PREFACE

It has been almost twenty years since mymonologue The Old Testament Canon in the OldTestament Church was published. Since that timeI have had numerous opportunities to convey mysentiments on the subject to my seminarystudents. Generally speaking, the mention ofcanon or “canonicity” is considered a topic forseminar professors and specialists in theology.It appears to have small relevance to ‘faith andpractice.’ But when one realizes thatcanonicity deals with fundamental questionslike, “how did God’s people know what belongedin the Scriptures?” and “how can we be sure westill have what the inspired writers wrote?” itbecomes clear that one’s view on canonicityeffects ones whole perspective on the Scripture.

In addition to instruction to graduatestudents I have enjoyed various opportunities toconvey my position on the subject over and overagain to our laymen and women in the pews. Ithas often occurred to me over the years that arewrite and update would be beneficialparticularly to those who have not had theadvantage of seminary or advanced studies in theworld of the Old Testament. My thought andpurpose, therefore, was to produce a work that

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is no less valuable than my monologue for thosereaders who have not had the occasion to equipthemselves to deal with a rather elusive topic,canonicity of the Old Testament, and, ifpossible, to present the issue in a lesstechnical fashion.

In addition, I wanted to make room forcanonicity regarding the New Testament as well.It was not covered in the original work. Theissues regarding the New Testament are naturallydifferent than the Old but equally challenging.I was happy to entice a busy scholar and formercolleague to contribute that part of the work.That way in this work the entire Bible will becovered.

CHAPTER ONE: THE FULLNESS OF TIMES

Galatians 4:4 reads, “But when the fullnessof time came, God sent forth His Son….” Ithardly needs to be said that tomes have beenwritten to demonstrate the timing God chose tosend His Son to the Greco-Roman world. Thefollowing sums it up nicely. “It was a timewhen the pax Romana extended over most of thecivilized earth and when travel and commercewere therefore possible in a way that had

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formerly been impossible. Great roads linkedthe empire of the Caesars, and diverse regionswere linked far more significantly by the all-pervasive language of the Greeks. Add the factthat the world was sunk in a moral abyss so lowthat even the pagans cried out against it andthat spiritual hunger was everywhere evident,and one has a perfect time for the coming ofChrist and the early expansion of the ChristianGospel.”1

While I have uncovered no such matchingstatement about the Old Testament, perhapsbecause of the long history of the OldTestament, there is no reason why that “thefullness of time” could not be said of the OldTestament as well. A review of the world of theOld Testament demonstrates that the origins ofthe Old Testament were ideally suited to itsmilieu as presented in Scripture. All thecomponents required for a sacred authoritativebody of writing for a community to be preservedfor posterity, the stuff of canon, were in placeat least by the time of Moses. Not only wasit possible and plausible but likely. Theworld of the Old Testament was a religious worldwhere the idea of a secular world would havebeen a phenomena. That is beyond question. Theancient historian, Herodotus, said that the

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Egyptians were beyond measure religious, morethan any other nation. . . . their religiousobservances are, one might say, innumerable”(2:37). The Assyrians, like their Babylonianneighbors, lived in a world inhabited andcontrolled by gods, demons, spirits, and ghostsof the dead. There was no other scenario. TheCanaanites were religious, expressing theirworldview through myths in which the forces ofnature were personified and deified.2 Suchobservations can be made in regard to all knownpeoples of the Ancient East (ANE).

This keen interest, therefore, generated alarge amount of written material about religiouspractices, beliefs and customs from very earlytimes. ANE texts demonstrate this (see below).Endeavors by researchers, particularly, in thelast century have made this more thanassumption. The following will well illustratethat the milieu of the ANE provided theprevailing conditions for the inception of thecanon of the Old Testament.

We should start, therefore, with a look intothe world where the Old Testament got its startand its impetus. Was there the interest,materials, skills and motivation that wouldproduce sacred texts to be venerated andcherished forever by a people such as ancient

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Israel? Is there documentation that the milieufrom which the Old Testament stems supports itsintegrity as the Old Testament presents itself?Are there not ancient models to demonstrate thatwritings held to be revered as authoritative andhence canonical were in concert with thetraditional dating of Moses ?3 And moreexpressly, concerning our focus on canon, canthe Old Testament stand up to the propositionthat the canonization of the Old Testament is nota late post exilic construct but enjoys a happycorrespondence with antiquity, i.e., afifteenth century B.C. milieu?

Geography It is useful to appreciate the place in the

world where the Old Testament came from. Theregions that engulfed the Levant (ancient Syria-Palestine), where the patriarchs and laterIsrael settled, was surrounded by two greatcivilizations, Egypt and Mesopotamia. Veryearly contact and influence from bothcivilizations on Canaan is not disputed. Theland of the Old Testament, Canaan, was a conduitbetween the valleys of the Tigris Euphrates andthe valley of the Nile. This land served as anatural bridge linking Egypt and Mesopotamia.This geographical link meant a deposit andexchange of culture. Their ways of life, both

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materially and non-materially had a profoundinfluence on Canaan where Israel has itsbeginnings.

