I’m about halfway through and am finding it to be both accessible and fascinating. I would be interested in the opinions of @AllenWitmerMiller and @deuteroKJ regarding this book.
It was well written and well marketed. But all it is is a popularized rehash of the old Documentary Hypothesis (except for the fresh claim that women wrote part of the text, and some disagreement with Wellhausen’s view of P/Temple). Friedman doesn’t acknowledge or interact with any scholar (from 19th c on)–conservative or liberal–who has questioned or objected to the DH. So, unfortunately, I’m unimpressed and unmoved by the book.
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Agreed. The book represented old scholarship even when it first came out in the late 1980’s. I find it annoying that every time Simon & Schuster produces a new edition and advertising campaign the enraptured New York Times book reviewers treat this book like some kind of definitive epitome of the very best thinking of the academy and Dr. Friedman its dazzling Chairman-of-the-Board.
I studied under a die-hard old-school JEDP man and so at least I can say that Friedman brings back a lot of memories of long ago. The great thing [sarcasm] about old-time JEDP-ism was that there was absolutely no contradictory evidence which could not be swept away by the spontaneous creation of yet one more hypothesized editor/redactor/scribe or after-hours office-janitor in the scroll-room who happened to “mangle” the text—yet not enough to prevent his influence from being identified with great accuracy by an insightful modern day academic. Each editor, sub-editor, and sub-sub-editor even got their own subscript/superscript code (e.g., E2c+*) so that Documentary Hypothesis fans could more easily keep score at home! (Yes, somehow we were told with a straight face that even the countless exceptions to the patterns of JEDP weren’t really a problem at all. Somehow all of those many elaborations on JEDP only managed to reinforce what was simply the “dynamic nature of the living text over time.”)
Memories. (Another nostalgic nod to @Dan_Eastwood.)
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I studied under a die-hard old-school JEDP man and so at least I can say that Friedman brings back a lot of memories of long ago. The great thing [sarcasm] about old-time JEDP-ism was that there was absolutely no contradictory evidence which could not be swept away by the spontaneous creation of yet one more hypothesized editor/redactor/scribe and after-hours office-janitor who happened to “mangle” the text—yet not enough to prevent his influence from being identified with great accuracy by an insightful modern day academic. Each editor, sub-editor, and sub-sub-editor even got their own subscript/superscript code so that Documentary Hypothesis fans could more easily keep score at home! (Yes, somehow we were told with a straight face that even the countless exceptions to the patterns of JEDP weren’t really a problem at all. Somehow all of those many elaborations on JEDP only managed to reinforce what was simply the “dynamic nature of the text over time.”)
Be that it may, source criticism far better explains the various contradictions, doublets, and many other observations far better than traditional interpretations.
I’ve actually asked Hebrew professors on a variety of points Friedman makes - and all they could come up with is “it is not the only possible explanation”.
The reason why evolution is accepted is because it explains many many many observations far better than creationism.
You all keep reiterating how JEDP is dead. But source criticism, multiple authorships of the Pentateuch is accepted. There are a few differences here and there, but the general thrust has been proven beyond all doubt.
Let us use Noah’s Flood as a test case.
For readers here, the two Flood texts from one Noah’s Flood story can be found here
@deuteroKJ and @AllenWitmerMiller, apart from two writers for Noah’s Flood combined into one, how do you two explain how two separate stories can be taken out of Noah’s Flood, each of which uses distinct language, removing contradictions such as number of animals and problems with chronology?
Specifically -
Why are we told twice about Noah’s offspring (5:32 and 6:10)?
Why does the story offer two explanations for God’s decision to destroy all creatures, removing them from the face of the earth—one explanation relating to the transgression of the divine/human divide and the wickedness of the human heart (6:1-7), and the other relating to human violence (6:11-12)?
Why, does the Torah contradict its own representation of God’s command to bring animals onto the ark, first requiring two of every species (6:19) and then requiring seven of each pure species and only two of each impure species (7:2-3)?
