Authors and their public in ancient times

by George Haven Putnam

Judæa.

—There is a similar lack of evidence concerning the existence among the Hebrews of anything that could be called literary property. The great body of the earlier Hebrew literature belonged, of course, to the class of sacred writings, best known to us through the books of the Old Testament and of the Apocrypha. In addition to these, and partly, of course, included with these, were the various collections of the law and of the comments on the law, while later years produced the long series of commentaries known to the reader of to-day under the general name of the Talmud. The various transcripts required of these writings of the law and the prophets gave employment to numbers of scribes, who, in the first place, apparently were usually connected with the Temple, and must have derived their support from the ecclesiastical revenues, but who later formed a separate commercial class, receiving payment for their work as done.

Professor Peters speaks of the age of Hezekiah as the golden age of Hebrew literature. He quotes the text, Prov. xxv., I, which says that “the men of Hezekiah translated” or transcribed, or wrote down the Proverbs of Solomon, as evidently an effort to collect and preserve the literary treasures of the past. He says, further:

“It is not unnatural to suppose that the writing down of Solomon’s Proverbs was for the purpose of a library in Jerusalem, such as the Assyrian kings had long since collected at Nineveh. The Book of Amos was edited (somewhere about 711 B.C.) apparently for this library ... and I suppose Hosea and Micah also to have been edited about this time and for the same purpose. It was the formation of this library at just this time and the desire to collect and preserve all the literary remains of the past, which led to the collection and preservation of so much of the literature of the Northern Kingdom, but lately brought into Judah by the Israelite emigrés. No tales of the valor of the heroes of Judah, no Judæan folk-lore ante-dating the time of David, have been handed down to us; this literature belonged to the Northern Kingdom. Literary and antiquarian zeal led to the collection and reception of these northern tales and poems into Hezekiah’s library ... where their use in historical works, owing to the awakened zeal for a knowledge of the past, was assured. So with the transfer of intellectual activity from Samaria, a new era begins in Judah, and soon the charming tales and poems of the north, preserved in the library of Hezekiah, begin to be woven into the more solid and ambitious works of the historians and lawyers of Jerusalem.

This literary awakening could not fail to act upon the priests. They were the custodians of those ancient religious and legal traditions, which, coming down from the age of Moses, had grown with, and been modified by, changing times and conditions. While some portions of the ‘law’ were written, presumably the larger part of it was handed down mainly by word of mouth.

Moreover, that which was written probably existed in various independent codes relating to different subjects. Some of these—such as a tariff of offerings, or tables of civil and criminal law, like those contained in the Book of the Covenant—may have been published, or set up at the Temple gates, where they could be read by the worshippers. The greater part of the ‘law,’ however, seems to have been the exclusive, if not esoteric, possession of the priesthood of the Jerusalem Temple. The literary activity of the Renaissance made itself felt within the circle of the priests, leading them to begin to commit to writing their unwritten law as well as the ancient traditions, customs, and ceremonies. Thus was commenced the work which has given us the middle books of the Pentateuch, as well as much of Genesis and Joshua.”[15]

It appears, therefore, as if the Hebrew literature of the time (the reign of Hezekiah, covering the period referred to, lasting from 728 to 699 B.C.) consisted substantially of the “law,” that is of the authoritative teachings of the “church,” and was almost exclusively in the hands of the priests. They exercised a control, which amounted practically to an ownership, over the sacred, that is the official, records of the “law,” and it appears as if the attested copies or transcripts could be made only with their permission and under their supervision. It is probable, therefore, that the copyists were attached to the Temple, and that such moneys as were received from the sale of their transcripts belonged to the treasury of the Temple,—but the manner of such sales can only be guessed at, as the records give us no information. If, however, this understanding of the practice should prove to be correct, we should have an example, if not of literary property, at least of a species of “copyright” control.

The severe Jewish law, directing the penalty of death to be inflicted upon prophets speaking “false words,” or uttering as inspirations of their own, words which had originated with others, has been quoted as an early example of regulation of plagiarism, but it appears evident, says Rénouard,[16] that the crime here to be punished was not plagiarism but sacrilege, “Vates mendax qui vaticinatur et quæ non audivit, et quæ ipsi non sunt dicta, ab hominibus est occidendus.”[17] The utterance of the prophet Jeremiah (c. xxiii. v. 30) evidently refers to the same regulation.