There was a vast amount of literary activityfrom both theatres that did not go without itsimpact on Canaan. One discovery alone from aCanaanite city in close proximity to the borderof ancient Israel produced texts that includedno less than eight different languages includingAkkadian (the language of Mesopotamia),Sumerian, Hurrian, Hittite and Egyptian.4 Thesetexts extend back to Moses times and before.Numerous written records from Israel’s widerenvironment provided models of attitudes towardsacred writings and beg their use for contrastand comparison with the Old Testament canon.This is not to say there were not essentialdifferences between Israel and Israel’sneighbors. But it addresses the idea thatcanonicity does not have to be thought to beremote from the beginning of Israel’s journey.Ancient Israel was in league with its nearbyworld. The environment regarding theproduction of writings was fertile ground forthe beginning of the Old Testament canon.

A World of Scribes: Ancient MesopotamiaThere is a sizeable evidence of written

records in antiquity, particularly the 2nd

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millennium B.C. and before, and that is wherethe Old Testament puts Moses.

In ancient Mesopotamia, a massive amount ofwritten records from archives have beenuncovered from before and during the Mosaicperiod. They amount not to thousands, buthundreds of thousands. At two sites alone, atGirsu, there are circa. 40,000 tablets andPuzrish-Dagan, circa 100,000 tablets but frombetter known Mari there are circa. 20,000.Inscribed on baked clay tablets scores ofwritings have survived the millennia. They are,next to stone, the most imperishable matter forthe preservation of writing. And there survivalhas provided texts untouched by editors(redactors) and hence representative of theirtimes. The discovery of extensive dictionarieshas proved invaluable tools for translatingancient texts. Even when cracked to pieces,diligent patience has deciphered their messages.

The Extent of the LiteratureThe literature includes a number of personal

libraries. A personal library with more thanthree thousand tablets was discovered at Tel-elDer. This library has been dated to theseventeenth century B.C. It would beirresponsible not to mention that writtenmaterial was not confined to archives and

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libraries alone. Writings from early periods onbuildings, seals, columns, weights, monuments,bullae, pottery, tombs, jewelry, houses,letters, toponyms, onomasticons, reports,syllabaries, contracts, treaties, daybooks,bilingual dictionaries, myths, epics, annals,histories, religious practices and every kind ofmiscellaneous topics are not only evident butabound. Writings were ubiquitous. Indeed, thecorpus is so great; much still awaitsspecialists to decipher a good deal of thematerial!5

Some of the literature is quite extensive.The well-known Epic of Gilgamesh is a workdivided into twelve tablets, one tabletcontaining over three hundred lines. Over 3.000lines are lost. Representative extant portionsare dated to the first half of the secondmillennium. A well-known legal code, The Codeof Hammurabi, universally held to precede Moses,contains two hundred and eighty two laws, alengthy prologue and epilogue. The Code isgrammatically fully organized and classical inform and addresses issues that were common toboth the Babylonians and Israel.

The daughter of the King Sargon of Akkad(2340-2154 BCE), Enkheduanna, wrote a cycle offorty-two hymns. She was a skilled literary

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poet. Several histories in the BabylonianChronicles were written in the middle of thesecond millennium B.C dealing with the Kassites,a period that corresponds with Moses.

It goes then without saying, though we willsay it, that the sheer size of the literaturereasonably presumes that there had to be bothwriting and scribes early. In Mesopotamia,writing appeared before 3000 B.C. in theSumerian language. Sumerian proverbs, circa1500 B.C. were found in neo-Babyloniancollections circa 600 B.C. with scarcely analteration! Though Sumerian is not a Semiticlanguage it does demonstrate the presence ofwriting in a very early period in the ANE.Akkadian documents, more germane to our focus,because it is Semitic like biblical Hebrew,appeared in Mesopotamia a thousand years beforeAbraham’s time.

Scribes and Scribal SchoolsAncient Mesopotamia is noted for scribal

academies commonly dubbed “Tablet-Houses.”Temples, much like medieval monasteries alsowere centers for training of thousands ofscribes.6 A description of scribal trainingdoesn’t sound so much different than what onemight find in a private academy today. KarenRhea Nemet-Nejat describes a Tablet House.

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The student attended school, called a “tablet-house,”whose headmaster was called “expert” or “father of thetablet-house.” There was a dean who enforced the rules andregulations of the tablet-house, called “supervisor of thetablet-house,” and there was even a “man in charge of thewhip.” Teaching assistants were referred to as “olderbrothers”; their jobs included writing new tablets for thestudents to copy, checking the students’ work, and listeningto memorized lessons. Other faculty members included “theman in charge of Sumerian,” “the man in charge of drawing,”as well as proctors in charge of attendance and discipline.”7

There are at present written records extantfrom the schools that were active before thepatriarchal period. The scribe in Mesopotamiawas the key to the growth of the community. Theadvancement of culture, not to mention commerce,could hardly have been achieved without writing.So-called ‘school texts’ have been unearthedfrom Erech, Ur, Shuruppak, Nippur and AbuSalabikh.

