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Algorithmic handwriting analysis of Judah's military correspondence sheds light on composition of biblical texts.

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Date
2016-04
Authors
Faigenbaum-Golovin, Shira
Shaus, Arie
Sober, Barak
Levin, David
Na'aman, Nadav
Sass, Benjamin
Turkel, Eli
Piasetzky, Eli
Finkelstein, Israel
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(9 total)
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Abstract
The relationship between the expansion of literacy in Judah and composition of biblical texts has attracted scholarly attention for over a century. Information on this issue can be deduced from Hebrew inscriptions from the final phase of the first Temple period. We report our investigation of 16 inscriptions from the Judahite desert fortress of Arad, dated ca 600 BCE-the eve of Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem. The inquiry is based on new methods for image processing and document analysis, as well as machine learning algorithms. These techniques enable identification of the minimal number of authors in a given group of inscriptions. Our algorithmic analysis, complemented by the textual information, reveals a minimum of six authors within the examined inscriptions. The results indicate that in this remote fort literacy had spread throughout the military hierarchy, down to the quartermaster and probably even below that rank. This implies that an educational infrastructure that could support the composition of literary texts in Judah already existed before the destruction of the first Temple. A similar level of literacy in this area is attested again only 400 y later, ca 200 BCE.
Type
Journal article
Subject
Arad ostraca
biblical exegesis
document analysis
literacy level
machine learning
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/26247
Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1073/pnas.1522200113
Publication Info
Faigenbaum-Golovin, Shira; Shaus, Arie; Sober, Barak; Levin, David; Na'aman, Nadav; Sass, Benjamin; ... Finkelstein, Israel (2016). Algorithmic handwriting analysis of Judah's military correspondence sheds light on composition of biblical texts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113(17). pp. 4664-4669. 10.1073/pnas.1522200113. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/26247.
This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Scholars@Duke

Faigenbaum-Golovin

Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin

Phillip Griffiths Assistant Research Professor
Sober

Barak Sober

Phillip Griffiths Assistant Research Professor
I am currently privilaged to be working with Prof. Ingrid Daubechies. Before that, I have completed my PhD in applied mathematics at Tel-Aviv University under the mentoring of Prof. David Levin. My MSc was co-mentored by Prof. Levin and Prof. Israel Finkelstein from the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations. My research ranges between analysis of high dimensional data from a geometrical perspective and the applicatio
Alphabetical list of authors with Scholars@Duke profiles.
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