Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-216) and index.

For the past two-hundred years Biblical scholars have usually assumed that the Hebrew Bible was mostly written and edited in the Persian and Hellenistic periods (5th-2nd centuries B.C.E.). Recent archaeological evidence and insights from linguistic anthropology, however, point to the earlier era of the late Iron Age (8th-6th centuries B.C.E.) as the formative period for the writing of biblical literature. This book combines recent archaeological discoveries in the Middle East with insights from the history of writing to address how the Bible first came to be written down and then became sacred Scripture. It provides insight into why these texts came to have authority as Scripture and explores why Ancient Israel, an oral culture, began to write literature. It describes an emerging literate society in ancient Israel challenging the assertion that literacy first arose in Greece during the fifth century B.C.E.--From publisher description.

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