EGYPT In Egypt, papyrus rolls provided the

material to write on. Papyrus does not havethe enduring quality of stone or baked claycommon to Mesopotamia. (Papyrus though is moredurable than paper and has survived the ravagesof time in dry regions.) Nevertheless, thereis ample evidence of sizeable collections of

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written material in Egypt written at or prior tothe patriarchal period. In fact, where it wasonce held that Mesopotamia gave witness to theearliest of writings that assumption has beenchallenged. It is now heralded that ancientwritings in Egypt offer a fitting competition toMesopotamia.

With regard to archives, writing and scribes,Egyptian efforts parallel Mesopotamia Morethan forty scribes are mentioned in the firstthree dynasties in the so-called archaic period(3100-2575 BCE). Copious copies of older textssupport the presence of earlier writings. Amongthe best known are Pyramid Texts, copied down tothe Roman period.8 These texts were discoveredat Saqqara in tombs that date as early as thefifth, sixth and seventh dynasties (2575-2134BCE). The comprehensively studied Abusir papyriinclude material dating to fifty years after thedeath of Neferikare of the fifth dynasty. Liketheir neighbors, a scribal tradition continuedthroughout most of the history of the pharaohs,beginning with the Old Kingdom period.

The earliest mention of a scribal school isfrom a tomb inscription of the FirstIntermediate Period (2134-2040 BCE). There is areference to “every scribe and every wise man,who is skilled in his calling, perfect in

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writing and perfect in learning....”9 TheEgyptians had an esteem for the written word.The Annals of Thutmosis III at Karnack, the fifthking of the eighteenth dynasty, are recordingsof two decades of this great pharaoh’s militarycampaigns.10 According to Egyptologists, somesections exhibit great narrative skill. TheAnnals are an extensive account of Egyptianmilitary achievements on Asian territory and thebooty and tribute exacted. The longest Annal has223 columns. This pharaoh lived just before thetime of Moses where Moses, schooled in Egypt wasfrom.11 Especially significant was the Egyptianmanifold aspects on life—prayers, laments,hymns, rituals and spells—requiring the servicesof writing, depending on the work of scribes.

The Range of Egyptian Literature Like the Sumerians, Assyrians and

Babylonians, Egyptian writings were ubiquitous.They included myths, fables, letters, treaties,economic transactions, philosophy, history,medical prescriptions, royal correspondence,rituals, incantations, and religion. militaryexploits, prayers, songs, hymns, animals,dreams, inscriptions, spells, blessings,proverbs, satires, poetry, curses, place names,botany, biographies, etc. etc. From this it appearsthat writing was pervasive; they permeated all

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areas of life. Scribes were not restricted to afew geographical areas. Training for scribes,for example, were at Memphis, Abydos, Amarna,Akhmim, Coptos, Esna and Edfu.12 Scribalactivity appears at the cradle of Egyptiancivilization. Much more can but need not beadded for it is not challenged. Scribes andwriting were prominent with cultures thatsurrounded and commingled time and time againwith the land of Canaan.

WRITTEN MATERIAL FROM THE LEVANT Even more telling, is the situ in the Levant

that included Canaan. The Levant is certainlynot without its history of written recordsbefore and in approximation to the Mosaic periodwhether one holds to an early or late date ofIsrael’s exodus from Egypt. Here, so-to-speak,we are getting much closer geographically toIsrael’ initial stages. The following dataclearly illustrates this.

TELL el-AMARNA There are presently extant 380 texts and

fragments on clay from the ancient site at Tellel-Amarna in Egypt. A good number of thesetexts, in a Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, werewritten from 1400-1370 B.C. to the pharaoh

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Amenhotep IV from Canaan.13 They express urgentconcern over the threat of invaders during thetime where the Scriptures place Joshua. Abouthalf of these texts include correspondencewritten from Canaanite vassal city-states. In acorrespondence from Megiddo, one of the townsmentioned in the letters, was Arad. It wasamong the first territories invaded by Israelaccording to Numbers 21:1-3. Other citieslisted as fallen recorded also in the Book ofJoshua are Gezer, Ashkelon, and Lachish. Textsfrom these sites, in the opinion of specialists,represent local scribes who have received aclassical, albeit provincial, education. Thepoint to be considered is that many of thesepetty city-states in Canaan in the latefifteenth or fourteenth century, in the Mosaicera, give evidence of scribal activity from anumber of local locations in Canaan.14

TELL MARDIKHA discovery subsequent to the above occurred

in l964 at the ancient city Ebla in Syria(modern Tell Mardikh). Excavations were made inthe middle seventies. Eventually, over 14,000tablets were uncovered, tablets decisively pre-dating Abraham’s time, 2200-2100 B.C. Some ofthe tablets were written in an East Semiticlanguage dubbed Eblaite or Eblaic. The tablets

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demonstrated written records by a people whospoke a language closely related to theCanaanite language, though, according toscholars, using a verbal morphology closer toAkkadian. Some of the persons noted in thesetexts had names remarkably similar to nameslater used in the Hebrew Bible. These textsalso gave testimony to sites as historical onetime dismissed as legendary. The texts fromEbla include some of the latest uncoveredliterary texts to date.

UGARITBut, perhaps, most decisive of all of the

above, are the discoveries from the ancient cityUgarit (modern Ras Shamra). About 1400 tabletswere discovered. One could hardly ask foranything more to illustrate the feasibility ofrecording data in Canaan in the Mosaic period.A number of details will support this statement.

