Jews are known as the "people of the book," but was literacy important in biblical times? As explained by Matthieu Richelle, a Professor of Old Testament at the Université Catholique de Louvain in a recent paper published in the latest volume of the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology, "the subject of literacy in ancient Israel and Judah remains hotly debated among scholars, and the case of the Kingdom of Judah proves especially controversial."
According to the Bible, Israel and Judah were the two kingdoms into which the Israelites split after King Solomon's death. Their existence is also well documented by archaeological findings.
Richelle said, "in Biblical times… there was no Bible yet! But some books that came, much later, to comprise the Tanakh, were highly valued by some Judeans and took on an increasing importance throughout the Second Temple period."
Richelle said that the extensive "library" of books written and rewritten from the Iron Age (1200 BCE – 586 BCE) to the Hellenistic period (332 BCE – 37 BCE) speaks to an essential literary activity.
"It seems that these books were read-only in limited circles (scribes, priests…) for most of these periods, so we can't expect to find the same situation as in later times," he said. "But Judean elites left an impressive literary legacy, which has been transmitted uninterruptedly since the first millennium BCE, and this is a unique case in the Ancient Near East. They were 'the people making the Book.'"
Questions related to literacy in ancient times are not an exclusive prerogative of academic studies on the Israelites.
"Historians have raised the same questions about the literacy rate for ancient Rome or Greece, which is interesting because, like ancient Israel and Judah, these countries used an alphabetic script," said Richelle.
According to the expert, scholars tended to overestimate the literacy rate of ancient populations in the past.
"Today they often say that 5 to 10% of the population in ancient Rome and Greece was able to read and write (although such figures should be taken with a grain of salt)," he noted.
When it comes to the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, Richelle noted that "there were, and still are, some scholars who believe that many people were able to write at least brief texts in ancient Israel and Judah. Today, however, scholars tend to think that only a small minority of ancient Israelites could do that."
"One of the arguments to support that view is that many inscriptions exhibit a good level of script execution, which suggests that professionals wrote them," he explained. "In addition, old arguments suggesting that literacy was widespread prove unconvincing. A few biblical texts may give the impression that everybody could read or write, but they seem to reflect later periods than the ones they are talking about, or they seem to be utopist or idealistic."
Asked why the situation in the Kingdom of Judah proved especially difficult for experts to evaluate, Richelle answered that this is true, especially for the early monarchic period, specifically the 10th and 9th centuries BCE.
"There are two reasons for that," he said. "First of all, only a limited number of inscriptions from these centuries have been found during excavations in or around Judah."
Richelle pointed out that there are also some cases where it's disputed whether the sites belonged to Judah or its neighbors.
"Khirbet Qeiyafa is a case in point: interesting inscriptions have been found there, including an important ostracon (an inscribed potsherd), dated to ca. 1000 BCE," the scholar said. "Some archaeologists believe this town belonged to the kingdom of David and this ostracon was a Hebrew text. Others think that the Philistines or another polity controlled Qeiyafa."
On the other hand, evidence is less controversial for the kingdom of Israel.
Elements of education
The second element that plays an important role in the debate surrounding the kingdom of Judah is connected to its level of development.
"Some archaeologists think that Judah was not well developed until the 8th century," said the scholar. "They infer from this that Judeans could not write long or literary texts before, say, the reign of Hezekiah. By contrast, they regard the Kingdom of Israel as much more advanced, especially in the 9th century."
The scholar is critical of the most skeptical arguments concerning the Kingdom of Judah.
"I believe that the best working hypothesis is that Judeans were able to write substantial, literary texts already in the early monarchic period, certainly in the 9th century, and probably in the 10th century," Richelle said.
"It's important to remember that the preserved inscriptions are not a reliable reflection of the actual production of texts in Antiquity," he said. "Long and literary texts were written on papyrus, a perishable medium that does not survive long in the climate of the Southern Levant. Hundreds of seals and seal impressions from the monarchic period have been found, but only one or two fragments of papyrus have been found. Most of the documentation is forever lost."
According to Richelle, some interesting hints were found in the City of David in Jerusalem, like lines of papyrus imprinted on the rear of bullae (clay lumps bearing seal impressions).
"Even though the seals themselves bore only images, not texts, they served to seal papyri," he said. "Specialists of iconography (the study of images) date some of them to the 10th and 9th centuries. Papyrus was likely used in the early monarchic period in Jerusalem."
Richelle highlighted that, in Judah (and Israel), quantitative approaches are not precise enough to assess the spread of literacy.
"Progress will come from qualitative approaches instead," Richelle said. These approach focus on the different types of written outputs (letters, documents, literary texts), and therefore go beyond the concept of literacy rate.
"What matters to me is that the study of ancient inscriptions should be undertaken with the highest degree of scientific rigor and that the results should be used correctly by historians and biblical scholars," he concluded. "Many hasty assertions are made by non-specialists, including archaeologists who are not epigraphers (specialists of ancient inscriptions). Many project presuppositions, ideologies, or apologetic concerns onto ancient reality. We urgently need discussions on ancient inscriptions to take a more scientific turn."