Why does it say the flood will last 40 days (Gen 7:4,12, 17), but elsewhere 150 days (7:24, 8:2)?
And of course, why can we separate out two distinct, complete stories, one of whom uses YHWH as God’s name, and the other of which Elohim as God’s name?
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Thanks to both!
I’m not saying that source criticism has no value. Nevertheless, one of the problems of the Documentary Hypothesis was it became—in my humble opinion (which is not worth all that much because I’m not a Torah specialist)—is that it illustrates the old maxim derived from Maslow’s Hammer: If your only tool is a hammer, all you ever see is nails. JEDP became a mania juggernaut on steroids, evidence be damned. (Again, that is my own brand of colorful opinion. I’m not at all speaking for @deuteroKJ or anybody else with much better training.)
Indeed, as an additional disclaimer, I should emphasize that I weighed in on the Who Wrote the Bible? question only because @Mercer politely tagged me on it. Besides not being a specialist in Pentateuch studies, my studies were a very long time ago and I no longer track much of the scholarship in that field.
Indeed, for that matter, I occasionally find big surprises when I finally get around to revisiting a topic from my grad school days which I thought was somewhat “settled” by the academy. Today my shocker was that the Steppe Theory and so much of what I thought I knew about Proto-Indo European language reconstruction is being heavily challenged from multiple directions. (Next thing you know, somebody will tell me that a U.S. federal court had to address whether or not the VP presiding over the Senate could overturn electoral college votes in particular states. Talk about far-fetched! Like anybody would ever imagine such a thing!)
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Never said that. It’s just not the monolith it once was. It has faced severe criticism from the right and the left. You should quit pitting source criticism vs. traditional. It’s nowhere near that simple. Also, many conservatives have no problem with source criticism per se (same with the dozen other critical -isms).
Have you attempted to read any scholarly criticisms of the source-critical take on the flood narrative? Besides, even if different sources were used, my interest is the text as we have it, not in the hypothetical sources and history of construction.
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Never said that. It’s just not the monolith it once was. It has faced severe criticism from the right and the left. You should quit pitting source criticism vs. traditional. It’s nowhere near that simple. Also, many conservatives have no problem with source criticism per se (same with the dozen other critical -isms).
My apologies. I conflated your position with my evangelical professors who said it was dead.
Have you attempted to read any scholarly criticisms of the source-critical take on the flood narrative? Besides, even if different sources were used, my interest is the text as we have it, not in the hypothetical sources and history of construction.
Umberto Cassuto’s The Documentary Hypothesis where he attacks five pillars of the documentary hypothesis - variation in the name of the deity; different language and styles; contradictions; repetitions and duplications; lastly, composite structure.
I am not persuaded by his arguments against the five pillars. Yes, Jews have traditionally argued that YHWH was used when God was more personal, and Elohim when God was more lofty.
Yet this traditional argument has less explanatory power and less parsimony of many observations taken together - where P is concerned for laws and centralisation of sacrifices, J with Judah, E with Israel, and of course the doublets with contradictions - Noah’s Flood has many many contradictions which source criticism explains better than any other traditional explanation.
How do you explain the questions I asked about Noah’s Flood?
Again, specifically -
Why are we told twice about Noah’s offspring (5:32 and 6:10)?
Why does the story offer two explanations for God’s decision to destroy all creatures, removing them from the face of the earth—one explanation relating to the transgression of the divine/human divide and the wickedness of the human heart (6:1-7), and the other relating to human violence (6:11-12)?
Why, does the Torah contradict its own representation of God’s command to bring animals onto the ark, first requiring two of every species (6:19) and then requiring seven of each pure species and only two of each impure species (7:2-3)?
Why does it say the flood will last 40 days (Gen 7:4,12, 17), but elsewhere 150 days (7:24, 8:2)?
