:The Hebrew Bible Reborn: From Holy Scripture to the Book of Books; A History of Biblical Culture and the Battles over the Bible in Modern Judaism.Translated by ChayaNaor. (Studia Judaica, number 38.)

Abstract

Until the nineteenth century, the Talmud and its commentaries, not the Hebrew Bible, were the principal foundation of Jewish religious culture. It was only with the integration of Jews into Western societies, which also claimed the Bible but not the rabbinic literature, and with the establishment of the Zionist movement, which regarded the Bible as its historical warrant, that the biblical text came to displace the talmudic as the formative document of Jewish identity. The shift required both reinterpretation of the Bible and its defense against scholarly and popular attacks that sought to undermine the Bible's theological status, moral value, and originality. This book, an expansion and rewriting of Yaacov Shavit and Mordechai Eran's earlier Hebrew volume, traces this revaluation and defense of the Hebrew Bible as they transpired especially in Germany and also in the Land of Israel both before and after the establishment of the Israeli state. Although numerous studies have dealt with various aspects of this subject, no work can match this one for its comprehensiveness, detail, and broad erudition. Following a discussion of the reassessment of the Bible by modernizing Jews, the authors deal with the first significant challenge to its authority: the higher criticism popularized especially by Julius Wellhausen. The documentary hypothesis that he espoused with regard to the Pentateuch undermined the orthodox Jewish concept of revelation and forced even liberal Jews to redefine their relationship to the text. Less challenging was the new science of archaeology, which, unlike the clearly problematic division of the text into various sources, could be seen in a positive light as undermining the documentary hypothesis. Its discoveries could even be used to prop up the historicity of the Bible.