The city was in geographical proximity toCanaan. It was a most important seaport for itstime with contacts throughout the Mediterranean.The city was cited in a number of texts from thesecond millennium. It flourished until circa.1250-1200 B.C. when it was abandoned. Texts(dictionaries) on clay tablets found at Ugarit

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were in several languages: Akkadian, Egyptian,Hittite, Hurrian and a language subsequentlydubbed Ugaritic, hint at its extensive contacts.The primary Ugaritic texts are that of epic andmythological poetry concerning the antics of theCanaanite gods, Baal, Aqhat and Keret. Thetexts were written on clay tablets. While thetexts may have been copies of older texts, theextant texts can be dated with reasonableconfidence and common consent to the fifteenthor fourteenth centuries.

Ugaritic, the language of about 150 tablets,is a Canaanite dialect that is closely akin tobiblical Hebrew. The alphabet, with slightexceptions, is identical. The letters of theUgaritic alphabet were written in exactly thesame order as the Hebrew alphabet. Indeed itis closer to biblical Hebrew than any otherknown Semitic dialects, which are mainlycomposed of syllables only. (An alphabeticlanguage offers a considerable wider opportunityfor the acquisition of reading and writing oversyllabic writing.)15 It has been demonstratedthat poetic meter in Canaanite verse at Ugaritis similar to Hebrew poetry in the Psalms.There are striking literary parallels in theseCanaanite texts to expressions found both in the

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Pentateuch and Psalms. Especially intriguing arethe similar technical terms for sacrifices.16

ADDITIONAL DETAILSWhile the importance of the tablets

discovered at Ugarit cannot receive theattention it deserves here, several items relateto our following focus. First is that thewidespread correspondence at Ugarit, consideringthe complicated writing systems in the ancientmilieu, shows it would have been impossiblewithout the establishment of scribal schoolsamong the city-states in Canaan and Syria too.Several inscriptions in the Ugaritic script havebeen uncovered in Israel itself. One fromTaanach, pertaining to a shipment of fine flour,was used for everyday purposes in Canaan on theeve of the Israelite conquest.17 Alphabeticscript has also been found at Shechem,Beersheba, Gezer and Lachish. More significantis that correspondence between the gods wasdeemed highly significant at Ugarit. Therefore,it was not permitted to take chances by relyingon messages sent by memory only. Allcommunication must be in writing and scribeswere responsible for putting them in a properform.18 Some of the tablets have colophonsinscribed noting the scribe who authored orcopied the tablet.

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CANONICITY IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EASTAnother topic not given due consideration in

this author’s opinion is attention to the ideacanonicity in the second millennium B.C. in theANE. Canonicity pertains to the belief that adeity communicated a message in some form withman and that he in turn accurately recorded it.The message was recognized by his community asdivinely inspired and was respected as a bindinginfallible rule of faith, practice andauthority. It was then copied with care forfuture generations for God had spoken and manwrote it down. Canonicity refers to texts at apoint they would be passed down unchanged(fixity) so as not to undergo serious alterationor editing by subsequent copiers.19 The idea ofa respected written work, transmitted withouttampering by future tradents, cannot be deemedforeign to the Mosaic era. In fact, there was adefinite move toward canonizing, i.e., thestabilization and standardization, of texts inthe fifteenth century. This corresponds to apre-exilic canonical dating of the Pentateuch.

RECOGNITION OF A CANONICAL STANDARDAttention to the fixity (standarizing) of

texts has been the contribution of

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Assyriologists. The recognition of canonizingin the second millennium has general agreementthough a discussion on the shared features ofcanonical texts ensues. Though the perceptionof canonicity, i.e., the fixity of texts, enjoygeneral agreement around the time of Moses, itmay be informative to provide a brief summary ofan analysis of a well known classical literarywork, The Epic of Gilgamesh, as a model.20 Thechanges in this epic have been traced in detailby Jeffry Tigay.21 Tigay’s conclusion is that arelatively standarized form of the epic appearsin the last half of the second millennium, about1250 B.C. but allows for the possibility of aneven earlier date. At that point, Gilgamesh wasstable enough to approach what might be termed acanonical form. He contrasted this with latermanuscripts of the Epic where he notes thatdifferences are minimal, “only a few lines arenot verbally identical.” This is in line withother specialists. William Hallo remarks, “...many Akkadian works had assumed a fixed form byneo-Assyrian times, and that their division intotablets, and in the case of longer series intogroups of tablets (pirsu) was fullystandarized.”22 Hallo even maintains that thepractice of the fixation of texts was present asearly as the Sumerian period. Many known textsfrom both Assyria and Babylon from Tiglath-

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pileser (1115-1071) and subsequently of bothliterary and non-literary compositions seem,with minute variations, to have standardizedtablet division.23 This hardly requireselaboration. There is no question that thefixing or standardization of texts was notpresent in the second millennium B.C.24

Although the zeroing in on canonization in theancient Egyptian theatre does not seem to havegrabbed the attention of Egyptologists, like ithas Assyriologists, nevertheless, the idea oftransmitting texts scrupulously, and especiallyvenerated texts, was the expectation of Egyptianscribes. That is tantamont to the same thingand is discussed below in regard to the canon ofthe Old Testament. The material above caneasily be expanded; it is only representativeand goes unchallenged, though neglected inconsideration of the pre-exilic canonizing ofOld Testament texts. Its relevance issignificant. The fifteenth century worldillustrates that there should be no challenge asto why a figure from that milieu could not haverecorded revered details for posterity such asthose found in the Pentateuch.

