BIBLICAL LIBRARIES
city-lands must have had its center of worship. When it was thought that writing did not exist to any extent in Palestine before the time of David, it was the fashion to account for the name of the city of "Kirjath Sepher," the "City of Books," by curious tours de force of conjectural emendation (Sephûr for Sepher, Tabor for Debir), but with the recent progress of excavation the possibility of the name has been fully established and the insight of Sayce probably justified. Whether Debir implies an oracle or sanctuary or public records ("words" - public acts, proclamations, decrees, etc., including oracles) or something else, it is crosschecked as to one of the cities by other terms in Hebrew and the Greek LXX; "City of Books," "City of Scribes," "City of Instruction," and apparently by the Egyptian which uses the determinative sign for "writing" (HBD 1:577) in connection with this or a neighboring city.
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