A Réévaluation of the Edomite Wisdom Hypothesis

By Bradley L. Crowell

(University of Toledo, 2801 W. Bancroft, OH 4 3 6 0 6 -3 3 9 0 , USA)

In twentieth-century scholarship on the Wisdom Literature of the

Hebrew Bible there has been a minor, but substantial, emphasis on the
influence of Edomite wisdom on specific sections of the Tanakh. In a re-
cent article, Victor Sasson reinterprets an ostracon excavated at Horvat
cUza in the northern Negev.1The inscription, found on the inside surface
of a fragment of a burnished bowl, was originally judged to be a Judean
literary fragment by F. M. Cross.2 While Sasson does not elaborate on
why he considers this ostracon an Edomite wisdom text, he is drawing
on an important strand of biblical scholarship to articulate his relatively
bold conclusions. After reviewing the role of what I call the »Edomite
Wisdom Hypothesis« in SassonJs article, I will trace the history of the
Edomite Wisdom Hypothesis and analyze the social context of written
wisdom traditions and the possibility of written wisdom within Iron Age
Edomite society. This article is not directly a critique of Sasson’s reading
of the ostracon, but his conclusions serve as an example of the role of the
Edomite Wisdom Hypothesis within some modern biblical scholarship.
Sasson challenges the interpretation of Cross because, according
to Sasson, the text was written in Edomite, a Northwest Semitic dialect
that is minimally attested and virtually indistinguishable from Hebrew.
Typically Edomite texts are identified based on three criteria: the prov-
enance of the text, the mention of Qaus (the Edomite deity), and pa-
leography, especially the distinct form of the dalet which is inverted in
most Edomite inscriptions.3 Significantly, this ostracon never mentions

1 Victor Sasson, An Edomite Joban Text with a Biblical Joban Parallel, ZAW 117 (2005),
6 0 1 -6 1 5 . The ostracon was first published in: Itzhaq Beit-Arieh, A Literary Ostracon
from Horvat Uza, TA 20 (1993), 5 5 -6 3 .
2 Frank M oore Cross, A Suggested Reading of the Horvat Uza Ostracon, TA 20 (1993),
64 -65; An ostracon in literary Hebrew from Horvat ’Uza, in: The archaeology of Jor-
dan and beyond: Essays in honor of James A. Sauei; eds. Lawrence E. Stager, Joseph A.
Greene, and Michael D. Coogan, 1 11-11 3.
3 One unique characteristic of the Edomite script is the inverted dalet (see Larry Herç
The formal scripts of Iron Age Transjordan, BASOR 238 [1980], 2 9 -3 1 ). The dalet
appears three times in the literary ostracon presented by Sasson (lines 2, 5, 10), all of
which are typical Judean forms and are not inverted.

ZAW 120. Bd., S. 4 0 4 -4 1 6 DOI 10.1515/ZAW .2008.024

© Walter de Gruyter 2008
 A Réévaluation of the Edomite Wisdom Hypothesis 405

Qaus, but it does refer to the Judean deity, Yahweh, in a broken context
(line 2). This leads Sasson to state that it suggests »the existence of
YHWH worship in Edom,« where there must have been a Yahwistic
scribal community.4 Sasson ultimately considers the Horvat eUza liter-
ary ostracon a poetic parallel to a biblical verse in Job 27,10.
In addition to the provenance of the ostracon, Horvat eUza, where
among thirty ostraca at least one Edomite text was discovered along
with Judean ostraca, Sasson invokes the Edomite Wisdom Hypothesis
to provide further proof of his conclusions. He states that »(i)t has long
been recognized that there are Edomite connections to wisdom in gen-
eral, and to Job, in particular.«5 Unfortunately, he does not cite any bib-
lical, extra-biblical or secondary literature to support this assertion. Sas-
son concludes that the author of Job could have been ethnically Edomite
or of mixed ancestry and that the »author of the ostracon - if he is not
the same as that of Job - could have had any of the ethnic backgrounds
that the author of the Book of Job had.«6 While the thrust of Sasson’s
article is not to argue that there was a flourishing wisdom school in Iron
Age Edom that influenced Judean wisdom, it illustrates that the Edomite
Wisdom Hypothesis pervades biblical scholarship on wisdom to such an
extent that some scholars take it as a thesis that can legitimately be as-
sumed.

