Resumo de That's Not What The Good Book Says

The bible, as recent generations researchers understand it, is based on old written traditions which were amassed, piled onto each other and united - occasionaly in rough patches - into one whole weave. Two prominent contemporary Judaism researchers - Yair Zakovitch and Avigdor Shinan, who teach at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, have tried to extract from the layered traditions in the bible answers to some thirty questions which arise in reading the bible's stories; they raise such questions as: who did Jacob fight with near the Jabbok the on his return to the Land of Canaan from Haran? What is the manna which descended from the sky for our fathers in the desert? Where are the gates of heaven? These questions were assambled by the researchers in four sections: the world of Myth, rites and holy places, biographical elements in the history of biblical heroes, and intimate matters. In the intro to the book the authors introduce the 3 tools they used to reconstruct the possible answers to these questions: a) indentifying multiple traditions within the body of the bible itself - according to the theory of the "sources doctrine" which try to decypher the chronolgy of the layered traditions in the bible. b) indicating traditions of the ancient pagan world - Canaanite, Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Hellenistic.
c) examining the metamorphosis the bible's story underwent in later literature - Apocrypha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Chazal writings, liturgical poems and others; that, with the understanding that different early traditions were 'skipped' (or omitted) from the official canons, but survived and surfaced in later writings. The book, while written by 2 professors, is directed at the common reader - it raises interesting questions - about things familiar to anyone who studied bible in school; and it's written in layman's terms, eschewing professional academic debates. The appendices offer an additional bibliographical reading list for those who wish to further explore the subject, and more importantly - 'of the extra-biblical sources' - short explanations on each of the 78 sources mentioned in the book: writings and personages. As a whole: a book for bible lovers, interesting and easily read, enriching our knowledge of ancient Israelite literature

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