WRITING ABOUT WRITING: ABECEDARIES AND

EVIDENCE FOR LITERACY IN ANCIENT ISRAEL

by
RICHARD S. HESS
Denver Seminary

The announcement of the discovery of a tenth century BCE abecedary

during the 2005 excavation season at Ron Tappy's excavations of Tell
Zeitah/Tel Zayit, south of Jerusalem provides further opportunity for
reflecting on the development of literacy in ancient Israel.1 This site
of eight acres boasted an alphabetic script whose most natural explanation remains that it served the purpose of learning how to read and
write in Hebrew. The text was scratched onto a stone that was formed
into a cup on the opposite side. This was secondarily buried into the
wall of a domestic dwelling. The abecedary was written before being
used in the wall as it was impossible to write the letters present on
the stone from its position in ntu. The text was given no apparent
prominence in the house, suggesting that it probably served no magical or special function, or that this was secondary. The paleography
of the script places it in the transitional period between the general
Phoenician orthography of Iron Age 1 (c. 1200-1000 BCE) and the
separate national scripts of Iron Age 2 (c. 1000-586 BCE). In this case
it largely conforms to a script transitioning to Hebrew and may be
most closely compared with the Gezer Calendar, in terms of dating,
letter forms, and an extended text of several lines.
Such a find as this adds to a growing body of epigraphic evidence
that serves to emphasize the presence of numerous writers and readers of Hebrew, and perhaps other neighboring scripts. The effect is to
1

For the description of the site and discovery, see the press release, "Pittsburgh
Theological Seminary Professor Discovers Evidence of Oldest Known Securely Dateable
Abecedary," 9 November 2005, from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, where Tappy
is G. Albert Shoemaker Professor of Bible and Archaeology; and from a public presentation by Tappy and P. Kyle McCarter at the annual meeting of the American
Schools of Oriental Research, 17 November 2005. Ron Tappy will publish a full treatment of the inscription. I thank him for reading this article and commenting on this
study. All interpretations are, of course, my own.
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2006
Also available online - www.brill.nl

Vetus Testamentum LVI,3

LITERACY IN ANCIENT ISRAEL

343

increase the evidence for the presence of a literacy that could be found
in rural areas as well as in state capitals and administrative centers.
Some of this evidence was summarized by the author in an earlier
discussion.2 It here remains to consider what this abecedary and other
recent studies provide in the way of a brief, interim assessment of this
question.
First, much of the evidence, in terms of Iron Age texts in and
around the areas traditionally assigned to the states of Israel and Judah,
was described earlier and need not be repeated here. It remains essential to note, however, that the importance of this evidence is primary
and crucial for understanding this question. Insofar as the biblical text
is in any sense understood as ideological or theological tendentious, it
remains suspect with respect to its evidence for reading and writing.
This is especially true in the Deuteronomistic literature where texts
are concerned to demonstrate the guilt of ancient Israelites in not following the written law of Yahweh and in worshiping other deities.
Such indictments gain significant force with the assumption that a representative group of Israelites could and did read and write this law.3
Thus there may have been motivation for making such claims. However,
even if one accepts the witness of the biblical text as authentic, sporadic statements such as occur in the text do not witness to a consistent testimony of reading and writing. Furthermore, the attestations
within a single body of literature such as the Bible require additional
and separate voices in order to establish any historical reality, ancient
or modern, by the means of multiple and separate sources of testimony.
Thus the evidence of Iron Age Hebrew inscriptions can provide an
invaluable starting point for the investigation of questions of literacy.
Indeed, in my earlier review of (then) recent writers on this subject,
including Young, Niditch, and Jamieson-Drake, an attempt was made
to appreciate the discussions and to move forward by arguing for the
need to assess all the available epigraphic evidence.4 As was the case

2
R.S. Hess, "literacy in Iron Age Israel", in V.P. Long, D.W. Baker and G.J.
Wenham (eds.), Windows into Old Testament History. Evidence, Argument, and the Crisis of
"Biblical Israel" (Grand Rapids/Cambridge, 2002), pp. 82-102.
3
Cf. texts such as Deut, vi 4-9; xvii 18-20. Compare also the negative evaluation
of Israel from the beginning (Judg. ii 10-13) with claims that its citizens could write
(Judg. viii 14).
4
I.M. Young, "Israelite literacy: interpreting the evidence, Part I", VT 48 (1998),
pp. 239-53; "Israelite literacy: interpreting the evidence, Part II", VT 48 (1998), pp.
408-22; S. Niditch, Oral Word and Written Word: Ancient Israelite literature (Louisville, 1996);

344

RICHARD S. HESS

then and remains true, there is no means of drawing this discussion

to a conclusion. However, each authentic inscription that is identified
adds to the overall picture of a people among whom many could read
and write.
A second important point concerning the question of literacy is that,
however, iconic the role of monumental texts, the presence of such
inscriptions assumes that a significant number of people could read
them to make their public presence and the variety of their texts worth
recording. This is all the more true when these texts were written with
no indication of accompanying artwork that might substitute for or at
least summarize the contents of the text. Such artwork is found accompanying public inscriptions in Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Egypt. It
occurs on earlier West Semitic inscriptions such as that of Idrimi.
There the text of Idrimi's rise to power is written on a statuesque representation of the seated monarch. The ninth century BCE Tell
Fakhariyeh inscription is also written on a statue of the ruler. Its bilingual nature, with the same or a similar text written both in Aramaic
and in Assyrian, would seem odd if it served a purely iconic perspective. However, the Moabite stele, the Tel Dan inscription, and the
Neo-Philistine text from Tel Ekron all attest to the presence of monumental inscriptions using alphabetic orthography not unlike Hebrew
during the Israelite Monarchy throughout the region. Nor is Jerusalem
without such evidence. It is difficult to understand any function for
the Siloam Tunnel inscription (c. 700 BCE) and its lengthy description, with details about building the tunnel, except for the purpose of
recording this event for others to read. From about the same time