The Edomite Wisdom Hypothesis, a brief history

The role of the region of Edom in wisdom traditions does have
ancient roots, especially regarding the book of Job. In the Septuaginfs
appendix to the book, the main character is noted as having an earlier
name, Jobab (Hi 42,17b). This Jobab was one of the kings of Edom
mentioned in the Edomite Kinglist in Gen 36,33. In the appendix, Jobab
was also named as the grandson of Esau, the eponymic ancestor of the
Edomites in the narratives from Genesis. The entire story of the book of
Job, according to the appendix, was set in the land of Ausis, »on the
borders of Idumea and Arabia.« This literary tradition was continued in
the first-century CE Testament of Job in which the narrative begins by
stating the character’s full name as Jobab (1,1) and placing him into the
ancestry of Esau (1,6). Yet in the Testament of Job the setting of the
story is shifted to Egypt, even Job is no longer considered a king of
Edom but the »king of all Egypt« (28,7), the likely place of composition
for the Testament of Job. While neither the Septuagint of Job nor the

4 Sasson, ZAW 117 (2005), 604.

5 Sasson, ZAW 117 (2005), 612.
6 Sasson, ZAW 117 (2005), 6 1 3 -1 4 .
406 Bradley L. Crowell

Testament of Job suggest that these works were composed by Edomites,

they do make strong textual and historical links to Edom and the Edo-
mites.
The first modern biblical scholar to emphasize the role of Edom in
Judean wisdom literature was Robert H. Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer developed two
important theories regarding Edom’s role in Israelite literature: a Penta-
teuchal source that he called the S (Seir or South)‫־‬document and Edom
as the locus of a substantial wisdom school.7 His theory of an S-docu-
ment is now little more than a footnote in the history of Pentateuchal
criticism, but it was also intimately related to his vision of the flourish-
ing Edomite wisdom school. Pfeiffer theorized that there were two parts
of the originally independent S‫־‬document, written between 1200 and
1000 BCE, edited into Genesis after the Priestly redaction. The first part,
found in non-Priestly sections of Genesis 1-11, was an Edomite mythic
account of the origin of the cosmos and the early history of humanity.8
The second part of the S‫־‬document consists of legendary accounts of the
origins of the Transjordanian and southern Levantine tribes and events
surrounding the Dead Sea in Genesis 12-50.9 To this collection of
stories, a Judean editor (S2) added his own comments as a kind of mid-
rash to unify the stories.10 Pfeiffer surmises that the S‫־‬document was
eventually incorporated into the Pentateuch just before the final edition
was produced around 400 BCE.

7 Robert H. Pfeiffer, A Non-Israelite Source of the Book of Genesis, ZAW 7/1 (1930),
66-73; Edomitic Wisdom, ZAW 3/1 (1926), 13-25 . See also Pfeiffer’s Introduction to
the Old Testament, N ew York, 1948.
8 Pfeiffer (Introduction, 160) assigned Yahwistic stories, in the early twentieth century
usually assigned to J1, to the S‫־‬document, including an account of the creation of hu-
mans (Gen 2 ,5 -9 . 15-25), the expulsion from Eden (Gen 3), positive accounts of Cain
and his descendents (Gen 4,1. 1 7-24 ), the fragment concerning the Nephilim (Gen
6,1 -4 ), a portion of the flood story (Gen 9,2 0 -2 7 ) and the account of the Tower of
Babel (Gen 11,1-9).
9 This section corresponds to stories in the history of the patriarchs: Abraham’s war with
the kings of the East (Gen 1 4 ,1 -1 7 .2 1 -2 4 ), the legend of Sodom (Gen 1 9,1 -26), the eti-
ological narratives of the origins of M oab and Ammon (Gen 1 9,3 0-38 ), the attack on
Shechem (Gen 34; 35,5), the mention of Reuben’s incest (Gen 3 5 ,2 1 -2 2 ), the annals of
Edom (Gen 36 ,9 -2 9 ) and the account of Judah and Tamar in Gen 38 (Pfeiffer, Intro-
duction, 160).
10 His additions and glosses are identified by Pfeiffer (Introduction, 160) in the brief com-
ments concerning the four rivers of Eden (Gen 2 ,1 0 -1 4 ), a revised version of the Cain
and Abel conflict from a more Judean perspective (Gen 4 ,1 -1 6 ), the story of Seth (Gen
4,25f), additions to the flood story (Gen 5,29; 6,5-8; 7 ,1 -5 .7 -1 0 .1 2 .16b.17b.22;
8 ,2 b -3 a .6 -1 2 .1 3 b .2 0 -2 2 ), the descendants of Shem, Ham and Japhath (Gen 10,1b.
8 -1 9 .2 1 .2 4 -3 0 ), the mention of Terah (Gen 1 1 ,28-3 0), the enigmatic Melchizedek
story (Gen 14 ,18 -20 ), and the story about Keturah (Gen 2 5 ,1 -4 ).
 A Réévaluation of the Edomite Wisdom Hypothesis 407

