Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Demotic Egyptian Papyri and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible

Lilian Uhlig analyzes the driving forces behind the literary development of both the post-exilic texts of the Hebrew Bible and Demotic texts. In some cases, the narrative struggle of "historical" texts with their own national past might turn out to be examples of "trauma literature", dealing with a collective experience of suppression and foreign rule in the past. They show that the strong interest in the own national past, often mentioned by Hebrew Bible scholars as characteristic of Biblical Literature from the post-exilic period, has important structural similarities in contemporary Demotic papyri.