THE SONG OF ERRA

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One of the models, and perhaps the best, forcanonicity that corresponds to the Old Testamentcanon is the Song of Erra. It presents the mostcomplete model for canonicity from an extantextra biblical source. While the dating isuncertain, specialists place it between the 12th

to the 9th century B.C., nevertheless it was atime when a good portion of the Old Testamentwas written.25 The following is a colophon, anaddendum added to the song, where the scribe notonly identifies himself, Kabti-ilani-Marduk, butclaims to be the recipient of a revelation fromthe god Erra. The scribe is both author andscribe of the revelation. The epilogue is asfollows:

Kabti-ilani-Marduk the son of Dabibi (was) the composerof his tablet: (The deity) revealed it to him during the night,and in the morning, when he recited (it), he did not skip asingle (line) nor a single line (of his own) did he add to it. Thescribe who commits it to memory shall escape the enemycountry (and) shall be honored in his own country. In thesanctuary of (those) sages where they constantly mention myname, I will grant them wisdom. To the house in which thistable is placed….

The correspondence between this ancient textand the Old Testament is remarkable. The aboveextract contains components which coincide withthe idea of canonicity of the Old Testament.

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First is that deity or deities revealedthemselves to mankind, the deity revealed it to himduring the night. Ancients believed that theyreceived revelations which were subsequentlywritten down. Numerous ancient texts from bothEgypt and Mesopotamia claim they are the wordsof their deities. A hymn from the 19th Dynasty(1314-1194 B.C.) from Egypt states that amessage was sent from heaven, heard inHeliopolis and composed in a dispatch by thewriting of Thoth.26 In another hymn, TheVictorious King, a text pertaining to ThutmoseIII (1504-1450 B.C.), the prologue claims theyare the very words of Amun-Re, Lord of theThrones of the Land.27

Pyramid Texts, inscriptions carved onpyramids in ancient Egypt, contain directquotations from their gods. Funerary texts inthe Book of the Dead have inscriptions said tobe written by the god himself.28 A suspensefilled tale reveals an attempt by Setne Khamwas,the fourth son of Ramses II, to keep in hispossession a writing held to be written by thegod Thoth. Though the attempt fails, itdisplays the work was held to be sacred; awriting revealing secrets belonging only to theworld of the gods.29

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In Mesopotamia there is much of the same. Ithardly needs documentation.30 A letter reportsthat the god Ashur revealed his words in a dreamto Sennacherib and the Oracle of Ninlil is stated tobe “the word of the goddess Ninlil herself tothe king.” In another letter a seer reports thewords of the goddess Ishtar which he received ina night vision, a vision similar to that ofKabti-ilani-Marduk who saw a dream vision andrecorded it.

It hardly needs to be documented as wellthat ancient Israel too believed their Godrevealed Himself and that His words and deedswere recorded. The “thus saith the Lord”permeates the Old Testament accompanied byexamples of encounters with the God of Israeland His people over and over again. And whetheror not one holds that a god revealed himself toancient Israel or not, the scenario iscompatible with the world ancient Israel livedin.

A second feature from the above colophon isthe characteristic of the scribe, when he recited it,he did not skip a single line nor a single line of his own did headd. Scribal fidelity to the text, anothercomponent of canonicity, is attested in thecopying in both religious and secular documents.In his work, Ancient Mesopotamia, Oppenheim

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states, “it was an essential part of thetraining of each scribe to copy faithfully thetexts that made up the stream of tradition.”Oppenheim maintains that the continuity ofreligious traditions was assured not byecclesiastical pressures but purely through thescribal practice of exact reduplication. Thisfreezing of sacred lore he traces back to thethird quarter of the second millennium B.C. Hestates it was for the purpose of “preventinghypertropic growth of the written corpus underinside pressure, especially to restrain thetheologian from reinterpreting the sacred story,elaborating it, and destroying it.”31 In fine,the scrupulous copying of religious texts wasthe manner of preserving religious traditions.Seventh century B.C. rituals copied as late asthe Seleucid Period have colophons that read,“copied from an older tablet, checked andrechecked.”32

Egyptian literature also testifies to thepractice of careful scribal copying. In the“Tale of Two Brothers” the god Thoth is enlistedto be the guarding of the work to make surewords were not altered in the tale. The FuneralPapyrus of Iouiya, (1575-1308) has at the closingof the book, “This is the end; it is frombeginning to end as it was found written; it was

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drawn, checked, examined, weighed from part topart.” It has to be obvious to all that thescribe meant to convey that the text wasreliable. It does not mean, of course, that alltexts and documents from the ancient milieu weregiven such careful scribal attention. This workdoes not say that. Only that the tradition ofcareful scribal fidelity to written texts fortransmission was not by any means foreign toancient Israel’s world and it should not beslighted from that consideration.

