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Summary: The Great Treasure of Monotheism
Review: I write this to an audience that believes Monotheism was an advance in the theological system of the ancient Near East. I personally believe in Reincarnation, but have trouble melding this belief with multi-deity religions. With this personal introduction, I offer that this book is an outstanding literary work. It is easily readable. Unlike many texts on religious literature, it is clear, precise, and most importantly, very enjoyable reading. It addresses questions any reader of the Bible has regarding duplication of it's stories and obvious contradictions. More importantly, this book illuminates the faces and lives of the several individual people who actualy composed portions of the Bible, giving them personalities, and showing their perspectives, personal agendas, and prejudices. The thesis is developed well and the conclusions are enjoyable, if not ironic. The Appendix divides the Bible into proposed authorship, allowing for comparison to other authorship theories. Most importantly, this book gives a glimpse into the literary and spiritual process that led to Monotheism. A great work.
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Summary: Now I understand the battle of the trees--
Review: I earn my living as a social scientist but I have a strong background in biological science. My reading has included scientific works by Strauss, Needham, Mauss, and others--and I read the Golden Bough by Frazier and the White Goddess by Groves when I was in graduate school. When I read Friedman's "Hidden Book in the Bible", then "Who Wrote the Bible" and then to the "Disappearance of God" I experienced a flood of illumination. Then I read "Noah's Flood" and had another flash of insight. A year or so ago I was visiting the John Muir Woods north of San Francisco. As my son and I walked through the magnificent redwoods, he asked me why I was whispering. I said, "Because this is a cathedral." I mentioned this to my friend who is Nez Perce. She said, "Yes." Now I see through a glass darkly.
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Summary: A Detective Story of the Highest Caliber
Review: I had read several books that purported to explain the origins of the Old Testament, but they tended to make assertions without explanations. Perhaps they were too advanced for me. This book, however, explains in great detail how it arrives at its conclusions.It is great fun to read parts of the book and ask yourself: Whodunit? For example, there's one place where you are compelled to predict who wrote about the Golden Calf incident. I picked J, but the author picked E. After he explained his decision, I had to admit that he was probably right and I was probably wrong. Not so good for my ego, but an enjoyable puzzle nonetheless. The author is careful not to overstate his case. In situations where he lacks sufficient evidence, he points this out. This level of caution makes the whole work much more credible. I greatly enjoyed the way he explained how the political reality of the ancient Near East created pressures to write (or compile) a particular KIND of book. Prior to this, I knew that many Bible stories contained contradictions, but I didn't know why. What is interesting about this -- though this may be lost on literalists -- is that the analysis of the Bible in no way diminishes it. Indeed, by explaining the reasons for the contradictions (rather than simply explaining-away), this book greatly increases my respect for the Bible. I think everybody who claims to know the Bible should read this book. It's all very well to memorize chapter and verse, but if you don't know of the Bible's origins, you can hardly claim to understand all its implications.
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Summary: Thought provoking & easy to read
Review: Very informative and enjoyable
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Summary: not enough substance
Review: I'm sorry, this documentary is a nice introduction into Biblical scholarship, but does not have enough "substance" for long-time readers into the subject, to whom most of the information in this video is nothing new. The brief "Acts" or episodes does help to make a review of the basic points a little superficial. The "cop out" at the end ("perhaps we will never know....") also prevents deeper insight.
