To speak about the books of the Bible is misleading on more than one account. Historically, the Hebrew Bible is a collection of scrolls, and scrolls cannot be simply equated with books.
1. The difference between the two is not merely a matter of form.
- It affects the mode of writing.
- It affects editorial strategies.
- It affects the way in which readers use the text.
2. Until the end of the Middle Ages, readers were more concerned with the authority of books than their authenticity.
- The author was deemed relevant mainly as a source of authority.
- If the books of the Bible are not books in the modern sense of the term, our notion of their authorship might have to be adjusted as well.
- They practiced their craft in a time in which there was neither a trade in books nor a reading public of any substance.
- To the public at large, the books of the Bible were icons of a body of knowledge accessible only through the oral instruction presented by religious experts.
3. Scribes wrote for scribes.
- The text of the Hebrew Bible was not part of the popular culture.
- The Bible was born and studied in the scribal workshop of the temple. In its fundamental essence, it was a book of the clergy.
- Most of those involved in the making of the Bible left neither a name nor biography. We do not know them individually.
- We can identify their scribal milieu as that of the scribal elite, and it is that milieu that holds the key to the origins of the Bible.
- It can be circumscribed more narrowly as that of the scribal workshop of the Second Temple, active in the period between 500 and 200 BCE.
Scribal Skills & Techniques
1. There is a coherent order and plan to their writings.
2. Every Hebrew word counts.
3. Juxtapositions are important. What precedes or what follows a given sentence or story may be crucial for discovering its meaning.
4. The teachings of the text are not utterly opaque to human reason, even if Elohim and other matters remain veiled in mystery.
5. The stories are too rich, too complex, and too deep to be captured fully, once and for all. The pursuit of wisdom is an ongoing process that leads to new discoveries every time one revisits the text. Notes for the Structure of the Hebrew Text of Genesis
1. Genesis takes up and considers themes and questions of paramount concern to human beings always and everywhere.
2. Wisdom regarding family and private life.
3. Wisdom regarding public and civic affairs. 4. Wisdom regarding one’s place in and relation to the whole.
5. Wisdom regarding one’s place in relation to the powers that be.
I added this just to have more of an idea of what a real page will look like
