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The Hidden Book in the Bible

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Friedman argues that the so-called "J" material in the Hebrew Bible (traditionally limited to the Pentateuch) actually includes large parts of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel. The bulk of the book consists of Friedman's translation of the passages he ascribes to J, which fit together into a reasonably coherent narrative. I'm not sure I'm convinced, though. The established J material includes talking animals (the serpent in the garden, Baalam's donkey), spectacular miracles, and many theophanies (God walking in the garden, closing the door of Noah's ark). The material in Joshua, Judges, and Samuel has little or none of this; it is much more realistic in tone. Still, Friedman's theory is provocative and interesting, and his book should appeal to anyone with an interest in the historical context of the Hebrew Bible.

It makes intuitive sense that there might be a single dominant thread in the Hebrew bible, with a timeline running from the creation story through the rule of David. Friedman, expanding on his earlier work "Who wrote the Bible", develops his thesis of this core work (with a sole author) through painstaking linguistic analysis and textual criticism. Within his interpretation of what is referred to by documentary hypothesis scholars as the "J" (Yahwist) account, you'll be surprised by such things as a very different rendering of the ten commandments, to say nothing of some surprising redefinitions of words and phrases that will both amuse and enlighten you.

All in all, the reader will feel as if they are seeing an extremely unvarnished and unedited version of ancient Israel's history for the first time, and if you really enjoy an in-depth look at the construction of the Torah, as well as the court era of the old testament, this work will not disappoint you. One warning though: be prepared, if your academic skills lie elsewhere, to read it twice because Friedman will put you through your paces in terms of the biblical expertise required of you to understand his thesis. Additionally, I would recommend that you read "Who Wrote The Bible" as a prelude to this book.

First, a quick primer: People who study the Bible divide the Old Testament into four basic categories depending on who wrote what: The Yahwist Texts, Elohist Texts, Deuteromnic, and Priestly. Yawhist and Elohist texts are both attributed to single authors. Yahwist came from Judah probably, while Elohist came from northern Israel. Their focus is to a large degree in line with where they came from: 1st Kings is Yahwist, 2nd Kings is Elohist. Both write about similar things at times which is why there are similar stories in the Bible, such as Joshua crossing the Jordan River and Moses crossing the Red Sea. "YHVH", or "Yahweh", is where the Latin "Iehova" came from, which is where our "Jehovah" came from today, hence the Yawhist Texts are sometimes called the "J" Texts. The Book of "J" is universally attributed to one author.

I never read the "Book of J", so this is the first time I have had the chance to see the Yawhist Texts put end to end. The adding of additional material into "the book of J" is controversial. Nonetheless it's a fascinating read.

I have one item of concern with the adding of the Material. Just because passages are similar does not mean that they are attributed to the same hand. While the case is strongly made that certain passages _ARE_ related due to word choice and theme, it doesn't mean that relationship is one of authorship. It is entirely possible that the passages can be inter-related with word choice and theme and still be written by different people. It is an age-old technique to gain respectibility of your work/point by mimicking something that came before, and letting readers catch on to it. For example, the Book of Matthew, intended for Jewish readers, is divided into five major "parts", similar in design to the Torah. Jesus and his family flee into Egypt to escape Herod because of Herod's killing of First Borns is at about the same placement as the Book of Exodus in terms of Matthew's progression vs. Torah Progression, and that was done on purpose. It was to make Jewish people _SEE_ the connection of Jesus to themselves. In spite of the similarities here, nobody claims that the Book of Exodus and Book of Matthew were written by the same person. It's just a deliberate similarity--one author mimicked the themes of another on purpose.

The same thing can happen in the Book of Kings vs. the Cain and Able story--one author ties his work into the significance of another. It doesn't necessarily mean both are written by the same person.

Nevertheless, even _IF_ the various passages were written by different people, SEEING THE PASSAGES LINED UP/LINKED IN THE WAY THE _HIDDEN BIBLE_ DOES IT BRINGS OUT THEMES AND MEANINGS WE WOULD OTHERWISE MISS. For that reason by itself, the Hidden Bible would be worth the read, regardles if the Author is one person or several. There are other reasons to be sure, but in the end the themes still hold regardless of authorship.

Having studied the Old Testament for over 60 years, it was always the genealogy and the talmudic laws that killed the enjoyment of the poetry and story line in the Old Testament.