Pfeiffer identified the S‫־‬document as an independent source because

it shared a common antipathy against the tribes of Israel, an amiable
attitude toward Cain and the Kenites, and a lack of allusions to IsraePs
institutions. But it was also unified in its pessimistic and agnostic phi-
losophy of history that explained humanity’s miserable conditions as
the curses of an antagonistic deity who is indifferent to the suffering of
his creation. According to Pfeiffer, the Edomite sages observed that as
culture progressed, so did the moral disintegration that began with a
single act (Gen 3,7).11 Since the rebellion of the first humans against the
command of God, he sought to keep humans just above the level of the
animals, but their choice to rebel was a good one since being know-
ledgeable and cursed was preferable to being innocent and naive.
The key link between Pfeiffer’s S‫־‬document and the wisdom school
in Edom was the author of Job, who shared the S‫־‬document’s pessi‫־‬
mistic view of God and humanity.12 Pfeiffer understood the canonical
version of Job as the product of a Judean redactor who added the tradi-
tional folktale of an innocent sufferer to an originally independent Edo-
mite poem that functioned as a literary vehicle for the Edomite sage’s
pessimistic philosophy that humans suffer at the hands of a capricious
god more than they justly deserve. This philosophy, combined with the
use of southern Jordanian place-names, led Pfeiffer to see continuity be-
tween the poem of Job and the putative S‫־‬document.
Pfeiffer discussed three arguments in favor of an Edomite origin for
the poetry of Job.13 First, the poetic dialogues of Job never uses Yahweh
to refer to the deity, Pfeiffer considers the Yahweh speeches to be an
addition by the Judean editor, preferring instead the more generic appel-
latives of El, Eloah, and Shaddai. Second, Israelite institutions, such as
the Torah, the priesthood and the monarchy, are never explicitly men-
tioned. Those literary connections that biblical scholars cite as examples
of Joban dependence on prophetic or Pentateuchal literature, like the
literary relationship between Jeremiah 20,14-18 and Job 3, are argued
by Pfeiffer to originate in the writings of Edomite composer of the Job
poem and subsequently alluded to by Judean authors. Third, Pfeiffer
argued that the doctrine of individual retribution, cited by biblical
scholars as transforming from an idea of national retribution in Deute-
ronomy 28 to a more individualistic retribution in Ezekiel (18; 33), was
a common, but debated, theological motif at the time. For Pfeiffer the
sources used by the Joban poet were the S‫־‬document (especially the
Eden and Tower of Babel narratives) and common ancient Near Eastern
wisdom traditions. Pfeiffer’s conclusion concerning the origin of the

11 Pfeiffer, Introduction, 1 63-64 .

12 Pfeiffer, Introduction, 669-7 0; ZAW 3 (1926), 1 3-25.
13 Pfeiffer, Introduction, 6 7 8 -8 2 .
408 Bradley L. Crowell

book of Job is that »the simplest hypothesis is that the author of the
book was an Edomite.«14
Pfeiffer’s work on the S‫־‬Document and the Edomite context for
wisdom literature was regularly cited during the middle of the twentieth
century by leading scholars, but only a few more recent scholars have
accepted Pfeiffer’s thesis of an Edomite school without significant reser-
varions.15 Young, for example, traces the development of the Edomite
language through the lens of the biblical narratives in Numbers and
Kings. He then cites Pfeiffer, along with Jeremiah 49,7 and Obadiah 8,
to suggest that »Job could be originally an Edomite composition.«16
Most scholars have followed the lead of Otto Eißfeldt, who noted
Pfeiffer’s theory of a hypothetical S‫־‬Document, but rejected it in favor
of the standard J,E,D,P documentary hypothesis.17 When Eißfeldt dis‫־‬
cussed the book of Job, however, he appropriated only a portion of
Pfeiffer’s ideas. He noted that the setting of the book of Job, Uz (Hi 1,1),
and the homes of Job’s friends - Teman, Shuach and Naamah (Hi 2,11 ) -
were all Edomite locations. While referring to Pfeiffer’s 1926 article and
Obadiah 8 to prove that the Edomites were famed as guardians of wis-
dom, he understood Edom as the setting of Job not the place of com-
position. This approach is similar to the more recent one of John Day
who acknowledges Judah’s debt to Edom with regard to the Wisdom lit-
erature, especially in the book of Job.18 He argues that Edom was the
setting of the dialogues between Job and his friends, partially because
the Edomites were well known for their wisdom (citing Jer 49,7; Ob 8
and Bar 3,22-23). Day, like Eißfeldt, never suggests that the author of
Job was himself an Edomite.
The approach exemplified by Eißfeldt and Day was one approach
to dealing with the »Wisdom of Edom,« that is, the book of Job was a

