The Hebrew bible was first written down some 2,600 years ago. And scholars have argued that only a population with sufficiently widespread literacy could have accomplished the task. Now there’s new evidence for such literacy—in the form of notes from that same time period, written in ink on shards of pottery.

Scientists have debated whether the first significant phase of the compilation of biblical texts happened before or after the fall of the first Temple, in 586 B.C. To get at the potential answers to that question, a group of researchers in Israel analyzed mundane inscriptions about the needs of daily life on 16 ceramic shards written about 600 B.C. from an ancient military fortress in Arad, at the northern edge of the Negev desert. These notes had no direct connection with biblical texts, which were more frequently written on papyrus or parchment and would not have survived the region’s climate. But they reveal that literacy did not belong to a privileged few. The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin et al, Algorithmic handwriting analysis of Judah’s military correspondence sheds light on composition of biblical texts]

The research team was able to determine that the documents—detailing military movements and food expenses—were written by a minimum of six authors. The scientists could even generally identify those authors, who ranged from a military commander down the ranks to a much lower subordinate.

"This means that not only their priests were able to write, but also the an army administration were literate down to the quartermaster of this fort in the desert.” Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin, a Tel Aviv University researcher involved with the study. “This indicates that in Judah, in the sixth century, there were high literacy ranks in not only the elite people but among simple people also.”

Such widespread literacy in the region could have set the stage for the eventual compilation of the Bible, and thus the foundation of the monotheism that still prevails in the West.

—Cynthia Graber

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]