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Inconsistency in the Torah: Ancient Literary Convention and the Limits of Source Criticism
Inconsistency in the Torah
320 pages, Hardcover
Published July 13, 2017
7 people are currently reading
176 people want to read
About the author
Joshua A. Berman
12 books17 followersB.A. - Religion, Princeton University, 1987
PhD - Bible, Bar-Ilan University, 2002
PhD - Bible, Bar-Ilan University, 2002
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September 6, 2018
This book is quintessential Berman - by which I mean a revolutionary and massively insightful treatment of some or other aspect of the Hebrew Bible.
In this case, it's the matter of "inconsistency in the Torah." Frequently, a sizeable portion of source-critical treatment of the text has relied on 'inconsistencies' as a sign that multiple sources have there been woven together by a later editor. So, for instance, assorted linguistic features are often said to demonstrate that the Flood narrative in Genesis 6-9 is a composite tapestry; that Exodus 2:1-10 is a late derivative of a Sargon legend; that divergent laws in different sections of the Torah are said to point to the ramshackle composition history that produced such different texts over the course of centuries; and much more.
But what if some of the key modern intuitions on which much of the source-critical edifice is founded are just that - modern intuitions unrelated to actual literary and textual practice in the ancient Near East? Cue Berman, who proposes to scour ANE texts for any similar dynamics at work, so that we can have a firmer and less speculative basis for the frameworks that govern our assumptions of what 'must' be the case. And this he does with great aplomb and scholarly rigor.
For instance, Berman tackles the "biases" inherent in the source-critical reading of Genesis 6-9, which David Carr calls "foundational for past and present source criticism of the Pentateuch" (quote on 236). Yet Berman identifies key methodological flaws, for instance the hubris that we need to select some hypothesis - which proceeds from the faulty assumption "that scholars have the keys to unlock the difficulties of the text" (238). Rather than solving anything in the text, any variant of the two-source theory leaves plenty of fragments of precisely what it sought to explain, as well as creates yet more dichotomies and problems. Here, the theory most obviously creates the text, rather than the other way around. Comparing Genesis 6-9 in detail to the famed flood narrative of Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh Epic, Berman points out that "neither of the two hypothesized sources, P nor non-P, comes close to containing all of the plot elements that are shared in sequence by MT Genesis 6-9 and Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh epic" - meaning that the two-source theory requires us to believe the highly implausible thesis that two separate authors wrote separate Noah/Flood accounts, neither including all the elements of the Gilgamesh version, but that when added together, they parallel the Gilgamesh version precisely (252). The only response to this in source-critical scholarship is that of John Emerton, and Berman very handily rebuts him (252-254). On top of this, Berman observes that Genesis 6-9 exhibits numerous intended parallels to Genesis 1, to present the post-Flood world as a (preliminary) 'new creation' - and that the two-source theory partitions these, too: "Here, too, it requires special pleading to maintain that there were originally two independent versions of the flood story, and that only when they were interwoven, did the close convergence to the days of creation in chapter 1 suddenly appear" (260). And finally, Berman finds a large-scale chiasm in Genesis 6-9, and sees how many paired elements (e.g., C vs. C') would be ripped asunder in the two-source analysis (261-263). All this adds up to Berman's conclusion that the source-critical approach is heavily methodologically flawed and unsuccessful here.
Another sort of key 'prize' for source critics is frequently the parallel existence of divergent narratives of the same event - we think, of course, of the infamous "two creation stories" in Genesis 1:1-2:4a and 2:4b-24, but another example is the two accounts, prose and poem, of the Parting of the Sea (see Exodus 13:17--15:18). A variety of redaction-happy source-critical approaches are surveyed here, but Berman drops a bit of a bombshell: the Kadesh Inscriptions of Ramesses II include juxtaposed conflicting accounts at least as jarring, and undeniably from the same author - and yet, for all their conflicts, they are presented intentionally to be read together. Each one functions to somewhat different ends, and hence adjusts, includes, or excludes certain details or descriptors; and yet they are meant as complementary to generate an overall message about the pharaoh's authority. When we find similar dynamics at work in Exodus, it may well be that - contrary to all our modern Western assumptions - "there may have been an Egyptian literary tradition that migrated to Israelite scribal culture" (34).
