Abstract
Northwest Semitic palaeographic data has inspired a consensus that several “national” scripts had become well-established by the Iron IIB. Many treat these scripts as expressions of self-contained identity. Moreover, they are often framed in ways that gloss over aspects of scribal training. Questions remain, however, regarding the behavioral processes that affected such developments. To account for these processes, we propose a “franchise” model of scribal training: A few centers produced scribal lineages that, once established, operated semi-independently. While some scribes may have been held “on retainer”, most likely hired themselves out on a localized “freelance” system. The selection of national scripts was thus likely unintentional and not motivated by exertions of “national” identity. Royal courts of the Iron Age IIB unintentionally adopted “micro-features” of the alphabetic script had been formalized in the scribal lineage(s) prestigious enough to enjoy employment in major centers. Rather than serving as a distinctive marker of national consciousness imposed from the top-down, the development of “national scripts” was the natural effect of local patronage and “elite emulation” of micro-features by more peripheral scribes. The nationalization of scripts was therefore incidental to the emergent national consciousness and driven by individual scribes and the training regimens connecting them.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Maarav |
| Publication status | Accepted/In press - 10 Oct 2024 |
Bibliographical note
AcknowledgementsThe research presented here has been supported financially by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Fund, administered by the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Office of the Vice Chancellor of Research and Graduate Education, especially through the H. I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship, administered 2019–2024 (#AAG5776). The authors are grateful for the many fruitful conversations that we have had with colleagues over several years of conceptualization and development. The subject of this study was discussed in a rudimentary way with Alice Mandell, and subsequent conversations with Heather Dana Davis Parker, Daniel Pioske, and Christopher Rollston have helped to flesh out the argument. Bill Schniedewind kindly provided us with advanced access to the proofs of his volume, Who Really Wrote the Bible (2024). The paper has benefited especially from the generous comments and criticisms in two recent venues of
presentation: We first presented this paper in the Ugaritic and NWS Epigraphy Session of the SBL Annual Meeting, Nov. 20, 2023 (San Antonio, TX), where we received helpful feedback from (in alphabetical order) Chip Dobbs-Allsopp, Joseph Lam, Marilyn Lundberg, Matthieu Richelle, Mark Smith, Christine Thomas, Zachary Thomas, Lawson Younger, and Anna Zernicke. We had the opportunity shortly thereafter to present a full draft of the paper to Chip DobbsAllsopp’s epigraphy class at Princeton Theological Seminary, where we fielded helpful remarks and challenges from the students of the class and from Leslie Virnelson. We likewise received gracious assistance on handling some of the Italian literature from Alessandra Cecolin. Finally, we received extremely helpful feedback from two anonymous reviewers at Maarav; these reviews
challenged us to be more precise in many of our formulations and added helpful bibliography. We regret if we have left any conversation partners unnamed. None of these individuals may be blamed for remaining infelicities in this paper—sometimes, we have ignored their good advice.