Kyle H. Keimer and George A. Pierce eds., "The Ancient Israelite World" (Routledge, 2024)
July 31, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readIn an interview about the Routledge volume The Ancient Israelite World, Dr. Natanel Green, a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, explains how the shape of ancient handwriting—paleography—can reveal more than just what words were written. By analyzing tiny, securely dated inscriptions from Tel Rehov, Green argues that the way letters were formed opens a window onto the social world of scribes, the pace of state formation, and the production of biblical narratives. The conversation ranges from the evolution of national scripts to the practical realities of scribal education, all while staying grounded in the material evidence of the Iron Age Levant.
Handwriting as Social Evidence
Green’s contribution to The Ancient Israelite World focuses on a specific set of inscriptions from Tel Rehov, a site in northern Israel. These nine or ten small, often enigmatic inscriptions are securely dated to the 10th or 9th centuries BCE. What makes them significant is not just their content—one fragment may preserve the name “Elisha”—but the features of the handwriting itself. Green notes that the letters exhibit “cursive” characteristics: fluid, curved strokes that result from rapid writing on soft media like wax boards or inked papyrus, rather than from chiseling stone.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:18) **Introduction & Guest Background** - Host welcomes Dr. Natanel Green, lecturer at the University of Aberdeen and editorial board member of European Hebrew Journal
- 2 (04:57) **Overview of "The Ancient Israelite World" (Routledge, 2024)** - Dr. Green describes the volume he contributed to, edited by Kyle Keimer and George Pierce
- 3 (05:53) **Paleography & the Tel Rehov Inscriptions** - A deep dive into the specific evidence from Tel Rehov and what it tells us about scribal practice
- 4 (09:14) **Other Notable Contributions in the Volume** - Dr. Green highlights articles beyond his own that are valuable for researchers
- 5 (10:31) **Scripts, Politics, and Regional Identity** - The relationship between script form, political authority, and regional identity in the Iron Age
- 6 (16:48) **Dr. Green's Forthcoming Monograph: "Warlord and Scribe"** - A revision of his doctoral thesis on state formation, scribes, and the biblical text
- 7 (21:54) **European Hebrew Journal: Call for Submissions & Advice** - Dr. Green discusses the journal and what he looks for in articles
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Show Notes
The Ancient Israelite World (Routledge, 2024) presents a collection of studies by international experts on various aspects of ancient Israel’s society, economy, religion, language, culture, and history, synthesizing archaeological remains and integrating them with discussions of ancient Near Eastern and biblical texts. Driven by theoretically and methodologically informed discussions of the archaeology of the Iron Age Levant, the 47 chapters in The Ancient Israelite World provide foundational, accessible, and detailed studies in their respective topics. The volume considers the history of interpretation of ancient Israel, studies on various aspects of ancient Israel’s society and history, and avenues for present and future approaches to the ancient Israelite world. Accompanied by over 150 maps and figures, it allows the reader to gain an understanding of key issues that archaeologists, historians and biblical scholars have faced and are currently facing as they attempt to better understand ancient Israelite society. The Ancient Israelite World is an essential reference work for students and scholars of ancient Israel and its history, culture, and society, whether they are historians, archaeologists or biblical scholars. Chapter 42 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF here under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. Dr. Nathaniel E. Greene is a distinguished international scholar closely associated with the European Hebrew Journal (EHJ), an international double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal.
Dr. Greene serves as a member of the Editorial Board of the European Hebrew Journal. In addition to contributing to the supervision of the scholarly quality of submitted articles, the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature in Belgrade, the journal’s publisher, has released an official academic interview with him as part of its series of scholarly conversations.
His publication and interview, entitled “Scribes, Scripts, and State Formation in Ancient Israel,” were produced in collaboration with Željko Stanojević, the journal’s Managing Editor.
About Dr. Nathaniel E. Greene
Dr. Greene is a lecturer in Hebrew Bible and Old Testament at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, United Kingdom. He received his PhD from the prestigious University of Wisconsin–Madison in the United States.
His principal areas of scholarly expertise and the fields he represents within the journal include:
- Biblical Hebrew and Philology: The study of the historical development and linguistic structure of ancient Hebrew.
- Northwest Semitic Languages and Epigraphy: The analysis of ancient inscriptions on stone, clay, and other materials from the Levant.
- Palaeography: The historical development of ancient scripts and m
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