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Who Wrote the Bible? | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard E. Friedman
Publisher: HarperOne
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $10.85
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Rating:  84 reviews
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 0060630353
Dewey Decimal Number: 222.1066
EAN: 9780060630355
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
"J," "P," "E," and "D" are the names scholars have given to some authors of the Bible, and, as such, they are very important letters to a lot of people. Churches have died and been born, and millions of people have lost faith or found it, because of the last two centuries of debate about who, exactly, wrote the canonical texts of Christianity and Judaism. Richard Elliott Friedman's survey of this debate, in Who Wrote the Bible?, may be the best written popular book about this question. Without condescension or high-flown academic language, Friedman carefully describes the history of textual criticism of the Bible--a subject on which his authority is unparalleled (Friedman has contributed voluminously to the authoritative Anchor Bible Dictionary). But this book is not just smart. Perhaps even more impressive than Friedman's erudition is his sensitivity to the power of textual criticism to influence faith. --Michael Joseph Gross
Product Description
"It is a strange fact that we have never known with certainty who produced the book that has played such a central role in our civilization," writes Friedman, a foremost Bible scholar. From this point he begins an investigation and analysis that reads as compellingly as a good detective story. Focusing on the central books of the Old Testament--Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy--he draws upon biblical and archaeological evidence to make a convincing argument for the identities of their authors. In the process he paints a vivid picture of the world of the Bible--its politics, history, and personalities. The result is a marvel of scholarship that sheds a new and enriching light on our understanding of the Bible as literature, history, and sacred text.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 79 more reviews...
 A book every biblical student needs in their library October 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Whether you agree with Friedman or not, he is one person you need to have in your library. The book "Who wrote the bible" is the most easiest and most detailed book to read on the subject of the Documentary Hypothesis.
Even if you do not agree with this theory, Friedman makes many good points, that are by themselves worth looking into. I did not realize that the Tabernacle was kept inside the temple, until Friedman made a good argument to prove that.
As far as i am concern that fact alone is worth the price of the book. Many authors especially on the "conservative" side seem to believe that everything is out of the box and there is nothing more to discover. Friedman proves that wrong. And he does that because he looks at the bible from a different perspective.
His argument that Solomon was responsible for the split of Israel is also a goldmine. Something I did not see in reading the bible and it is nothing I have heard or read from by anyone else.
His perspective on how the culture around Israel and Judah formed the bible is also a very good argument. That when Israel "returns to God" is when the powers are at its weakest and when they worship the powers gods is when that power is at its strongest. That religious and social reform within these two countries coincide with the rise and fall of Assyria and Babylon.
This book is one that changed my view on the bible and it opened my view to new possibilities and how history, religion and life of the Powers influenced Israel and Judah, and the bible shows it and Friedman made it clear.
Even if you do not like Friedman, you need to read this book, it will reveal a new way of looking at the bible. This book needs to be read by every bible student!
 Makes as much sense as do our traditions of who wrote what August 23, 2008
Professor Friedman's book shatters most of my beliefs since childhood relative to who wrote the Bible. My earliest beliefs were formed by my teachers who were strict orthodox protestant believers. Basically I believed that every word of God in the Old Testament was there as if God had dictated it to those who penned its contents. I can recall questioning authorship at least of some of its sections, such as the death of Moses. It was logical to assume that the account written describing his death and burial was written by someone other than himself. I questioned that if Moses did write the first 5 books, why did he keep referring to himself as "Moses said", or "Moses did?" That didn't make sense. Why didn't he use the first person referring to himself? In seminary, the Documentary Hypothesis was studied as a satanic deception. We had Jesus own testimony with his referral to Moses throughout the Pentateuch and Paul's own statement that every word of God was written under inspiration. My viewpoint was as most of the editors of the 1995 version of the NIV: "These first five books were most likely written by Moses, except for the last chapter of Deuteronomy which tells about Moses' death."
It is evident that the first 3 chapters of Genesis contain two totally different narratives, each telling not necessarily a complimentary account of the same event. He points out that the first version of creation, the writer always refers to the creator as God (35 times). The second version refers to the creator always as Yahweh God (11 times). "The first version never calls him Yahweh; the second version never calls him God." He illustrates the two flood stories, with contradictory numbers of animals taken into the ark, number of days of the flood, and other details. He takes you though other Old Testament stories containing doublets and written in different language. He gives the history behind the Documentary Hypothesis and gives reasons for the scholastic credence of it. I had to cast away some of my superstitious ideas of how the Bible came to be after reading this. The Bible was cobbled and woven together over a long period of time. It is evident we don't have final answers for a lot of it, but I came away believing it is as logical to believe Ezra wrote most of the first 5 books during the exile as it is that Moses wrote all of them.
