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- [00:00]
Dr. Nathaniel Green
I'm Archmanning.
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Madison Skinner
I'm Madison Skinner. I'm Eva Jovic.
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Dr. Nathaniel Green
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- [01:14]
Dr. Nathaniel Green
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Zhulika (Interviewer)
Welcome and thank you for joining us today. I'm speaking with Dr. Nathaniel Green, a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen and a member of the editorial board of European Hebrew Journal. His research focus on the Hebrew Bible, not less emitting languages, epigraphy, paleography, scribal culture and the history of ancient Israel. Welcome to the Institute of Hebrew Language and Literature and to New Books Network. Dr. Green, thank you very much for joining me.
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Dr. Nathaniel Green
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate it.
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Zhulika (Interviewer)
Your research combinines the Hebrew Bible, epigraphy, paleography, archaeology and ancient history. How originally led you to this interdisciplinary approach?
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Dr. Nathaniel Green
How did I arrive at the approach? Yeah, it's an interesting question because as I was developing my doctoral thesis, I've always had interest, obviously in the text of the Hebrew Bible in its original languages. And during my first master's degree, I studied with Christopher Ralston. He really instilled in me a passion for studying inscriptions in their historical contexts and the material context out of which these inscriptions emerge. And so I his work on scribes and scribal practices and scribal education was really formative for me. And the things that I came to care about passionately in my own work. And so as I was doing my own doctoral research, I wanted to make sure that I had kind of an element of all those things in there, while also being able to imbue it with my own kind of. My own focus. That was kind of. That kind of set myself apart from. From Chris and from my actual doctoral advisor, Jeremy Hutton, who his work focuses more explicitly on the Deuteronomistic history. And so I had to try to find a nexus where all those things intersected between the biblical text and the inscriptions and the scribes. And ultimately, that nexus is kind of, in my mind at least, really comes out in. In conversations that center on the historical origins of Israel as a. As a nation state or as a polity, however we want to talk about it. There have been a lot of conversations in epigraphic research about the relationship between scribes and states and the origins of literacy and writing and narrative prose production and things of that nature. And so that's kind of where things all started. Kind of congealed for me, was thinking about scribes in their historical social contexts and the various spaces that were political and theological and physical material that they were trying to navigate and figure out, all the while helping to contribute to the development, emergence of the Alphabet and writing technology over the course of the Iron Age.
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Zhulika (Interviewer)
Very nice. You contributed the Routledge volume, the Ancient Israelite World. How would you introduce this book and what is its main contribution to the study of ancient Israel?
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Dr. Nathaniel Green
Yeah, so the larger book is a fascinating one. And so I was not one of the editors for this volume. I only contributed one of the articles in there. But there's a lot of really good entries in this volume that study ancient Israel from a number of different perspectives. So there's a lot of, like. I would really encourage anyone who's interested in ancient Israel. Definitely check this out. There's something for everyone in there. My own particular contribution was thinking about paleography and basically the shape of handwriting. What are letters shaped like? And how the shape of the handwriting, the morphology of the handwriting, how that can inform. Inform us about how writing is developing at that time period and in that specific location. And so some of the things that I reflected on, I looked specifically at the inscriptions that we have found from a place called Tel Rahove. And these inscriptions, there are about nine or 10, maybe 11 of them. They're all very small. They're all short and in many ways enigmatic. Most of the inscriptions only have a few letters to them. In one case, we probably have most of the name of Elishna, which is a fascinating inscription in and of itself. But the important thing that I think I drew out of thinking about these inscriptions was that these inscriptions are all securely dated to a particular or one or two particular archaeological contexts. So we can securely date most of these inscriptions to the 10th or the 9th centuries BCE. And the fact that the inscriptions are securely bailable, along with the fact that the handwriting exhibits certain features that we might classify as cursive. And when we think about cursive handwriting, cursive handwriting is that handwriting that exhibits more mellifluous and fluid features that emerge from more rapid writing in soft media. So all the little, like little curved parts of letters, letters that make it clear that you have a scribe who's been doing this for quite a long time, and long enough that they've gotten to a point the writing is happening rapidly. And what that means is that they're working in softer media. So they're not just chiseling things into stone, but they might be working on wax boards, they might be working on soft or leather, hard clay, or they might be working, in some cases, certainly in ink. And if you have the presence of cursive features, it takes time for cursive features to emerge in any writing system. You have to have at least a certain number of people practicing handwriting for a substantial amount of time for the. For handwriting to develop in that direction. And so what this tells us indirectly is that there was probably enough handwriting happening in the Alphabet, right, In a Phoenician style or a proto Hebrew style, the Alphabet, enough so that cursive features could emerge and were being applied at a place that was kind of at a nexus for the economic reality of the region. And so Rahove is in northern Israel, not too far from some major international highways and things like that. They had a major apiary. This is one of my favorite things about Tel Rahove. They found something like a hundred ancient beehives, and they were even able to identify the specific species of bee that the apiary specialized in. And so the site was producing lots of honey, which means they were probably exporting it and selling it. And anytime you've got money changing hands, you've almost certainly got people writing him down. So a lot of really fun stuff from Rahove. And so my goal there was really to think about the social context of handwriting and scribes in a way where we could draw out more meaning from the paleography, from the handwriting itself, in ways that many scholars haven't Done so traditionally.
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Zhulika (Interviewer)
Okay, so what you can recommend to researchers and university professors what they can find in all this big book.
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Dr. Nathaniel Green
Yeah, yeah. So that's just my. What I just spoke about is just my contribution. But you've got a lot of things throughout that entire volume there. So there are articles that focus more on explicitly on, say, archaeological perspectives to state formation. You've got articles that focus on different elements of the production of the text of the Hebrew Bible. You've got different approaches to inscription. So not just my own approach, but there are other articles there that focus on, say, monumental inscriptions. One of the first articles that I've found myself citing quite frequently, actually, is written by Daniel Piaski, which Piaschi reflects on the relationship between text and archeology. And Piaschi focuses in a lot of his research in thinking theoretically on how we do history, because most of us who are in Hebrew Bible are not actually properly trained in history as historians are. And so his reflections are really helpful in there as well. So it really runs the full gamut. I think the editors, Kyle Keimer and George Pierce did a really good job in collecting a lot of different articles in there. So, I mean, if it's pertinent to the development of ancient Israel in its ancient context, there's something on there on it in that volume. So definitely recommend it to folks.
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Zhulika (Interviewer)
Okay. What can ancient scripts and letterforms tell us about the scribal education, political authority and regional identity in the Iron Age?
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Dr. Nathaniel Green
Yeah. Okay, so the relationship between the script form and politics and regional identity. Yeah, this is a great question. So Professor Jeremy Hutton at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. So who I mentioned earlier, my doctoral advisor, Professor Hutton and I recently published an article on the emergence of what are called national scripts in the Iron Age, too. For a long time, there are many people who study Northwest Semitic epigraphy who have used a model or thought about the different scripts that we have. Phoenician scripts, Aramaic scripts, Hebrew scripts. They've thought about these scripts as being tied to the Phoenician Kingdom, the Aramaan Kingdom, and the Israelite and Judahite kingdoms. So not everyone has thought about those scripts in those ways. But there are subtle differences between, say, you know, the shape of the handwriting in Phoenician inscriptions, like the Royal Biblian inscriptions, like the Ahiram sarcophagus or the Ship I BAAL inscription. So the Phoenician inscriptions and the old Aramaic inscriptions, like the Sephirah Treaty or the Tel Fakiriya bilingual inscription, and then the traditionally considered, like, old Hebrew inscriptions such as the Irad Ostraca or the Lachish Ostraka, and especially the Samaria ostraca, which are 8th century. So the handwriting in all those different areas looks a little bit different. It's difficult to really demonstrate a connection, though, between the handwriting and a state entity or a polity. Right. We don't have all the information in terms of what the relationship was like between kings and scribes. We certainly know that kings employed scribes. We have titles in the Hebrew Bible, and Christopher Rolfe has done some really nice work on this, where we have the title Sofer Hamelech, right, The scribe of the king, which appears in the Hebrew Bible. So we do know, Right. And if you go back and read the Egyptian tale of Wen Amun, the Phoenician prince Teker BAAL has his own kind of court scribe who he summons to bring the Day Book of the Kings of Tyre and things like that. So certainly there were scribes in royal courts in the early Iron Age, but it's probably not the only space that they operated in. People were able to move through social borders and boundaries. These things are porous ideas, right? People are interacting in. In them, in the marketplace and, you know, and with their family and things like that, and engaging in commerce. And in those ways, handwriting is mobile and moves, you know, not only across political borders and boundaries, but also, you know, interacts with different versions of it in different areas of the southern Levant. And so what Hutton and I have argued is that when we think about scribal education and the way that it was probably a family enterprise, this is probably a father teaching their kids the craft that they do. And in that way, this is something that's handed down generation over generation, but that as the script evolves, it's not a matter of a polity intentionally selecting a style of script to reflect its identity in the same way that a modern nation state designs its flag to represent itself. Right. Instead, what. What Hutton and I argue is that as the children of scribes would grow up, you know, you may have one or two who might stay in the same location and carry on the family business, but others might move into nearby locales and take the trade there with them. And in that way, as the script spreads through the region, it starts to develop localized characteristics because it's just evolving in its own direction.