For, indeed, Berman highlights a number of points at which the 'Song of the Sea' (Exodus 15:1b-21) carries intentional resonances with the sort of New Kingdom Egyptian royal propaganda that the Kadesh Inscriptions exemplify, with certain biblical phrases (e.g., "mighty hand" and "outstretched arm") that first appear here having been adapted from Egyptian royal discourse; not to mention, famously, the graphic adaptation of the Ramesside military encampment (with the pharaoh's war tent in the center) into the Israelite camp (with a Tabernacle whose dimensions uniquely parallel the pharaonic war tent of Ramesses II at its center, and with the Abu Simbel depiction of the pharaonic cartouche flanked by wing-stretching falcons there transmuted into the mercy seat flanked by wing-stretching cherubim atop the Ark of the Covenant). All of this lends plausibility as Berman investigates real structural similarities between the Sea Account in Exodus and the Kadesh 'Poem' (which, along with the 'Bulletin,' constitutes a main component of the Inscriptions). Numerous elements of the sequence appear as fairly tight parallels, one has to admit, and Berman is persuasive that the role of Yhwh's "right hand" in Exodus 15 could only have Egyptian resonance and not Canaanite or Mesopotamian. Berman makes a strong case that the Exodus Sea Account is intentionally modeled after the Kadesh Inscriptions - and yet plot points and lexemes that appear together in the Kadesh Poem are routinely classified by source-critics as deriving from opposing sources (e.g., 'Priestly' versus 'non-Priestly') - an indication that something is wrong.
Or, again, another stated point of inconsistency in the Torah - and one of which source-critics have made their fair share of hay - pertains to the way Deuteronomy, in retelling the prior Pentateuchal story, reworks it in mutually exclusive ways. Deuteronomy seems to offer a sort of 'rewritten history' that surely indicate it was meant to displace, e.g., Exodus and Numbers, or the traditions contained therein. Not so fast, saith Dr. Berman. Building on the known affinity of Deuteronomy with Late Bronze Age Hittite treaties, Berman notes two Hittite diplomatic texts designated CTH 46 and CTH 47, both found in the same Ugaritic palace, both treaties between the same Hittite king (Suppiluliuma I of Hatti) and the same Ugaritic vassal-king (Niqmaddu II). Both, in their introductions, narrate the history of the relationship between Hatti and Ugarit - and they do so every bit as differently, Berman finds, as the Deuteronomic rendition of the relationship between YHWH the Great King and his national vassal Israel differs from the rendition in Exodus and Numbers. Scrutinizing the political culture of the Amarna period, Berman stresses the communicative aspects of the historical prologue of a Hittite treaty: the history is cast in a certain way as a conscious bit of "diplomatic signaling," and its alteration from treaty to treaty was "a way of pressing the reset button on the relationship ... and signal to the vassal that their relationship was now on new footing" (72). Berman uncovers further support in another set of four treaties between Hatti and Amurru (CTH 49, the initial one between Suppiluliuma I of Hatti and Aziru of Amurru; CTH 92, between Hatusili III of Hatti and Bentesina of Amurru; and, though he doesn't draw on them, also CTH 62 and CTH 105). In all this, Berman finds "not a single example in which full consistency is seen in the portrayal of an event across two treaties," since the creation of a new treaty was occasioned by the sort of shift in political landscape that also necessitated a different sort of historical prologue (80).
Pulling from this, Berman devotes his fourth chapter to the implications of this tradition, finding that, contrary to a wide swath of conventional source criticism, "Deuteronomy employs the convention of retelling history at the moment of covenant renewal found in the Hittite treaty tradition just as Israel re-commits herself to YHWH at the covenant of the Plains of Moab," and that readers were meant to ponder the differences in the tellings precisely because "they are markers of the sovereign's signaling to his vassal" (100).
Responding to observations of the differences between stated dictates in the Torah and the implementation of contrary practices elsewhere (as we see in Ruth with respect to Deuteronomy 24-25, whose sequence it follows closely), Berman finds a similar dynamic at work in the way the opening sections of the Laws of Hammurabi are used in a Neo-Babylonian text known as Nebuchadnezzar, King of Justice. In both cases, while the narrative texts pay homage to their legal antecedent, they also feel free to describe a praxis at variance with the laws in question. This he explains in terms by exploring at length the non-statutory nature of law in Israel and Mesopotamia.
