In Bible times, tall, slender papyrus reeds grew in defense clusters along the River Nile. You will not find them growing wild along the Nile today because civilization destroyed their natural habitat, ironic, since papyrus nourished human civilization by providing a great way for people to communicate and preserve their history.

Papyrus was the world’s first lightweight, inexpensive and durable writing material. That assured it a major role in the story of the Bible. In fact, many of the oldest copies of Bible books, including some of the Dead Sea Scrolls that are more than 2,000 years old, survive on paper made from papyrus reeds.

By about 3000 BC, Egyptians discovered they could make paper from the columns of soft, mushy pith inside papyrus reed stems. These reeds grew throughout the Mediterranean, but the papyrus reeds in Egypt were best suited to making paper for two reasons. First, the supply seemed endless – especially in the Nile Delta. Second, stems of the Egyptian plants were biggest: five meters (10 to 15 feet) high and up to five centimeters (two inches) thick. This meant Egypt had pretty much a monopoly on the industry.

As ancient wall paintings show, men harvested papyrus reeds by pulling them from the river bottom and hauling them in bunches on their back. Craftsman then cut the stems into short sections of about a third of a meter (one foot) long, or a little longer. Next they cut away the outside layer of the stem, exposing the soft cylinder of white pith inside.

The pith, still moist, was then sliced lengthwise into thin strips, normally about one to three centimeters (a quarter of an inch to one and quarter inches) wide. These strips could be dried and stored for use later, or they could be immediately worked into papyrus sheets.

To make a sheet, strips were laid side by side on a hard surface, such as a board. The parallel strips were just touching or slightly overlapping. Then a second row was laid on top, with its strips running crossways to the first layer. Craftsman then hammered and pressed the moistened strips until the pith fibers intertwined, binding the two layers. Afterwards, the sheets were dried in the sun, forming a strong, flexible, creamy white writing surface.

Scribes could write on individual papyrus sheets. But the sheets were often glued end to end with flour paste to form a scroll, or roll, generally about 20 sheets long. Scribes preferred to use the side with the horizontal strips, so they could move their pens with the grain. But many ancient papyrus scrolls have writing on both sides.

Ink was made of natural minerals that did not fade easily. The clearly legible writing on the Dead Sea Scrolls written centuries before the time of Jesus is a tribute to the quality of the ink.

Black ink came from carbon deposits, such as soot scraped off lamp tops or pot bottoms. Carbon also came from charcoal or burnt bones ground into a fine powder. Whatever the carbon source, it was mixed with a binding agent such as gum Arabic, a water soluble sap from acacia trees. This mixture was dried into small cakes. When a scribe was ready to write, he rubbed a moistened pen or brush over the ink cake.

Scribes commonly used red ink as well. It was made from iron oxide, red ochre or other minerals found in the soil.

When scribes made a writing mistake, they could erase the fresh ink by wiping it with water. If the ink had already dried, they could scrape it away with a rock. These methods of erasing worked because dried papyrus plant juices form a protective barrier on the surface of the sheet, keeping the ink from sinking deep into the fibers.

Pens first used for writing on papyrus paper were more like small paintbrushes. They were cut from rushes, tiny plants that grew in the marsh. The pens were cut to different lengths, often anywhere from about 15 to 40 centimeters (6 to 15 inches). Scribes would chew on the pen tip to loosen the tiny fibers and form them into a delicate brush.

When the scribes wrote, they looked more like artists at work because they did not generally rest their hands on the sheet, but held the pen like a brush against a canvas. By New Testament times, writers used reeds sharpened to a point and split like a quill pen. Pens and dried cakes of ink were often kept together in long, narrow pen boxes made of wood. Ink cakes were also kept in small stone inkwells.

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The Bible’s Name

The Bible owes its name to papyrus. Greeks called the papyrus rolls biblia, after Phoenicia’s seaport of Byblos – a major exporter of papyrus. In time, the word came to mean “book” and eventually “the Book,” the Bible.

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The final episode of Deborah’s campaign against the detested Canaanite general Sisera belonged to another woman. Jael was a woman of the Kenites, a Midianite clan that lived a nomadic existence in the Negeb desert south of Judah. They claimed an affinity to Israel through their descent from Hobab, the Midianite father-in-law of Moses.

Jael’s husband, Heber, had separated from the main Kenite clan and “pitched his tent” in the north of Israel, where the king of Hazor held sway. As foreigners subject to the Canaanites, Heber and his wife apparently came to fear Sisera and his army of iron chariots as much as the Israelites did.

In any event, Jael’s tent happened to lie in the path of Sisera as he tried to desert his own defeated army and escaped from the pursuing Israelites. Jael evidently perceived Sisera as a deadly threat. Thus, she used all the guile she could muster to entrap and kill him.

The bait for the trap was the practice of hospitality, a custom of great importance to Bedouin clans such as the Kenites. To welcome a stranger into one’s tent meant that one was responsible for protecting that stranger. When Sisera came asking for water, Jael welcomed him by offering him milk instead. Sisera trusted her welcome as “she brought him curds in a lordly bowl,” and he rested in her tent.

