Source Criticism (Cascade Companions)

by Joel S. Baden

Publisher:

Wipf and Stock

, 2024

Overview

“Source criticism” has been at the center of biblical studies for the last two centuries. In that time, it has produced a wide range of theories and approaches, often conflicting. This book provides a concise overview of the major approaches and positions in the field, helping the reader understand where scholarship has been and where it currently stands, and situating each major development within its broader intellectual and social context.

Key Features

• Provides an explanation of the history of pentateuchal source criticism
• Helps the reader understand where scholarship has been and where it currently stands
• Situates each major development within its broader intellectual and social context

Contents

• Early Theories: Sources, Fragments, Supplements
• Defining the Sources
• The Classical Period of Source Criticism
• Complications: Addition and Subtraction
• Reimagining Source Criticism
• A Return to the Sources

Praise for Source Criticism

This slim volume delivers exactly what it promises: an explanation of the dizzying history of pentateuchal source criticism that is both accessible and expertly crafted. With characteristic clarity and wit, Joel Baden highlights the evidence to which source critics respond and, crucially, the intellectual and cultural conditions that have influenced their work. Anyone seeking to understand the Pentateuch will benefit from this insightful book.

—Jeffrey Stackert, professor of Hebrew Bible, University of Chicago Divinity School

Joel Baden has done it again! With great clarity and a surprisingly light touch, he reviews three centuries’ worth of scholarship on the composition of the Pentateuch, laying out not only the theses of the most significant biblical critics but the reasoning behind their work and, no less crucially, the cultural presumptions and religious values that motivate them. He provides an accessible roadmap to what at first seems a bewildering variety of theories, and he guides readers, I think quite fairly, to evaluating them. Scholars, students, and lay readers alike will benefit greatly from Baden’s expertise—and his expert pedagogy.

—Benjamin D. Sommer, professor of Bible and ancient Semitic languages, The Jewish Theological Seminary

Product Details

• Title: Source Criticism
• Author: Joel S. Baden
• Series: Cascade Companions
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Print Publication Date: 2024
• Pages: 156
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• ISBNs: 9781666764093, 1666764094
• Resource ID: LLS:SOURCECRITICISM
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-09-17T21:45:32Z

About Joel S. Baden

Joel S. Baden (PhD) joined the YDS community in the fall of 2007 as an assistant professor of Old Testament. Baden, a specialist in the Pentateuch and Biblical Hebrew, is particularly interested in the issue of Pentateuchal and Deuteronomistic composition and redaction. He is teaching classes in Advanced Biblical Hebrew (prose and poetry), Composition of the Pentateuch, and Methods of Reading the Pentateuch. Baden holds a B.A. in Judaic Studies from Yale University, an M.A. in Northwest Semitics from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible from Harvard University. Joel S. Baden is professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale University. He is the author, most recently, of The Book of Exodus: A Biography (2019).