University Press), Schniedewind, a professor of biblical studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, focuses on the “various scribal communities that wrote and collected biblical literature and how these communities and their literature made their way to Jerusalem where this literature could be preserved, compiled, edited, and eventually canonized into our Bible.”
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/book...

[Lori Hadley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picking up this book, I knew it was more my husband's style and I read it in part to try and have discussions with him. However, I know very little about Israel, the makings of the Bible, and Hebrew/Greek languages. Therefore, I felt rather lost when reading this book. I did however, appreciate the explanation of the short vs. long form of Jeremiah. That really gave me some additional insight into something I previously did not know about.

[Andrea Engle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This cogently reasoned volume introduces the idea that the Hebrew Bible (a.k.a. the Old Testament) was edited and preserved by scribal communities consisting of masters and apprentices … Studded with line illustrations (many created by the author), the book supports this thesis with the evidence from archaeological digs of inscriptions, seals, and pottery shards … absolutely stellar, and very informative …

[Mike Cross · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a VERY academic book on a very narrow subject (even narrower than the title states). However, the author is clearly insanely knowledgeable and presents the material well, but a little repetitive. If you are interested in the history of ancient Israel or true biblical history (not what you are taught in Sunday school or church every Sunday), read it, otherwise pass because it will challenge your delusion.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Much too technical. Would love to know the story though.