The academic community in particular has expressed this intense interest in recent years through the publication of a rash of books and articles on writing, literacy, and archives in ancient Judah.

The focus on the Judean region coincides with the fact that it has long been thought of as the locus point for the composition of the earliest versions of several texts now preserved in the Hebrew bible (HB), such as the books of Deuteronomy through 2 Kings, and several of the prophets.

The following chapters will demonstrate that in the oral cultures of the ancient Near East, it is the small circles of scribal specialists who engage in writing for the production and preservation of written records. While the scribal culture that produced the canonical books of the HB only flourished later during the Second Temple
period, there is nonetheless indisputable evidence dating to the previous Iron Age for the presence of professional scribes in Judah who were the educated men of their time, just as their counterparts were in Egypt and Mesopotamia.