14 Pfeiffer, Introduction, 683. In Pfeiffer’s original article on Edomite wisdom (ZAW 3

[1926]), he identified several additional examples of Edomite wisdom in the Hebrew
Bible, including Psalms 88, 89, and Proverbs 3 0 -3 1 ,9 . He also surmised that Egyptian
influence on Judean wisdom was mediated through Edom, especially Psalm 104 and
Proverbs 2 2 ,1 7 -2 3 ,1 4 . Pfeiffer also suggested that perhaps Ecclesiastes was originally
an Edomite text because it shared the same skeptical and pessimistic viewpoint as the
book of Job.
15 For an important, but rarely cited, analysis of Pfeiffer’s emphasis on Edomite wisdom
in the Tanakh, see Bernardo Boschi, Saggezza di Edom: mito o realtà? Rivista Bíblica
Italiana 15 (1967), 3 5 8 -3 6 8 .
16 Ian Young, Diversity in Pre-Exilic Hebrew, FAT 5, 1993, 136.
17 Otto Eißfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction, 1965, 16 9 -1 7 0 , 470.
18 John Day, Foreign Semitic Influence on the Wisdom of Israel and its Appropriate in the
Book of Proverbs, in Wisdom in Ancient Israel, eds. John Day, Robert P. Gordon, and
H. G. M. Williamson, 1995, 55 -7 0 .
 A Réévaluation of the Edomite Wisdom Hypothesis 409

Judean composition set in the literary world of Edom. Another common

approach is to allow for the possibility that Job was an Edomite com-
position while remaining cognizant of the lack of Edomite remains. This
second approach was taken by scholars like Harrison, who referred to
Pfeiffer’s article as an example that Job was a »specimen of the renowned
wisdom of the Edomites.«19 Several commentaries on the book of Job
take the second approach, noting the location of the story and the Edo-
mite reputation for wisdom as allowing for the book to have been
composed there.20 A few commentators, like Fohrer and Pope,21 cite
Pfeiffer negatively and then do not significantly discuss the theory.

Wisdom in Edom? A Socio-Political Analysis

The important question here is not the setting of the book of Job,
but was Edom a location where wisdom authors wrote extended trea-
tises on the subject of innocent suffering? The Edomites were acknowl-
edged as having wisdom (or wise men; see Jer 49,7; Ob 8), but what
kind of wisdom was this? Folk wisdom traditions and colloquial prov-
erbs are universal among societies dealing with everyday affairs like
agriculture, relationships, economics and social order. However, not all
traditional sapiential counsel is written down. Such endeavors require
a certain level of literacy and, at least in the ancient world, patronage
either from the wealthy classes or within the royal court. Those who
composed the wisdom literature - whether from Mesopotamia, Egypt
or Israel - were part of an intellectual elite of scribal schools or circles.
These individuals were part of societies that took a direct interest in col-
lecting and composing their histories, religious traditions and wisdom
speculations, in addition to the mundane tasks of inscribing seals,
keeping bureaucratic records, and writing official correspondence.
Within scholarship on the social location of wisdom literature,
there are three dominant views regarding the status and occupation
of wisdom writers.22 First, the wisdom writers are from a traditional,

19 R. K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament, 1969, 1023.

20 Samuel Terrien, Job, 1963, 9; Samuel Terrien and Paul Scherer, The book of Job, in:
The Interpreter^ Bible, 1954, 8 78-79; John E. Hartley, The Book of Job, NICOT,
1988, 5, 66, 85-86 .
21 Georg Fohrer, Das Buch Hiob, KAT 16, 1963, 4 2-43 ; Marvin H. Pope, Job, The An-
chor Bible, 1973, xliii. Pope refers to a number of famous authors as promoters of the
Edomite Wisdom Hypothesis for Job. For instance, Voltaire, who actually thought that
it was originally written in Arabic before it was translated into Hebrew.
22 See R. N . Whybray, The Social World of the Wisdom Writers, in: The World of Ancient
Israel: Sociological, Anthropological and Political Perspectives, ed. R. E. Clements,
1989, 2 2 7 -2 5 0 .
410 Bradley L. Crowell

agrarian, tribal background.23 Proponents of this position suggest that

in a society like ancient Israel, with its semi-nomadic and agrarian roots,
the most logical place for wisdom traditions to originate is within the
family (bêt3äb) and tribe or clan (mispähäh). In this context the father,
mother, or tribal elder could function as a teacher (as in Prov 1,2-6), as
an arbiter of disputes (Prov 11,9; 16,23; 20,5, etc.), and as a general
counselor (Prov 12,15; 15,22; etc). Few would dispute that within this
context traditional and popular sayings were handed down over gener-
ations, some of which could have been included in the biblical wisdom
literature. Yet this tribal, rural context was not the location for the pro-
duction of the written wisdom traditions, a process that required liter-
acy, knowledge of foreign wisdom traditions, and the material and time
to compose the literature.
The second major theory concerning the social context of wisdom
literature is that it emanated from scribal schools with professional
sages.24 André Lemaire is a leading proponent of the »scribal school«
theory for ancient Israel.25 Based on ancient Near Eastern analogies
with Egypt and Mesopotamia, where scribal schools flourished as insti-
tutions in which literature was composed and copied as training exer-
cises, he proposed that similar, though much smaller, institutions existed
in ancient Israel. Lemaire gathered evidence from ostraca, seals, and
bullae to propose that there were eleven categories of epigraphic evi-
dence that intimate the existence of scribal schools. After critiques by
scholars, four of the categories remain substantial arguments for some
formal training of scribes: abecedaries written on ostraca with a fairly
standard order and number of letters (at Lachish, Kadesh-Barnea, Kun-
tillet Ajrud, and Arad), isolated letters or groups of letters (at Arad),
numbers or words repeated on the same ostraca as practice exercises
(at Arad and Kadesh-Barnea) and lists of numbers in order (at Kadesh-
Barnea).26
Centralized government bureaucracies, like Judah during and after
the reign of Hezekiah in the late eighth century BCE, needed to train
scribes in order to perform administrative tasks. The third and most

