Quratulain’s Reviews > How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel > Status Update

“The control of writing resides among the temple and political elites. Those who had a vested interest in the shift of authority from the oral tradition to the written text were also those who controlled the means of production of the written word.”

“In the Persian and early Hellenistic periods, the writing of biblical literature comes to an end.”

“There is a strong Jewish tradition that prophecy ended with the destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE.

“They also omit what seems irrelevant or does not advance their interests.”

“Chronicles makes additions in a few places as it suits the purposes of the Jerusalem priesthood of the Persian period.”

“Biblical literature and Jewish literature has historical gaps. The biggest gap is from the 6th-2nd century BCE….After Babylonian exile things get sketchy.”

“By the third century BCE, the Hebrew Bible began to be translated into Greek by the Jewish community in Alexandria- Septuagint

“Until the mid-third century BCE practically no evidence exists of writing in Hebrew (apart from the Bible).

Script is often ideologically and theologically loaded.”

“When inscriptions in the Hebrew language do begin to appear in numbers during the Hasmonean and Roman periods (2nd century BCE) it is usually the Hebrew language written with Aramaic letters.”