Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature

This book explores a new model for the production, revision, and reception of Biblical texts as Scripture. Building on recent studies of the oral–written interface in medieval, Greco-Roman and ancient Near Eastern contexts, David Carr argues that in ancient Israel Biblical texts and other texts emerged as a support for an educational process in which written and oral dimensions were integrally intertwined. The point was not incising and reading texts on parchment or papyrus. The point was to enculturate ancient Israelites -- particularly Israelite elites - by training them to memorize and recite a wide range of traditional literature that was seen as the cultural bedrock of the people: narrative, prophecy, prayer, and wisdom. Generally, mastery was exercised through remarkably exact recall and reproduction of the tradition - whether through oral performance or through production of written "performances." Crises like exile, however, could prompt the creation of radically new versions of the classic tradition, incorporating verbal recall of ancient tradition with various extensions, recontextualizations and supplements. This educational process took place on a one-to-one basis and focused on the cultivation of an educated elite. A major change took place with the arrival of the Hellenistic empires in the fourth and following centuries. This, says Carr, led to the emergence of a democratized Jewish "school" as well as the marking off of the standard Israelite texts as an "anti-canon" to the Hellenistic canon of educational texts that were used in the Greek schools of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Table of Contents:
PART ONE: EARLY EXAMPLES OF TEXTUALITY AND EDUCATION IN THE NEAR EAST AND MEDITERRANEAN ; PART TWO: TEXTUALITY AND EDUCATION IN THE EASTERN HELLENISTIC WORLD ; APPENDIX: THE RELATION OF THIS STUDY TO EARLIER RESEARCH

About the Author :
David M. Carr is Professor of Old Testament at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He is the author of The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Bible (OUP, 2003) and several other books.

Review :
In Writing on the Tablet of the Heart David Carr draws on a vast range of evidence to explore writing and the socialization of elites in the ancient Near East and the Hellenistic world. This impressive work contributes vitally to breaking down the distinction between literacy and orality which has often clouded discussions of cultural and administrative institutions in the ancient world, and reaches significant conclusions that will have an impact far beyond its core area of Biblical Studies. David Carr's Writing on the Tablet of the Heart provides a fresh and highly readable account of the contexts and conditions which progressively shaped ancient Israel's textual heritage as scripture. Carr adroitly employs an impressively broad range of comparative and theoretical perspectives to argue for the centrality of an oral-written textual practice in the educational process of cultural formation and socialization in elite Israelite circles. While this book is must reading for students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible, both in its literary formation and social reception, Carr's reach extends to other cultural fields in which orality and textuality are performatively bound. David Carr has given us an extremely thorough study of the modes of textual transmission that has far-reaching implications for our study of the Pentateuch and the composition of biblical literature. Using a comparative and anthropological approach, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart breaks new ground in understanding the implications of orality and literacy in the formation of Scripture. This well-written and carefully researched book deserves to be a standard work for anyone interested in the Bible. [Carr] integrates so many good ideas together into a coherent synthesis that this will become a classic text worth quoting. His arguments are compelling. The author has brought old insights into a comprehensive synthesis and given us new perspectives, or "handles," by which to focus our attention on the greater picture of writing, literacy, scribes, and literary texts in the ancient world. Exceptionally erudite and readable. Biblical scholars will need to seriously consider this well laid out challenge to the generally accepted theories of documentary sources.