The Bible with Sources Revealed - Friedman 2005 | Religious Study & Research

Why is the Bible so hard to read? The answer lies in the Documentary Hypothesis, conceived over a hundred years ago. This book presents a comprehensive collection of evidence supporting this theory, all in a concentrated format in the first 31 pages.The rest of the book presents the author's translation of the Torah (1st 5 books of the Bible), coded to alleged authorship, with extensive footnotes & explanations. What a job!The short version is as follows: "J" wrote a story representative of Southern Judean interests. "E" wrote one about Northern Israeli interests. When the North and the South united, the Priests in charge could not get rid of either well known document, so he (they) wrote "P", making the story more to his (their) liking. King Josiah "took charge" at age 8. Because of his age, he was heavily influenced by the priests. After he attained young adulthood, the main priest conveniently found "D" (mainly a set of laws) that so impressed the young king that he had the whole tome read aloud to the masses.All these sources and editions were put together by an editor, called the "Redactor" into the final 5-book work. The Redactor may have been Ezra, a priest of the Second Temple after the Jews returned from exile in Babylon.Evidence for this elaborate theory consists of differences in linguistics, terminology, content, narrative flow, connections with other parts of the Bible, relationships among the sources to each other and to history, and convergence (several different lines of evidence converge). This data is fascinating, well-presented, and quite convincing.The above is my light summary of the Documentary Hypothesis. The heart and soul of the book, however, is in the text of the Torah itself, which is color coded. This makes it quite convenient to read each source individually as a flowing text. When read in this fashion, the improvement in continuity is striking. The footnotes are helpful in bringing out political considerations of the authors and the Redactor.Friedman is also the author of "Who Wrote the Bible", a book which creates a mystery out of the authorship delimma. That book I also recommend, and suspect a person who likes one book would like the other. The book under review here appears to be the definitive work on the Documentary Hypothesis. It belongs in the library of anyone interested in the Bible, with the possible exception of literal interpreters, and I recommend it highly.