Furthermore, elsewhere throughout the Hebrew Bible, Berman spots what he (following Michael Fishbane) calls a "legal blend" - conflating renditions of a law in multiple corpora from the Pentateuch - and argues that this is an intentional approach constituting "an inherent part of the legal tradition of the biblical writings from their inception" (170). From there, Berman establishes a case that biblical texts should be read using common-law sensibilities rather than that of statutory jurisprudence, and that biblical authors "did not view the various corpora as inimical to one another, but rather as complementary" (183). Many theories about redaction, then, make an error when they rely on a supersessionist approach to legal blending and divergence. Consequently, Berman rejects two key theories of Pentateuch redaction - the 'compromise document' view and the 'anthology' view - and instead points to two comparable modern examples to the complementary nature of biblical legal revision: amendments to the United States Constitution, and the retention of rejected law within the Mishnaic text. (Also, in a nearby chapter, sketching a detailed history of biblical source-criticism, Berman is able to see the rise of statutory jurisprudence in Germany as all but fating Graf and Wellhausen to their blunders.)
Berman tackles still more, but who could summarize it all? Suffice to say that Berman's is an original, innovative, thorough, iconoclastic contribution to Old Testament studies, and while he's no foe of compositional history as such, it does explode some of the lazy orthodoxies that still have their hegemonic grasp on the field. This is 'must-read' stuff for anyone interested in Old Testament / Hebrew Bible.
In this case, it's the matter of "inconsistency in the Torah." Frequently, a sizeable portion of source-critical treatment of the text has relied on 'inconsistencies' as a sign that multiple sources have there been woven together by a later editor. So, for instance, assorted linguistic features are often said to demonstrate that the Flood narrative in Genesis 6-9 is a composite tapestry; that Exodus 2:1-10 is a late derivative of a Sargon legend; that divergent laws in different sections of the Torah are said to point to the ramshackle composition history that produced such different texts over the course of centuries; and much more.
But what if some of the key modern intuitions on which much of the source-critical edifice is founded are just that - modern intuitions unrelated to actual literary and textual practice in the ancient Near East? Cue Berman, who proposes to scour ANE texts for any similar dynamics at work, so that we can have a firmer and less speculative basis for the frameworks that govern our assumptions of what 'must' be the case. And this he does with great aplomb and scholarly rigor.
For instance, Berman tackles the "biases" inherent in the source-critical reading of Genesis 6-9, which David Carr calls "foundational for past and present source criticism of the Pentateuch" (quote on 236). Yet Berman identifies key methodological flaws, for instance the hubris that we need to select some hypothesis - which proceeds from the faulty assumption "that scholars have the keys to unlock the difficulties of the text" (238). Rather than solving anything in the text, any variant of the two-source theory leaves plenty of fragments of precisely what it sought to explain, as well as creates yet more dichotomies and problems. Here, the theory most obviously creates the text, rather than the other way around. Comparing Genesis 6-9 in detail to the famed flood narrative of Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh Epic, Berman points out that "neither of the two hypothesized sources, P nor non-P, comes close to containing all of the plot elements that are shared in sequence by MT Genesis 6-9 and Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh epic" - meaning that the two-source theory requires us to believe the highly implausible thesis that two separate authors wrote separate Noah/Flood accounts, neither including all the elements of the Gilgamesh version, but that when added together, they parallel the Gilgamesh version precisely (252). The only response to this in source-critical scholarship is that of John Emerton, and Berman very handily rebuts him (252-254). On top of this, Berman observes that Genesis 6-9 exhibits numerous intended parallels to Genesis 1, to present the post-Flood world as a (preliminary) 'new creation' - and that the two-source theory partitions these, too: "Here, too, it requires special pleading to maintain that there were originally two independent versions of the flood story, and that only when they were interwoven, did the close convergence to the days of creation in chapter 1 suddenly appear" (260). And finally, Berman finds a large-scale chiasm in Genesis 6-9, and sees how many paired elements (e.g., C vs. C') would be ripped asunder in the two-source analysis (261-263). All this adds up to Berman's conclusion that the source-critical approach is heavily methodologically flawed and unsuccessful here.