The idea of passing down ancient texts withgreat care could not have been extraordinary tothe writers of the Old Testament. Seeing thatIsrael believed God Himself communicated withthem, what could have been a stronger motivationfor preserving His words? That ethos is evidentin the Old Testament. The Book of Deuteronomy,attributed to Moses, says, “You shall not add tothe word which I am commanding you, nor takeaway from it, that you may keep the commandmentsof the Lord your God which I command you” (Deut.4:2; 12:32). Indeed, diligent adherence to thescruples of the Mosaic laws was tied to thenation of Israel’s success or failure.33 Thenation’s life and welfare was dependent upon it.Attention to the minutia of the lawsnecessitated that they be transmitted to the

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following generations with precision for thewellbeing of the nation.

A third facet of canonicity was the call toallegiance to the text by promising blessingsand curses. In the Song of Erra above itstates, The scribe who commits it to memory shall escapethe enemy country (and) shall be honored in his own country.Here is the promise of a cherished blessing inthe ancient world, liberty from the threat ofexile. Both blessings and curses from a godtranslate to mean that the text carriesauthority. In a psalm to the god Shamash, thesun deity, the one who sings and masters thepsalm is promised great favor along with awarning curse from Shamash to the one whomisuses it.34 In an Egyptian fable, The Tale ofTwo Brothers, a curse is pronounced upon anyonewho “maligns this book.” These blessings andcurses signaled the texts were binding. Theywere believed to be written under the authorityof a god.35 One scarcely needs to mention remindthe reader that this is a prominent feature ofthe Old Testament law

A fourth component pertains to depositingholy writ to a sanctuary. Kabti-ilani-marduknoted To the house in which this table is placed….Reverence or recognition that a writing issacred is also indicated by depositing the

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writing in a place deemed sacred.36 The Song ofErra was placed in a sanctuary because it wasreported to be given by a god. It specificallystates in The Program of the Pageant of the Statue of theGod Anu at Uruk that it was deposited in theTemple of Resh and a ten-verse poem by the godAmun-Re, The Victory of Thutmose, was discovered inthe Temple of Karnak in Egypt.37 This, of course,was for safekeeping that a text that revered asdivine revelation would be guarded byfaithful/priestly scribes. It was common andwidespread practice.38 Israel in step with thetimes was commanded to give the same reverenceto their holy writings by building a sanctuaryand ark to maintain the words from their God.Moses reported, I … put the tablets in the arkI had made as the Lord commanded me (Deuteronomy10:5; Exodus 40:20).

All of the four components above that make upthe essence of canon are well illustrated inthis Song of Erra and find a correspondence inthe Old Testament canon as well. There areother models, of course, that may not fit thisscheme. But the point is that the componentsabove demonstrated in this Song find agreementin the milieu of the ANE both before and afterthis revelation from a god was composed. Whilethe Old Testament has it own significant and

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decisively unique distinctions, the abovedemonstrates why a concept of canonicity and itsattendant practices should not seem outlandishits setting at the time of Moses. This not tosay that the writers of the Old Testamentvisualized its final form. (The bibles as weknow them in book form didn’t began to takeshape till several centuries after Christ.) Butit is to demonstrate that comparative evidenceshows that it is not extreme in the least tohold that the idea of canon is inconceivable inthe middle of the second millennium B.C.

CONCLUSION

My task above was to demonstrate why it isreasonable to hold that writings ascribed to afifteenth century B.C. author of Scripture isperfectly compatible with the milieu of the ANE.Israel did not exist in a vacuum. In light ofthe immense evidence of scribal activity and thehuge amount of literature from the earliestperiods extant from the ANE, it is hard not tobelieve that ancient Israel could and would notrecord events they deemed most sacred too.Writing was prevalent. Not only does writinghave a long and extensive history before Moses,it seems to appear almost everywhere on varioustopics and places. (One letter has a son writing

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his father for more funds. How contemporary!)Scribes were drilled in faithfully copyingtexts. Add to that are clay tablet records of analphabetic Semitic language practicallyidentical to biblical Hebrew not onlyphilologically but also in close geographicproximity to the land of Israel. It would trulyseem a conundrum if Israel did not write andmaintain their sacred traditions as they wereformulated and received than not. The land ofCanaan did not exist in a vacuum. That is notcontested. What, then, would be a moreimpelling motive than to believe that youpossessed the very words of God to write themdown and preserve them rigorously for posterity?The motivation is there, something that cannotbe dismissed, along with all of the necessaryresources that for the most part, have long beenknown to us.

