Elusive Scrolls: Could Any Hebrew Literature Have Been Written Prior to the Eighth Century BCE?
Abstract
Two reasons lead many scholars today to think that the Israelites were not able to produce long, literary works during the 10th and 9th centuries bce . First, there is a dearth of Hebrew inscriptions from that time; second, the Israelites did not have the necessary socio-economic resources until the 8th century bce . This article critically assesses these two lines of reasoning in light of current research in the epigraphy and archaeology of the Southern Levant. In addition, it provides several elements which indicate that the necessary conditions for the production of long texts were present in Judah/Israel in the early royal period.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Conditions for the production of lengthy texts were already present in the 10th and 9th c. BCE in the southern Levant.
“Richelle convincingly presents evidence that the conditions for the production of lengthy texts were already present in the 10th and 9th c.BCE.”
From Killing Pharaohs in Exodus: The Anonymity of the Egyptian Kings, the Deconstruction of Their Individuality, and the Egyptian Practice of Damnatio Memoriae (2023) · cites this paper as Richelle 2016, pp. 556-94
Cited by
Sorted by citations
- Authors
- Richelle, M.
- Affiliations
- École Pratique des Hautes Études (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Richelle, Matthieu
- ORCID
- Richelle, Matthieu
- Venue
- Vetus Testamentum
- Publisher
- Walter de Gruyter GmbH
- Published
- 2016-10-12
- Volume
- 66
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 556-594
- ISSN
- 0042-4935 (ISSN-L)
- 1568-5330
- OpenAlex
- W2537715912
- Cited by
- 41
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 5
- FWCI
- 0.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Vetus Testamentum (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Religious studies › Biblical Studies and Interpretation
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Archeology › Ancient Near East History
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Archeology › Archaeology and Historical Studies
- Keywords
- Hebrew inscriptions, Hebrew literature, Judah, Israel, socioeconomic conditions
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
