Drawing from recent work in media studies as applied to the ancient world, I will argue that all epigraphic evidence and all literary texts that may have their roots in Iron Age Judah must be understood as having a metonymic function because the ancients understood written texts as simple representations of broader messages that had been or would have been delivered in some oral form. I will illustrate this assertion by discussing representations of epigraphic materials in Deuteronomy (phylacteries, mezuzot, stelae), text-critical variants in the manuscript evidence of Deuteronomy, and the Lachish letters. I will conclude that the Lachish letters did not necessarily contain the full messages, and the courier of the ostraca would deliver a more elaborate oral communication. This metonymic function of documentary literature may have contributed to the development of the collective scribal memory that preserves the fullness of the traditional literary texts, a fullness that no one manuscript could possibly preserve since the traditional literature was transmitted with textual fluidity so that it existed in textual plurality.

This article takes a fresh look at the various Hebrew inscriptions of the pre-exilic period, which are to be understood as letters, model letters, or dedicatory inscriptions. In particular, letter introductions and letter endings are examined. Not all elements of the earlier model letter introductions are found in later periods. Military-style letters between superiors and their subordinates are very brisk but nevertheless use various idiomatic and syntactic devices to express their objectives. Letters between colleagues or friends emphasize the blessing of YHWH they wish for their recipients but still differ from dedicatory inscriptions. The unprovenanced Hebrew ostraca published so far employ the same basic greeting formulas known from provenanced materials. Some letters from Arad and Lachish seem to have peculiar endings due to important information being kept for the last sentence.

This article presents a tentative review of the information about First Temple-period Judahite cult, which historians of religion can glean from the various inscriptions discovered so far. It surveys the various deities, sanctuaries, cultic rites, and feast days mentioned. When an inscription’s reading, dating, or interpretation is controversial, I take a stand as an epigrapher but also consider the archaeological context and biblical literature. This status quaestionis seems to capture an important historical evolution of Juhadite cult.

Lachish Letter 4 is mostly legible and understandable, save one word, וידע, the punctuation and object of which are still controversial. Here, I suggest it should be read וְיָדַע and that its object is Š^emaʻyāhū, a high-ranking army officer who came from Jerusalem to the Maresha Fortress in order to study Judah’s western defense lines. This proposition is supported by syntactical analogies with contemporaneous biblical verses. Thus interpreted, I propose that Lachish Letter 4 is not an alarming note on the fall of the Azekah Fortress, as some scholars argue, but a routine progress report on orders issued by the regional commander in Lachish.

Although research of the Arad Ostraca often focuses on the victuals supplied to military squads passing through the fortress, where these products originate from is rarely asked. This study examines the Arad Ostraca for evidence of agricultural products raised as taxes from the inhabitants of the Beer Sheva-Arad Valley. It aims to enhance our understanding of how the agricultural tax collection system was used to supply the army with victuals. Seven ostraca exemplify the collection and administration system of tax-in-kind in the valley. This conclusion arises from the registration of large quantities of unprocessed agricultural products in these ostraca and their connection to clans or even towns in the area.

The subject of literacy in ancient Israel and Judah remains hotly debated among scholars, and the case of the Kingdom of Judah proves especially controversial. To disentangle a complicated issue, this article first draws up a typology of approaches used by scholars to tackle questions such as the population’s rate of literacy, the Judeans’ ability to write down literary texts, and the development of literacy throughout the centuries. Then, it critically examines two quantitative approaches, which have been highly influential and currently promote the thesis that the levels of literacy were minimal in the early monarchic period in Judah (in contrast to the situation in Israel) and considerably increased at the end of this period.

The cultural contact between Canaanite and Egyptian hieratic scribes in Late Bronze Age southern Canaan promoted the consolidation and refinement of the Early Alphabet, which had hitherto been mainly modeled after hieroglyphic sign shapes. Lachish seems to have been pivotal in these encounters. Based on two recently found inscriptions from this site, one hieratic and one Early Alphabetic, it can now be shown that the “handshake” between the scribal traditions occurred already during the 18th Dynasty, in the mid–late 15th century BCE. This is more than a century before the region’s Ramesside administration of the 19th and 20th Dynasties when the scribal contacts intensified considerably.

Of the numerous Iron Age II (First Temple period) ancient sites across the southern Levant, none has yielded as many inscriptions as Jerusalem. This abundance manifests in numbers as well as diversity of forms, media, and subjects. They include personal names and titles of kings, princes, governors, scribes, priests, sons, daughters, fathers, wives, and grandfathers (approximately a dozen names are biblically attested) and feature content of a general historical, geopolitical, financial, commemorative, and religious nature. These inscriptions broadly span from the Iron Age IIA to the fall of Jerusalem, ca. 586 BCE. Here, we review the corpus of provenanced Iron Age II inscriptions from Jerusalem and conclude that its size and quality demonstrate a significant literary capacity, the background for the writing of biblical texts.

This paper examines the phenomenon of recurring names on Judahite private jar-handle impressions. The large number of recurring names in this corpus has been noted as early as 1941 by David Diringer, who proposed that many stamp-bearers belonged to the same family. This phenomenon has rarely been discussed in subsequent literature, however. I offer a new statistical analysis, showing that the high recurrence of names among the private stamps cannot be due to mere chance and should rather be explained in terms of genealogical relations. These relations span at least two generations and involve between 30% and 60% of the stamp bearers. These results have two main implications. First, they vindicate Diringer’s intuitions about the importance and genealogical nature of recurring names among the jar-handle impressions. Second, they suggest that the private jar-handles phenomenon probably had a longer time span than often assumed, lasting several decades rather than a handful of years before the Assyrian invasion of 701 BCE.