Who Wrote the Bible? - Softcover

Friedman, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060972149 ISBN 13: 9780060972141

Publisher: Harpercollins

Synopsis

The contemporary classic the New York Times Book Review called a thought-provoking [and] perceptive guide, Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard E. Friedman is a fascinating, intellectual, yet highly readable analysis and investigation into the authorship of the Old Testament. The author of Commentary on the Torah, Friedman delves deeply into the history of the Bible in a scholarly work that is as exciting and surprising as a good detective novel. Who Wrote the Bible? is enlightening, riveting, an important contribution to religious literature, and as the Los Angeles Times aptly observed in its rave review, There is no other book like this one. 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.

About this title

Review:

Brilliantly presented: There is no other book like this one. It may well be unique. --Los Angeles Times

It is an event to have a book as readable and exciting as Who Wrote the Bible? It has about it the resounding smack of solid truth. --Harvard Magazine

A contemporary classic that is a thought-provoking and perceptive guide to the Bible's authorship. --New York Times Book Review

About the Author:

Richard Elliott Friedman is the Davis Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Georgia and the Katzin Professor of Jewish Civilization at the University of California, San Diego. One of the premier biblical scholars in the country, he received his doctorate at Harvard, was a visiting fellow at Oxford and Cambridge, and was a senior fellow at the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. He is the author of The Disappearance of God (published in paperback as The Hidden Face of God), The Hidden Book in the Bible, Commentary on the Torah, The Bible with Sources Revealed, The Exile and Biblical Narrative, and the bestselling Who Wrote the Bible?. He works in Akkadian, Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Ugaritic, French, and German. He was an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow and was president of the Biblical Colloquium West. His books have been translated into Hebrew, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Polish, Hungarian, Dutch, Portuguese, Czech, Turkish, and French. He has been interviewed by CNN s Larry King and on NPR s All Things Considered and Morning Edition and Radio Times and Talk of the Nation. Articles and citations of his work have appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Time, Newsweek, and other print media. He was a consultant for the Dreamworks film The Prince of Egypt, for NBC The Eternal Light, for A&E Mysteries of the Bible, and for A&E Who Wrote the Bible?, for PBS Nova: The People of the Covenant: The Origins of Ancient Israel and the Emergence of Judaism, for European television's ARTE The Bible Revealed, and for PBS The Kingdom of David. A consultant to universities, journals, encyclopedias, and publishers, he is also the editor of four books on biblical studies and has authored more than fifty articles, reviews, and notes in scholarly and popular publications.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• ISBN 10: 0060972149
• ISBN 13: 9780060972141
• Binding: Paperback