Prophetic libraries and books in ancient Israel

For most readers of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, the question of the ancient material forms of the biblical books rarely comes up. When it does, readers tend to imagine the large scrolls made famous by the discoveries around the Dead Sea. Even the Dead Sea scrolls, however, are centuries newer than most of the Hebrew Bible, which may well have been written on different materials and in different formats.

At least some of the biblical prophetic literature started out as collections or libraries of scrolls rather than as what we call books. Considering these material forms of biblical literature is important because the materials and formats of texts play a crucial role in how both authors and readers encounter and think about them. Consider the difference, for example, between reading a hardbound book by a famous author and a small mass market paperback. Even before you crack the cover, the material form and format of each book contribute to your expectations as a reader. Thinking about the material and format of texts, therefore, is always important and is especially so when considering media cultures whose forms would have differed so markedly from our own. Rethinking the materiality of the biblical books before they were books opens up intriguing new possibilities for understanding the ancient texts.

One interesting possibility concerns the prophetic books of Isaiah and Jeremiah. The book of Isaiah was written over a long period of time and involved multiple authors. Isaiah 1–39 is more or less attributed to the titular prophet of the 8th century BCE. Due to a discernible difference in context, scholars generally understand Isaiah 40–55 and 56–66 to belong to two different anonymous prophets nearly two centuries later. Around the same time, scribes were also recording and collecting traditions that would eventually become the book of Jeremiah.

I argue that at this early stage, the literary traditions that would eventually become the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah were libraries of short scrolls rather than complete books. We can imagine in the 6th-5th centuries BCE something like an Isaiah-library and a Jeremiah-library, both of which would have included multiple scrolls and other short media. These libraries were the locus of growing prophetic tradition, elaborated on and expanded by the scribes responsible for them. By their nature, these libraries were fluid and open to texts being added, rearranged, removed, and revised.

One intriguing hint about the fluidity of these prophetic libraries appears in a reference to a supposed prophecy of Jeremiah that concludes the book of Chronicles (2 Chronicles 36:20–23) and is partially repeated at the beginning of the book of Ezra (Ezra 1:1–2). The passage in 2 Chronicles describes two prophecies that were fulfilled with the restoration from exile. The first identifies the end of the exile as the completion of Jeremiah’s promise of restoration after seventy years of exile (2 Chronicles 36:20–21, which is clearly referring to Jeremiah 25:11–12; 29:10). This reference to an oracle of Jeremiah is straightforward, but the author continues with the fulfillment of a second prophecy of Jeremiah:

But in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, in order to complete the word of YHWH through the mouth of Jeremiah, YHWH roused the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, and he sent a message through his entire domain … saying, “Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, YHWH God of Heaven has given to me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has appointed me to build on his behalf the temple in Jerusalem.” (2 Chron 36:20–23)

What is so intriguing about this prophecy is that nothing in the book of Jeremiah corresponds to it. Jeremiah never speaks of rousing a foreign king or of the rebuilding the temple. By contrast, not only does Isaiah 40–55 mention both of these elements, it provides the name of the foreign king: “He says concerning Cyrus: ‘My shepherd. He will accomplish all I desire.’ And he says concerning Jerusalem: ‘it will be rebuilt, and the temple will be reestablished’” (Isaiah 44:28). Furthermore, the language used in 2 Chronicles of “rousing Cyrus” appears to be a direct reference to a repeated motif that appears in Isaiah (Isaiah 41:2, 25; 45:13).

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the author of Chronicles and Ezra attributed Isaiah 40–55 to the prophet Jeremiah. How could this happen? It is hard to explain if we assume the books of Jeremiah and Isaiah were already books. But if they were prophetic libraries, it is not difficult to imagine an anonymous prophetic text like Isaiah 40–55 finding its way into two libraries, one associated with Isaiah and one with Jeremiah. The author of Chronicles knew it as part of the Jeremiah library and attributed it to him. Through an accident of history, it ultimately found its way into the book of Isaiah.

Before they were books, these compositions were very different than the unified texts that we can find today in printed editions of the Bible. In some cases, the texts that would later be curated into single books were likely part of larger libraries with fluid boundaries. The transformation of these libraries into books profoundly transformed the texts—and altered the experience of later readers.

_{Featured image from Metropolitan Museum of Art via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0.}