Murmuring Against Moses
The Contentious History and Contested Future of Pentateuchal Studies
John Bergsma, Jeffrey L. Morrow

luotu 15.7.2025 klo 19:31

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Sivuja: 328

Kustantaja: Emmaus Academic, 2023

ISBN-13: 9781645851493

ISBN-10: 1645851494

Tilaa Adlibrikselta – tuet Puolustajan Polkua!

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Kirjan kansiliepeestä:

For much of the history of both Judaism and Christianity, the Pentateuch – first five books of the Bible – was understood to be the unified work of a single inspired author: Moses. Yet the standard view in modern biblical scholarship contends that the Pentateuch is a composite text made up of fragments from diverse and even discrepant sources that originated centuries after the events it purports to describe.

In Murmuring against Moses, John Bergsma and Jeffrey Morrow provide a critical narrative of the emergence of modern Pentateuchal studies and challenge the scholarly consensus by highlighting the weaknesses of the modern paradigms and mustering an array of new evidence for the Pentateuch's antiquity. By shedding light on the past history of research and the present developments in the field, Bergsma and Morrow give fresh voice to a growing scholarly dissatisfaction with standard critical approaches and make an important contribution toward charting a more promising future for Pentateuchal studies.

This is exactly the sort of book I was looking for when I was teaching graduate student seminars and expositional courses on the books of the Pentateuch. The authors discuss in great detail not only the history of critical scholarly ‘murmurings against Moses’ but also the ‘inconvenient facts’ that proponents of Wellhausenian versions of the Documentary Hypothesis of the origins of the Pentateuch have overlooked or intentionally refused to admit to the discussion for more than a century... If this volume gets the reading it deserves, the paradigm shift we currently observe in Pentateuchal studies will gain momentum.

A throughly researched and well-argued presentation... If the authors are correct, which I believe they are, then there should be no ‘future’ to this long-lived hypothesis in Pentateuchal studies.

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Tri Jeffrey L. Morrow työskentelee teologian professorina (Franciscan University, Steubenville) ja Paavali-tutkimuskeskuksen johtajana (St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology).