Interesting... but Circular

 

The Original Torah: The Political Intent of the Bible's Writers (Reappraisals Jewish Social History) by S. David Sperling is a very good, interesting book, but like all books like this, who knows if it is true? I have no doubt that the writers of the bible often had a political intent behind the stories they told.  But what is our standard?  Sperling uses allegory to read political intent into certain stories, but for others, he uses those stories as sources for the allegorical stories.  This kind of reasoning is circular.

I really enjoy reading these types of books.  They help me understand the Tanakh in new and interesting ways.  But we won’t have any certainty about compositional issues of the bible until ancient versions of the documents, and the sources of the biblical text are discovered (an unlikely scenario),  Until then, books like this will be theoretical.