By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

William M. Schniedewind thinks scholars and contemporary readers often ask the wrong questions when looking at the development of the biblical text. In his “Who Really Wrote the Bible: The Story of the Scribes” (Princeton University Press), Schniedewind, a professor of biblical studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, focuses on the “various scribal communities that wrote and collected biblical literature and how these communities and their literature made their way to Jerusalem where this literature could be preserved, compiled, edited, and eventually canonized into our Bible.”
If readers learn one thing from Schniedewind’s work, it’s that a focus on the individual authors of the text is the wrong approach. He notes that “the idea of biblical authors is anachronistic. It transports modern views of writing and authorship back into the past.... producing and distributing literature in antiquity relied heavily on scribal communities and social infrastructure. A scribe could not just sit and write and then distribute their work. Writing and literature as well as their distribution and dissemination relied on communities.”
Schniedewind notes that scribes were connected to a variety of occupations, for example, writing letters and proclamations for rulers, keeping track of business transactions, writing religious documents, etc. Since there were no schools as we think of them in contemporary times, scribes were either the natural children of scribes (with the occupation passed down through the family) or apprentices who learned to write as part of their training. These apprentices were often considered part of the family, noted by the fact the word ben (son) was often used to describe their connection to the scribal family. 
The author believes that, after the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel, many northern priestly scribes moved to the area around Jerusalem and brought the stories of the northern kingdom with them. The author also writes of those scribes found in rural areas of the southern kingdom of Judah, who did not work for the temple proper. He sees these two groups as coming together at some point to write an authoritative text that would become the scroll of the Torah.
Using archeological evidence and references from the biblical text, Schniedewind offers a far more complex version of what occurred than can be explained in a short review. He includes details about the history of the two kingdoms and what occurred when they were conquered and/or destroyed. The author also notes how the use of Aramaic spread, meaning that Hebrew was now only used by a limited group of people. It became the specialty of the priestly scribes who copied and recopied the documents that had been passed down. Hebrew became a literary language, rather than a spoken one.
It was only later that these scrolls became venerated. Schniedewind feels this began during the Persian period. He quotes from biblical texts to show the scrolls containing these stories now being read to the public, rather than just being known to the scribal community. The author also outlines the relationship between Judean scribes and Samaritan ones, describing when the two groups began to split and noting how that affected the writings they passed down to the next generation. 
“Who Really Wrote the Bible” is a scholarly work and can be difficult to read for those unfamiliar with this era of history. Lovers of archeology will enjoy the illustrations and discussions about the development of writing throughout this period. Those who are interested in specifics of the writing of the biblical text may find less information than they might have wished. That’s because Schniedewind recognizes the impossibility of identifying authors as we now know them. However, that explain his clever title: he is less interested in who wrote (authored) the text than he is with those who physically placed words on seals, buildings, stones, papyrus and parchment.