When we last checked in on Richard Elliott Friedman, he was happily whistling the old JEDP tune in a book called Who Wrote the Bible? These days he's peddling an even wackier literary theory, one that makes the English/lit major in me get achy teeth. The basic thesis: The author of the "J" portion of the Pentateuch is also responsible for other parts of the OT history from Joshua to Kings.

As before, Friedman's tone is not that of a hostile critic; his tone is rather breathless at times (I wanted to mail him some paper bags and tell him to calm down) as he reports what he thinks is a great discovery, but is actually no more than the usual case of overstatements mixed with presumption. What Friedman has done is found an indeed large number of words and phrases that are found only in "J" passages from Genesis to 1 Kings. In a few cases the data is so meager as to be meaningless: A word or phrase is found only twice in this span. For example, "coat of many colors" is found twice, but in the context of Bible times, when this would be a special gift, would this mean any more than finding the words "leather jacket" twice in a multi-authored book on motorcycle gangs? In other cases the data is a mountainous molehill. Words like "hate" found five or seven times don't mean a thing; one may as well use the words "the" or "and" as markers of authorship. The term for animal feed is used five times in this span, but are we expecting references to animal feed in the Deuteronomy covenant, or in the annals of Kings? "And Rehoboam ordered a pile of animal feed placed in the middle of the throne room..." In yet other cases, mimesis by a later author is an even better explanation than Friedman's.

Friedman does offer a service in arguing for an early date for the J material. Nevertheless, Hidden Book in the Bible is little more than the usual literary three-ring circus we have been accustomed to.