Nathan Mastnjak. Before the Scrolls: A Material Approach to Israel’s Prophetic Library. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. 250 pp.
Summary
In Chapter 1, Mastnjak identifies the book’s broad, central concern. If the prophetic books are simultaneously akin to and distinct from their ancient Near Eastern counterparts, how do we account for these works’ existence? Rather than focusing on prophetic literature’s oral-to-written shift, Mastnjak raises questions about the history of prophetic scrolls’ materiality and how such materiality affects meaning. He demonstrates the pertinence of these questions by weaving into his discussion ideas from the field of book history and well-known biblical scholarship. In doing so, he argues that “book” is a fundamental conceptual category that is nearly invisible. His work aims to mitigate this problem by “grappling with its materiality” (8) and “writing a history of the prophetic scrolls” (8).
In Chapter 2, Mastnjak draws on a range of evidence to argue that the papyrus-to-animal-skin shift happened during the Hellenistic period, not the Persian period. First, he bolsters Haran’s claims that papyrus was widely used in the Persian period, highlighting the analyses of Philip Zhakevitch and Olaf Pederson regarding the popular use of papyrus. Second, Mastnjak engages with Hellenistic scroll culture and materiality, scroll headings in the Pentateuch, and various DSSs to argue that 1) long texts were likely written on multiple papyrus scrolls in the Hellenistic period, 2) Judean scribes switched to animal skins at some point, and 3) some scrolls, even animal skins, were not confined to a single scroll. Third, Mastnjak engages with and critiques various aspects of Haran’s argument for a shift to animal skins in Judah during the Persian period in order to argue that Judean scribes continued primarily using papyrus during this period. Finally, Mastnjak puts forward economic and historical data to argue that Judean scribes switched to animal skins “as the preferred medium of textual production and preservation” (29) during the Hellenistic period, not the Persian period.
In Chapter 3, Mastnjak demonstrates that ספר can refer to multi-volume works. First, he highlights texts in the Hebrew Bible, Aramaic inscriptions, Phoenician inscriptions, and Ugaritic material where ספר refers to written objects in different material forms, not just papyrus. Second, he shows how ספר can reference a multivolume work in Hellenistic and Roman literature, drawing from the DSSs and Daniel. Third, he shows where ספר refers to multivolume works in the Persian period through Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles, and Jeremiah. Thus, Mastnjak concludes that “the considerations open up possibilities for the reader of the term sefer elsewhere in Classical Hebrew” (55).
In Chapter 4, Mastnjak sets the stage for examining scholarly assumptions on book history in Jeremiah, noting that we can refine our questions about Jeremiah by identifying book history assumptions and how those tie into textual variants. First, Mastnjak discusses how the idea of an original text comes from the rise of print books and feeds into “scholarship’s essential ontology of the text” (62). Thus, denaturalizing this idea of book history can allow us to start “reassessing old problems and questions” (63). Here, he shifts his focus to Jeremiah and tries to show why Jeremiah 36 is not good evidence for a model assuming a single book scroll from a single authorial event. Mastnjak continues by reviewing scholarship on the oracles against the nations’ (OAN) placement in Jeremiah to show how scholars view it as a linear development with a single vorlage instead of considering each distinct Jeremian tradition. This linear assumption reflects modern print culture assumptions. Doubling down on this, he links the previous scholarship with book history and print culture to articulate that “so strong is the influence of the print-book model that scholarship has failed to imagine the history of the Jeremiah literature as anything other than the growth of a book” (80). Shifting from Jeremiah and in light of his discussions on book history, Mastnjak argues that the redactional history of the Book of the Twelve is a helpful model for thinking about Jeremiah via a collection model. Subsequently, Mastnjak brings colophons from the Hebrew Bible and Akkadian literature, as well as Jeremiah’s mention of a “single scroll,” to strengthen his claim for a collection model in Jeremiah. This model likewise works for Psalms, the Book of the Twelve, Ezekiel, Daniel, Proverbs, and Samuel and the Song of Hannah. Simply put, the evidence that Mastnjak proposes for the claim that versions of Jeremiah reflect “a thematically and redactionally unified collection” as opposed to steps in composition history “suggest a reorientation of how biblical scholarship imagines its objects of study” (107). This reorientation moves away from “a teleological fallacy built into the concept of the development of the book” (107) and more accurately reflects the material reality underlying biblical ספרים collections.
