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Bible Dictionaries
Writing
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or WRITING
1. Pre-historic The origin of writing is not recorded in Genesis, where we should expect to find some account of it, but this omission may be intentional. Since God is represented as writing on two Tables of stone ( This classic reference book has been a standard for the past 100 years among scholars and laity alike. James Hastings, one of the most influential Bible scholars and editors of the early 19th century, assembled this massive dictionary of all Biblical terms in 1909. Written by over 75 Biblical experts and pastors, each entry has an in-depth explanation, summary, cross-references, and contributor. This edition also has a list of abbreviations, maps, and a pronunciation guide. Hasting's one volume Dictionary of the Bible is not simply an abridged or condensed version of his 5-volume work. It is an entirely separate work.
This resource is essential for any student of the Bible, whether you×re a pastor, seminary student, or general reader. With the Logos edition, all Scripture references are linked to the other resources in your library, making study, devotions, and comparison easy. f.), it might seem improper that He should employ a human invention, while, on the other hand, there may have been no tradition that the art was first used on that occasion; the inference is therefore left to be drawn by the reader. Perhaps we may infer from the phrase in Isaiah 8:1 that there was a style known as ‘Divine writing,’ being the character used in these Tables. The Tables themselves scarcely figure in the historical parts of the OT, neither can we from the Pentateuch learn their contents with precision; yet the tradition that such Tables at one time existed is likely to be trustworthy, and the narratives given in Ex. and Deut. imply that there were whole Tables and fragments of Tables which had to be accounted for. From the statement that they were written on both sides afterwards grotesquely misunderstood we may infer that they resembled stelÅ“ in form, and perhaps the original should be rendered by that word.
2. Origin of writing among the Israelites . It is improbable that the OT contains any documents which in their written form are earlier than the time of David, when we first hear of an official scribe ( 2 Samuel 8:17 ). The question of the date at which writing was first in use in Palestine is absolutely distinct from that of its earliest employment by Israelites , though the two are often confused. There is no evidence of Israel ever having employed the cuneiform script or any form of hieroglyphic writing, though both may have been familiar in Palestine before the rise of the Israelitish State. Probably, then, their earliest writing was alphabetic, but whence the Israelites got the art is a question of great difficulty, never likely to be cleared up. It is certain that Hebrew orthography is etymological, i.e. fixed in many cases by the history of the word as well as by its pronunciation, and this being so, it must have come down by tradition from an earlier stage of the language; yet of this earlier language we have no monuments. The possibilities are: (1) that the Israelitish tribes contained men with whom knowledge of writing was hereditary; (2) that when they settled in Canaan however we interpret this phrase they took over the language, and with it the writing and orthography, of the earlier inhabitants; (3) that when the immigrants were settled, teachers of this art, among others, were sent for to Phœnicia. The second of these hypotheses has most in its favour, as it accounts best for the differences between Hebrew and Phœnician spelling.
3. Character of writing . The alphabet employed by the Israelites consists of 22 letters, written from right to left, serving for 28 or more sounds, not including vowels, which some of the consonants assist in representing. The OT, which bas no grammatical terms, never alludes to these signs by name; yet we learn a few letter-names, not from their being employed to denote letters, but from their use as names of objects resembling those letters: these are Wâw and Tâw , meaning ‘hook’ and ‘cross’ (like our T-square, etc.), and it seems possible that two more such names may lurk in Isaiah 28:10 . From the story in Judges 12:6 it might be inferred that the letter-names were not yet known at the time; still those which figure in the Hebrew grammars must be of great antiquity, as is evinced by the Greeks having borrowed them. The Greek names are evidently taken from an Aramaic dialect, and of this language some of the names used by the Jews ( Nûn, Rçsh ) show traces. These names have often been thought to be taken from the appearance of the letters or perhaps it should be said that the letters were originally pictures of the objects which their names denote but it is difficult to draw up a consistent scheme based on this theory. The familiar order is found in the alphabetic Psalms and in Lamentations, and in the cypher of Jeremiah ( Jeremiah 25:26 etc., if the traditional explanation of those passages be trustworthy). Of the existence of any graphic signs other than the letters there is no evidence, though it is likely that the signs used by the neighbouring peoples to express units, decades, scores, and centuries were known to the Israelites, and