Reflection on Who Wrote the Bible? By Richard Elliott Friedman

               This was a cool book. It asks the titular question and goes into a literary analysis of the Old Testament, showing how different lines and phrases imply different authors, and explaining his hypotheses to the reader with references to archaeological evidence. It is very convincing, but that might be mainly because I knew so little about this stuff going in.

               The book covers the books in order, starting with the Pentateuch, showing that by separating the text into parts that refer to Yahweh and parts that use other names for God, you find that the text is actually at least two texts pushed together. Then, by separating another portion that deals greatly with law and priests by identifying key phrases, you can find another author. Friedman claims that his undergraduate students can learn to tell the authors apart in weeks. Basically, Friedman thinks that there were two versions of the bible that were combined when the Assyrian Empire conquered Israel, the northern Hebrew kingdom, in 722 BC and dispersed its people, who came from various Hebrew tribes that would later, due to this, be known as the lost tribes. Judah remained, and refugees flowed in, bringing their version of the Jewish origin story. He uses interesting observations to determine this. For example, the J version (mentions Yahweh) refers to the ark that housed the Ten Commandments several times, but E (the version from Israel) never mentions it at all. This makes sense because the ark was in Jerusalem, part of Judah, which wanted to emphasize its importance, while Israel would want to diminish it. He thinks that J was written in Judah between 848-722 BC and that E was written in Israel between 922-722 BC. It is interesting to read the examples the author gives of how you can split the text up and find two flood stories and several stories that are in one but not the other.

               Friedman’s book is especially captivating because he often tells tales of his own life as a biblical researcher, explaining how he and his mentors have come up with ideas, making the whole book a lot more relatable. He emphasizes that the Bible was the first attempt at writing history and that for it to be written or compiled by anyone other than Moses does not reduce its importance. After all, a faithful Jew would recognize that those who wrote it were doing so based on their own revelations from God.