The Bible with Sources Revealed
Richard Elliott Friedman
 The core of the book, taking up almost 300 of its approximately 380 pages in the paperback edition, is Friedman's own translation of the five Pentateuchal books, in which the four sources plus the contributions of the two Redactors (of the combined JE source and the later redactor of the final document) are indicated typographically. The remaining sections include a short Introduction outlining Friedman's thesis, a "Collection of Evidence," and a bibliography. Friedman's version of the documentary hypothesis can be summarised as follows: The first source to be written down was the Jahwist, or J. This occurred in Judah, the southern of the two Israelite kingdoms, in the period between 922-722 BC. (Friedman's arguments are dealt with below). The Elohist, or E, was composed in roughly the same period, but probably a little later than J, in the northern kingdom of Israel. In 722 BC the Assyrian conquest of Israel brought E to Judah with refugees from the northern kingdom. Shortly after this a redactor combined the two into a standard text, JE, the redactor himself being known as RJE. Then in the reign of Hezekiah, c.715-687 BC, the Jerusalem priesthood produced a text which they saw as a replacement for JE, the theology of which was objectionable to their project of religious reform: this was the Priestly source, or P. Hezekiah's reform program failed, but was revived in the reign of his great-grandson Josiah, c. 640-609 BC, producing the last source, the Deuteronomist, or D. The three sources (JE now counting as a single source) existed independently until the return from the Babylonian exile, when a final redactor, R, combined them. The "Collection of Evidence" section sets out Friedman's arguments for the documentary hypothesis in general and for his own version of it in particular. He notes seven arguments: * Linguistic: each source (treating JE as a single source) reflects the Hebrew of its period. * Terminology: Certain words and phrases appear disproportionately, or exclusively, in certain sources. * Consistent content: Certain concepts, objects, and practices are specific to certain sources. * Continuity of texts: When separated into sources following linguistic, terminological and contextual clues, each source constitutes a coherent, self-contained narrative. * Connections with other parts of the Bible: Each source has direct, non-indiscriminate affinities with other specific parts of the Bible. * Relationships of sources to each other and to history: The sources each have connections to specific circumstances in the history of Israel/Judah, and to each other.