The Book of J

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Startling
Review: This translation of the elements of the Book that are from the J tradition, complete in a startling simple prose, was very enlightening and useful. As compared to the Richard Freedman book "Who Wrote the Bible?" this book gives you the elements Rosenberg considers from the original tradition isolated and available for clear reading. If we can trust this scholarship this is a great source for those that would not have the expertise to recognize the text within a text themselves. People like me. The introduction by Harold Bloom is excellent.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Startling
Review: This translation of the elements of the Book that are from the J tradition, complete in a startling simple prose, was very enlightening and useful. As compared to the Richard Freedman book "Who Wrote the Bible?" this book gives you the elements Rosenberg considers from the original tradition isolated and available for clear reading. If we can trust this scholarship this is a great source for those that would not have the expertise to recognize the text within a text themselves. People like me. The introduction by Harold Bloom is excellent.

Rating:
Summary: fraudulent scholarship
Review: This was a bestseller and, I fear, for many English-only readers it was likely their first and last exposure to the Documentary Hypothesis and redaction criticism. Unfortunately this is not a book for learning about textual criticism of the Torah. The translation is a pathetic hack job and Bloom's commentary is built on many of his own (imaginary) assumptions about the sources.
For a scholarly evisceration of the book, see Robert Alter, "The Quest for the Author", in The World of Biblical Literature (1992).
A good introduction to textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible for English readers is Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman (2nd ed.) ... though just about anything would be better than The Book of J.