Another sort of key 'prize' for source critics is frequently the parallel existence of divergent narratives of the same event - we think, of course, of the infamous "two creation stories" in Genesis 1:1-2:4a and 2:4b-24, but another example is the two accounts, prose and poem, of the Parting of the Sea (see Exodus 13:17--15:18). A variety of redaction-happy source-critical approaches are surveyed here, but Berman drops a bit of a bombshell: the Kadesh Inscriptions of Ramesses II include juxtaposed conflicting accounts at least as jarring, and undeniably from the same author - and yet, for all their conflicts, they are presented intentionally to be read together. Each one functions to somewhat different ends, and hence adjusts, includes, or excludes certain details or descriptors; and yet they are meant as complementary to generate an overall message about the pharaoh's authority. When we find similar dynamics at work in Exodus, it may well be that - contrary to all our modern Western assumptions - "there may have been an Egyptian literary tradition that migrated to Israelite scribal culture" (34).
For, indeed, Berman highlights a number of points at which the 'Song of the Sea' (Exodus 15:1b-21) carries intentional resonances with the sort of New Kingdom Egyptian royal propaganda that the Kadesh Inscriptions exemplify, with certain biblical phrases (e.g., "mighty hand" and "outstretched arm") that first appear here having been adapted from Egyptian royal discourse; not to mention, famously, the graphic adaptation of the Ramesside military encampment (with the pharaoh's war tent in the center) into the Israelite camp (with a Tabernacle whose dimensions uniquely parallel the pharaonic war tent of Ramesses II at its center, and with the Abu Simbel depiction of the pharaonic cartouche flanked by wing-stretching falcons there transmuted into the mercy seat flanked by wing-stretching cherubim atop the Ark of the Covenant). All of this lends plausibility as Berman investigates real structural similarities between the Sea Account in Exodus and the Kadesh 'Poem' (which, along with the 'Bulletin,' constitutes a main component of the Inscriptions). Numerous elements of the sequence appear as fairly tight parallels, one has to admit, and Berman is persuasive that the role of Yhwh's "right hand" in Exodus 15 could only have Egyptian resonance and not Canaanite or Mesopotamian. Berman makes a strong case that the Exodus Sea Account is intentionally modeled after the Kadesh Inscriptions - and yet plot points and lexemes that appear together in the Kadesh Poem are routinely classified by source-critics as deriving from opposing sources (e.g., 'Priestly' versus 'non-Priestly') - an indication that something is wrong.
Or, again, another stated point of inconsistency in the Torah - and one of which source-critics have made their fair share of hay - pertains to the way Deuteronomy, in retelling the prior Pentateuchal story, reworks it in mutually exclusive ways. Deuteronomy seems to offer a sort of 'rewritten history' that surely indicate it was meant to displace, e.g., Exodus and Numbers, or the traditions contained therein. Not so fast, saith Dr. Berman. Building on the known affinity of Deuteronomy with Late Bronze Age Hittite treaties, Berman notes two Hittite diplomatic texts designated CTH 46 and CTH 47, both found in the same Ugaritic palace, both treaties between the same Hittite king (Suppiluliuma I of Hatti) and the same Ugaritic vassal-king (Niqmaddu II). Both, in their introductions, narrate the history of the relationship between Hatti and Ugarit - and they do so every bit as differently, Berman finds, as the Deuteronomic rendition of the relationship between YHWH the Great King and his national vassal Israel differs from the rendition in Exodus and Numbers. Scrutinizing the political culture of the Amarna period, Berman stresses the communicative aspects of the historical prologue of a Hittite treaty: the history is cast in a certain way as a conscious bit of "diplomatic signaling," and its alteration from treaty to treaty was "a way of pressing the reset button on the relationship ... and signal to the vassal that their relationship was now on new footing" (72). Berman uncovers further support in another set of four treaties between Hatti and Amurru (CTH 49, the initial one between Suppiluliuma I of Hatti and Aziru of Amurru; CTH 92, between Hatusili III of Hatti and Bentesina of Amurru; and, though he doesn't draw on them, also CTH 62 and CTH 105). In all this, Berman finds "not a single example in which full consistency is seen in the portrayal of an event across two treaties," since the creation of a new treaty was occasioned by the sort of shift in political landscape that also necessitated a different sort of historical prologue (80).
