Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature

by David M. Carr

This book explores a new model for the production, revision, and reception of Biblical texts as Scripture. Building on recent studies of the oral/written interface in medieval, Greco-Roman and ancinet Near Eastern contexts, David Carr argues that in ancient Israel Biblical texts and other texts emerged as a support for an educational process in which written and oral dimensions were integrally intertwined. The point was not incising and reading texts on parchment or papyrus. The point was to enculturate ancient Israelites - particularly Israelite elites - by training them to memorize and recite a wide range of traditional literature that was seen as the cultural bedorck of the narrative, prophecy, prayer, and wisdom.

Genres: Biblical Studies, Theology, Academic

338 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

David M. Carr is Professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Over his decades-long academic career, he has become an international authority on the formation of the Bible, ancient scribal culture, and issues of the Bible and sexuality.

Decades into a career as a biblical scholar, he suffered a life-threatening bicycle accident that changed his view of the scriptures he had devoted his life to studying. As he grappled with his own individual trauma and survival of it, he became interested in how the collective trauma of Israel and the early church had shaped the Bible. He saw that these holy texts are defined by survival of communal catastrophe. This is part of what makes them special, what made them last. The result of this basic insight is Carr's forthcoming work, Holy Resilience: The Bible's Traumatic Origins (Yale University Press, Fall 2014).

His academic journey to that point started with dropping out of high school at age sixteen to attend college full-time and completing a BA in Philosophy at Carleton College at age eighteen in 1980. Eight years later, in 1988, he finished his Ph.D. with a focus on the Old Testament and Early Judaism at Claremont Graduate University.

Since then he has taught full time for twenty-five years, first at Methodist Theological School in Delaware, Ohio (1988-1999) and the last fifteen years at Union Theological Seminary in New York City (1999-present). Some of his publications have been directed to fellow specialists on the Bible, such as Reading the Fractures of Genesis (Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford University Press, 2005) and The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (Oxford University Press, 2011). While other publications have been directed to a broader audience of students and the general public such as Carr's Introduction to the Hebrew Bible: Sacred Texts and Imperial Contexts (Wiley Blackwell, 2010) and The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality and the Bible (Oxford University Press, 2001).

A father/stepfather of four, Carr lives, rides his bicycle and plays funk-blues organ in New York City with his wife and fellow biblical scholar, Colleen Conway.

Reviews

[KA · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book and hope it's going to help revolutionize the way we talk about the scribal tradition, orality, text transmission, and canon formation.

[Ross McKnight · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quality book on the under-discussed topic of early textuality. Carr’s comparison of Israelite education with their ANE neighbors was fascinating. He presents modest conclusions due to how little information is available to scholars about ancient education and textuality. But as with any work on such topics, there was a noticeable amount of inference and speculation. This leads me to consider how much is truly unknowable as it relates to ancient, often anonymous literature.