How to Read the Bible

After setting up the needed background, twenty-one chapters (Chap. 526) expose his target audiencethe curious adultto reading strategies that are relevant to historiography, myth, source criticism, law, the development of cult and religion, intertextual phenomena, prophecy and biblical poetry, wisdom literature, and canon. Brettler claims that this book is the first Jewishly sensitive introduction to the 173 Book Reviews historical-critical method, but the Jewishly sensitive part of this work is essentially relegated to the final four pages, where he discusses how the historical-critical method can help contemporary Jews relate to the Bible as a religious text in a more meaningful way (5). After surveying trends within twentieth-century historiographic approachesfrom historical fundamentalism through the so-called Copenhagen SchoolBrettler offers the lay reader what he calls a reasonable middle position, which is that the Bible may be used, with significant caution, as a source for ancient history, just like any other ancient document (21; emphasis added). Labeling Deuteronomy a pious fraud (85) (a literary genre of sorts), does not actually diminish its fraudulence or its fictional character, nor does its alleged piety quell a personsurgetoask, Why should a fraudulent document serve as the backbone of a truth-seeking religion, or the writing of history, or in shaping a life of religious engagement?