BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Did Northern Scribes Help Write the Bible?

The evidence for scribal refugees in the Jerusalem court

In the late eighth century BCE, the Assyrian Empire conducted a series of military campaigns that devastated the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The onslaught drove huge numbers of refugees southward, with many resettling in Judah and its capital city, Jerusalem. Judah’s new residents doubtless hailed from all walks of life: farmers, laborers, artisans, and even scribes who took up work in the royal court. In his article entitled “Samarian Scribes in King Hezekiah’s Court,” published in the Fall 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, William M. Schniedewind probes the available evidence to see who these scribes were and what their lives in the burgeoning capital city may have been like.

Schniedewind begins by examining the late eighth-century population boom in Judah. He notes that the arrival en masse of northern refugees may explain certain peculiar aspects of biblical literature: traditions about the 12 tribes, and especially the accounts of the northern kings, permeate the Hebrew Bible even though only the Southern Kingdom and its capital survived the Assyrian Empire’s military incursions. Such information likely would have been brought by witnesses to the destruction of the north whose expertise would have been invaluable in the Jerusalem court.

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From an archaeological standpoint, Schniedewind points to the dramatic increase in the size and population of Jerusalem itself in the late eighth century—“more than can be accounted for by the natural, gradual growth of the city.” On the city’s Western Hill, only sparsely populated in earlier periods and situated outside the city walls, large numbers of houses were hastily constructed; this ultimately led King Hezekiah of Judah to build an extensive circuit wall to enclose the Western Hill, even demolishing some of the new construction to make space for the wall.

Another one of King Hezekiah’s renowned building projects, the Siloam Tunnel, which conducted water from the Gihon Spring on the east side of the city into a pool within the walls, may have been dug by a team that included northern refugees among its workers. Schniedewind highlights a variety of features in the Siloam Tunnel Inscription—discovered a short distance into the tunnel near its southwestern end, and now housed in the Istanbul Museum—that hint at a northern perspective: it omits any mention of a king, for instance, and uses specific linguistic forms peculiar to the northern dialect of Hebrew.

Turning his attention to inscriptional evidence, Schniedewind points out that we have access to a variety of northern conventions used in personal names. For instance, the shortened affixes yw- and -yw, pronounced “yaw-/yo-/jo-” and “-yaw” respectively, are known from the Samaria Ostraca, an important group of inscriptions found at Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom, which was destroyed by the Assyrian Empire. These affixes are significant because in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, the usual forms were yhw-, “Yeho-,” and -yhw, “-yahu.” Consequently, when the shortened forms appear in inscriptions from Judah, it likely indicates the presence of northern individuals.

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One particularly prominent example comes from the various seal impressions left on jar handles and other goods by a northern scribe named Menahem son of Yawbanah. Well over a dozen of this figure’s impressions have been discovered in the vicinity of Jerusalem; in fact, as Schniedewind notes, “we know of no other person who left so many seal impressions in such diverse locations.” Menahem must have been not only a trained and experienced scribe, but one of great value to the administrative apparatus of Jerusalem.

Most importantly, the three different seals that Menahem used have different spellings of his patronymic (father’s name). One, in characteristic northern fashion, spells it ywbnh, “Yawbanah,” with the recognizable yw- prefix. A second seems to shorten that element even further, resulting in ybnh, presumably pronounced as “Yawbanah” or “Yobanah.” The third instance is especially telling: it appears that the letters ybnh were carved into the seal first, and the letters h and w were squeezed in secondarily—resulting in a somewhat jumbled version of the Judahite spelling of the name: wyhbnh, an approximation of “Yehobanah.”

This adaptation in the spelling of Menahem’s father’s name suggests that northerners who had come to Judah may have sought to adapt and assimilate to their new environs after escaping the onrushing armies of the Assyrian Empire. This likely means that at least some aspects of northern culture and identity would have disappeared within just a few generations. Schniedewind points out that according to the biblical texts, while King Hezekiah appears to have been quite receptive to the new arrivals, this did not necessarily hold for subsequent kings: about a century later, for instance, King Josiah exhibited some hostility toward the newcomers. The refugees doubtless faced a variety of challenges, and assimilation may have been one way of mitigating their social struggles as they settled into their new lives in Judah.

For more on the northern refugees, their flight before the Assyrian Empire, and the evidence of their presence in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, read William M. Schniedewind’s article “Samarian Refugees in King Hezekiah’s Court,” published in the Fall 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Subscribers: Read the full article, “Samarian Refugees in King Hezekiah’s Court,” by William M. Schniedewind, in the Fall 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Related reading in Bible History Daily

10 Things to Know About the Assyrian Empire

Refugees at Tel Hadid

Looking for the 12 Tribes of Israel

Sennacherib’s Siege of Lachish

Hezekiah’s Monumental Inscription?

Ancient Samaria and Jerusalem

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Samarian Scribes in King Hezekiah’s Court

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Grisly Assyrian Record of Torture and Death

Israelites in Exile

Sennacherib’s Siege of Jerusalem: Once or Twice?