And of course, why can we separate out two distinct, complete stories, one of whom uses YHWH as God’s name, and the other of which Elohim as God’s name?
Evangelical theological school told me doublets were there to show different perspectives, like the two creation stories.
The different perspectives argument doesn’t explain Noah’s Flood, though, and the Flood story itself was not a traditional doublet, but two stories fused into one.
They also don’t explain why in one part of the bible, Balaam is depicted as a prophet of God, then elsewhere as a heretic.
The archaeological evidence including the Deir Alla texts which talk about prophet Balaam shows that at the time in Canaan, YHWH was unknown there.
The texts provide a fascinating look at the actual religious beliefs and scriptures of a locale the Bible considers to be part of Israel. They mention the biblical deity El, a fertility goddess, and a council of gods called the Shadday. They make no mention of Yahweh, which suggests that he was not a significant deity in Gilead, contrary to Samaria across the Jordan river. Balaam is described as a prophet who receives visions from El at night, and who delivers his oracles in a manner quite similar to some of the biblical prophets. (On this point, see Dijkstra 43-64.)
The actual biblical text is very good at confusing and misleading a great many people. Would not an inerrant/infallible biblical text be less prone to misinterpretation? Or was God sending us a great delusion, so we would believe a Lie?
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Rather than going point by point, here’s a helpful article by Gordon Wenham giving an alternate reading while engaging the source-critical arguments.
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@Witchdoc, don’t let the paywall deter you from the Gordon Wenham article. For those who may be unfamiliar with JSTOR, you can register for a free individual account and get access to 6 free articles per month. (During this pandemic when libraries may be closed, they raised that number to one hundred.)
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Rather than going point by point, here ’s a helpful article by Gordon Wenham giving an alternate reading while engaging the source-critical arguments.
Thanks for the link, it was a good read.
Wenham is a fabulous scholar (his Leviticus commentary is an absolute favorite, in spite how boring Leviticus appeared otherwise on the surface), and he answers the Divine name, contradictions, and repetition arguments, but what about the overarching pattern ?
In evolution, we talk about a consilience of evidence, and patterns.
The particular patterns -
One description of Noah’s offspring, one divine name, one reason for the Flood, with one pair animals with one chronology and one version of the story,
And another description of Noah’s offspring, with another divine name, with another reason for the Flood with 7/2 pairs of clean/unclean animals, and another complete version of the story?
Wenham does not address the overall consilience of two stories indicating two authors ; he may have addressed individual arguments but not the overarching pattern, which I think is evidence better explained by two authors.
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Thanks! I was going to say I didn’t have access.
Signed up.
If you read his Genesis commentary, he provides literary patterns on the current text (e.g., chiasm and palistrophe), showing, regardless of sources, the text is intentionally put together (not sloppily, as source critics often presuppose). Many who’ve dug into the details show that the source-critical picture is inconsistent at points, so that the so-called pattern isn’t so clear.
I don’t think the source-critical reading of the flood story is crazy, despite its weaknesses. But I’m weary of the presuppositions in the methodology and the lack of interaction with other ANE texts (real texts, not hypothetical sources) that also don’t portray the clean consistency source critics require.
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If you read his Genesis commentary, he provides literary patterns on the current text (e.g., chiasm and palistrophe), showing, regardless of sources, the text is intentionally put together (not sloppily, as source critics often presuppose). Many who’ve dug into the details show that the source-critical picture is inconsistent at points, so that the so-called pattern isn’t so clear.
Wenham’s chiastic/palistrophic argument can actually be used as evidence for two stories into one - the two individual J and P stories are chiastic.
Also, contrary to Wenham’s thesis, because both J and P were arranged in chiastic structures, it would not have been overly difficult for the redactor to splice the two stories together into one story. The two-source theory remains the best explanation for the doubling of events and also the two different language styles found in the text as we have it.
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I’m glad I chose science. 
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I’m glad I’m not a scientist. Too much hard work for too little reward. 
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