Studies in the Bible and Antiquity Volume 8 Article 3 2016 The Irreconcilability of Judaism and Modern Biblical Scholarship James L. Kugel Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sba Part of the Biblical Studies Commons BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Kugel, James L. (2016) "The Irreconcilability of Judaism and Modern Biblical Scholarship," Studies in the Bible and Antiquity: Vol. 8 , Article 3. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sba/vol8/iss1/3 This Forum is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in the Bible and Antiquity by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact
[email protected],
[email protected]. The Irreconcilability of Judaism and Modern Biblical Scholarship James L. Kugel Thanks to the work of scholars of the Hebrew Bible over the last two centuries or so, we now know a great deal about how and when various biblical texts were composed and assembled; in fact, this has been the focus of much of modern biblical scholarship. One thing has become clear as a result. Our biblical texts are actually the product of multiple acts of rewriting. All our canonical books have been found to be, in some degree, the result of editorial expansion, rearrangement, and redaction introduced by various anonymous ancient scholars. This raises an important question about those ancient scholars. To put it bluntly: How dare they? If you, an ancient Israelite, believe that Scripture