There is No Reading Public?

"Most people were [illitterate] ... there is [was] no reading public"

The learned man in 0:59 of this trailer:

Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy (Long Trailer with dates)
PatternsOfEvidence | 14.I.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHVne50ckiA

In the books about Agaton Sax (lighthearted detective stories from Sweden), the hero is one of ten people understanding the language Graelic (a language in Scottish Highlands, but seems not to be identic to Gaelic, which has many more speakers than that). This is to say, one of the crooks still writes in Graelic, because his fellow conspirers understand it. Unfortunately for them, so does Agaton Sax.

Not comparing Moses, Aaron, and the Levites to crooks, but the point is, they were not trying to edit the Bible in millions of copies. One copy and one reserve copy of each book would have been adequate.

Patterns of Evidence digs up proto-Sinaitic.

I was guessing sth like Ugaritic (but it seems dates for it can have changed like 500 years since when I saw it, now it is on 1300 BC) or Eblaitic.

Adapting hieroglyphs to alphabetic writing would have been possible.

So would simplifying them somewhat. This is anyway considered to be origin of Canaanean alphabet. Even by mainstream scholars.

But the public falls in two classes, namely reading public (minimum, any Cohen Gadol) and hearing public (the Cohen Gadol was supposed to read the Torah in full once every seven years, to the people).

It is not necessary that spelling and pronunciation was identic, gradual updates are fairly likely, especially as we know writing of vowels was back in the centuries BC confided to matrices lectionis, consonant signs functioning as vowels. After that, the dots for vowels added in or under consonants were developed, as in Biblia Hebraica now. This need not have been the earliest change.

Some have speculated whether writing was available prior to Moses.

Did Adam, Henoch, Noah, Heber or Peleg write down mémoirs?

I don't know. I think it is likeliest that, up to Abraham, the transmission was mainly oral.

The chapter 1 of Genesis reflects Moses' vision. But chapters 2 to 11 are human history, in a very summary form, and marking events (apart from births and deaths) a few centuries before Abraham. The summary form makes it likely to me, it was initially transmitted orally, up to Moses, or before him Joseph, or perhaps even before that Abraham.

From chapter 12, chapters gradually become longer, events are described in more detail, they would have been less likely to memorise all in prose - and a Beduin tribe would have been able (from Abraham to Joseph in Egypt receiving his father and brothers) to preserve written documents. Some have suggested cuneiform.

I have suggested that earlier, as an aid to learning by heart, in pre-Flood and Noahic post-Flood times, one could have used acronymic memory aids based on the 32 letters discovered by Genevieve von Petzinger, first her video:

Why are these 32 symbols found in caves all over Europe | Genevieve von Petzinger
TED
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJnEQCMA5Sg

Then my comment:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Genevieve von Petzinger's 32 late palaeolithic signs
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2017/03/on-genevieve-von-petzingers-32-late.html

A bit like someone trying to learn "credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem" could be looking at CIDPO in order to forget no word.

Because, the medium length of a chapter 1 to 7 is like 2 and a half times the Nicene Creed, or so I recall calculating by use of word documents, and this length of text can evidently be learned by heart.

The palaeolithic ended before Babel, that is around when Noah died in 2607 BC. The Exodus was in 1510 BC (not sure whether dated best in c. 1600's carbon date wise or c. 2200's carbon date wise). To Genevieve von Petzinger, believing there were tens of thousands of years between palaeolithic and the times of Moses, my suggestion would probably at first seem absurd. But I believe she is taking carbon dates on wrong calibration, there were really only sth like 1100 years. This means, even if the details were abandoned, like if Abraham used some version of cuneiform, the idea of an alphabet could have been preserved. Meaning, Moses, Aaron, Levites, simply had to revive it.

Or, God gave the alphabet on the stone tablets might be a possibility, since God both wrote them (two times in hard stone, a third time, thousand five hundred years later, when hearing an adultery case, in sand, all three times in mineral) and also, to Moses, pronounced them.

Whereon Moses had a chance to gather the cuneiform tablets or whatever the support had been and transscribe to alphabetic writing in papyrus. That this Mosaic alphabet existed around five hundreds of years without leaving traces preserved to our time is not exactly miraculous, if the reading public remained as slender as initially foreseen by the law. Or as vast, depending on how many Levites there were.

But the Levites in the tribes of their families were not numbered with them. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Number not the tribe of Levi, neither shalt thou put down the sum of them with the children of Israel: But appoint them over the tabernacle of the testimony, and all the vessels thereof, and whatsoever pertaineth to the ceremonies. They shall carry the tabernacle and all the furniture thereof: and they shall minister, and shall encamp round about the tabernacle. Numbers 1:47-50

And here is the link to my correspondence table between real, Biblical dates and carbon dates, from Flood to Abraham. As you will see, the Upper Palaeolithic after démise of Neanderthals (=Flood, in my view) spans the life of Noah after the Flood.

Creation vs. Evolution : Refining table Flood to Abraham - and a doubt
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2018/05/refining-table-flood-to-abraham-and.html

It is the latest in a series of rather similar tables, and in each, the amount of extra years in the carbon date equals the "implied" carbon age in how low the carbon 14 content was when the object ceased to be involved in a breathing organism.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Kremlin-Bicêtre
Quinquagesima Sunday
3.III.2019