Who Wrote the Bible?

Rating:
Summary: Excellent but title is misleading
Review: This excellent book focuses exclusively on who wrote the first five books of the Bible, also known as the Pentateuch or Torah. The title is thus unnecessarily misleading and an explanatory subtitle would have been a simple fix. Such a fix would not compromise sales and would nullify any suspicions that the misleading is partially intended for lucrative purposes. The author's aim is to synthesize his and related research, to give an overview for experts, and to make the topic accessible for a wide audience. The aims are amply achieved, the author is clearly competent, and his writing is a pleasure to read. For me as an amateur novice, it was tantalizing to be lead through some chapters like a whodunit, and surprising to see how advances continue steadily in the field. As a non-expert I got the feeling that the research has matured beyond simply dissecting fragments and has moved towards constructive synthesis. Presumably, this book can be taken more seriously than the many, many books on this or related topics by authors who have no serious credentials. The topic is obviously important for all people of the Western and Middle Easter world, including agnostics like me, because the Bible has defined much of who we are and the first five books are seminal. Yes, most people will say to themselves that only the contents are important, but by understanding the history of how the contents came about, one can get MUCH better understanding of the contents. The second edition includes significant changes and a substantial new preface.

Rating:
Summary: Torah: more than the sum of its parts.
Review: Well, the first thing that I am going to observe about this book is that it will offend the sensibilities of a large number of Judeo-Christian theists. The thesis here is so-called 'higher criticism' which is to say an attempt to resolve the identities of the hands who contributed to the writings (in this case) of the Torah / Pentateuch, as well as the Deuteronomistic histories which follow them. Tradition calls the first five books of the Bible 'The Books of Moses', but one who reads them will observe that the writings themselves do not make any claim as to actual authorship. Earlier sources certainly existed and while some may have traced to Moses, there are many indicators in the text that suggest he did not pen the accounts as we have them. Of course, Tradition has said certain things about the Bible that the Bible does not say about itself. Recognizing that Tradition might not be correct does not inherently diminish the significance of the Biblical canon. As a Christian, I can say (as does Friedman, who is not a Christian) that the Bible stands up extremely well to this kind of examination, even if Tradition may not. Read the whole book (WWtB) before making hasty judgments about it. As Friedman concludes, the Torah texts are unique among the writings of antiquity, are much more than the sum of their parts, are much more than their individual authors could have understood or foreseen.
What will offend many conservative Jews and Christians about this book is that it will be seen as discrediting the idea that scripture is inerrant. In this regard, I offer three quick observations: (1) the idea of errant/inerrant writing has limited applicability, it hardly applies to poetry, symbolisms or parables, for example, or to many aspects of cultural perspectives, all of which the Bible clearly contains. (2) Perhaps this is one of the reasons the Bible does not itself claim to be 'inerrant' in every literalized detail of the collected whole. (3) If one contends that there are historical errors in scripture, for example, when so-called 'doublets' or 'triplets' (the Bible begins with a doublet, Genesis 1 and 2) seem to yield different sounding accounts, this does not rationally suggest that the Bible's ultimate claims are wrong. In fact the Bible claims to reveal the deepest understanding or reality: that the Creator of the material world is not bounded by the world or human understanding, that the world is God's, that we are God's, that God ordains that free beings may accept His friendship and peace, and that free beings are not constrained to do so. These are certainly consistent claims of scripture and have no contingency, for example, to whether two (P source) or seven (J source) clean beasts entered Noah's ark. That writers relate different accounts, and that the redactor (R source) presents them without regard to differences (at points even intertwining these differences), is strong evidence against the suggestion that the Torah is a "pious fraud" collusion. The Torah may be puzzling and paradoxical but it is not finally contrived window-dressing, not mere pretense. Lastly, in this regard, the reader might bear in mind that the Torah texts are indeed ancient and mysterious; Friedman's study, whatever its merits, should not be seen as the final word, neither should anyone else's.
I found the book quite interesting. The author presents some fairly persuasive arguments for his conclusions (although a few are rather weak). He seems to have done a better job than earlier scholars working in this field, and he respects the texts he works at dissecting. By this standard I'd rate it as either 4 or 5 stars. However, as a Christian and one who believes in things deeper and higher than human scholarship, I have some concern that many readers will not know what to do with Friedman's thesis and arguments. For the individual who's overly simplified view of the Bible might be characterized as 'bibliolatry', the textual theory of 'J - E - P - R - D' is indeed jeopardy. For the Christian (or Jew) who equates human religious tradition with divine truth, I won't recommend this book -- at least not until spiritual development has freed him from this comfortable but confused view. Likewise, the secularist opponent of scripture may narrowly delight in the critical dissection of these texts, but will probably resist recognizing that the assembled whole is more than the sum of its parts. In other words, it's an interesting and perhaps valuable book to the reader who can approach it with honest questions and without excessive dogmatic pre-commitments. Many biblical literalist-traditionalists and many supposed skeptics of the Biblical canon will not fit this description.