In Chapter 5, Mastnjak explores a broad question: “What is gained and what is lost when prophetic collections became books” (109)? This question is rooted in media studies and agreement with Rudolf Pfeiffer that the Hellenistic period saw the emergence of “the book.” To this end, his central claim is that “in the creation of the books of Isaiah and the Twelve, prophetic collections were transformed into prophetic anthologies” (109). First, he describes the contours of the anthological genre in Jewish texts and relates features of that genre to the Neo-Assyrian prophetic corpus to argue that Isaiah and the Book of the Twelve can be seen as anthologies. He then focuses on the Book of the Twelve and articulates the books we have now (especially the MT and LXX) are anthologies. He demonstrates this by showing that cross-references existed before the anthologizing, and he suggests that anthologizers capitalized on these cross-reference catchword links to create “a sequential reading of the anthology” (120). Then, he focuses on Isaiah with the central idea that “the material known now as the book of Isaiah existed at one point as a collection of multiple scrolls” (120). Finally, he examines the voicing in First, Second, and Third Isaiah in light of this anthological habit and suggests that First Isaiah influenced the later editing of First Isaiah and the composition of Second and Third Isaiah; however, “this collection of scrolls had . . . the unity of an anthology, not the unity of a book centering on a single prophetic figure” (133). And this anthology of Isaiah is organized in a way akin to the Book of the Twelve, with a general focus on chronology.
Continuing with this chapter, Mastnjak argues that Hellenistic reading practices of paragraphoi evident in Leviticus Rabbah and 1QIsaa “represents an indication of an early reading of the book as an anthology of prophetic texts rather than as a book that in its entirety is associated with the eighth-century Isaiah of Jerusalem. He further supports this reading practice, one that assumes the process of scroll collection to anthological collection to the book anthology being associated with a named prophetic figure, by highlighting that 2 Chronicles 36:20–23 and Matthew 27:9–10 attribute prophetic material in a way we might perceive as misattribution; however, Mastnjak’s model opens the possibility that the so-called misattribution instead substantiates his claims for scroll collections and textual fluidity: “It at least suggests that the fluidity of prophetic texts and attributions may have extended well into the Common Era” (145).
In Chapter 6, Mastnjak examines the MT and LXX Jeremiah narrative structures and plusses side-by-side to demonstrate that the process of shifting from a Jeremiah collection to a Jeremiah book scroll engendered creating distinct narrative arcs. Similarly, Chapter 7 argues that the story of Ezekiel in the MT and Greek Papyrus 967 reflect distinct book-making efforts. Thus, for both Jeremiah and Ezekiel traditions, Mastnjak shows that although previous scholars assume a linear relationship between these books, they were more likely created as distinct books (i.e., Jer LXX vs. Jer MT and Ezek MT vs Greek Papyrus 967) during the Hellenistic period with the new literary medium “of the long-form book-scroll” (214).
Continuing with Chapter 7, Mastnjak raises what I think should be a key question for any scholars who study their object through literary texts: although “a narrative reading implies a reading that proceeds from beginning to middle to end” and “producers of these books [i.e., Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah] intended them at some level to be read sequentially,” “did any readers actually follow this direction” (215)? Put another way, Mastnjak identifies various aspects of the author/compiler/composer of various book-scrolls but realizes that what an author intends is not always how a reader reads. So, how did readers adhere to the authors’ intended frameworks? Mastnjak finds some evidence for following the book-scroll narratives of Jeremiah in Sifre Devarim; however, second temple evidence, by and large, suggests a period in which “the reading communities represented by texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls and rabbinic literature were either unaware or unwilling to adopt the narrative and sequential reading strategy that the producers of the book of Jeremiah and Ezekiel sought to impose” (219). Thus, Mastnjak highlights that Judean literary evidence suggests that not everybody adhered to the authors’ rules. Even so, he connects his work to a broader stream of scholarship that highlights ancient Judean interests in “the narrativization of non-narrative literary traditions and in the incorporation of non-narrative texts into a broader narrative of Israel’s history through practices of ascriptions” (220), which is the same impulse that drives the various book-scroll narratives of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
In the conclusion, Mastnjak reviews his arguments and suggests that scholars begin to think “outside the confines of an anachronistic conception of the book” (224) and should instead imagine much looser assemblages of textual objects,” “a shelf . . . full of scrolls, sheets, and scraps” (224). This approach allows scholars to ask new questions of biblical criticism.
Highlights
Mastnjak’s Before the Scrolls should be a cornerstone for any biblical scholarship that considers notions of materiality in ancient Israelite and Judean (and Jewish) texts (and even ancient Near Eastern texts more broadly). Here, a few elements are worth highlighting.
First, Mastnjak beckons scholars’ attention to an oft-ignored aspect of scholarship: book history. As Mastnjak highlights, our assumptions about book history shape the questions we ask of biblical texts. In interrogating those assumptions, Mastnjak takes his readers on a journey to reimagine new, more likely explanations for what some scholars perceive as problems in biblical texts. This aspect is particularly interesting to me because of how it can help us better understand scribal practices in ancient Israel and Judah. As I highlighted in a recent SBL presentation, “The frustratingly few extant Judean and Israelite inscriptions make tracing such scribal networks, their associated practices, and their implicit scribal ideologies remarkably difficult, if not impossible, to extrapolate.” Although my work went in a different direction, Mastnjak’s focus on book history is imperative to addressing this challenge of understanding ancient Judean and Israelite scribal practices.
