Dominik Markl SJ Pontifcal Biblical Institute, Rome markl@biblico.it • ORCID-iD: 0000-0002-5202-048X Media, Migration, and the Emergence of Scriptural Authority * DOI: 10.35070/ztp.v143i2.3716 Abstract: The article explores the relationship between media and migration in the development of the authority that sacred writings gained in ancient Israel and early Judaism. The question is framed using media theory, applied to the development of writing in the ancient Near East. A historical reconstruction of the migration of scribes and the transport of manuscripts, especially during the Babylonian exile and the return migration of Judeans in the Persian era, provides the background for considering three literary representations of the relationship between migration and scriptural authority: the extraterritoriality of divine revelation in the Pentateuch, the authorization of Torah after the return from Babylonia as refected in the fgure of Ezra, and its translation into Greek in the Hellenistic period, dramatized as narrative in the Letter of Aristeas. The article comes to the conclusion that transpositions through migration intensifed the importance of writings as focal points of collective identity and thus contributed to their growing authority. Keywords: media theory, writing, migration, scriptural authority, sociology of literature, Pentateuch, Early Judaism One of the major puzzles of history is why the ancient cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia fell into near oblivion in late antiquity, while a particular set of texts from an area of minor importance in the Levant – the biblical scriptures – made a singular career in signifcantly infuencing history up to the present. Their infuence depends on the authority attributed to them, which originates in their conception as divine revelation, and in the historical and sociological conditions under which they emerged – a ZTP 143 (2021), 261–283 * I thank Peter Dubovský, Jean Louis Ska, Jean-Pierre Sonnet and Claudia Paganini for helpful conversations on topics involved in the present argument. I am particularly grateful to Mahri Leonard-Fleckman and Juliane Prade-Weiss for commenting on a draft of this article.