But in this wonderful book Professor Friedman after years of work and study uncovered the Hidden book within the Bible, the story by J. Here is the first great prose of mankind. Shorn of all the additions heaped on it by editors with their own agendas you now have a work of beauty. It is more like Homer or Shakespeare. I never thought, I not only would understand the story of the Hebrews from creation to King Solomon, but would truly enjoy reading it. Boiled down to 222 pages of beautifully printed text, Professor Friedman calls this version "IN THE DAY" taken from the first three words of this new revision of the Book of J. He shows why his translation works by as he says "presenting the text of the original as carefully as possible. This translation is made from Hebrew original sources. This is a big departure from for example the King James version that used Greek translations that muddied the works even further.

Let me quote Freidman. "Readers have an opportunity to see the first great prose writer's full achievement; an epic work of the struggle between God and humans. and between good and bad." Professor Friedman is one of the most interesting biblical writers actively writing today.

The foremost scholar of the JEPD textual theory of the Torah, Friedman presents his scholarly notes and backgrounds, and the reconstructed text of what he understands to be the original story of the J text, thought to be the oldest narrative of the Torah, which uses Yahweh as the name of God.

Freidman's analytical reconstruction differs from that of Harold Bloom, in "The Book of J." Friedman find the J Writer in much of the material up through the Davidic monarchy of united Israel. Bloom follows the more conservative traditonal view that restricts the J document primarily to Genesis. Friedman interacts with Bloom and other textual critics and their theories.

Friedman presents strong stylistic, linguistic and thematic arguments that this original document goes from Genesis through the establishment of Solomon's reign. He further presents arguments confirming the antiquity of this deep strata of biblical material, proving that this is the oldest known example of prose in any language, as well as the first history (though all ancient "histories" are different in style from the modern western concept of history).

The author further deals critically with its relationship to the early material from the northern kingdom, commonly referred to as E, showing that they both were in final form and already being combined into a single document in Judah.

Together these constitute the two oldest examples of human prose, predating even Greek histories, previously claimed to be the earliest histories. Friedman closes with a devastating detailed argument against recent lines of argument claiming all the biblical texts were written in or after the Babylonian Exile.

If you read Harold Bloom's "The Book Of J", you need to buy this.
The scholarly consensus over most of the past century was that the oldest Biblical stories were from the Yahwist (or "J") source. However, Friedman makes a pretty convincing argument that the J source and another Biblical source, the "Court History of David" were written by the same person. Of course, this means that J is much more recent than previously thought, since it could not pre-date the reign of Solomon (with whom the Court History ends).

Everyone has their own unique way of talking and writing. Where I would use one set of words to describe something someone else would use a totally different wording for the same thing. Where I would use one type of illustration to make a point someone else will use a totally different one. Friedman uses this sort of linguistic analysis along with other techniques to search the Old Testament and find passages that appear to be written by the same author. What results is a Biblical history book that apparently had been scattered throughout several of the Old Testament books and now is brought together as one consistent and highly readable book.
Working from Hebrew sources, his research is sound and scholarly and yet the result is easily understandable and highly readable. Mr. Friedman notes that as he researched this common authorship he noticed that each time one section ended the next section that met the same author's writing style started up from the same place the first left off as if there had been nothing between. This further supported his position that it has at one time been one text and was probably the original work of prose for the Bible.
The book covers the period from the creation until the reign of Solomon and is a wonderful read for those interested in Biblical studies, early Jewish thought, or Biblical history. A recommended read.

