The Hidden Book in the Bible

The title of this book caught my fancy right away. It is so amazing to me that there is still so much mystery surrounding the Bible. Friedman makes some stunning observation of similarities. " Both J adn the Court History are about families, and the plots of both depend on chains of deceptions and recompense that run through those families. Both have wise, controlling females acting within a patriarchal structure. Both have wronged females. Both have a woman named Tamar. Both have a woman called Bathsheba (or Bath-shua). Both have openly imperfect heroes. David, like Jacob, has twelve sons inJerusalem. Freudian literary analysis also reveals a range of similarities between these two groups of stories-relations of fathers and sons, sibling rivalries, powerful mothers developed outwardly as relatively minor characters-in a concentration found nowhere else in the Bible," (9). I think he makes a great argument and is very persuasive because he looks at all sides. "In the past, we have explained such parallels by saying that one author imitated another, or that one author was influenced by the actual history reflected in the other story, or that both authors used common formulas from old oral traditions, or that an editor reconciled the two stories. But none of these solutions will work when we take all of teh other evidence into account as well. All five of these sister stories were part of a continuous, connected history. And that history repeatedly used words and phrases that occurred nowhere else," (19). I am beginning to see a pattern that repetition is very important, and as Dr. Sexson mentioned the first day of class, "REPETITION IS GOOD."

Further I found the part "About the Author" provacative. His description is very specific except when it comes to sex of the author. The idea that it may have been a woman is so controversial and in my opinion awesome.

But getting to the J story itself, it is interesting to see what has theoretically been inserted, and what the gaps, or lacunae, are. For instance, I will list the parts that are excluded from the J story that are present in the Bible now. In Genesis, Joseph's birth is the only son of Jacob that is mentioned. However, Joseph's story of dream interpretation and his rise from prison to power is not mentioned. Another is that Jacob's death is not recorded.