Solving the Puzzle of Literacy in Ancient Israel

The question of how literate biblical Israelites were has long occupied scholars of the ancient Near East. While the existence of ancient texts and inscriptions provides evidence of literacy, it gives no sense of whether reading and writing were widespread skills or confined to a narrow scribal elite. Rosella Tercatin takes a look at recent research on this topic by Matthieu Richelle of the Université Catholique de Louvain, who pointed out “that the extensive ‘library’ of books written and rewritten from the Iron Age (1200 BCE–586 BCE) to the Hellenistic period (332 BCE–37 BCE) speaks to an essential literary activity.”