Excellent, short, compelling book August 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a very good book, making careful and reasonable arguments about the various authors of the Bible - J, E, D, P, and their redactor R. While I am not an expert in this field, Friedman makes arguments that seem very compelling and accessible even to a lay audience not deeply familiar with the historical, academic of constructing the Bible's authorship. Careful reading is required, and an open mind. Friedman's analysis seems to be fair-minded and academically honest, without sounding pretentious or claiming to have an absolutely definitive view. Anyone interested in a review of Biblical History (Old Testament or Jewish Tanakh only) should read this book to become acquainted with the field. It provides an excellent staring point into the historical construction of one of our most important and pervasive texts.
For Those who are students of the Documentary Hypothesis March 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is an excellent read. For those who are literary critics of the Holy Bible, this would prove to be the back bone for understanding who evolution of who wrote the bible, why they wrote it, and when. Friedman's emphasis' lies on the Pentateuch, or the first five books of the bible which were purportedly written by Moses. Friedman however dismisses this, and provides a more plausible explaination behind these first five books. His image of the documentary hypothesis cannot be matched in this day and age.
Important For Those Who Like Postmortem November 25, 2007
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Most of this book concentrates on a hypothesis for how the Torah, not the bible as a whole was written (regardless of what the book's name or some of the reviewers say)- it is the origin of Torah that is attributed to Moses, not the bible as a whole.
Torah in its own right, if this hypothesis is correct, is a) an omelet and b) has a history. I don't know why for Christians it is important that the written Torah was revealed to Moses all at once, for the Orthodox Jews, this is important because Torah is the covenant between the Suzerain - God and a King - the people Israel. This relationship between God and Israel is at the core of Judaism. Also, it is important for the Orthodox that Torah is attributed to Moses because of the position that the Orthodox hold that the ancient state of Israel had to find its justification in the Torah - not the other way around. Israel only has one ruler and law giver - God.
I will leave it to the reader of this review to look at the other reviews to see what the book is talking about. In my review, I would like to raise a few questions about the validity of some of what the author of "Understanding The Bible" wrote.
Firstly. The author Richard Friedman, wrote in Chapter 14 about how the various pieces that sometimes contradicted and were totally unrelated were put together and that they created something that the originators could never have imagined. I argue that this is not correct. There are major themes in the Torah that are constants that are seen throughout and have been preserved all throughout the "merges".
1) The theme that leads from the creation story to the Tabernacle and the first temple. The idea is that the first temple represented Eden.
2) The moral growth of humans as well as the moral changes in the conceptions by God. This leads us from Cain who killed his brother, but was tolerated by God to the dictum made by God that all those who shed the blood of man will die by man's hand. As well as that God will demand a reckoning from every beast for killing men. This was a legal principle that Israelites used from the earliest time (even if the writing down of this principle is attributed to a later age). Additionally, we go from Adam and Eve who are children, to Noah who is the most righteous of his generation, but doesn't attempt to change God's mind about killing all people and animals, to Abraham who tells God not to dare to destroy an entire city.
3) The covenental formulary is preserved throughout all the so called modifications, "arbitrary additions", political feuds, etc. To learn what covenental formulary is and why it is important, please read the book Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible by Jon Levenson.
Here is another thing that one has to watch out for. The so called contradictions. On page 229, the author lists two "contradictory" passages.
(1) "Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it...because in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day. Therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it."
(2) "Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it...and you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Yahweh your God brought you out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore Yahweh your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day"
The author claims that (1) and (2) above are somehow contradictory and yet people who read them seem to be able to reconcile them. Let me suggest that (1) states why the Sabbath day is sanctified while (2) states why you should keep it sanctified. Had the author understood that the story of the bringing out of the land of Egypt is the reason for why we as Jews obey God's commandments, he would have understood the reason for (2). (1) simply states that given that you will obey God and keep Sabbath holy, here is an explanation for why it is holy. Contradictory? Perhaps in the author's imagination.
In any case, the bible is a living book. It is the way in which one communicates with a living God. Perhaps the reason that so many people object to the kind of study that leads to the documentary hypothesis is the notion that it is like cutting up a dead frog in order to do a postmortem. Instead, you can use the book to create a relationship with God that has been described by many as a relationship between lovers.
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