Second, and in the vein of my previous comment, I appreciate that Mastnjak takes general comments about textual traditions (i.e., Samaritan Pentateuch, MT, LXX, etc.) and roots that discussion in real-world, material conditions.
Third, I especially appreciate that Mastnjak turns scholars’ attention not just to how scribes and especially anthologizers structured and ordered material but also the extent to which readers adhered to those individuals’ or groups’ rules for reading.
Fourth, Mastnjak offers a helpful vocabulary for engaging biblical materials with greater precision: scroll collection and book scroll. I hope that scholars can continue refining these terms so that we can engage with the material in a more precise way. Such language can be helpful for moving away from a framework wherein “scholarship describes at every stage [. . .] prophetic books in the process of becoming” (67).
Finally, Mastnjak’s framework fits well with Sara Milstein’s recent work on Hebrew legal fictions. In Making a Case, Milstein shifts attention away from the typical law codes in the ancient Near East and instead considers how legal-pedagogical texts can shed light on biblical texts. As such, she argues that texts such as Deut 19:3–14 and Deut 22:23–29 should be understood as Hebrew legal fictions that were incorporated into an illusion of a law cluster and only later added and edited by scribes. These Hebrew legal fictions, she argues, are more akin to Mesopotamian legal fiction than Mesopotamian legal texts. Her ideas regarding Hebrew legal fictions, other Hebrew legal texts as fiction (e.g., Exod 21:7–11 and Deut 21:15–17), and even texts within the CC as pedagogical texts fit well with Mastnjak’s model. Mastnjak’s model does not engage with Milstein; however, his model of a scroll collection explains not just that legal-pedagogical texts form a foundational part of Pentateuchal laws but how legal-pedagogical texts may have made their way into Pentateuchal laws. That is, at some point, one pedagogical scroll could have become part of a scribe’s scroll collection, unordered and haphazardly organized. That scroll could have been from the scribe’s own son or from another scribe’s collection. In either case, the scribe could have come to see the legal-pedagogical text as part of the scroll collection, which would explain how it eventually made its way into the Pentateuch. Thus, Milstein’s claim that the Pentateuch’s “building blocks are rooted in legal-pedagogical exercises that originated in the sphere of scribal education” (157) takes on new meaning in light of Mastnjak’s work, as Mastnjak provides a helpful framework to explain how this came to be.
Criticisms
First, Mastnjak’s volume does not adequately consider how the scroll collection actually functioned in a real-world social context. That is, his work considers the nature of the material objects, the scrolls and scroll collections, but he does not consider how these scroll collections came to be. In Chapter 4, for example, Mastnjak leverages scholarship on book history to suggest that the influence of “the print-book model” has prevented scholars from imagining “the history of the Jeremiah literature as anything other than the growth of a book” (80). He roots this claim in a discussion on how models for the so-called book are culturally contingent and how different time periods conceptualize books in distinct ways. In order to strengthen this discussion, Mastnjak could have considered not only engaging with the abstract ideas associated with books and spent more time engaging with the social contexts of books, collections, manuscripts, etc. That is, how did scribes share books? Who was involved in the process? How did the technologies impact book production? If the LXX and MT evince distinct Jeremiah collections, to what extent were those collections the results of a single scribal family maintaining texts? And to what extent were materials shared between scribal families and communities? How does the movement of texts and writing within the Hebrew Bible possibly reflect how people shared scrolls within scroll collections? Although these questions are challenging to address with the dearth of in situ evidence of scribal ideologies and practices in ancient Israel and Judah and with the acknowledgment that biblical texts (i.e., fictive worlds) are not necessarily the best evidence for scribal practices and scroll sharing, concretizing his argument through on-the-ground evidence would strengthen his overall argument.
Second, and similar to the first point, I would have liked to see more in-depth engagement and consideration of how practices in ancient Mesopotamia can substantiate his claims about the scroll collections as a social phenomenon. On this topic, I can think of various materials worth engaging with: Eleanor Robson’s Ancient Knowledge Networks, the scholarship on the cuneiform science corpora in the first millennium BCE, Francesca Rochberg’s work on Mesopotamia and text corpora, John Wee’s work on serialization in scientific corpora, and more. Through engaging with other ancient material and book history, Mastnjak could significantly strengthen his overall arguments about the book history of the prophetic scrolls.
Conclusions
Overall, I highly recommend Mastnjak’s insightful book as a starting point for reorienting the conceptual framework that scholars bring to books and written texts. Although folks will take issue with some finer points, the overall idea is pertinent moving forward: we must be aware of how our ideas of book history influence our understanding of literary texts and their histories.
The Biblical Review 