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Eva Jovic
Right?
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Dr. Nathaniel Green
The metaphor that or the comparison that we drew was the Galapagos Islands and how Darwin envisioned evolution through the tortoises on the various islands. And where basically, as things you have localized development of specific script types. And so these things happen naturally rather than as a process of intentional political selection. It's kind of the political element of things is kind of incidental to the process, as it were. And so I think. I think that's captured most of what you're looking for. There is anything else I can unpack for you on that?
- [15:07]
Madison Skinner
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Zhulika (Interviewer)
Give now to endhunger@feedingamerica.org you have announced Fort Cumming monograph. Could you tell us its full title, what it will examine, and when you expect it to be published?
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Dr. Nathaniel Green
Oh, you're putting the pressure on me now. This is great. I need the pressure. I need the pressure to get it done. So this is great. So the monograph is currently entitled Warlord and Scribe. That's the main title, and the subtitle is the Nascent Israelite State Beneath its textual Veneers. I'm thinking about changing the title because I worry that the title is maybe a little opaque and it's not as descriptive as it needs to be the focus. But this is a revision of my doctoral thesis. And so what it does is it looks at scholarship on Israelite state formation, the origins of the Israelite state, especially over the course of the second half of the 20th century and the last 20 years or so. There's been a lot of movement in that conversation over the last 20 years, and especially lately with the work of people like Erez ben Yosef and Zachary Thomas. Obviously, Israel Finkelstein has contributed a lot to this and Omer Sergei as well. And so it thinks on the origins of the Israelite state in a context of state formation theory and then asks the question, okay, where would scribes fit in the midst of that conversation? So it's a Very social anthropological approach to the question of the relationship between states and scribes. And then once I kind of construct those models and think about, okay, thinking about the Israelite state and Israelite scribes, how do. How does thinking and reflect, thinking on and reflecting on those two kind of social, political entities, how does that impinge upon how we think about the formation of the biblical text and specifically the narratives that describe the emergence of kings in Israel in the Book of Samuel? And so I focus explicitly on a section of 1 Samuel that a number of different people have looked at before. So first Samuel 9, 14, although I think I may expand the project to capture chapter 15 as well. And so getting to that part of the study, I really kind of dive into more traditional redaction and composition critical methodologies to reflect on how Those narratives in 1st Samuel about Saul and the origins of the Israelite monarchy, how those narratives may have formed over time and what they may have looked like in their oldest forms. And ultimately, my goal in exploring that question is to think about what Iron Age narrative production would have looked like. And would these narratives in 1st Samuel be possible at an early part of, say, in the late, sometime in the 10th or 9th centuries BCE? Would these narratives, or Grunschriften, if we want to use the German term, would these narratives fit that context? Are they descriptive of a social context or reflective of a social context that fits the archaeological record? Certainly the text of Samuel is not reflective of literal history. I think the field is pretty well determined, is decided on that fact. And so this is not to say that these texts in Samuel reflect history as such, but that they reflect a legendary style of narrative that reflects a certain social reality that scribes were living in that would have had to have been intelligible to their audience. Right? Because if the story is not intelligible to the audience, then it's not a good story. So really, ultimately, the book is kind of taking three seemingly disparate areas. Anthropological, sociological approaches to state formation, epigraphy and paleography and scribal education, and then deuteronomistic history, and tries to tie them together into one coherent. And this is one of the things that the reviewer comments came back at me with. And they said, these things feel like three disparate things. Can you tie them together a little more smoothly? So that's part of my project for the summer, is making that case a little bit more clear and showing how I see the relation. Really, scribes sit at the center of all this. Scribes are the connective tissue to the study, because they're part of the emergence of states because states are producing propaganda literature to support their own emergence and development. And then scribes are also responsible for the production of the Hebrew Bible. And so it's about thinking about how all these puzzle pieces kind of fit together and how that reflects the ancient world that gave birth to these things and hoping to have the revisions done by the fall. I've been so distracted with so many things here in Aberdeen and various other project spend a lot of time on Palmer and Aramaic too and doing digital humanity stuff. So this book is long overdue. And for those of you who have been waiting for it, I'm so sorry. I promise that I'm working on it all summer. So that's where things stand just about now.
