WRITING MATERIALS [1908]

The ancient people found many ways to record their history and ideas. The result has been a wealth of information about the Ancient Near East.

The Old Testament records several methods for recording parts of the Word of God. The Old Testament does not mention the writing material or the method of recording the major portion of the text.

The following list includes several writing materials used to record parts of the Bible. See Writing Instruments

Clay - Jeremiah 17:13

 

Stone-Exodus 24:12; 34:1 Joshua 8:31-32

 

Papyrus

a writing material made from the papyrus reed found on the banks of the Nile River. Strips of the papyrus were made into a lattice work and then beat into a sheet.

Vellum, parchment, leather-

many of the ancient scrolls were made from specially treated leather

 

Miscellaneous-

• Metal-Job 19:24
• Potsherds (ostraca) - Job 2:8 often use like yellow-stickies.

[More Information] from On line Text book

QUESTIONS:

Did they have erasers?

Instructor's Miscellaneous Thought: The material used by ancients determined the longevity of the document. Clay lasts a long time. Skins is more susceptible to decay and destruction. HOWEVER, our modern technology (CDROMs, Diskette, Hard Drives) may not be as resistant to decay and destruction as some of the ancient's writing material. We will soon see the need to have "archive refershers": migrating information form one media to another. Or, there will bee a need to ALWAYS KEEP a CDROM in working order. Every piece of information which I stored on my TRS-80 III (almost 20 meg of data), was useless in PC format. I used a program called PC-Cross which "refreshed" the old file format (TRS-80) into a newer format. The scribes and preservers of history in any generation are faced with a critical responsibility.

As a information explorer, collector, and creator you need to remember to keep your valuable information "refreshed" or as least in a format that can easily migrate into a newer format. After the last 1.4 floppy is gone, none of your information stored on that diskette is available.

(Some of this lesson adapted from [Francisco and Geisler & Nix]

Last Updated 24 February, 2000