Meanings
- The practice of using scribes.
As a rule, those in positions of power shared a vested interest in advancing the cause of scribality because control over the medium allowed them to govern the public discourse.
2004, Jonathan Draper, quoting Werner H. Kelber, Orality, Literacy, and Colonialism in Antiquity, Brill, →ISBN, Roman Imperialism and Early Christian Scribality, page 1352 more examples
The scribal culture of the technical wisdom movement, the mnemotechnical oral scribality of the pre-mishnaic rabbis and the scribality of monks produced noticeably different texts.
1996, Ian H. Henderson, chapter 2, in Jesus, Rhetoric and Law, →ISBN, page 186He has stressed, first, the great differences between a manuscript and a printed text, and second, the multiple interactions between orality and scribality in the first century, including the variability of early manuscripts.
2013, Joanna Dewey, chapter 7, in The Oral Ethos of the Early Church […] (Biblical Performance Criticism; volume 8), Wipf and Stock, →ISBN, page 109
Origin
By surface analysis, scribal + -ity.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
scribality. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scribality
“scribality.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scribality. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “scribality,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scribality.
Source: scribality on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.