Who Wrote the Bible? - Hardcover

Friedman, Richard Elliott

4.11

5,963 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224025732 ISBN 13: 9780224025737

Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1988

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For some two thousand years, the Bible has been revered, studied, disdained and debated. It is the most influential book of Western culture and is read wherever there are people who can read. Many have lived by it, some have died for it. But no one knows who wrote it or why. Armed with his training as a Bible scholar and linguist, Professor Friedman combines his own understanding of the ancient world with recent archeological evidence and new methods of literary analysis to discover clues within the Bible itself that point to a solution to the puzzle of its authorship. Like a skilled detective, he uncovers the identity of its writers, discovers that some of these writers knew each other, and tells how this affected, in unexpected ways, the final form the Bible took. He explains why there are inconsistencies in the Bible and why God is portrayed in so many and often contradictory ways. Already praised in America as 'fascinating', 'stimulating', 'brilliant' and 'provocative' by Bible scholars of differing religious affiliations, Who Wrote the Bible? challenges us to rethink the way we understand, value, and use the Bible today.

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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

From the Back Cover:

"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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