23 Carole R. Fontaine, The Sage in Family and Tribe, in: The Sage in Israel and the
Ancient Near East, eds. John G. Gammie and Leo G. Perdue, 1990, 155 -1 64.
24 G. I. Davies, Were there Schools in Ancient Israel? in: Wisdom in Ancient Israel, eds.
John Day, Robert R Gordon, and H. G. M. Williamson, 1989, 19 9-21 1.
25 See André Lemaire, The Sage in School and Temple, in: The Sage in Israel and the
Ancient Near East, eds. John G. Gammie and Leo G. Perdue, 1990, 1 65-181; Les
écoles et la formation de la Bible dans Panden Israël, OBO 39, 1981.
26 For a substantial critique of Lemaire, see E. Puech, Les Ecoles dans l’Israël préexilique:
données épigraphiques, in: Congress Volume: Jerusalem 1986, SVT 4 0, 1988,
189-20 3.
 A Réévaluation of the Edomite Wisdom Hypothesis 411

likely context for the production of wisdom literature is scribal circles

sponsored by the palace, although it was never isolated from their folk
wisdom traditions.27 The book of Proverbs repeatedly mentions the pol-
icy advisors of the king (Prov 11,14; 15,22; 24,6) and even the tenuous
status of the court scribes (Prov 25,6-7). The superscription of a portion
of Proverbs notes that it was compiled by »Hezekiah’s men« (Prov 25,1).
The royal court was also the intellectual center of Judah that was appar-
ently in dialog with international wisdom traditions and genres from
Egypt and Mesopotamia, as the relationship between the Instructions of
Amenemope and Proverbs 22,17-24,22 clearly demonstrate. The pro-
duction of texts like the wisdom books of the Hebrew Bible requires
time, material, education in the intricacies of the language, and know-
ledge of foreign traditions. It is likely that members of the royal court,
under sponsorship of the king and his officials, composed and trans-
formed local and international wisdom traditions into the majority of
the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible.
Was Edom the type of society that actively produced wisdom litera-
ture? After a century of archaeological explorations and attempts to
describe the history of the Edomites, modern scholars are in a better
position to address this question than Pfeiffer was in the early twentieth
century. In order to support a scribal bureaucracy sufficient enough
to produce literary texts beyond simply administrative letters, Edom
required a centralized bureaucratic government, evidence for scribal ac-
tivity, and evidence for the production of literature. Sources for Edomite
history go back to the thirteenth century BCE when Edom appeared in
Egyptian documents from the reign of Merneptah (around 1200 BCE),
which refer to the »Shasu tribes of Edom« (mhwt s3sw 51dm) in Papyrus
Anastasi VI (lines 51-61).28 The region of Edom was inhabited by semi-
nomadic Shasu tribes that maintained, at least during the reign of Mer-
neptah, a fairly peaceful relationship with Egypt. The region and its
inhabitants were probably also mentioned as Seir in a topographical list
from Amara West, the Tanis Obelisk I and the Gebel Shaluf Stele during
the preceding reign of Ramesses II (c. 1290-1224 BCE). Ramesses II
claims to have destroyed the tribes, so there was a tumultuous relation-
ship during that period. Egyptian interests in the area were probably li-
mited to the copper mining at Timna and possibly farther north along
the Wadi Arabah.

