Heard across millennia of book making, these words from the preacher in Ecclesiastes ring true today. Recent technology, such as print-on-demand, e-books, e-mail, and the ubiquitous Internet, disseminate the written word more easily and more quickly than was possible in any previous era. Despite occasional laments from bibliophiles, the book is alive, well, and rapidly multiplying. Thus, the production of annual book titles in the United Kingdom rose by 72 percent during the 1990s, according to the International Publisher Association, and book production in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Germany, the United States, and other countries also recorded significant increases.

But while books may now seem without end, they do have a more definite beginning, as the ancient preacher also may have known. His words serve as a general warning about the relatively new practice of book production. The preceding verse inveighs against any writings except the “sayings of the wise,” which invite interminable study and thus “weariness of the flesh.” A widespread concern for such weariness would have made sense only in a literate culture, or, more likely, in a society involved in the dangerous transition from an oral culture to a literate one. My study focuses on this transition in ancient Israel, the spread of literacy among the social classes of seventh-century Judean society. In doing so it looks at the beginnings of the making of one book – the Hebrew Bible.