Harold Bloom imagined the author of the Court History of David (the document behind most of 2 Samuel) as the husband of the princess he imagined wrote the "Book of J" (the J document that makes up a large part of Genesis, Exodus and Numbers). Richard Elliott Friedman goes this one better: he imagines them as the same person (not committing himself to whether that person was male or female). The basis for the claim is primarily verbal parallels. For example, the "ktonet pasim" (mistranslated "coat of many colours") that Joseph wears in Genesis 37:3 is repeated in 2 Samuel 13: 18, as the garment Tamar, David's daughter, is wearing when she is raped by her half-brother Amnon. And the phrase is repeated nowhere else in the Bible. There are indeed a lot of verbal parallels between the J document and parts of the Deuteronomistic History. The problem is that verbal parallels can occur for a number of different reasons: the same authorship, allusion by one author to the work of an earlier author, or simply by chance. Friedman often tries to suggest that some of the stories in Genesis are parallel to stories in 2 Samuel, but often these parallelisms are phony. For example, Friedman claims that in Genesis four brothers are in contention for the succession to the blessing of Jacob: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, and the blessing falls to the youngest of the four, Judah. Meanwhile in 2 Samuel, four brothers are contending for the succession to David: Amnon, Absalom, Adonijah, and Solomon, and the succession eventually goes to Solomon. But anyone looking back at Genesis would see that (1) a fifth brother is in sharper contention than the four Friedman mentions: Joseph; and (2) the fates of the four sons of Leah are very different from those of the four sons (all by different mothers) of David: only Solomon survives David's death by more than a month. So while by twisting and pushing the two stories can be made to seem to line up, a little reflection suggests that the parallels aren't really parallel. The evidence of the verbal parallels is much stronger, and it may be convincing to some readers. I think, though, that this is a case of looking too hard at the trees and missing the forest. The J narrator and the Court Historian share an ability to deftly characterize persons and to create a swiftly moving plot. But the narratives are very different in flavor. J's story is richly mythic, set among characters who are larger than life, while the Court Historian is presenting a tale of political intrigue among people who are all too human. Friedman's theory finally stands or falls on one question: if there was one writer for both the J narrative and the Court History of David, when did he or she write them? Friedman presents a date toward the end of the ninth century B.C.E. The lateness of the date is chosen to accommodate a phrase in the blessing of Esau by Isaac in Genesis 27:40, which indicates that Edom (the nation founded by Esau) will eventually throw off the yoke of Jacob (the nation of Israel). That happened around the reign of king Joash, about 815 BCE. But it seems very implausible to me that the narrative of the Court History of David was written any later than during the reign of Solomon. The narrative deals in great detail with the personalities not only of David's children but his courtiers--Jonadab, Achithophel, Shimeah, Barzillai--all of whom come alive as people whose virtues and vices made history of David's reign happen. It seems obvious to me that whoever wrote the Court History knew these people; they weren't vague memories or reconstructions of folks who had lived and died over 150 years before. My own guess would be that the person who wrote J knew the Court History of David, was influenced by its vocabulary and turns of phrase, but probably wrote a generation or more later. But I wouldn't insist that anyone agree with me. On Friedman's theory my verdict would be "not proven."

Richard Friedman could probably be called the Julius Wellhausen of modern biblical studies. Like Wellhausen did a century ago, Friedman has essentially updated, expanded, and clarified the Documentary Hypothesis so as to make a book on this subject from just 30 years ago seem hopelessly outdated. P in the postexilic period? Psssshaw...

While I had heard of this book before, I was naturally skeptical of its rather large claims, but after seeing the evidence for myself I agree with Friedman's conclusion- J and the Court History, as well as several texts in between, were written by the same author as part of a single narrative (perhaps initially "published" in two volumes), that covered the Hebrews' traditional history from creation to the accession of Solomon.

My only problem is with Friedman's translation of the work- I understand that it was his intention to translate the work as literally as possible, in order for the readers to get a feel of what it may have read like in Hebrew; nonetheless, this really made for awkward reading; I had to put the book down a couple times because the tedious vocabulary was giving me a headache. That may be what it's supposed to sound like in Hebrew, but in English it doesn't necessarily work.

However, the story and commentary are very well-written, the evidence is convincingly-presented, and, underneath the awkward translation, a genius of an author is remembered for the first time in over 2800 years. Worth it in my book.

The fascinating untangling of the Flood story that Professor Friedman gave us in "Who Wrote the Bible?" is carried many steps forward in this captivating feast of detective work and biblical scholarship. A single, cohesive book has been 'hidden' under our very eyes in the biblical text. It begins in Genesis 2:4b with the writings of "J", but then it is scattered throughout nine biblical books, from Genesis to Kings. Yet all of its parts can be identified by their similar stylistic, thematic and vocabulary characteristics. He demonstrates with very convincing arguments that the similarities of the various components are far in excess than what could be expected by virtue of imitation or chance. And what emerges is 'the heart of the Bible', a single, cohesive and beautiful story, the mother of most of the beloved biblical stories that we learn since childhood, and the one that routed the cultural and religious development of the Western world. And it appears to be the work of a single author, possibly a woman.

Professor Friedman's book is organized in three parts: introduction, a new translation into English of the entire 'hidden' Hebrew text, and scholarly notes to document and support his thesis. It is best to read them in order. The introduction captures the interest of the reader, who may find it difficult to put the book down once started. It describes the origin of the idea and the twelve years of research and discovery that led to the identification and concatenation of all the parts of the 'hidden' book. The translation begins with a title, 'In the Day". In the Hebrew Bible books are usually named with their first word, and the first word of this until now partially hidden treasure means just that. The last part of the work will be of interest to biblical scholars, but much of it is within reach for educated readers.

The biblical text has been rendered into English with clarity and forwardness. Instead of the majestic wording of the King James version, where the idea often appears dim behind archaic expressions and clarifying words, Professor Friedman's English rendition faithfully reflects the economy of vocabulary and structure of the Hebrew language. The message is conveyed with a classic beauty that contrasts with the pedestrian, uninspiring English of some contemporary translations.