ondly, the self-perpetuaing process of textual ritualisation Watts proposes leaves unan-
swered the question of how the process actually began. We are left with something of a
‘chicken-and-egg’ causality dilemma in which the exact form of a text in transmission is
driven by that text’s ritual status, yet the ritual status of that same text is simultaneously
driven by its exact form in transmission. One cannot help but ask the question: which
came first – the ritual status of the text, or its exact form?
In answer to the first objection, we can look to the development of the Hebrew scriptural
texts proposed by Carr. His view of the process through which the Torah became a
largely invariant long-duration text proposes a significant role of priestly transmission
and textual ritualisation – both mechanisms that feature prominently in the model pro-
posed by Watts. While the process of education-enculturation in pre-exilic Israel is envi-
sioned as effectively mirroring that of the larger empires of Assyria and Babylon in the
first millennium B.C.E., Carr sees a shift in the centralisation of education-enculturation
from the context of the palace towards the context of the temple in late pre-exilic
times.^1342 This shift is evident in the Deuteronomistic History, especially in the Book of
Deuteronomy itself, which was “shaped and used for education.”^1343 Deuteronomy posi-
tions itself as the only material to be used for education-enculturation, refocusing the
educational curriculum on a text which imparts commandments, statues and laws that
claim singular authority.
(^1342) D.M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart (^) , 117-19. See also G. Boccaccini, Rabbinic Judaism, 56-
57, who sees the re-alignment of political power being complete in the post-exilic period. 1343
D.M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart, 142.