Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age.

• Author: Whisenant, Jessica
• Position: Book review

Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age. By CHRISTOPHER A. ROLLSTON. SBL Archaeology and Biblical Studies, vol. 11. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2010. Pp. xix + 171, illus. $21.95.

The purpose of this book is twofold: 1) to analyze the Iron Age Northwest Semitic epigraphic record, and 2) to discuss how this record can shed light on ancient Israelite writing, literacy, and scrib-alism. In his preface, Rollston describes his work as "non-technical" (p. xv). In keeping with this pronouncement, his introduction reviews some basic principles of the epigraphic and paleographic method and provides explanations for the non-specialist of many key terms used in the field of epigraphy.

In the three chapters that comprise part 1, Rollston situates his analysis of ancient Israelite writing and literacy within the larger picture of Early Alphabetic writing during a period that encompassed the origin of alphabetic writing in the early second millennium, down through its development by the Phoenicians in the early first millennium and its use by the various Levantine polities from the ninth through the sixth centuries B.C.E. With one notable exception, these three chapters hardly break new ground; rather, they seem designed to present the novice in Northwest Semitic epigraphy with a well-informed but uncontroversial portrait of Phoenicia's role in developing and promoting the script throughout the wider Levantine world (and beyond) in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. This is followed by an account of the rise of the Levantine national scripts and by a survey of the various types of inscriptions in Northwest Semitic that have been unearthed to date.

Where Rollston for the first time deviates from the general consensus is in his identification of the script as Phoenician of two famous inscriptions dating to the late tenth or early ninth centuries B.C.E., discovered in ancient Israelite territory, and commonly held to have been written in the Old Hebrew script: the Tel Zayit abecedary and the Gezer Calendar. Rollston contends that the Old Hebrew script did not develop until later in the ninth century; until then the Phoenician script remained in use in Israel as well as in the wider Levantine and Mediterranean geographic region, with inscriptions in this script series hailing from Crete, Syria, and Anatolia as well as Phoenicia and Israel. When later in the ninth century the Old Hebrew script...