Jael was no soldier, but as a nomadic woman she had set up her tent countless times – and therefore knew how to wield a mallet and tent peg. With these weapons she sprang her deadly trap. When her prey was asleep she struck and “drove the peg into his temple, till it went down into the ground” (Judges 4:21). Barak, in hot pursuit of Sisera in the hope of gaining glory for himself by killing his foe in person, found, upon arriving, that the deed had been done.

Certainly Jael’s act was one of treachery for she had betrayed both the Bedouin conventions of hospitality and the trust of Sisera. But as far as the Israelites were concerned, a far greater cause was at stake: freedom from Canaanite oppression. Thus they could sing in the “Song of Deborah:”

“Most blessed of women be Jael,

The wife of Heber the Kenite,

Of tent-dwelling women most blessed . . . “

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In the beginning there was no written word. There was only the spoken word, and – as it was later to be recorded in the book of Genesis – God created the universe by speaking words into the void. God’s earliest worshippers their thoughts about God or their experiences of God, but they could speak them, and speak them they did. Long before they invented their own writing system, and even long afterwards, Hebrews told and retold stories, many of which were later to appear in the Bible.

At first, fathers and mothers probably told their children stories about their own parents and grandparents. Abraham himself must have engaged in such storytelling. When he was called by the Lord to leave Ur and move to Canaan, Abraham must have wanted to preserve memories of his old life and to convince his family and new neighbors that the Lord was the one true God and that the many gods being worshipped by the people around them were lifeless idols. Abraham probably repeated stories of how the Lord created the universe and saved Noah and his family from the flood. He must have told of his own calling, repeating God’s promise to make him the father of a great nation. Later, his son and grandson, Isaac and Jacob, would have continued the tradition, adding their own stories. When their descendants were forced by famine to move to Egypt, where they later became slaves, they would have had even more reason to preserve their heritage, clinging to their beliefs in order to endure.

The Hebrews were not the only people to pass along stories orally. A number of ancient Babylonian narratives parallel those in the Bible. One such tale, later set down as a poem, the “Enuma Elish,” tells of the creation of heaven and earth, but it also tells of a multitude of battling gods who are eventually subdued and ruled by Marduk, the principal god of Babylon. On the other hand, the creation account of the Hebrews affirms that the one true God created everything and holds all creation in his grasp. This vision of God makes the Hebrews unique in the ancient world.

Storytelling, then was not merely for entertainment. Rather, it was of a way of preserving the culture of the people, of letting them know who they were, how they differed from their neighbors. The stories reminded the Hebrews of what made them special. As time went on, storytelling moved out from the family to larger groups, and professional storytellers became common. Often these storytellers recited their texts at community gatherings or to celebrate special feasts. As they told their stories, they may have embellished them to stimulate the interest of their audiences, but they dared not wander far from the point or alter any essential truths. If they tried, listeners would have objected, as they had heard these recitations often enough to be familiar with their contents, and would not tolerate significant deviations – for it was their faith and culture that was being passed on in these stories.

The oral tradition, as this ancient type of storytelling is now called, continued after the Hebrews were delivered from slavery in Egypt and eventually moved into the land that God had promised them. Stories of Moses and the exodus, the conquest of Canaan and heroic feats in the days of the judges were added to the repertoire. Even though writing was becoming widespread, only bits and pieces of the biblical texts were being written down. In fact, scholars say that none of the books of the bible were written down in their final form until at least the time of King David. But even later, centuries after the last of the books of the Bible had been written, people continued using word of mouth to pass on stories, laws, principles and teachings of all kinds.

Adding to the Story

In order to make a point, storytellers sometimes supplemented their narratives with unrelated stories from other traditions. Some of these stories have survived independently of the Bible. One of them may be the ancient Egyptian “Tale of Two Brothers.” In this tale, a woman tries to seduce her brother-in-law. When he rejects her advances, the woman is afraid of what will happen if her husband finds out what she has done. And so, as soon as her husband comes home, she accuses his brother of rape, and the brother is forced to flee for his life. Some scholars say that a Hebrew storyteller may have borrowed this story and adapted it for use in the saga of Joseph, who having been sold into slavery by his brothers, is accused of rape and imprisoned after he refuses the sexual advances of the wife of his master, Potiphar. If a Hebrew storyteller did deliberately incorporated the Egyptian tale into the Joseph narrative, he was not trying to falsify history, as we understand it. He was probably only attempting to illustrate that Joseph was an upright and moral man and that God would take care of him no matter how cruelly he was treated by the outside world. For Genesis goes on to tell how Joseph ultimately rises to power and is able to help his own people in time of famine.

More Than Stories

Stories were not the only type of material passed on by storytellers. There were also proverbs, prayers, lyric poems, songs, laws and even riddles (such as Samson’s riddle in Judges 14:14) and etiologies – stories that explain how some person or place was named, or how so many languages came into the world.

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