Download or read book How the Bible Became a Book written by William M. Schniedewind and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-08-22 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the Bible Became a Book combines recent archaeological discoveries in the Middle East with insights culled from the history of writing to address how the Bible was written and evolved into sacred Scripture. Written for general readers as well as scholars, the book provides rich insight into how these texts came to possess the authority of Scripture and explores why Ancient Israel, an oral culture, began to write literature. It describes an emerging literate society in ancient Israel that challenges the assertion that literacy first arose in Greece during the fifth century BCE. Hb ISBN (2004) 0-521-82946-1