27 Whybray, The Social World of the Wisdom Writers, 234; The Sage in the Israelite Royal
Court, in: The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, eds. John G. Gammie and Leo
G. Perdue, 1990, 13 3-139 .
28 For the Egyptian material relating to Edom, see K.A. Kitchen, The Egyptian evidence
on ancient Jordan, in: Early Edom and Moab: The beginning of the Iron Age in south-
ern Jordan, ed. Piotr Bienkowski, Sheffield, 1992, 2 1 -3 4 .
412 Bradley L. Crowell

Social and political organization accelerated in the late eighth

century BCE in response to the threat of the Assyrians and the in-
creased economic incentives of the trade routes reaching from south-
ern Arabia to the Mediterranean coast. By the time of the Assyrian
king Tiglathpileser III (744-727 BCE) and his campaign in the south-
ern Levant between 734 and 732 BCE, it is clear that Edom had be-
gun to develop a more centralized leadership. The first leader of
Edom mentioned by name was Qaus-malak in Summary Inscription 7
of Tiglath-pileser III (II R 67 = K 3751),29 when the Edomite leader
is listed along with other regional rulers as paying a tribute to the
Assyrian monarch. Edom continued to pay a compulsory tribute to
the Assyrians through the reign of Sargon II (724-705 BCE), although
a rebellion initiated by Yamani of Philistia in 712-711 BCE dis-
rupted that payment (K 1668 + K 1671).30 Ayyarammu, the king of
Edom, was mentioned as a king who brought tribute to Sennacherib in
701 BCE (Chicago Prism II: 50-60; Taylor Prism II: 47-57 = 1 R
37-42).31 Qaus-gabar provided building materials for Esarhaddon’s
new palace in Ninevah in the early seventh century BCE (I R 48, 1; III
R 16, col. 5) and sent troops to assist in Assurbanipal’s invasion of
Egypt (Prism C II 37-67).32 These references to the Edomite kings
demonstrate that some level of political centralization occurred in
Edom during the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. During this period
the Edomite bureaucracy included at least one level of royal officials.
Qaus‫־‬eanal, a »servant of the king« (ebd hmlk), whose seal was im-
pressed on at least twenty-two vessels at Tall al-Khalayfi, and Malak-
Ba'al found on an impression at Busayra. Other than these two officials,
there is little evidence of any centralized administration or bureaucracy
in Edom.
During the period of the Edomite polity, the central site of Busayra
was constructed on a rocky spur surrounded by deep ravines in northern
Edom. This settlement was unique within Edom: it was the largest
at 8.16 hectares, it was the only fortified settlement, a palace was con-
structed in Area C, and a large temple stood in Area A (see Bienkowski
2002). A number of ostraca and seals were also excavated in the settle-

29 Hayim Tadmor, The inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III king of Assyria: Critical edition,
with introductions, translations and commentary, 1994, 16 8-1 7 1 .
30 Andreas Fuchs, Die Annalen des Jahres 711 v. Chr, SAAS 8, 1998, 4 4 - 4 6 , 7 3 -7 5 ,
plate 8.
31 Eckart Frahm, Einleitung in die Sanherib-Inschriften, AfO Beiheft 26, 1997, text
T4.
32 Rykle Borger, Die Inschriften Asarhaddons, Königs von Assyrien. AfO Beiheft 9 ,1 9 5 6 ,
text 27; Beiträge zum Inschriftenwerk Assurbanipals, 1996, 18 -2 0 , 212.
 A Réévaluation of the Edomite Wisdom Hypothesis 413

ment suggesting an administrative function.33 But other sites in Edom

were predominantly small agricultural villages. Among the largest were
Tawilan, a 2.45 hectares settlement in the Petra region, and Ghraha, an-
other small settlement (about 1 hectare) just to the south of Tawilan.
Even centralized control of this area from Busayra is questionable. A
number of mountain top settlements, like Umm al‫־‬Biyara and Ba'ja III,
were possible locations of resistance against the ruling Edomite elite in
Busayra. Perhaps the bullae bearing the seal impression of king Qaus-
gabar discovered at Umm al‫־‬Biyara demonstrates attempts by the Bu-
sayra elite to control this region.
Since Edom was such a small, decentralized polity with tenuous
control of its hinterland, what kind of scribal activities were required
and actually enacted in ancient Edom? Like in the studies of Judean
scribal activity, several aspects should be observable within Edomite
society: written scribal exercises like abecedaries and single letters or
numbers repeated on the same ostraca, official correspondence and
consistency in spelling and word formation. Unfortunately, the epi-
graphic remains from Edom are slim. While this could be a result of
the chance of discovery, enough of the major archaeological sites in
Edom have been excavated that this sparsity of written records prob-
ably indicates that the Edomite administration was not interested in
major royal inscriptions, written correspondence or elaborate bureau-
cratic record keeping. There is no indication of scribal exercises in
Edom, although the enigmatic seal impression from Busayra (no. 856)
bearing the inscription Itw could indicate that it was a practice exercise.
Furthermore, four objects from Busayra have inscribed or scratched
lines (nos. 889, 891, 992, 1215), but they do not form any identifi-
able letters.
Several inscribed objects from Busayra and the Negev, especially at
Horvat Qitmit, do indicate that some scribal activity was taking place,
whether this was by officially trained scribes appears unlikely. These
inscriptions typically consist of only one or two words and are fragmen-
tary. At Busayra, a fragmentary stone incense-burner was inscribed with
only two letters remaining, ...]Ik[... (Busayra no. 157), possibly the
final two letters of a name ending with mlk. A second inscription from
Busayra (no. 583) is possibly almost complete, ...]rk . qws, although its
meaning is debated. Since the inscription has a word divider between the
two words, it is unlikely that it is a personal name. The probable recon-
struction is yb]rk . qws, meaning »Qaus has blessed.« The inscriptions
from Horvat Qitmit are similar in that they are short, one or two word,