Pulling from this, Berman devotes his fourth chapter to the implications of this tradition, finding that, contrary to a wide swath of conventional source criticism, "Deuteronomy employs the convention of retelling history at the moment of covenant renewal found in the Hittite treaty tradition just as Israel re-commits herself to YHWH at the covenant of the Plains of Moab," and that readers were meant to ponder the differences in the tellings precisely because "they are markers of the sovereign's signaling to his vassal" (100).
Responding to observations of the differences between stated dictates in the Torah and the implementation of contrary practices elsewhere (as we see in Ruth with respect to Deuteronomy 24-25, whose sequence it follows closely), Berman finds a similar dynamic at work in the way the opening sections of the Laws of Hammurabi are used in a Neo-Babylonian text known as Nebuchadnezzar, King of Justice. In both cases, while the narrative texts pay homage to their legal antecedent, they also feel free to describe a praxis at variance with the laws in question. This he explains in terms by exploring at length the non-statutory nature of law in Israel and Mesopotamia.
Furthermore, elsewhere throughout the Hebrew Bible, Berman spots what he (following Michael Fishbane) calls a "legal blend" - conflating renditions of a law in multiple corpora from the Pentateuch - and argues that this is an intentional approach constituting "an inherent part of the legal tradition of the biblical writings from their inception" (170). From there, Berman establishes a case that biblical texts should be read using common-law sensibilities rather than that of statutory jurisprudence, and that biblical authors "did not view the various corpora as inimical to one another, but rather as complementary" (183). Many theories about redaction, then, make an error when they rely on a supersessionist approach to legal blending and divergence. Consequently, Berman rejects two key theories of Pentateuch redaction - the 'compromise document' view and the 'anthology' view - and instead points to two comparable modern examples to the complementary nature of biblical legal revision: amendments to the United States Constitution, and the retention of rejected law within the Mishnaic text. (Also, in a nearby chapter, sketching a detailed history of biblical source-criticism, Berman is able to see the rise of statutory jurisprudence in Germany as all but fating Graf and Wellhausen to their blunders.)
Berman tackles still more, but who could summarize it all? Suffice to say that Berman's is an original, innovative, thorough, iconoclastic contribution to Old Testament studies, and while he's no foe of compositional history as such, it does explode some of the lazy orthodoxies that still have their hegemonic grasp on the field. This is 'must-read' stuff for anyone interested in Old Testament / Hebrew Bible.
July 15, 2019
This book is really incredible—>A must read for those interested in defending the integrity of the Torah. It’s not a systematics book. It’s about the historical and literary integrity of the Torah, and how the obvious literary inconsistencies are best explained in favor of maintaining that integrity.
September 2, 2021
Fantastic book with lots of detail.
Read
May 2, 2025DONE!
July 6, 2017
Rabbi Dr. Joshua A. Berman, addresses in this book questions that have bothered scholars and clergy for centuries—the many seeming contradictions that are found in the Torah, in both its narrative and legal portions. He offers a solution that they ignored, a solution that makes sense. He suggests that many of the problems that they noted, some of which are described below, can be solved by looking at how other ancient Near East cultures wrote their books. By doing so, readers will find that not only the Torah contains the so-called “problem of contradictions,” but so too did other ancient cultures; this was the way the ancients wrote their books.
Scholars raised questions about these problem areas and using their intuition, without looking at the writings of other cultures or any similar proof, argued that the problem they saw in the scriptural text proved to them that the Bible is a document that was composed by several different authors and editors, frequently living at different times and frequently altering the text they received to reflect the situation they saw in their time, and to insert their own world-view.
But looking at other ancient writings, as Dr. Berman suggests, explains what bothered these scholars, we see that the ancients did what these modern scholars consider problem areas. For example: Not only Israelites gave God more than one name – Elohim and y-h-v-h, other ancient religions also gave their gods more than one name.
Similarly, Berman discusses the many incidences where there appears to be conflicting texts, such as the following: (1) Genesis chapter one seems to say that Adam and Eve were created at the same time, while chapter two states that Eve was formed from Adam’s side when God felt that it was not good for man to live alone. (2) The differences between the wilderness accounts in Exodus and Numbers on the one hand, and Deuteronomy on the other. (3) The inconsistency between the narrative versions in regard to the splitting of the sea in Exodus 13:17 and Barak’s defeat of Sisera’s army in Judges 4, and the poetic descriptions of these events in Exodus 15:18 and Judges 5. (4) Exodus 17:14 states that God will engage in the struggle with Amalek, while Deuteronomy 25:19 gives the mandate to the Israelites. And there are many more texts that deviate from another. Berman explains that the ancients also told inconsistent versions of events, even when it is certain that the two versions were composed by the same individual, and he explains why they did so.