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1 Boice, James Montgomery, The Expositors Bible Commentary Galatians Vol 10 (GrandRapids: Zondervan Publishig House, 1976) p. 472. 2 Clifford, Richard J. “PhoenicianReligion,” Bulletin of the American Schools ofOriental Research 279 (1990): 55-64.3 The two dates presented for the Moses of the Exodus is 1446 and 1290 B.C.While this author holds to the earlier date, the discussion is not treated in thiswork. The reader is directed to Bimson, John, Redating the Exodus. References toMoses in this work assumes a middle second millennium B.C. dating. The discussionforthcoming can equally apply to the later date. 4 The modern name of the city is Ras Shamara. In biblical times it was known asUgarit. 5 Experts agree that there are about half a million cuneiform tablets held in theworld’s museums today. Approximately 130,000 are in the British museum in London.Yale university’s Babylonian collection has 40,000, the largest in the UnitedStates. Many of these tablets have lain in museums for a century without beingtranslated, studied or published. Berlin, Louvre, Istanbul and Baghdad have hugedepositories as well.6 Ur, Sippar, Nippar and Mari display remains of scribal academies. Detailedinformation concerning scribal professionals comes from Ur (2112-2004 B.C.).Scribes numbered in the thousands.7 Nemet-Nejat, Karen Rhea. Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, The GreenwoodPress “Daily Life Through History” Series (London: Greenwood Press,1988, 55. 8 Pyramid texts are the earliest Egyptian religious writings where allusion is madeto the knowledge and practice of writing. The earliest named scribe in Egypt wasImhotep, the architect and chancellor of King Djoser (circa. 2650 BCE). 9 From the “Teaching of Ptahhotpe” (circa. 2400 BCE), “Emulate your forefathers, your ancestors .... You see, their words remain in [their] writings; open that you may read and copy their wisdom” (AEL 1:99). *** Boys from humble origin could and did become scribes. In a text from the third millennium a king advises his son, “Do not prefer the wellborn to the commoner.” In Mesopotamia we have reference to poor orphans who were trained as scribes due to the benevolence of generous patrons! 10 The Egyptian bureaucracy instituted a system of official record keeping of important events. These records or “annals” were probably recorded and eventually compiled on papyrus scrolls. These “annals” date from about 1980-1630 BCE. Eventually they were supplemented by daybooks that covered a wider range of state affairs. 11 For an abbreviated list of Egyptian records predating the patriarchal period,see Williams, Ronald J. in The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East (WinonaLake: Eisenbrauns, l990) l9-30; 95-98. 12 A temple scene at Abydos shows a prince holding a papyrus scroll and describeshim as ‘reading out praises’. That prince was Ramesses II (1290-1224 BCE).13 The dating of these texts enjoys a universal consensus. The main discussion is the identification of the invaders that the letter-writers are complaining about tothe pharaoh. Not all of the correspondence was from Canaan. A letter, Amarna letter 369, is a letter from a pharaoh to the city-state Gezer asked to send pharaoh forty beautiful women as cupbearers. “... send women-cupbearers very beautiful, that there will not be any one deficient among them, so that the king, your lord will say to you: This is good....”

14 It is risky to be dogmatic on how literate the population in Canaan was at the time of the exodus and conquest. It was probably greater than assumed? In the Sinai peninsula, about 1500 BCE, at Serabit-el-Khadim, an assortment of forty-five inscriptions carved in stone exhibits a Semitic alphabetic system. It seems that they were inscribed by miners working for Egypt. It shows that some among the lowest classes in society could read and write. Potsherds from Hazor are inscribedin this same Semitic script. Cf.also Seger, Joe, The Gezer Jar Signs: New Evidence of the Earliest Alphabet, The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, l983) 477-481. Alphabetic inscriptions were found at Gezer, Lachish and Shechem dated to the sixteen or seventeen centuries BCE. Cf. also, Millard, Alan, An Assessment of the Evidence for Writing in Ancient Israel in Biblical Archaeology today. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, l985,301-312. Regarding the monarchial era,Millard concludes, “Ancient Hebrew written documents, recovered by archaeology, demonstrate both that there were readers and writers in ancient Israel, and that they were no means rare. Few places will have been without someone who could write, and few Israelites will have been unaware of writing.” The rate of literacy, however, is of little relevance to canonicity; there were certainly enough trained scribes or readers to serve the community. 15 The advantage of an alphabetic language (Hebrew and Ugaritic) over a syllabic alphabet (Mesopotamian) is considerable. The simplified alphabetic language could be mastered in a matter of days as opposed to a lifetime of struggling with syllabic cuneiform! 16 “Scribes throughout the region learned the scribal arts in loosely connected pan-Levantine scribal schools. The affinities between Ugaritic and biblical poetry – especially early biblical poetry – thus point to Canaanite tradition as the heritage of early Israelite scribes.” Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book, p. 47. In the world of the Old Testament, there were no copyright laws; the sharingof all kinds of cultural items was widespread just as borrowing is today 17 Hillers, D. R. ‘An Alphabetic Cuneiform Tablet from Taanach BASOR, 173, 45-50. 18 Even before the occupation of Canaaan both commandments of religious laws andhistorical records were written down. Widengren, G. Literary and Psychological Aspectsof the Hebrew Prophets, Uppsala, l948, p 62. 19 The Greek word for “canon” (kanwvn) was first used by scholars of a library in Alexandria Egypt in the third century B.C.20 Gilgamesh is only one example. Wm. Hallo discerns successive appearances ofcanonization in Old Sumerian, neo-Sumerian, Akkadian, and bilingual (Sumero-Akkadian). The first canonization he dates circa. 1750 BCE to the last, 250 BCE.Hallo, William H. The Concept of Canonicity in Cuneiform and Biblical Literature: A ComparativeAppraisal, in The Bibllical Canon in Comparative Perspective, ed. by Younger, Jr.,Wm. Hallo and B. Batto (Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, l991),21 See Tigay, Jeffry H. The Evolution of the Epic of Gilgamesh (Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania, l982). This work was the outcome of a doctoraldissertation at Yale University.22 Hallo, William H. The Concept of Canonicity in Cuneiform and Biblical Literature: A ComparativeAppraisal, in The Bibllical Canon in Comparative Perspective, ed. by Younger, Jr., Wm. Hallo and B. Batto (Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, l991), 6.

