Newly Discovered Documents of Judean Exiles in Babylonia

[Stephan Huller]

https://www.arhu.umd.edu/events/newly-d ... -babylonia

[DCHindley]

https://www.arhu.umd.edu/events/newly-d ... -babylonia

After all the advance hype, we'll probably learn that they all dealt with grain and oil distributions.

[Stephan Huller]

Yup. You'd think we'd have read something about this by now

[semiopen]

I wonder what the implications of 200+ cuneiform tablets about the use of stuff like Parchment.

Parchment was developed in Pergamon, alternately Pergamo [3] from which name it is believed the word "parchment" evolved,[4] under the patronage of either Eumenes I, who ruled 263–241 BCE; or Eumenes II, who ruled 197–158, as a substitute for papyrus, which was temporarily not being exported from Alexandria, its only source.

I don't understand what the various biblical scrolls could have been written on other than Papyrus, which the Parchment wiki says was not manufactured outside of Alexandria.

Just curious, I haven't seen any academic discussions of this issue.

[DCHindley]

I wonder what the implications of 200+ cuneiform tablets [would be] about the [alternate] use of stuff like Parchment or whatever.

The Babylonians were the ones who used clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform characters, not the Judeans. That's why I think they will be Babylonian accounts related to Judean exiles in local context only, at least the earlier ones. The rest will likely be copies of official communications between towns/villages and central authorities at various levels, which would naturally be written in the "official" cuneiform manner. The place where the tablets were deposited may have governed regions settled by the Judean exiles. I would think these Judeans would have to be mentioned in some manner or another if that were the case.

DCH

[Thor]

I knew this sounded familiar, so I searched my library. ( Vast chaotic mess of stored data to be honest ). Found this piece published by professor Kathleen Abraham from 2011.

The Reconstruction of Jewish Communities in the Persian Empire: The Āl-Yahūdu Clay Tablets
https://www.academia.edu/1383485/The_Re ... ay_Tablets

I know it relates to the same region and period, but not sure about much more. But Imagine those with interest will get a clearer picture of what to expect.

[spin]

Lots of ancient texts that don't stir interest still help give history. The Jewish banking family, the Murashu family left several hundred tablets in the Babylonian city of Nippur that provide evidence for Jews living in Mesopotamia, choosing not to return to where they came from.

[Thor]

Lots of ancient texts that don't stir interest still help give history. The Jewish banking family, the Murashu family left several hundred tablets in the Babylonian city of Nippur that provide evidence for Jews living in Mesopotamia, choosing not to return to where they came from.

Certainly. I only referred to one's own personal interest, not the academic study of history as a whole.

[semiopen]

In a class on Sunday, my Rabbi mentioned the bullshit about Moses writing 13 copies of the Torah on Parchment. He further made the outrageous assertions that Moses created the 54 Parshot as well as the tropes.

I don't argue when he says the entire Torah was written by God and Moses, etc but these things seemed off the wall.

The existence of technology to write on animal skins prior to second temple times does not seem to be possible.

The History and Technology of Parchment Making by Meliora di Curci http://www.sca.org.au/scribe/articles/parchment.htm

As early as the late Assyrian period (8th Century BC) the inhabitants of Mesopotamia preferred animal hides to clay tablets for writing, and according to Herodotus, wrote on unhaired sheep and goat skins (Gansser, 1950, p. 2941). Inscriptions from Denderah state: after the finding of decayed leather rolls from the days of King Kheops (c. 2575 BC) (Reed, 1972, p. 4).

The simplified tanning process used to make leather (see section 3.1) created difficulties in drying the wet leather to a smooth, flat sheet free of wrinkles and undulations (Reed, 1975, p. 40) which detracted from their widespread use, leaving papyrus the dominant writing media (Reed, 1975, p. 37).

I think these technical issues prevented the skins from being rolled into a scroll.

In the second century BC a library was set up at Pergamum in Asia Minor by King Eumenes II. Pliny wrote in his Natural History, Book XIII, passage XXI:

Subsequently, also according to Varro, when owing to the rivalry between King Ptolemy and King Eumenes about their libraries, Ptolemy suppressed the export of Papyrus, parchment was invented at Pergamum and afterwards the employment of the material on which the immortality of human beings depends, spread indiscriminately." (Reed, 1975, p7)

The apparently universal view is that first temple biblical scrolls were written on Papyrus.

An important article is -

Book-Scrolls at the. Beginning of the. Second. Temple. Period. The Transition from. Papyrus to Skins*. MENAHEM. HARAN. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1983

Haran remarks

This conclusion that the scribal practice of the pre-exilic period was based primarily on papyrus-scrolls, invites the question of how conditions changed and what caused the total rejection of papyrii for scrolls, to the extent that in the Talmud, the copying of holy writ on skins becomes positively obligatory, being conceived as a law given to Moses at Sinai. (J.T Megillah 71d and Soferim 1,1-4)

An interesting if somewhat obscure sideline.