Bible may be older than thought

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The Bible Is Really Old, Handwriting Analysis Reveals

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ey parts of the Old Testament may have been compiled earlier than some scholars thought, suggests a new handwriting analysis of text on pottery shards.

The shards, found at a frontier fort dating to around 600 B.C., were written by at least six different people, suggesting that literacy was widespread in the ancient kingdom of Judah, said study co-author Israel Finkelstein, an archaeologist and biblical scholar at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

"We're dealing with really low-level soldiers in a remote place who can write ," Finkelstein told Live Science. "So there must have been some sort of educational system in Judah at that time."

The writing shows that the kingdom had the intellectual resources to write and compile large chunks of the Old Testament during this period, he added. [The Holy Land: 7 Amazing Archaeological Finds]

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