Scribes and Scribal Groups in the Early Second Temple Period

Programme

There is an increasing awareness among biblical scholars in various specialisation fields of the fact that the late Achaemenid-Persian and early Hellenistic periods were constitutive for the formation (origin, finalisation, redaction, etc.) of a significant part of the Hebrew Bible. Various scholars have therefore started investigating the broader discourses of these time periods in order to come to a better understanding of the interaction and cross-influence of different scribal groups of the time, and resultant literature formations. However, there is still not much collaboration between and correlation of results in the various fields of expertise. This 5-year research unit will therefore bring together scholars from various relevant sub-fields for the purpose of investigating the practices and cross-influences of scribal activities in the late Achaemenid-Persian and early Hellenistic periods in Jerusalem in Yehud/Judea. The aim will be to establish how scribal groups with different ideological (and theological) agendas participated in the political-theological discourses of their time, and how they contributed to the biblical literature formation processes of the time period.

Keywords:

Chairs

Jaeyoung Jeon 

Sofia 2024 Call for Papers

Scholars have endeavoured to identify the authors and redactors of biblical texts since the beginning of modern biblical criticism and invented and used the notions of scribal groups or schools e.g., Dtr, P, and prophetic groups to do so. However, scholars have paid less attention to the criteria for making a concrete connection between a text and a scribal group, their purpose, and meanings in a specific socio-historical context. Moreover, biblical scholars traditionally identified scribal groups based on the biblical texts without reflecting on the social-cultural contexts within which these scribal activities took place. 

In these investigations, scholars are faced with at least two challenges: (i) Hebrew Bible/Old Testament research is often very compartmentalised, and scholars do not often move outside their own specialisations to interact with the results of other fields; (ii) In determining scribal trends in biblical literature of the mentioned periods, scholars tend to work with assumptions of how scribalism impacted on written literature, without having clear methodologies for determining the relation between ideologies and written literature. These two factors necessitate further investigation in which scholars with different, and differing, expertise will be brought together to come to some methodological clarity, and to investigate the points of con- and divergence in various areas of expertise in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament studies.

In the previous two years, sessions of this research group have already taken place at EABS meetings. At the Toulouse meeting in 2022, an introductory session was held in which the scope of the investigation of this research group was delineated. In 2023, at the Siracusa meeting, three sessions focussed on the methodological issues involved in this investigation.

For the 2024 meeting in Sophia, we will specifically focus on Levitical Groups and their Scribal Debates. We invite papers focusing on “Levitical” passages in various books of the Hebrew Bible such as the Pentateuch, Former Prophets, Later Prophets (such as Ezekiel), Psalms, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles. The papers are especially required to explain why the chosen literature was identified as “Levitical” scribal works, what themes are addressed in the chosen passage(s), and what their purposes and rhetorical agendas were in their social-historical locations.

Papers on the main theme for 2024 are preferred, but other related topics about scribal culture and debates will also be welcome.