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I came across a couple more items on writing:
1. On page 67 of Prelude to Israel's Past, Niels Peter Lemche states that "only a few inscriptions that date between 2300 and 1200 B.C.E. have survived from Palestine", in contrast to the "significant and substantial text collections" of "various Syrian sites---especially those including royal palaces". Why? Lemche explains:
"Syria's urban centers were complex social organizations. Their comprehensive archives helped keep local affairs in order as well as recorded and maintained relations with neighbors. Most Palestinian cities, on the other hand, were small---at times more like fortified villages or simple fortresses. Consequently, they did not require extensive record-keeping or written communications to regulate or monitor interpersonal and interstate relations. It is no surprise, then, that not a single document has survived from third-millennium B.C.E. Palestine, and only a few are extant from the first half of the second millennium. Only the extensive excavations of the Middle Bronze city of Hazor in Upper Galilee provide a few insignificant tidbits from this part of the second millennium. Predictably, Hazor was by far the largest city in the region."
Why did the ancients write? According to Lemche, when areas got big and populous, they needed to keep records "to regulate or monitor interpersonal and interstate relations." For big areas, there were a lot of people who needed to be managed, as well as relations with foreign regions; consequently, writing was used to keep records, whereas, in small areas, there wasn't as much of a need for writing because there wasn't as much to manage (and, thus, that needed to be remembered).
But Lemche acknowledges that writing was for more than that in the ancient Near East. On page 36, Lemche says that second millennium Mesopotamian law codes (such as the Code of Hammurapi and the Nuzi texts) were academic speculation or wisdom literature---not actual laws---for they were not cited in courts, nor did they cover important areas such as murder. On page 68, Lemche refers to second millennium Ugaritic texts that had nothing to do with "the administration of the Ugaritic state", but rather were literary texts, or texts about religion, or historiographic (and, according to some authors, propagandistic), such as the "fifteenth-century Syrian inscription of King Idrimi of Alalakh." On page 73, Lemche mentions early second millennium Execration texts, which were "inscribed on figurines that represent renegade monarchs". Egyptians would smash these figurines while reciting the curses against the Palestinian rulers.
I suppose that one could argue that an area would need to be big enough to write even these sorts of things. Why preserve wisdom, literary, or religious texts, if the community is small enough to handle---and people more or less remember their customs? This may be one reason that Gerhard Von Rad and others argued that the time of the United Monarchy was when J was written---for that was when there was a state that was large enough to preserve Israel's heritage in written form. Others, however, may point out that Jerusalem wasn't even that big in the time of the United Monarchy, which would cast doubt on it even existing as an administrative center. And yet, Philip Davies says that Jerusalem could have still had scribes---for the biblical description of David's administration is quite modest, which would fit that time.
2. On page 184 of A History of Prophecy in Israel, Joseph Blenkinsopp says that Second Isaiah is anonymous because of its controversial message promoting Cyrus' overthrow of Babylon and lampooning Babylon's religious cult. According to Blenkinsopp, even if this circulated primarily within Jewish circles in Babylon, there was still a risk that the Babylonians could find out and punish those responsible for what struck them as sedition. A question I have had is: Could anti-establishment writings have been promulgated in antiquity, and, if so, how? Blenkinsopp says on page 189 that anti-Babylonian preaching may have originated in Diasporic houses of worship. Could those have been places where Second Isaiah was read? Or did the community that produced Second Isaiah proclaim the message orally, even as they wrote it down---the same way that Isaiah's school did in Isaiah 8---perhaps so that the writing would testify to people once the prophecies came to pass, or preserve a record of God's activity in history?
