• Memory in a Time of Prose: Studies in Epistemology, Hebrew Scribalism, and the Biblical Past

    Author(s):
    Daniel Pioske (see profile)
    Date:
    2018
    Subject(s):
    History--Comparative method, History, Ancient, History, Bible. Old Testament, Scribes--Social life and customs
    Item Type:
    Book
    Tag(s):
    Comparative ancient history, Hebrew bible, Old Testament, Scribalism/scribal culture
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6RJ48V0H
    Abstract:
    Memory in a Time of Prose investigates a deceptively straightforward question: what did the biblical scribes know about times previous to their own? Daniel D. Pioske attempts to answer this question by studying the sources, limits, and conditions of knowing that would have shaped biblical stories told about a past that preceded the composition of these writings by a generation or more. This book is comprised of a series of case studies that compare biblical references to an early Iron Age world (ca. 1175-830 BCE) with a wide range of archaeological and historical evidence from the era in which these stories are set. Pioske examines the relationship between the past disclosed through these historical traces and the past represented within the biblical narrative. He discovers that the knowledge available to the biblical scribes about this period derived predominantly from memory and word of mouth, rather than from a corpus of older narrative documents. For those Hebrew scribes who first set down these stories in prose writing, the means for knowing a past and the significance attached to it were, in short, wed foremost to the faculty of remembrance. Memory in a Time of Prose reveals how the past was preserved, transformed, or forgotten in the ancient world of oral, living speech that informed biblical storytelling.
    Metadata:
    Published as:
    Book    
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    5 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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