they may also have had the dividing line between words, though the mistakes in the text of the OT due to wrong division show that it was not regularly used; a dividing point is used in the Siloam inscription. Isaiah, as has been seen, distinguishes ‘human writing’ or ‘the writing of ‘Ä•nôsh ’ from some other; and it would be in accordance with analogy that the spread of the art should lead to the formation of a variety of scripts. The style current, as exhibited in the inscription mentioned, and in a weight and a few gems, differs very slightly from that in use in the PhÅ“nician settlements, of which the history is traceable from the 8th or 9th cent. b.c. down to Roman times. The papyri recently discovered at Elephantine show that in the 5th cent. b.c. a different and more cursive hand was used for Aramaic by the Jewish exiles; we should probably be correct in assuming that a similar hand was employed for Hebrew papyri also, in the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
The square character, according to the Jewish tradition, was substituted for the older writing (of which a variety is preserved in the Samaritan script) in copies of the Law by Ezra, but this can be regarded only as a conjecture. The modern character first appears in Hebrew inscriptions of the 1st cent. a.d., and a somewhat similar type in Palmyrene texts of nearly the same date; yet for certain purposes the older style was retained by the Jews, e.g. for coins, which show the ancient character even in Bar Cochba’s time. Still the numerous errors in the LXX [Note: Septuagint.] version which owe their explanation to the confusion of similar letters, show that an alphabet similar to that now in use must have been employed for writing the Law as early as the 2nd or perhaps the 3rd cent. b.c.; and the allusion in Matthew 5:18 to Yod as the smallest letter of the alphabet, shows that the employment of this alphabet was familiar at that time. The change by which it had superseded the older scripts is likely to have been gradually rather than suddenly accomplished. The square character differs from the older, among other things, in the possession of five final forms, four of which are in fact nearer the older script than the initial forms; this innovation seems to be connected with the practice, adopted from the Greeks, of employing the letters for numeration, when five extra letters were required to provide signs for 500 900. That this practice was borrowed from the Greeks is confirmed by the Rabbinical use of the Gr. word gematria , ‘geometry,’ to denote it. The exact sense of the word rendered ‘tittle’ In Matthew 5:18 is unknown; attempts have at times been made to interpret the word from the strokes called in the later Jewish calligraphy tâgîn .
4. Later history of Hebrew writing . Of other signs added to the letters the only kind which can claim any considerable antiquity are the puncta extraordinaria , dots placed over certain letters or words ( e.g. ‘and he kissed him’ in Genesis 33:4 ) to indicate that they should be ‘expunged,’ a term which literally means ‘to point out.’ This practice was common to both Western and Eastern scribes in the early centuries of our era, and even before; and it has rightly been inferred from the occurrence of these dots that all our copies of the Hebrew OT go back to one, of no great accuracy. In Bible times the process of erasure is indicated by a word signifying ‘to wipe out’ ( Exodus 32:32 ), apparently with water ( Numbers 5:23 ), whereas in Rabbinical times a word which probably signifies ‘to scratch out’ is ordinarily employed. The NT equivalent is ‘to smear out,’ e.g. Colossians 2:14 etc. During the period that elapsed between the fall of Jerusalem and the completion of the Tradition, various rules were invented for the writing of the Law. which are collected in the Tract called Sôpherîm; these involved the perpetuation of what were often accidental peculiarities of the archetype, and the insertion in the text of signs, the meaning of which had in certain cases been forgotten. A much more important addition to the text is later than the completion of the Talmuds, viz. the introduction of a system of signs indicating the vocalization and musical pitch or chant. Of the former, two systems are preserved, an Eastern and a Western, but the familiar Western system won general acceptance. The invention and elaboration of these systems stand in some relation to the efforts made by Syrian Christians and Moslems to perpetuate the correct vocalization and intonation of their sacred books and facilitate their acquisition; and indeed the Jewish inventions seem based on those already employed by Syrians and Arabs, and both in form and in nomenclature bear evidence of this origin. It would seem, however, that the first employment of vowel-signs for a Semitic language is to he found in the monuments of pagan Abyssinia. We should expect the introduction of extraneous signs into the sacred page to meet with violent opposition, yet of this we have no record; there is, however, evidence that the employment of the same signs for the punctuation of non-Biblical texts was disapproved by a party. The Karaite Jews appear to have saved the text from these additions by the expedient of transliterating it into Arabic characters, but this practice was soon abandoned, and the MSS which illustrate it belong to a limited period.
