Q&A: Books Dealing with Biblical Criticism
Books Dealing with Biblical Criticism
Question
Hello Michi,
I wanted to ask whether you could recommend books that respond to biblical critics?
Thanks in advance.
Answer
I’m not knowledgeable in this area. Let those more expert than I am come and answer.
Discussion on Answer
I had Berman’s book and returned it to the store… I wasn’t impressed by the content; see the Ratzio website, where they reviewed it…
Any other recommendation?
Maybe The Method of Aspects by Rabbi Breuer.
The book Until This Day by Rabbi Amnon Bazak might be more to your taste, and also Excavating the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) (every book I’ve mentioned I’ve read myself) by Dr. Yitzhak Mitleis (a student of the archaeologist Finkelstein, though he holds different views from his teacher).
Personally, I find it hard to take the arguments of modern biblical criticism seriously, from the simple fact that they assume in advance an atheistic outlook or the impossibility of prophecy, and therefore the game is rigged. Of course, I’m talking about the critical arguments, not seemingly substantive questions as such (it seems to me there’s a long thread on the site about this topic, along with references to books, most of them in English).
On the Reliability of the Old Testament
by the Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen.
Of course, belief in the possibility of prophecy does not belong to the field of archaeology or literary analysis of the Hebrew Bible, so to some extent everyone comes to the discussion with different assumptions. Still, there are topics that bypass those questions and may be meaningful. For example, the dating of events or of the text, which can affect the reliability of the tradition.
You asked for books, so I can recommend the book I Believe by Professor Rabbi Joshua Berman. That book is an adaptation of his 2017 academic book in English, Inconsistency in the Torah, published by Oxford University. If you have the option of reading the English book, that’s preferable.