Inconsistency in the Torah: Ancient Literary Convention and the Limits of Source Criticism by Joshua A. Berman

literature if they are to continue using the classic methods of their field. Many scholars will want to disagree with Berman’s conclusions, but none can ignore them.”–Benjamin D. Sommer, author of Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition, winner of the Goldstein-Goren Prize
for Best Book in Jewish Thought“Joshua Berman throws down the gauntlet and challenges all critical scholars who have based their research on modern conceptions of literary unity and on the diachronic growth of the Pentateuch. He opens up a new path for the study and unity of the Pentateuchal literature, which will surely lead to

much debate and further intensive review.”–Shalom M. Paul, Professor Emeritus Bible, Hebrew University“In this groundbreaking and provocative new study, Berman demonstrates some of the methodological problems within traditional biblical source criticism, especially how dependence on the scholar’s own intuition to identify fissure in a text can yield misleading results. Berman argues that there is

need among source critical scholars for a self-awareness of their own aesthetic senses of literary unity, and that cognate ancient Near Eastern literature can provide the necessary controls to diachronic inquiry in the study of the Torah. Through his own analyses of different genres of ancient Near
Eastern literature, he illustrates ‘a procedure for knocking out at least some errors’ and for arriving at more modest and contingent results, ones that can withstand empirical scrutiny in the light of the ancient Near Eastern cultural literary world.”–K. Lawson Younger, Jr., Professor of Old
Testament, Semitic Languages, and Ancient Near Eastern History, Trinity International University, Divinity School