Non­fic­tion

Scrib­al Cul­ture and the Mak­ing of the Hebrew Bible

Karel Van Der Toorn
  • Review
By – March 23, 2012
Van Der Toorn, pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ams­ter­dam, and schol­ar of ancient reli­gion, has invest­ed much ener­gy in delin­eat­ing the world of the scribe of the ancient Near East, and from that work has cre­at­ed a view of how that may have influ­enced the cre­ation of the Hebrew Bible. He draws from Egypt­ian and Mesopotami­an par­al­lels, of which con­sid­er­able infor­ma­tion is avail­able and applies it to Israel, where almost noth­ing is known out­side of the Bible itself. Per­haps not sur­pris­ing­ly, the result describes the scrib­al cul­ture” of the Uni­ver­si­ty as much as any world of the past.
Jeff Bogursky reads a lot, writes a lit­tle and talks quite a bit. He is a media exec­u­tive and expert in dig­i­tal media.

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