23 Cf. also, Cooper, Jerrold. The Return of Ninurta to Nippur (Rome: Pontificum Institutum Biblicum, l978), 38. 24 Tigay’s work on the evolution of the Epic of Gilgamesh has been acclaimed by such authors as J.A. Emerton, J.J.M. Roberts, Adele Berlin, John J. Ferrie, J.W. Rogerson and Richard Elliott Friedman as an analogue for the Documentary hypothesis. (Tigay, himself, is not quite so sure. See Empirical Models... p. 51.) Does this Epic model the Documentary Hypothesis? It is granted that the reworkingof the Epic by redactors over the centuries finds no argument here until the time of finalization. But unlike the Old Testament text, the work passed through the hands of different people and languages by those who modified the work somewhat to suit their situation. However, as a model for the Documentary hypothesis,, that is ludicrous. There are fundamental differences between this Epic and the Pentateuch. Basically the Documentary theory pertains to a conflation of four major sources, each covering an entire series of events. The Epic is not a meshing of different accounts integrated into a single composition by succeeding generations. In addition, the various versions of the Epic are hardly discernable by means of different names of gods, a hallmark of the documentarians.

25 Cagni, L. The Poem of Erra Sources and Monograms on the Ancient Near East, vol.1 (Malibu: Undena Publicatins, 1977), 20-21. Cf. also Lambert, W.G. “A Catalogueof Texts and Authors,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 16 (1962):76. 26 ANET, pp.368-69. Thoth was the scribal deity of the Egyptian gods. In theGreat Hymn of Osiris it states that “Re spoke, Thoth wrote.” Lichtheim,Miriam.Ancient Egyptian Literature: The New Kingdom, vol. 2 (Berkley: UCLA Press, l976) 85. On atwo-part prayer inscribed on the base of a statue of Haremhab, Thoth is describedas the “Lord of Writing.” Lichtheim, M. The New Kingdom, p. 101. Toth isidentified as the “scribe who keeps the book…whose words endure forever.”Lichtheim,M. The New Kingdom, p. 103. 27 ANET, p. 373. Add to this a speech written as a blessing for a king, a blessingassigned to a deity. Lichtheim, M. The New Kingdom, p. 46. Cf. also a similarincident in the “Divine Nomination of an Ethiopian King”, ANET, pp. 447-8. 28 Faulkner, R.O. The Ancient Pyramid Texts (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, l969)Utterance 513, p. 189 states that a god is being quoted. Utterances 563, p. 218;565, p. 220; 573, p. 228 and 587, pp. 238-241 all attribute authorship ofinscriptions to gods. Some Pyramid texts date back to the 6th Dynasty (2340B.C.?). Cf. also Utterance 576, pp. 231-32 which states tha the god Re will put awriting in the king’s register. Without question numerous inscriptions claim to bewritten by the hand of gods. “Thoth, the Most High Lord of Hermopolis comes tothee having written for thee writings of breathings with his own fingers,” is acitation from an Egyptian papyrus 3284 in the Lourvre. (Salt Lake City: Desert BookCompany, 1975), 60.29 Lichtheim, M. Ancient Egyptian Literatur, , vol 3. (Berkley:UCLA Press, l980),pp. 127-8.30 ANET, pp. 450-451. See also Oppenheim, A. Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of aDead Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, l977), p. 280.31 Oppenheim, Leo. Ancient Mesopotamia, p. 14,18,232. 32 ANET, p. 336,342. 33 Leviticus 18:4,5; 25:18; 26:3ff.; Deuteronomy 6:3,24,25; 11:13ff.; 12:28 passim.34 ANET, pp. 386-367.

35 In the Funeral Papyrus of Iouiya there is a blessing for those who revere the text.“…whoever has this book recited over him every day, he will be prosperous upon theearth, he will come forth safe from every fire, and no evil will approach himregularly, for times infinite” (p. 10). 36 Sacred collections were often deposited in temple libraries. Colophons notedthe temple scribes who copied texts. Copying a temple text was meritorious. Thetext became a property of the temple and available for consulting. A scribe wasallowed to take a copy home for a specified time only if he swore not to alter asingle line. Van Der Toon, Karel, Scribal Culture and the Making of the HebrewBible (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007) p. 64. 37 ANET, p. 342,373. In Demotic literature Thoth is credited with writing a Bookof Magic with his own hands. He then deposited it in a sacred tomb ofNaneferkaptah. Litchtheim, M. The Late Period, pp. 127,128. 38 Brinker, R. The Influence of Sanctuaries in Early Israel (Manchester: The UniversityPress, l946). “The practice of writing down documents and depositing them insanctuaries is a practice familiar to us from many sources.”