ABSTRACT
This essay outlines and defines four major processes of literary production in preexilic Israel—text creation, assemblage construction, revision, and redaction—as variously exemplified in the major corpora of biblical literature. These processes are not to be understood as representing a linear progression of literary production. Some texts participate in only one or two processes; some texts participate repeatedly in one process or another. Furthermore, the lines between these processes can be decidedly blurry. Nevertheless, most textual production in preexilic Israel falls into these categories, and it is hoped that the basic taxonomy presented herein will help clarify the nature of the literary activity that led to the textual building blocks for what would eventually become the Hebrew Bible.