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Summary: Eloquent popularization marred by some special pleading
Review: Richard Elliott Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible has a lot going for it. It is probably the clearest guide for the lay reader to the "Documentary Hypothesis" -- the notion that the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, were not written all at one time but assembled from at least four major sources composed at different times and under different circumstances. This idea, which was first proposed in late eighteenth century France and developed by Julius Wellhausen in the nineteenth century, allows one to see the religious traditions of ancient Israel as historically evolving from a nature cult, through centralized worship and sacrifice, to a text-based ethical religion. Friedman tells the story of the composition of the Torah with great clarity and verve, in a way that a reader lacking Hebrew can understand. Occasionally I find Friedman's exposition to be marred by what might be called "special pleading." Friedman will have a novel idea and will present it in a way that seems quite convincing, but since he doesn't really present the alternatives other scholars have considered, I sometimes feel he is pulling a fast one on the less learned reader. He has a theory, for example, that the E document (composed in the Northern Kingdom around the 9th century BC) was written by a priest at the old site of Shiloh, in the tribal area of Ephraim. He supports this by the Golden Calf episode in Exodus 32-34. This text attacks Aaron, and so, he argues, it couldn't have been written in the southern kingdom of Judah, where the priesthood was descended from Aaron. But it also presents idolatry in terms of a Golden Calf, and the Calf was the symbol Jeroboam used in place of the Cherub in the alternative temples he set up in the North at Dan and Bethel. Friedman argues that a priest of Shiloh would have no ties to Aaron, and would be jealous of the successful priesthood in Bethel, and so would have precisely the ideology required to write the story that way. That works, though, ONLY if the story is all of one piece written by a single narrator. But many scholars think (on the basis of linguistic evidence) that this part of Exodus was put together by an editor who was combining the narratives from the J (southern) and E (northern) traditions after the destruction of the northern kingdom by Assyria. If that is the case, you don't have to imagine an alienated priest from Shiloh at all. The connivance of Aaron in rebellion and idolatry could be from the E (northern) document, and the Golden Calf symbol could be from the J (southern) document, skillfully edited together by the JE editor. Hypotheses should be as simple and plausible as they can be. I'm from New York, and when I hear hoofbeats outside my window, I think "horses" (there's a riding stable down the block). I don't think "buffalo." Sometimes I think Friedman hears too many buffalo.
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Summary: A Correction
Review: Professor Friedman kindly informs me that the second edition of his book contains a footnote to an article he wrote in rebuttal to the Kikawada and Quinn volume I mentioned in my previous comment. His additional arguments should be given due consideration in assessing his case.
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Summary: An Explanation of the Documentary Hypothesis
Review: I was persuaded by Friedman until I read Before Abraham Was: The Unity of Genesis 1-11 by Issac M. Kikwada and Arthur Quinn (Ignatius Press, 1989), which I reviewed here by saying that "Freidman's prize example of the documentary hypothesis, based on work by Julius Welhausen, shows that you can slice the Noah story into two separate accounts, written by two different authors, each with an allegedly separate vocabulary and concerns. Kikawada and Quinn look at the same passages, questioning the assumptions behind the documentary approach (showing, for example, other ancient writings that mix different names for diety in the same passages). They also show both large scale and local chiasms (inverted parallel structures) running through the Noah story, showing that the same repetition that documentary scholars see as evidence of multiple authorship, can be seen from another perspective, as evidence of concious artfulness. Reading Friedman and Kikawada and Quinn might also send you scrambling for another look at Thomas Kuhn's _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_, so that you can consider how one goes about choosing between conflicting paradigms." It's a good book, but not the last word on the subject. Friedman's book contains not a word about Hebrew poetic forms, particularly chiasmus, despite chiastic structures having been proposed for the Noah story as early as 1930 in Lund's Chiasmus in the New Testament.
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Summary: Who Wrote the Bible is a useful video for teenagers/adults
Review: I highly recommend the "Who Wrote the Bible" video because it allows high school and college students (as well as adults) to explore some of the big scholarly questions about the Bible in an attractive, professional format. It gives students exposure to top scholars and allows them to engage in questions they often have about the human side of the production of the Bible. I would especially recommend its use in conjunction with Friedman's book by the same title which explains in relatively simple language the JEDP theory. While conservative churches may not buy into the views espoused in the video, others will find the exploration of the Bible's origins engaging and at times liberating.
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Summary: a wonderful journey into knowledge
Review: This is a book worth buying, keeping, underlining, citing, and re-reading. Richard Friedman is obviously a devout man of God who requires a logical understanding of where our roots of Christianity came from. I spent some time discussing his proposals with several fundamentalist friends and found their final rebuff to Friedman's ideas, "Well I guess you just have to take some things on faith alone." God gave us brains, and quite extrordinary ones at that, to think with. The contradictions of the Old Testament both within the text and within the world as we know it today drove me away from Christianity for 15 years. Now, as I read and learn more about Christian reality and Hebrew history, I find my faith, belief, and reason coming together at a point that gets closer and closer to God, which I claim to be synonymous with The Truth.
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