33 For the archaeology of Busayra, see Piotr Bienkowski (ed.), Busayra excavations by
Crystal‫־‬M. Bennett 1 9 7 1 -1 9 8 0 , BAMA 13, 2002; for the epigraphic material, see Alan
Millard, Inscribed material, in: ibid., 4 2 9 -4 3 9 .
414 Bradley L. Crowell

inscriptions on pottery sherds. The Edomite Horvat Qitmit inscriptions

include ...]Ikqw[... (no. 2, excavation no. 518/1), Iqws (no. 4, exca-
vation no. 550/1), and ...]blqwshp[... (no. 3, excavation no. 554/1 ).34
In addition to brief inscriptions, several economic objects were dis-
covered in Edom including receipts and weights. A receipt for wheat
or wine (htn or yyn) was excavated at Busayra (Busayra no. 1191) and
a docket for the delivery of refined oil (smn . rhs) was found at Umm
al‫־‬Biyara by Bennett.35 One of the more interesting categories of eco-
nomic objects is inscribed weights. While the metrological systems used
in the southern Levant during the Iron Age are difficult to analyze, it ap-
pears that there was not a single system in use within Edom. Three
weights are known from Edom, all of different sizes, shapes and with
different inscriptions. One chalk cube from Busayra (no. 621) weighs
9.5 grams and is inscribed on one face with n and ns on another. This
is probably an abbreviation for nsp, a »light« or »half« shekel, which
average around 9.66 grams.36
Two weights are known from the Petra region, one was purchased
in 1922 and the other was excavated at Umm al-Biyara. The first is a
bronze weight of 45.36 grams inscribed with the word hmst »five.« It
is possible that this is an example of a non-standard weight of five
»light shekels«,37 but according to Kletter the metrological system
typically was based on multiples of four of the standard shekel. Also
there are no other examples of weights that were five shekels and
usually its weight was written with the shekel symbol followed by hie-
ratic numerals, not a single word. The Umm al-Biyara weight is a
dome-shaped stone of 42.46 grams inscribed with the sign for a shekel
and the number four, within the range of four regular shekels (average
is 45.24 grams).38
One additional ostracon, written in Edomite script, was discovered
at Tall al Khalayfi (no. 6043).39 This list of names, from the seventh or
sixth century BCE, includes several Edomites (1. 2 bdq[ws; 1. 4 qwsb[nh],
1. 5, 9 pg'qws). The ink at the end of the lines is faded and it is unclear if

34 The excavations and inscriptions from Horvat Qitmit are published in Itzhaq Beit-
Arieh, Horvat Qitmit: An Edomite shrine in the biblical Negev, Tel Aviv, 1995.
35 Crystal M. Bennett, Fouilles d’Umm el‫־‬Biyara. Rapport préliminaire, RB 73 (1966)
3 8 9 -9 0 , plate 22a.
36 Raz Kletter, The inscribed weights of the kingdom of Judah, TA 18 (1990), 135 and
table 4.
37 John R. Bartlett, Edom and the Edomites, JSOT. S 77, Sheffield, 1989, 227.
3» Bennett, RB 73 (1966) 3 9 5 -3 9 6 , plate 24b.
39 Robert A. DiVito, The Tell el‫־‬Kheleifeh inscriptions, in Nelson Glueck’s 1 9 3 8 -1 9 4 0
excavations at Tell el-Kheleifeh: A reappraisal, ed. Gary D. Pratico, 1993, 5 5 -5 7 ,
plate 82.
 A Réévaluation of the Edomite Wisdom Hypothesis 415

