A group of archaeologists and mathematicians from Israel came up with the assumption that the Tanakh, the content of which almost completely coincides with the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, was written much earlier than previously assumed. The study of inscriptions in the ancient form of Hebrew, dating back to 600 BC, led the specialists to this conclusion.
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The tablets, written by at least six people, are not themselves fragments of Holy Scripture and do not represent religious texts. They contain information about troop movements and food costs. However, the very fact of the presence of these inscriptions. allows to clarify the chronology of the spread of writing and literacy among Jews in antiquity, the researchers say. In particular, according to the style in which the tablets are written, it can be concluded that they were not composed by professional scribes, and for a large number of authors and topics, it is highly likely that not even the most senior military leaders at that time could write, reports The Guardian.
According to scientists representing the University of Tel Aviv, if at the turn of the 6th and 7th centuries BC, writing was already very widespread, this means that at that time the conditions for the appearance of religious books were already formed. According to the researchers, this may well indicate that many fragments of the Tanakh were composed before the Babylonian captivity - events dating from 598-539 BC. During this period, a series of forced migrations to Babylonia of a significant part of the Jewish population of the Kingdom of Judah took place during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II. After the conquest of Babylonia by the Persian king Cyrus the Great, some of the Jews returned to Judea. Until now, it was believed that Judaism, which later formed the basis of other Abrahamic religions, was largely formed under the influence of these events. However, in a new study, experts argue that most of the books of the Pentateuch, one of the sections of the Tanakh, were written before these events.
The work of scientists has been published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dmitry Istrov