5/13/96...

I start a month of multiple-city travel this week, with tons of speaking engagements (it's a business thing, of course...I almost NEVER get to do speaking about the ThinkTank kinda things) and press meetings. The result is that I won't be in my 'monastery' much for the next 30 days--where all my books are. Although I am reading tons (mostly on airplanes--it's amazing how a good book on the archeological remains of Ugaritic sub-culture of the 3rd millennium BC can make a 4-hour jet flight just WHIZ BY...), the next few pieces I want to write require scores of references...

Also, I still have several books on order, that I need for continuing the discussion with James Still. Hopefully, they will arrive soon, so I can finish checking some of the underlying assumptions and references.

But, I am SO EXCITED about a new piece I want to write, on the transmission of literary documents in the ANE. I have been researching the existence of schools and libraries in antiquity and have been blown away by how incredibly document-oriented and education-oriented the ancient world was.

For examples:

• The world that Abraham came FROM (Meso/Sumer/Babylon) was highly literate. We have thousands of texts from that time, ranging from legal documents, to religious texts, to simple writing exercise tablets from scribal schools. It was essentially the head of the family AND THE MAIN steward (i.e. the 'butler') that managed the literary affairs of the household. Eliezer, in the case of Abe, would have been a highly trained scribe and would have been involved in the household education of the sons.
  

• The world that Abraham came INTO (Canaan/Ugarit) was also highly literate. We have thousands of texts from that time, ranging from libraries with upwards of 6 foreign languages in it(!), with texts ranging (again) from religious to secular matters.
  

• The world that the Israelites went INTO (Egypt) was also highly literate. We have many texts from that time, esp. ones used for copying purposes in the schools! Moses was trained in those educational centers, of course.
  

• The world that the Israelites went INTO (Canaan, after the Exodus) was also highly literate. We have texts from this period as well.
  

• The world of the United Monarchy (under David and Solomon) was a period of unprecedented literary achievement within Palestine, with literary exchanges with Egypt and Meso being common. It is in this period that the Teacher in Ecc 12.12 says "Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body."
  

• Under the Divided monarchy we have our first archeological evidence of the existence of schools and libraries in Israel (i.e. the Siloam Inscription under Hezekiah, the Lachish Letters written by a junior military officer, and the 'alphabet writing practice' jars in outposts in southern Palestine)--in the 8th century BC.
  

• We have unbroken evidence of schools/libraries from the Exile until the well known school of Ben Sira in the 2nd century BC.
  

• The evidence shows that documents were written, preserved, transmitted, and used by SEVERAL DIFFERENT (and not necessarily co-operative) groups--the priesthood, the military, the government, the prophets (often in opposition to the leadership), the merchants, the managers of households and estates, and the educational centers. There was a VAST AMOUNT of literary exchange throughout Israel's history. (cf. Is 29.11,12; Ezek 37.15-20; Hab 2.2).
  

• Indeed, by the time we get to the NT, those non-official works known as the Jewish Apocrypha and the even less-official Pseudepigrapha are cited/alluded to over 100 times in the NT documents. And, in light of the fact that many of these references are made by COMMON, non-rabbinic writers raises the obvious question as to how these presumably limited-circulation documents would have be APPEALED TO (or even KNOWN) by these common-folk writers...They obviously took it for granted that their general audiences of the populace ALSO had basic familiarity with those documents! I suspect we have underestimated the extent of literary pervasiveness in 1st century Palestine (but I am investigating that as fast as I can!)...
  

Well, I need to go get some sleep now...I have to write an article for a client-server magazine in the morning, create a presentation on 'Managing the Total Cost of Computing in Large Organizations' tomorrow, finish budgets, etc., etc., etc. before heading out on Wed. on the plane...

Talk to you in a couple of weeks...glenn
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