Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature (Library of Ancient Israel)

Rating:
Summary: Readable, Challenging, Remarkable
Review: I started Ms. Niditch's "Oral World and Written Word" with something of an attitude after other books on the composition of the Bible had left a jargonesque, overcomplicated, underexplained taste in my brain. I was expecting more of the same. However, I was soon won over by the clarity of Nidich's thinking, the order of the presentation and the strengths of her arguments. The overall thrust of the book is to examine the nature of literacy in the very ancient world, to distinguish it from modern notions of literacy, and to consider how the interplay of oral culture and writing exhibits itself in the Bible. Perhaps the best thing I can say here is that this tiny volume is causing a major shift in my thinking. While she does not pretend to comprehensive knowledge of the process of compiling the Bible, she does raise a number of practical considerations against the Documantary Hypothesis variatons that I daresay the authors of purely literary theories have never even remotely thought of. Wherever you stand, this book is worth reading. I only wish there were more of it!