William M. SCHNIEDEWIND. Who Really Wrote the Bible: The Story of the Scribes.  Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press. 2024. Pp. xii + 337. $29.95  ISBN 978-0-691-23317-8. Reviewed by Daniel SMITH-CHRISTOPHER, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA.

This book is described by Princeton University Press as “groundbreaking”, and even accounting for marketing language, this is not really an exaggeration.  William (“Bill”) Schniedewind, The Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies at UCLA, is an accomplished Biblical scholar, who has already produced some critically important studies.  However, as he describes in this fascinating book that reads like he is chatting with you over coffee in his office, he has become increasingly interested in the actual production of the writings themselves – the technology and cultural contexts of scribal production in the ancient world.  In short – those who “really did” write the Bible!

When one reads, early in this book, that we “need to think practically about how scribes actually learned and worked.  This began with relationships – master scribes and their apprentices.  These master scribes were first employees of the government bureaucracy.  They had official positions.  They trained their apprentices – junior scribes.  And while learning and working together, they created tight-knit communities…”(5), then it quickly becomes clear that here is an approach to thinking about the Bible that is rarely, if ever, seriously considered as part of understanding how the Bible came to be, and ought to be also a part of our contemporary reading and study of the Bible.  Schniedewind is a trustworthy guide for such serious questions!

Beginning with an analysis of the artifacts of writing from the ancient world itself, Schniedewind carefully discusses how writing emerged in real life – and what we can know about those who produced all kinds of ancient writing.  An interesting key for Schniedewind is establishing the existence of communities of scribes – it is rare, it seems, to speak about a lone writer apart from a group, nor is it to be thought of as a rural undertaking! Scribal communities presume official, and urban, institutional support.  Schniedewind shows us how many passages of the Bible point toward the existence of these scribal communities – sometimes pointing out that there have been some translation problems in English that have effectively ‘hidden’ the scribal communities themselves.  A common translation of a Hebrew term as simply: “young man” in English, for example, rather than the more specific “apprentice”, effectively hid the existence of training groups including scribal schools in previous English translations.  Indeed, some of these translation clarifications that Schniedewind points out, result in rather striking new understanding that scribal traditions and training ARE more common in the Bible than we previously realized.

In the opening chapters, Schniedewind establishes the roots of Scribal culture in Egypt – moving towards territories of their interest including Canaan (later to be Israel/Palestine), in Egypt.  There are clear Egyptian influences on the beginnings of writing in this area, and Schniedewind emphasizes that “biblical literature did not start as a religious corpus.  It started in the mundane life of an emerging monarchy and its military, administrative, and diplomatic operations” (74).  Religious writings, clearly, come much later when Scribal communities become associated with shrines as much as from royal patronage.

After Israelite kingdoms are established, Schniedewind then explores how Northern Israelite scribal traditions moved south into Judah, influencing the beginnings of their scribal culture as well – and bringing with them Northern traditions that have entered into our Bibles.  This is interesting, noting that for all intents and purposes, our Bibles are a decidedly JUDEAN (southern) undertaking.  In fact, in subsequent chapters, Schniedewind weighs the evidence of different sorts of scribal communities – sometimes with rival agendas.  There were “prophetic” scribal communities in addition to priestly groups and royal groups.  The wider Imperial conquests of Babylon, especially, with their destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, eliminated much of the diversity of these communities.  Jerusalem, however, would remain the center of any surviving and ongoing scribal activity.   The religious writings of the Bible, therefore, would take place as a Jerusalem based activity right into the Hellenistic era.  However, rival groups would arise – such as the group responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls.

An interesting implication of Schniedewind’s emphasis on scribal communities is whether the Bible reflects as much these writing communities’ own social, political, or religious agendas as well as those they are writing about (or for)!  In some cases, this question becomes quite serious.  Why, for example, would a scribal community with any kind of official (royal) support continue to copy and re-copy a fiery and potentially revolutionary text like Micah or Amos?  One could argue that southern scribes would love to maintain writings that blame the NORTHERN kingdom’s fall on their sins…but it seems to me that it would be hard to keep a book like Micah historically caged in a specific context…the implications of the book’s furious criticism of leadership (kings, priests, even false prophets) would be hard to control.  Southern slave-holders may have approved their slaves hearing sermons, perhaps even about Moses, but it wouldn’t have taken the hearers long to make the easy leap from emancipation from slavery in ancient Egypt to thinking the same about 18-19th century Southern plantations!  Were there radical scribes as well as conservative and obedient scribes?

Reflecting on Schniedewind’s wonderful book, we are reminded to be grateful for the hours, the months, and the years that scribes spent with their inkwells and precious papyrus scrolls.