this is a list of names followed by disbursements or patronymics. These

economic objects found in Edom or including Edomite names demon-
strates that there was some sort of scribal apparatus operating in Edom
during the late Iron Age II, but there are no royal inscriptions or literary
texts that demonstrate any scribal activity beyond mundane economic
documents and occasional correspondence.
The most important Edomite text is a letter written on an ostracon
from Horvat eUza, the same site that the Literary Ostracon was found,
in the Negev along with approximately thirty Hebrew ostraca. The
letter, concerning the delivery of grain, is from Imlk to blbl and opens
with a blessing in the name of Qaus. The script of the letter is similar to
other Edomite texts including the inverted dalet.40 This letter includes
the only certain Edomite verb within the entire corpus of Edomite epi-
graphs, hbrktk in line 2. This demonstrates that the Edomite scribes did
not often write this kind of text, since no other letters from Edom have
been recovered. Furthermore, the verb, from the common root brk, is in
the hiphil stem, a combination that is unattested in any other northwest
Semitic inscription. It is possible that this is a unique Edomite form of
this verb, but it is more likely that it is simply a mistake by a scribe un-
familiar with the intricacies of the verbal system. Another probable mis-
take by Edomite scribes is the misspelling of the name on a seal men-
tioned earlier. The seal is that of a royal official, Malak‫־‬Bacal (Busayra
no. 368). But the name is mistakenly written lmlklb% which Lemaire
suggests was the error of an untrained engraver.41
During the nearly two centuries that Edom was a growing, but still
small and decentralized, polity, it did not ever require a well-trained
scribal community. Its scribes were only utilized for engraving seals,
economic affairs, and an occasional letter. Even if there was scribal
training in Edom, it was not to the level required to compose literature
like monumental inscriptions, hymns, and wisdom literature. This
would have required time devoted exclusively to writing, material and
extensive training in other languages and literatures, especially those
of Egypt and Mesopotamia. It is improbable that the Edomite scribes
composed literature like that found in the book of Job or Proverbs.

40 For a detailed discussion of the language and script of this text, see David S. Vander-
hooft, The Edomite dialect and script: A review of evidence, in: You shall not abhor an
Edomite for he is your brother: Edom and Seir in history and tradition, ed. Diana Vik-
ander Edelman, 1995, 145-51 .
41 André Lemaire, N ote on an Edomite seal from Buseirah, Levant 7 (1975), 18-1 9.
416 Bradley L. Crowell

Conclusion
Throughout its history, Edom remained a small, decentralized pol-
ity with a low level of bureaucratic administration. The only evidence
for officials in the Edomite government is the occasional reference to a
king in Assyrian inscriptions and the seals of Qaus-Canal and Malak-
Ba'al, the servants of the king. It never attained the political complexity
of producers of great wisdom writings like Egypt, the Mesopotamian
empires, or even of its northwestern neighbor, Judah. Scribal train-
ing and administration, if it existed at all, never composed monumental
royal inscriptions, religious treatises, or even training exercises. The
most sophisticated Edomite text known to date is the Horvat cUza letter,
which is the only document where the verbal system needed to be em-
ployed and the scribe appears to have misunderstood the standard use
of the system. While the book of Job is surely placed in Edom as a liter-
ary setting, it was not composed in Edom by a scribal school familiar
with a wide range of Judean, Mesopotamian and Egyptian genres and
imagery.

An ostracon discovered at Horvat Uzza in the eastern Negev was published in 1993
and initially considered a Hebrew poetic text. Recently, however, this ostracon was inter-
preted as an Edomite parallel to the biblical book of Job. The interpretation of this text as
an Edomite wisdom writing continues a tradition of considering Edom the home of a sig-
nificant school of wisdom in the ancient world. This article traces the »Edomite Wisdom
Hypothesis« in modern scholarship and analyses the possibility of a wisdom school in
Edom within the context of contemporary studies on the social location of wisdom writers
and the production of wisdom literature in the ancient world.
Un ostracon découvert à Horvat Uzza, dans le Négèv oriental, a été publié en 1993
et initialement considéré comme un texte poétique hébreu. Cet ostracon a cependant été
récemment interprété comme un parallèle édomite au livre biblique de Job. Le fait de consi-
dérer ce texte comme un écrit de sagesse édomite rejoint une tradition qui voit en Edom
le berceau d’une importante école de sagesse du monde antique. Cette étude retrace cette
»hypothèse de la sagesse édomite« dans la recherche récente et en analyse les possibilités
dans le cadre des études actuelles sur la localisation des auteurs et de la production de lit-
térature de sagesse dans le monde antique.
Ein in Horvat Uzza im östlichen Negev entdecktes Ostrakon wurde 1993 publiziert
und anfänglich als ein hebräischer poetischer Text angesehen. Jüngst jedoch wurde dieses
Ostrakon als eine edomitische Parallele zum biblischen Buch Hiob ausgelegt. Die Interpre-
tation dieses Textes als eine edomitische Weisheitsschrift setzt eine Tradition fort, die Edom
als Heimstatt einer bedeutenden Weisheitsschule in der Antike in Betracht zieht. Der Auf-
satz zeichnet die »edomitische Weisheitshypothese« der jüngeren Forschung nach und über-
prüft die Möglichkeit einer Weisheitsschule in Edom im Rahmen gegenwärtiger Untersuchun-
gen zur sozialen Stellung der Weisheitslehrer und der Produktion weisheitlicher Literatur in
der Antike.
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