D.W. Jamieson-Drake, Scribes and Schoob in Monarchic Judah. A Socio-Archeological Approach

(JSOTSup 109; SWBA 9; Sheffield, 1991). Young's article was reviewed first and in
greater detail as the most recent contribution to these discussions. Nevertheless, I.M.
Young, "Israelite literacy and inscriptions: a response to Richard Hess", VT 55 (2005),
pp. 565-67, took this author to task for attempting to mount a "case against my arguments." The astonishing nature of this claim is demonstrated by the simple fact that,
in spite of filling three and a half pages of Vetas Testamentum with quotations from my
earlier work, Young is unable to cite one instance where I state explicitly that I disagree with any of the major points of his argument. Rather than dealing directly with
such a claim, which doesn't exist, he must revert to citing a single general work on
history (not on literacy or inscriptions) and conclusions he understands the authors to
reach there. Whether or not I agree with Young, and I certainly don't agree with him
on various points, my discussion in the article was not intended to mount a case against
him. References to him and to other scholars discussing the question of literacy were
rather intended to demonstrate the importance of the question, as well as the need for
an up-to-date assessment of the epigraphic evidence.

LITERACY IN ANCIENT ISRAEL

345

period another fragment of a monumental inscription from Jerusalem

has been discovered.5 Again, this suggests a greater number of these
monumental inscriptions, found in both obscure and prominent places,
and written by nations throughout the region. Writing was not unknown
nor was it so rare that it could not appear in a variety of public texts.
The third point concerns the continually increasing evidence for a
wide variety of people from all walks of life who could read and write.
One can now consider more than seventeen hundred Imlk seal impressions from c. 700 BCE as well as perhaps twelve hundred or more
different seals and seal impressions, from the Northern Kingdom of
Israel and from Judah.6 When taken together with hundreds of additional pieces of writing, there is evidence that throughout Iron Age 2,
and extending back to Iron Age 1 (c. 1200-1000 BCE), every region
and every level of society had its writers and readers, and that they
left thousands of inscriptions for archaeologists and others to identify.7
Whether as Schniedewind's "broader literacy" or Dever's "functional
literacy," the epigraphic evidence continues to grow.8 The writings
incised on the seals betray a variety of skills, from the cruder forms
etched by those too poor to hire a professional scribe, to the more
elegant styles.9 The same is true of the value of the stones on which
the seals are carved. The whole picture is consistent with a variety of
classes and groups, not merely a few elites.10

5
F.M. Gross, Jr., "A Fragment of a Monumental Inscription from the City of
David", IE} 51 (2001), pp. 44-47.
6
Cf. A. G. Vaughn, Theology, History, and Archaeology in the Chronicler's Account o/Hezekiah
(Archaeology and Biblical Studies 4; Atlanta, 1999); Hess (note 2).
7
Young's (p. 567) reference to 485 inscriptions in my essay is not my own number but an earlier published assessment. The actual number of identified inscriptions
in pre-exilic Israel is several times that figure.
8
Cf. W.M. Schniedewind, "Orality and Literacy in Ancient Israel", Religious Studies
Review 26A (2000), p. 331; W.G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Enow and When
Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel (Grand
Rapids and Cambridge, 2001), pp. 202-21.
9
Gf. A. Demsky and M. Bar-Dan, "Writing in Ancient Israel and Early Judaism,"
in M.J. Mulder (ed.), Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible
in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (Assen/Maastricht, 1988), p. 15.
10
This argues against the view that only priests, government officials, and professional scribes could read or write. Contra Young, p. 566, it is not clear that this is
the picture found in the Bible. See, already, Judg. viii 14. See further the extrabiblical evidence of Lachish ostracon 3 and the interpretation (and full discussion of other
views) by W.M. Schniedewind, "Sociolinguistic Reflections on the Letter of a 'Literate'
Soldier (Lachish 3)", Ztschnfi fur AUhebraistik 13 (2000), pp. 157-67.

346

RICHARD S. HESS

The Tel Zayit abecedary from the tenth century follows by perhaps
a hundred years the Izbet Sartah abecedary that was found in the
Western hill country village by that name.11 The material culture of
that village conforms to the general culture of the Israelite hill country, although the script of the abecedary predates the distinctive Hebrew
script of the first millennium BCE. As with the seals and other inscriptions, the picture these texts suggest is one of learning to read and
write the alphabet in the villages of what would be known as ancient
Israel. This new discovery provides evidence that this practice was
going on in the tenth century BCE, as well as before and after that
time.
Abstract
The 2005 discovery of an abecedary from the tenth century BCE at the Judean site
of Tel Zayit dramatically attests to the increasing evidence for the presence of writing
during the Israelite monarchy. As an example from early in the history of the development of the Hebrew script, this text supplements epigraphic and biblical attestations
to the early and ongoing presence of readers and writers at many levels of Israelite
society.

11
Gf M. Kochavi, "An Ostracon of the Period of the Judges from Izbet Sartah",
Tel Aviv 4 (1977), pp. 1-13; A. Demsky, "A Proto-Canaanite Abecedary Dating from
the Period of the Judges and Its Implications for the History of the Alphabet", Tel Aviv
4 (1977), pp. 14-27; F.M. Cross, Jr., "Newly Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite and
Early Phoenician Script", BASOR 238 (1980), pp. 8-15.

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