BIBLICAL LIBRARIES
of such books before the monarchy. Such collections, at their gathering point, the collector, were of course true libraries. This applies even to orally transmitted books as well as to written, but as a matter of fact there seems, from the bibliographical point of view, small possibility of oral transmission or even composition of many of these. While it may be doubted that the laws were "engraved on stone or clay" rather than papyrus (which was rapidly coming into use then in Palestine) or leather, and one may even ask evidence that they were "deposited in the various sacred cities," one can hardly avoid now agreeing with Sellin (p. 7) they were nearly all written down at the time. This by-product of modern criticism thus ensures, by unanimous agreement of the critics, collections of books in the period of the Judges, On the whole, therefore, the logical inference from these collections tends to confirm the existence
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