In the late eighth century BCE, the Assyrian Empire conducted a series of military campaigns that devastated the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The onslaught drove huge numbers of refugees southward, with many resettling in Judah and its capital city, Jerusalem. Judah’s new residents doubtless hailed from all walks of life: farmers, laborers, artisans, and even scribes who took up work in the royal court. In his article entitled “Samarian Scribes in King Hezekiah’s Court,” published in the Fall 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, William M. Schniedewind probes the available evidence to see who these scribes were and what their lives in the burgeoning capital city may have been like.This essay is a fairly detailed summary of the BAR article. To move from there being northern scribes in the Jerusalem court (likely) to northern scribes helped write the Bible is a leap. But it's possible. It's been argued, for example, by me and others before me, that the narratives about Elijah and Elisha came from northern traditions and even show traces of a northern dialect of Hebrew.[...]
The Bible has the Hebrew language being called both "the language of Canaan" and Yehudit, Judahite, in the time of Isaiah the prophet. That doesn't seem to prove anything one way or another.
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