Literature and education

It is extremely doubtful whether the Hebrew nomads who entered the land of Canaan in the thirteenth century B.C. were possessed of a written literature; though some of their number may have made some small use of letters. The rough life of the desert must have been unfriendly to such culture; while the life which the people lived in Egypt must have been a life out of touch with its advanced civilisation. It seems probable that the art of writing must have been learned of the Canaanites. The Tellel-Amarna tablets reveal the fact that letters were not unknown in Canaan long prior to this time. We may suppose that the folk-stories and battle-odes, of which we have remnants in the Book of Judges, were not committed to writing until some time after they were composed. ¹ That there was no written literature in Israel prior to the compilation of J in the ninth century, cannot be maintained. The evidence is against such a supposition. Much of the material used by J must have long been in written form. Says W. H. Bennett: “The reader will remember that, before the close of the eighth century, the Israelites already possessed numerous narratives, poems, and other monuments of the revelation they had received through their national experience and their inspired teachers. During the later monarchy and the Captivity these earlier documents were combined in larger works, with various additions and other modifications.”