Some record of the process by which the text was vocalized would be welcome, for without this it has to he re-constructed by analogies drawn from the history of the Koran, which itself is imperfectly known. There are clearly many cases in which the vocalization has been affected by dogmatic considerations; it is not, however, certain that the punctuators were responsible for this, as there is evidence that before the invention of vowel-signs there were cases where fault was found with the traditional vocalization. The familiar series of variants known as Qerç , opposed to Kethîbh , appears to embody suggestions for the improvement of the text, dating from various ages. So elaborate a task as the vocalization must have been accomplished by a large and authoritative committee, labouring for at least some years; but whether there was any reason for secrecy or not, there is ground for thinking that even in the 9th cent. the memory of the event was exceedingly hazy.
5. Character of writers . The OT gives little information on such subjects as schools and methods of instruction. In Isaiah’s time ( Isaiah 29:11-12 ) an ordinary Israelite might or might not be able to read; apparently, however, such knowledge was usual in the higher classes ( Isaiah 8:2 ), and the same seems to he implied by a scene in Jeremiah (ch. 36), whereas the precepts of Deuteronomy from their wording ( Isaiah 6:9 ) rather suggest that the process of writing would be familiar to every Israelite, and in one case ( Isaiah 24:1 ) distinctly imply it. Of association of the art of writing with the priestly caste there is perhaps no trace except in Numbers 5:23 , where a priest has to write a magical formula; and the fact that in later times the order of scribes was quite distinct from that of priests shows that there was no such association. Unless we are to infer from Judges 5:14 that the art of writing was cultivated at an early time in the tribe of Zebulun, it would appear that the foreign policy of David first led to the employment of a scribe ( 2 Samuel 8:17 ), such a person doubtless corresponding with the kâtib or munshi ’ of Mohammedan States, whose business it is to write letters for the sovereign, himself often unacquainted with the art; these persons set the fashion and invent the technicalities which other writers adopt. Less distinguished scribes attach themselves to particular individuals, at whose dictation they write (as Baruch for Jeremiah), or earn their living by writing and reading letters for those who require the service. Closely connected with this profession ls that of copyist, but the development of the latter in Israel seems to have been peculiar. In Deuteronomy Moses writes the Law himself ( Deuteronomy 31:24 ), and the kings are to make their own copies ( Deuteronomy 17:18 ); of a professional copyist of the Law we do not hear till the time of Ezra, who is clearly regarded as editor as well as copyist; and though the word ‘scribe’ technically means one who copies the Law, its sense in Sirach ( Sir 10:5 etc.) approaches that of savant , while in the NT it might be rendered by ‘theologian.’
Publication in ancient times was usually effected by recitation, whence one copy would serve for a large community; but the employment of writing altogether for the composition and perpetuation of books appears to have commenced late in Israelitish history. Thus Solomon’s ‘wisdom’ was spoken, not written ( 1 Kings 4:32-34 ), and those who wished to profit by it had to come and hear the king, who may be thought of as holding séances for the recitation of his works. In Isaiah’s time the amount of a prophecy written appears to have been confined to just sufficient to remind the hearer of its content ( 1 Kings 8:1 ); and this might he attested by witnesses. When the prophecies of Jeremiah were written at length, the process appears to have been regarded as an innovation of which some account was required ( Jeremiah 36:17 ); but after this time it seems to have become familiar, and in Habakkuk 2:1 the prophet is commanded to write his prophecy clearly, to enable it to be read easily. Of a written Law, apart from the tradition of the Two Tables, there seems to