Scribal Discourses in Second Temple Biblical Literature
Edited by Jaeyoung Jeon Edited by Louis C. Jonker Edited by Katharina Pyschny
Paperback (Forthcoming)
(November 2026)
ISBN: 9783162008107
6.1 x 9.13 inches
Price: $164.00
The contributors to this volume examine how diverse scribal voices in the Second Temple period debate, support, and resonate with one another across the textual traditions of the Hebrew Bible, illuminating the social, institutional, and theological dynamics that shaped Scripture in the making.
The contributors to this volume investigate the scribal communities and literary practices that shaped the formation of the Hebrew Bible during the late Achaemenid-Persian and early Hellenistic periods, with particular attention to scribal activity in Yehud/Judea and the broader southern Levant. Drawing on redaction criticism, intertextual analysis, and socio-historical contextualization, the contributors collectively advance the thesis that biblical literature emerged not from solitary authorship or linear editorial progression, but from sustained negotiation among competing and collaborating scribal circles embedded in specific institutional, political, and theological contexts. The volume proceeds in two movements: methodological reflection on how scribal ideologies and practices are identified in biblical and post-biblical texts, followed by case studies examining concrete instances of scribal discourse across the Pentateuch and prophetic literature. The studies converge on a central claim: textual plurality was a structural feature of Second Temple scriptural transmission, not an aberration – as analysis of the competing redactional layers in Deuteronomy, Numbers, Genesis, the prophetic corpus, and the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrates. The relationship between Judean and Samarian scribal circles – whether characterized by rivalry, family ties, or negotiated compromise – emerges as a generative axis of inquiry. The contributors also examine how post-exilic circumstances, including diaspora, colonial administration, and priestly competition, left identifiable traces in Pentateuchal and prophetic redaction. By bringing together specialists across previously compartmentalized subdisciplines, they model an integrative approach to Fortschreibung, theocratic redaction, and the social history of Scripture.
Jaeyoung Jeon: Orality and Performance in Scribal Culture: Some Methodological Considerations on the Formation of the Bible - Attila Bodor: Deuteronomistic Scribal Concerns: Behind the (Pre-)Samaritan Editorial Interventions - Reinhard Achenbach: God's Covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17 and Genesis 15: A Comparative and a Complementary Reading of a Scribal Composition - Kishiya Hidaka: The Anti-Diaspora Scribal Group and the Formation of the Pentateuchal Wilderness Narrative - Louis C. Jonker: Theocratic Redaction in the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Period? Exploring its Possible Connections to Chronicles - Dany Nocquet: The Restoration of Northern Israel and its Unity with Judah: Reflections about Literary Developments in the Prophets during the Persian Period - Diana Edelman: The Ties that Bind: Scribal Families Working on Mt. Gerizim and in Jerusalem? - Eckart Otto: Was there a Compromise between Scribal Scholars in Jerusalem and on Mount Gerizim in the Post-exilic Hexateuch and Pentateuch? - Mark G. Brett: Mapping Scribal Self-Interest and Compromise in the Pentateuch - Taylor O. Gray: Nascent Jewish Scribal Theology and the Assembly of the Pentateuch
- Edited by Jaeyoung Jeon
- Edited by Louis C. Jonker
- Edited by Katharina Pyschny
Other Titles in this Series
Kronerben der Weisheit
Gott, Konig und Frommer in der didaktischen Literatur Agyptens und Israels
Volume 20
Inscribe It in a Book
Scribal Practice, Cultural Memory, and the Making of the Hebrew Scriptures
Volume 139
The Translation Style of Old Greek Habakkuk
Methodological Advancement in Interpretative Studies of the Septuagint
Volume 86
Scribal Culture and Intertextuality
Literary and Historical Relationships between Job and Deutero-Isaiah
Stammevolk – Staatsvolk – Gottesvolk?
Studien zur Verwendung des Israel-Namens im Alten Testament
Volume 68
Identitat und Bedeutung der Gruppen im masoretischen Estherbuch
Einfuhrung in eine gruppenorientierte Hermeneutik
Volume 158
Contesting Labeled Identities
The Sociology of Gentilics in Biblical and Northwest Semitic Literature
The Vision in Job 4 and Its Role in the Book
Reframing the Development of the Joban Dialogues. Studies of the Sofja Kovalevskaja Research Group on Early Jewish Monotheism. Vol. IV
Volume 75
The Significance of Linguistic Diversity in the Hebrew Bible
Language and Boundaries of Self and Other
Volume 138
The Formation of the ‘Book’ of Psalms
Reconsidering the Transmission and Canonization of Psalmody in Light of Material Culture and the Poetics of Anthologies
Volume 88
Yahwistic Diversity and the Hebrew Bible
Tracing Perspectives of Group Identity from Judah, Samaria, and the Diaspora in Biblical Traditions
Similar Books
Ars Prophetica
Theology in the Poetry of Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poets Avraham Halfi, Shin Shalom, Amir Gilboa, and T. Carmi
As Messianism Turns to Heresy
The Regenstein Chair Lectures On Lurianic Kabbalah and Shabbatai Tzevi at Hebrew Union College - Cincinnati
Athanasius of Alexandria, Epistula ad episcopos Aegypti et Libyae
Old Slavonic Version and English Translation
Volume 261
Cyril of Alexandria’s Christological Exegesis
Explorations of Partitive Exegesis in the Dialogues on the Trinity
Volume 70
Epiphanies of the Divine in the Septuagint and the New Testament
Fifth International Symposium of the Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti (CJHNT), 14-17 May 2015, Nottingham
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
From Joseph to Jesus
The Joseph Narrative as a Compositional Template from Old Greek Esther to the Gospel of Luke
Volume 125
Lobbying for Equality
Jacques Godard and the Struggle for Jewish Equality during the French Revolution
Paradise Lost in Transmission
The Return to Eden in the Apocalypse of Peter within Its Ethiopic and Early Christian Contexts
Punning in Odd or Elegant Constructions in Jeremiah
The Convergence of Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Textuality in the Hebrew Text of Jeremiah
Shame in the Worlds of the Hebrew Bible and Akkadian Texts
A Linguistic Study and Its Implications
Volume 33
