Scholar unearths a great new-old writer

Is there a core 'hidden book' in the Hebrew Scriptures

The Hidden Book in the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman. New York: Harper San Francisco, 1998. 304 pp. $25
by Aaron Leibel Arts Editor
 

For almost 3,000 years, Jews believed that Moses, with Divine help, wrote the Bible. Beginning in the 19th century, scholars who studied the biblical texts from a scientific perspective posited several different authors of different parts of the Five Books of Moses - the so-called "J" "E" "D" and "P" sections.

Now, in this remarkably provocative book, Richard Elliot Friedman, professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at Hebrew University, suggests the existence of a "hidden book" in the Hebrew Scriptures, written almost 3,000 years ago by a single author.

Using the deductive power worthy of a Sherlock Holmes, Friedman concludes that the hidden book was "a united story," which over the years was concealed by biblical editors cutting and pasting, separating the stories and inserting others between them.

The writer lived in the kingdom of Judah in the ninth century BCE. He - or she - was a writer, not someone who collected oral poems. Friedman says the author probably was a lay person, not a priest. His is "the work of a literary artist, whose aim seems to have been partly that of the writer and partly that of the historian to tell the story and to tell it beautifully".

The unknown writer's work is about 3,000 sentences long, strung through nine books of the Bible. It is characterized by particular words or phrases that recur in this group of text but infrequently, if at all, in the remainder of the Bible. For example, says Friedman, the expression "flesh and bone," occurs seven times in the Tanakh, with six in this writer's group of text; "kindness and faithfulness" is found seven times, all in this group; all nine references to shearing sheep are here; all 10 instances of the term for a foolish person or thing are in this group; and of the 32 times the term "to lie with" is used with a sexual connotation, 30 appear here.

Once he discovered that particular words and expressions turned up only in certain biblical texts, he found the text in which these words occurred connected to each other. For instance, Friedman notes that the Jewish people are located at a placed called Shittim in Numbers 25:1 and are located at-the same spot at the beginning of the book of Joshua (Joshua 2:1) where the "hidden book" picks up again.

There also is evidence of common technique, such as parables and punning, which occur exclusively, or mostly, in the part of the Bible in question. In addition, certain themes, such as drunkenness, espionage and sex, recur mostly in this group of texts.

Most important, says Friedman, are the "network of connections through the whole text" which, he claims, is readily seen by reading the hidden book in its entirety without the editorial additions and in a single translation. "What happens in one story has implications for things that happen in later ones," he writes. "Later stories contain echoes of earlier stories. Later stories allude to earlier stories. Later stories depend on early stories."

One theme that runs through the stories in the group of text is deception and recompense. For example, Jacob, who deceives Esau to get his birthright, is deceived in turn when he works to marry Rachel and is given Leah instead. When he asks the girls' father why Laban answers: "It is not done like that in our place, to give the younger one before the firstborn." (Genesis 29.26)

"The man who has taken away the firstborn privilege of his brother now suffers because of the firstborn privilege of his beloved's sister!" Friedman writes.

This theme of deception for deception continues with Jacob's sons (the selling of Joseph into slavery and Joseph pretending not to recognize them later in Egypt), and much later in the Tanakh in the story of David. David has an affair with a married woman (BathSheba) and arranges to have her husband killed. In recompense, David's house is filled with intrigue and violence.

Most of this book is Friedman's translation of the 25 percent of the Hebrew Scriptures that he believes constitutes "the hidden book of the Bible." Whether or not you are convinced that this part of the Tanakh is one book written by a single unknown author, I think you will find Friedman's translation to be simple, direct and consistent.

Even if you can't accept its premise, the book still has much to offer. In this age of relative values, Friedman writes, in which there has been so much suffering, "suddenly this work [the part of the Bible written by the unknown author] comes back from nearly three thousand years ago," and is like a beacon.

It teaches that we humans make choices and that those choices have consequences. "This work conveys that deception and cruelty in a family fester and spread, and that the most likely way to stop it all is for one member of the family who is entitled to recompense choose not to take it - and forgive," Friedman notes. . __

"It implies that human inclinations that lead to war which is the worst thing in the world - must give way as we see war's results. And it teaches us that the choices and actions we make have implications through a vast span of generations of our descendants."

I found Friedman's argument persuasive But whether the author's name is unknown - or was Moses - and whether we are dealing with the traditional or Friedman-translated Bible, the Tanakh is the most influential and powerful book in history. And its author and his work still have much to say to us.

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