be little or no trace prior to the discovery of Deuteronomy; how the older code embodied in Exodus was preserved is not known. Official chronicles perhaps engraved on stone, but this is uncertain seem to have commenced in the time of David, when we first hear of an official called ‘the recorder’ ( 2 Samuel 8:16 ); and to his age or that of his successor it is possible that certain collections of tribal lays go back, which afterwards furnished the basis of prose histories whose substance is preserved in the Pentateuch and following books; but the older theory of the documents contained in the Pentateuch ( e.g. Exodus 13:8 ) is that the memory of events would be preserved by ceremonies, accompanied with explanatory formulæ, rather than by written monuments. The founding of libraries (cf. 2M Malachi 2:13 ) and circulation of literature in masses probably belong to post-exilic times, when Ecclesiastes can complain that too many books are written ( Ecclesiastes 12:12 ), and Daniel thinks of the OT as a library ( Daniel 9:2 ). But for legal and commercial purposes (as well as epistolography) the use of writing was common in pre-exilic times. So Jezebel sends a circular note in many copies ( 1 Kings 21:8 ), which bear the king’s seal, probably in clay ( Job 38:14 ); Job ( Job 13:26; Job 31:35 ) thinks of his indictment as written, and Isaiah ( Isaiah 10:1 ) appears to condemn the practice of drawing up documents fraudulently. Contracts of divorce and purchase of land are mentioned by Jeremiah ( Jeremiah 3:8; Jeremiah 32:14 etc.), the latter requiring attestation by witnesses. The images of Isaiah 34:16 , Psalms 139:16 etc. appear to be taken from the practice of bookkeeping, which ben-Sira in the 2nd cent. b.c. so strongly recommends (42:7). Of genealogical rolls we hear first in post-exilic times, but the comparison of 1 Chronicles 9:1-44 with Nehemiah 11:1-36 shows that such documents were sometimes old enough to make it difficult for the archæologists to locate them with certainty. In the Persian period a few new terms for writings and copies were introduced into Hebrew, and we hear of translations ( Ezra 4:7 ‘written in Aramaic and translated into Aramaic,’ where the first ‘Aramaic’ is surely corrupt), and of foreign scripts being learned by Jews ( Daniel 1:4 ). In Esther we read of an elaborate system in use in the Persian empire for the postage of royal communications.
On the whole, we are probably justified in asserting that the notion connected with writing in the classical period of Hebrew literature was rather that of rendering matter permanent than that of enabling it to reach a wide circle. Hence the objection that some have found to the Two Tables of stone being hidden away in the ark (unlike the Greek and Roman decrees engraved on public stelÅ“ ) is not really a valid one; the contents are supposed to be graven on the memory ( Jeremiah 31:33 ), the written copy serving merely as an authentic text for possible reference in case of doubt like the standard measures of our time. This theory is very clearly expressed in Deuteronomy 31:26 and 1 Samuel 10:25 , and renders it quite intelligible that the Law should have been forgotten, and recovered after centuries of oblivion. Such instruction as was given to the young was in all probability without the use of any written manuals, and in the form of traditions to be committed to memory. ‘We have heard with our ears and our fathers have told us’ ( Psalms 44:1 ) is the formula by which the process of acquiring knowledge of ancient history is described. The conception of the Law as a book to be read, whereas other literary matter was to be learned and recited without note, is due to the growth of synagogal services, such as commenced long after the first Exile. Even in the time of Josephus it would appear that a community rather than an individual was ordinarily the possessor of a copy of the Law, whence the term ‘to read,’ as in Luke 10:26 , is the formula employed in quoting texts of Scripture only, whereas ‘to repeat’ would be used when the Tradition was cited. Both were doubtless habitually committed to memory and so cited, whence it comes that quotations are so often inaccurate.