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Zhulika (Interviewer)
But this is very, very, very important idea. Behind of you. I saw something. Is it it something the relation with your research? What is.
- [21:36]
Dr. Nathaniel Green
No, no, this is. This is Scotland. This is a map of Scotland. Yeah, these are both maps of Scotland. So my household. We like whiskey in my household. And so this is a map of the various distilleries in Scotland. And then this is a map of the various breweries in Scotland. So. Yeah. And we just painted the walls so we needed things to put up on the walls. And so these, these are my backup. I figure I ought to represent Scotland in some way. And so here we are.
- [22:01]
Zhulika (Interviewer)
Yes, yes, we like Scotland.
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Dr. Nathaniel Green
Oh, good, good. I love it here.
- [22:07]
Zhulika (Interviewer)
Finally, as a member of the editorial board of European Hebrew Journal, what kind of articles would you like to see submitted and what advice would you give to prospective authors?
- [22:30]
Dr. Nathaniel Green
Yeah, yeah. So this project has been exciting to see develop. And so I think a couple of. So I'm open to a whole number of things. Right. I really enjoy classical philological studies of the Hebrew text of the Hebrew Bible. Obviously the scope for the journal here is very broad. Right. Like basically like from ancient to more modern stuff. Which is one of the. Which is. Which is great. We've got Hebrew studies out there, but I think that Hebrew studies is maybe more focused on North America and maybe isn't as prominent over here in Europe. So it's good to have something that's a little more visible here. So, you know, classical philological study of the text of the Hebrew Bible. I love Semitic linguistic things. I've been dabbling in conceptual metaphor theory myself as well, and like psychography, so I love that kind of stuff. I would always love to see studies of. Of epigraphic materials especially. So I'm open to any number of things. I think the Main thing, the main advice I would have for prospective authors would be make sure your bibliography is robust. I think one of the strongest things of any good study is demonstrating that you've read broadly in the area that you're writing in an article is never necessarily going to be comprehensive. But one of the nice things about this journal, I think one of the best things about this journal right now is that there's not a cap on the word limit.
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Venmo Advertiser
Right?
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Dr. Nathaniel Green
There's not a lot of journals right now have like a 6 or a 7000. Some journals even 5000 word limit. Having long form articles in our field is very important. And that's one of the things I appreciate and hope that we can maintain as an editorial board over the life of the journal. And so what that does is it gives prospective authors the opportunity to really show their research strengths by get into the literature, show us what that conversation looks like and really highlight what the novel contribution that you're bringing to the field is with that research. Show us your language chops, show us that you know what you're looking at. I love comparative Northwest Semitic. So you know, stuff that's bringing together Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic, Syriac, all that stuff. I absolutely adore that stuff. The more nerdy the linguistic stuff the better. And yeah, so I think those are my main bits of advice. Make sure you do that thorough research. Dig into EBSCO and find all the recent articles on whatever you're working on and then dig into the bibliography that they're citing and that'll make your work that much stronger. So at the end of the day, it all comes down to evidencing a strong argument with robust citation practices and bibliography. But yeah, in terms of foci for articles, love to see any number of things, whether it's about the development of Hebrew language, whether it's about the development of handwriting, how to interpret biblical texts, all that kind of stuff. It's all wonderful.
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Zhulika (Interviewer)
Thank you. Any question or something? I'm not asking ask you. Do you have.
- [25:32]
Dr. Nathaniel Green
Well, yeah. I'd love to hear more about the inspiration for the European Hebrew Journal from you and how this all got kicked off because it seems like it's come together at pace, which is great to see. There are a lot of great people on the editorial board that I've seen for Aaron Kohler's on there and Christopher Rolson's on there. A lot of great names on that editorial board. So if you've got any reflections, I'd love to hear about that. But otherwise, in terms of you know, my own part, you know, I, you know, if it ticks your boxes, then I'm very happy. So,
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Zhulika (Interviewer)
first of all, thank you for, for your interview. And secondly, thank you for, for you because you are with us in European Hebrew Journal, and I hope that European Hebrew Journal for one or two or two years will be, or three years will be a very important journal in the world.
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Dr. Nathaniel Green
Yeah, that'd be great to see.
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Zhulika (Interviewer)
So, Professor Green, thank you for this interview.
- [26:38]
Dr. Nathaniel Green
Yeah, thank you so much, Zhulika, for the time and for the invitation. I really appreciate it. It's been a fun chat.
- [26:43]
Zhulika (Interviewer)
You're welcome.
- [26:45]
New Books Network Host
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- [27:20]
Zhulika (Interviewer)
Sam.