This dissertation is a study of four ancient stories about the creation and transmission of all or part of the Hebrew Bible: Moses and the stone tablets (Exodus 32-34), Josiah and the discovery of the law-book (2 Kings 22-23), the scroll of Jeremiah and Baruch (Jeremiah 36), and Ezra's legendary restoration of the entire Bible (4 Ezra 14). Each story is a variation on the common narrative pattern of textual loss and recovery, a fact that is noteworthy because this narrative theme stands in tension with one of the cardinal aspirations of scribal culture in antiquity, as it is known from colophons: the fixity, permanence, and inviolability of writing. When the scribal creators of biblical literature told stories about the texts they produced, they represented the text in its early history as vulnerable and threatened. The purpose of this dissertation is to account for that counter-intuitive choice. My central argument is that in each of the three biblical stories, the common narrative pattern of textual loss and recovery serves as the vehicle for a particular argument related to the textualization of divine revelation, and that the stories function in ways that a plotline of uninterrupted textual transmission would not. Stories of textual loss and recovery can be viewed as strategic transactions in which the ideal of the pristine text is sacrificed in order to express other arguments about divine written revelation. After discussing three texts from the Hebrew Bible, I discuss the legend of Ezra's miraculous restoration of the entire Bible after the exile, reconstructing the biblical-exegetical background of 4 Ezra 14 and tracing the meanings of the story in later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic literature. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

The Book of Ben Sira, written at some point between 198 and 175 BCE, is a Second Temple Jewish wisdom text which regularly echoes or quotes the Hebrew Bible. A recent area of study in biblical scholarship has been that of scribal culture, written sources and physical remains left behind by societies with manuscripts and a scribal profession. While scholarship on Ben Sira has centred on his use of texts and on his sociocultural background, these issues might be better understood by examining Ben Sira through the lens of scribal culture as understood in biblical scholarship. This thesis proposes first to study the primary data of Ben Sira closely in order to discern characteristics of Ben Sira's individual scribalism or personal compositional style. This can then be compared to other evidence of ancient scribal culture. The central argument of the thesis is that the lens of scribal culture tells us more about the complexity of this ancient composition. Chapter One introduces the thesis and covers scholarship on Ben Sira and on scribal culture. Chapter Two examines the portrayals of Noah (Sir 44:17-18) and Phineas (Sir 45:23-26), exploring how Ben Sira uses one major biblical source in each. Looking at the portrayals of Hezekiah-Isaiah (Sir 48:17-25) and Josiah (Sir 49:1-3), Chapter Three highlights the harmonization of multiple sources. Chapter Four examines Ben Sira's lines on weather (Sir 43:11-19) in order to evaluate the relationship between quotation and literary model. Chapter Five approaches the sociocultural and textual spheres on the subjects of death and the body (Sir 41:1-15). Chapter Six investigates Ben Sira's perspectives on physicians (Sir 38:1-15) in the light of ancient medicine. Each of the selected passages shed a slightly different light on the scribalism of Ben Sira.

A partir de uma avaliação crítica de propostas teóricas voltadas ao estudo histórico da cognição como as apresentadas por Jack Goody e Reviel Netz , este trabalho desenvolve uma possível aproximação entre novos modelos produzidos no campo das ciências cognitivas, em especial modelos de cognição corporalizada (embodied cognition), e as atuais interpretações dos textos matemáticos babilônicos. Propõe possíveis desenvolvimentos dessas interpretações através da identificação de um sistema cognitivo estendido específico da cultura escribal babilônica, fundado no uso de ferramentas cognitivas: as formas de produção da escrita cuneiforme, o repertório textual preservado pela tradição escribal e a própria instituição social escolar da eduba. Neste quadro, os conceitos matemáticos, as formas de percepção e ordenação da realidade material e a cognição escribal sobre o conceito de tempo se revelam dependentes da agência material dos tabletes cuneiformes, das práticas ligadas a eles e da posição social do escriba. / From a critical evaluation of theoretical proposals aimed at the historical study of cognition as those presented by Jack Goody and Reviel Netz this paper explores a possible connection between new models coming from cognitive sciences, particularly \"embodied cognition models, and current interpretations of Babylonian mathematical texts. It proposes possible developments of these interpretations through the recognition of an extended cognitive system, specific of Babylonian scribal culture, based on the use of cognitive tools: forms of production of cuneiform writing, the textual repertoire preserved by scribal tradition and the social institution of the eduba school. In this context, mathematical concepts, forms of perception and ordering of material reality and scribal cognition of the concept of time reveal themselves dependent on the material agency of cuneiform tablets, the practices linked to them and the social position of the scribe.

A partir de uma avaliação crítica de propostas teóricas voltadas ao estudo histórico da cognição como as apresentadas por Jack Goody e Reviel Netz , este trabalho desenvolve uma possível aproximação entre novos modelos produzidos no campo das ciências cognitivas, em especial modelos de cognição corporalizada (embodied cognition), e as atuais interpretações dos textos matemáticos babilônicos. Propõe possíveis desenvolvimentos dessas interpretações através da identificação de um sistema cognitivo estendido específico da cultura escribal babilônica, fundado no uso de ferramentas cognitivas: as formas de produção da escrita cuneiforme, o repertório textual preservado pela tradição escribal e a própria instituição social escolar da eduba. Neste quadro, os conceitos matemáticos, as formas de percepção e ordenação da realidade material e a cognição escribal sobre o conceito de tempo se revelam dependentes da agência material dos tabletes cuneiformes, das práticas ligadas a eles e da posição social do escriba. / From a critical evaluation of theoretical proposals aimed at the historical study of cognition as those presented by Jack Goody and Reviel Netz this paper explores a possible connection between new models coming from cognitive sciences, particularly \"embodied cognition models, and current interpretations of Babylonian mathematical texts. It proposes possible developments of these interpretations through the recognition of an extended cognitive system, specific of Babylonian scribal culture, based on the use of cognitive tools: forms of production of cuneiform writing, the textual repertoire preserved by scribal tradition and the social institution of the eduba school. In this context, mathematical concepts, forms of perception and ordering of material reality and scribal cognition of the concept of time reveal themselves dependent on the material agency of cuneiform tablets, the practices linked to them and the social position of the scribe.