6. Writing materials . The ordinary verb used in Hebrew for ‘writing’ has in Arabic as its primary sense that of sewing or stitching , whence it might be inferred that the earliest form of writing known to the peoples who employ that word consisted in embroidery or the perforation of stuffs and leaves. More probably the sense of ‘writing’ comes through an intermediate signification to put together, make a list, compose , of which we have examples in Judges 8:14 , Isaiah 10:19 , and perhaps Hosea 8:12 and Proverbs 22:20; this sense is preserved in Arabic in the word katîbah , ‘regiment or list of men enrolled.’ From the Heb. word kâthabh , then, we learn nothing as to the nature of the material; more is indicated by a rarer word châqaq , lit. ‘to scratch,’ which implies a hard surface, such as that of stone or wood; and of ‘ books ’ of this sort, calculated to last for ever, we read in Isaiah 30:8 and Job 19:23-24 . Wooden staves are specified as material for writing in Numbers 17:2 and Ezekiel 37:16; and a ‘polished surface,’ probably of metal, in Isaiah 8:1 . The instrument (AV [Note: Authorized Version.] pen ) employed in this fast case has a peculiar name: that which was employed on stone was called ‘çt , and was of iron, with a point at times of some harder substance, such as diamond ( Jeremiah 17:1 ). There appears to be a reference in Job ( l.c .) to the practice of filling up the scratches with lead for the sake of greater permanence, but some suppose the reference to be rather to leaden tablets. At some time near the end of the Jewish kingdom, the employment of less cumbrous materials came into fashion, and the word for ‘book’ ( sçpher ) came to suggest something which could be rolled or unrolled, as in Isaiah 34:4 , where a simile is drawn from the latter process, and Isaiah 37:14 , where a letter from the king of Assyria which we should expect to be on clay is ‘spread out’; in the parallel narrative of 2Kings this detail is omitted. Allusions to rolls become common in the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and though their material is not specified, it was probably papyrus; but skins may also have been employed. For writing on these lighter substances, reeds and pigments were required; references to the latter are to be found in Jeremiah 36:18 , Ezekiel 23:14 , but of the former ( 3 John 1:13 (‘ pen ’)) there is no mention in the OT, though it has been conjectured that the name of the graving tool was used for the lighter Instrument ( Psalms 45:1 ); the later Jews adopted the Greek name, still in use in the East, and various Greek inventions connected with the preparation of skins. To an instrument containing ink and probably pens, worn at the waist, there is a reference in Ezekiel 9:2 (EV [Note: English Version.] inkhorn ), and to a penknife in Jeremiah 36:23 .
In Roman times parchment appears to have been largely used for rough copies and notes, and to this there is a reference in 2 Timothy 4:13 . The Apostolic letters were written with ink on papyrus ( 2 Corinthians 3:3 , 2 John 1:5; 2 John 1:12 etc.). Zacharias ( Luke 1:63 ) uses a tablet, probably of wood filled in with wax .
Literary works, when rolls were employed, were divided into portions which would fill a roll of convenient size for holding in the hand: on this principle the division of continuous works into ‘ books ’ is based, while in other cases a collection of small pieces by a variety of authors was crowded into a single roll. The roll form for copies of the Hebrew Scriptures was maintained long after that form had been abandoned (perhaps as early as the 2nd cent.) for the quire by Christians in the case of Greek and Syriac copies. The quire was employed, it would appear, only when the material was parchment, the roll form being still retained for papyrus. Paper was brought from the far East by Moslems in the 7th cent. a.d., when factories were founded at Ispahan and elsewhere, and owing to its great cheapness it soon superseded both papyrus and parchment for ordinary purposes. The Jews, however, who were in possession of a system of rules for writing the Law on the latter material, did not readily adopt the new invention for multiplying copies of the Sacred Books.
7. Writing as affecting the text . It has often been shown that accuracy in the modern sense was scarcely known in ancient times, and the cases in which we have parallel texts of the same narrative in the Bible show that the copyists took very great liberties. Besides arbitrary alterations, there were others produced accidentally by the nature of the rolls. The writing in these was in columns of breadth suited to the convenience of the eye; in some cases lines were repeated through the eye of the scribe wandering from one column to another. Such a case probably occurs in Genesis 4:7 , repeated from Genesis 3:16 . Omissions were ordinarily supplied on the margin, whence sometimes they were afterwards inserted in a wrong place. There is a notable case of this in Isaiah 38:21-22 , whose true place is learned from 2 Kings 20:7-8 . Probably some various readings were written on the margin also, and such a marginal note has got into the text of Psalms 40:7 b. Ancient readers, like modern ones, at times inserted their judgment of the propositions of the text in marginal comments. Such an observation has got into the text in 2Ma 12:45 ‘it is a holy and godly thought,’ and there are probably many more in which the criticism of an unknown reader has accidentally got embodied with the original: Ecclesiastes 10:14 appears to contain a case of this sort. A less troublesome form of insertion was the colophon , or statement that a book was finished, e.g. Psalms 72:20 . Similar editorial matter is found in Proverbs 25:1 , and frequently elsewhere. An end was finally put to these alterations and additions by the registration of words, letters, and grammatical forms called Massorah , of which the origin, like all Hebrew literary history, is obscure, but which probably was perfected during the course of many generations. Yet, even so, Jewish writers of the Law were thought to be less accurate than copyists of the Koran.
D. S. Margoliouth.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Writing'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/w/writing.html. 1909.
