Scribes and Language Use in the Graeco-Roman World

Michael Freeman presents a helpful review of a recent volume:

Sonja Dahlgren, Martti Leiwo, Marja Vierros, Scribes and language use in the Graeco-Roman world. Commentationes humanarum litterarum, 147. Helsinki: The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, 2024. Pp. 285. ISBN 9789516535206.

The book has an interesting assortment of test cases regarding language interference, the relationship between author and scribe, and quantitative approaches to stylistic analysis.

Contents

Introduction (Martti Leiwo)

1. The language use of the Narmouthis scribes: Foreign language perception and native language transfers. A case study (Sonja Dahlgren)
2. Scribal Revision in the Process of Text Production. A Linguistic Typology of Scribal Corrections in Four Genres of Greek Documentary Papyri (Joanne Vera Stolk)
3. Whose words? Identifying authors in Greek papyrus texts using machine learning (Marja Vierros & Erik Henriksson)
4. Infinitives at Work. Competing Patterns in Early Ptolemaic Papyrus Letters (Carla Bruno)
5. A Bilingual Scribe in Early Roman Tax Receipts from Elephantine (Ruth Duttenhöffer)
6. Documentary papyri as ‘multimodal’ texts. Aspects of variation in the Nepheros archive (IV CE) (Klaas Bentein)
7. Spoken Greek and the Work of Notaries in the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (Tommaso Mari)
8. Bilingual Letter Writers: The Verbs γράφω, οἶδα and θαυμάζω in Formulae, Idioms and Collocations (Victoria Beatrix Fendel)
9. ‘You Know Justice and Law and the Kind of Writing of the Notaries’ (Rhet)or(ic)al skills and scribal act in P.Col. inv. 600 (a.k.a. P.Budge), Coptic transcript of a hearing in front of an arbitration council (Tonio Sebastian Richter)
10. Early Medieval Scribes’ Command of Latin Spelling and Grammar: A Quantitative Approach (Timo Korkiakangas)

Yiftah 2025 - The Taxonomy of the Legal Document

Uri Yiftah has published online here a very useful book on the typology of language in ancient Greek legal documents.

RBL Review of Jassen's "Scripture and Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls"

The most recent RBL has a review by Ian Werrett of Alex Jassen's Scripture and Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The review is long, but a good (generally appreciative) summary of the important points of the book. In particular, Jassen stresses how nonpentateuchal texts can also be used as prooftexts in legal debates, demonstrating an authoritativeness (even if secondary to the Pentateuch) for these texts as well.


According to Werrett:


"Some of the more notable observations in this chapter include: (1) that the legal material in the Dead Sea Scrolls is reflective of a broad and lively discussion on halakah in ancient Judaism; (2) that any study on legal-exegetical trends in the rabbinic corpus must take into consideration the legal positions and exegetical strategies of the Second Temple period and vice versa; (3) that the Dead Sea Scrolls community was seemingly content to use nonpentateuchal sources as legal prooftexts, thereby implying a degree of authority approaching that of the Pentateuch; and (4) that many of the documents from the Second Temple period appear to modify the wording of the biblical passages they employ as prooftexts, thereby indicating that the authors of these texts had an effect on the overall shape of the canon."