He also discusses other questions raised by scholars such as the alteration between the use of the singular and the plural to refer the same person or event. He shows by examples from ancient texts that such grammatical usages, what we would consider an inconsistency today, was widespread in Near East documents.
He also focuses on the differences between the laws in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers and their differences in Deuteronomy, and compares this phenomenon of changes with those in the Near Eastern texts. His explanation for the changes is very enlightening.
Berman quotes Levi ben Gershom (1288-1344), a great scholar known as Gersonides, who wondered why Exodus repeats in chapters 35-40 what appears to be tedious detail that was already stated in chapters 25-31. Gersonides wrote: “Perhaps we may say that it was the convention at the time of the giving of the Torah to fashion literature in this way and that the prophet expresses himself through the conventions of his time.”
Although Gersonides lacked the ancient documents, Dr. Berman shows by reference to them that what Gersonides thought might be true is now proven to be correct. There is no doubt that Dr. Berman’s findings will make a great impact upon future biblical study.
Scholars raised questions about these problem areas and using their intuition, without looking at the writings of other cultures or any similar proof, argued that the problem they saw in the scriptural text proved to them that the Bible is a document that was composed by several different authors and editors, frequently living at different times and frequently altering the text they received to reflect the situation they saw in their time, and to insert their own world-view.
But looking at other ancient writings, as Dr. Berman suggests, explains what bothered these scholars, we see that the ancients did what these modern scholars consider problem areas. For example: Not only Israelites gave God more than one name – Elohim and y-h-v-h, other ancient religions also gave their gods more than one name.
Similarly, Berman discusses the many incidences where there appears to be conflicting texts, such as the following: (1) Genesis chapter one seems to say that Adam and Eve were created at the same time, while chapter two states that Eve was formed from Adam’s side when God felt that it was not good for man to live alone. (2) The differences between the wilderness accounts in Exodus and Numbers on the one hand, and Deuteronomy on the other. (3) The inconsistency between the narrative versions in regard to the splitting of the sea in Exodus 13:17 and Barak’s defeat of Sisera’s army in Judges 4, and the poetic descriptions of these events in Exodus 15:18 and Judges 5. (4) Exodus 17:14 states that God will engage in the struggle with Amalek, while Deuteronomy 25:19 gives the mandate to the Israelites. And there are many more texts that deviate from another. Berman explains that the ancients also told inconsistent versions of events, even when it is certain that the two versions were composed by the same individual, and he explains why they did so.
He also discusses other questions raised by scholars such as the alteration between the use of the singular and the plural to refer the same person or event. He shows by examples from ancient texts that such grammatical usages, what we would consider an inconsistency today, was widespread in Near East documents.
He also focuses on the differences between the laws in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers and their differences in Deuteronomy, and compares this phenomenon of changes with those in the Near Eastern texts. His explanation for the changes is very enlightening.
Berman quotes Levi ben Gershom (1288-1344), a great scholar known as Gersonides, who wondered why Exodus repeats in chapters 35-40 what appears to be tedious detail that was already stated in chapters 25-31. Gersonides wrote: “Perhaps we may say that it was the convention at the time of the giving of the Torah to fashion literature in this way and that the prophet expresses himself through the conventions of his time.”
Although Gersonides lacked the ancient documents, Dr. Berman shows by reference to them that what Gersonides thought might be true is now proven to be correct. There is no doubt that Dr. Berman’s findings will make a great impact upon future biblical study.
July 31, 2024
The information Berman provides here makes the price tag well-worth it. Berman makes several persuasive arguments for an early date of the Torah material, dating it to the late 2nd millenium BC. This volume is the best resource for studying the Exodus sea crossing narrative in light of the Ramesside Kadesh inscription!
For anyone wanting to learn more about the origins of the Pentateuch, this book is for you. There is just too much data supporting an earlier date for the Pentateuch.
For anyone wanting to learn more about the origins of the Pentateuch, this book is for you. There is just too much data supporting an earlier date for the Pentateuch.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews