On Scroll-Making in Ancient Jerusalem

This paper, read to an Association of Bible collectors, considers the way in which a small scroll-making community constituted by a prophet, scribes, and political operators formed a community with an alternative vision of social reality in opposition to the dominant vision and the dominant power structure of ancient Jerusalem. It is proposed that this oppositional community that produced its subversive scroll began the scroll movement that eventuated in "canon," a text production that was characteristically subversive of established social vision.