Finished 13 April 2005.

I thought this book was absolutely fascinating. As another reader has commented, it reads like a detective story, setting up all the clues from a bewildering variety of sources such as stylistics (word choice, sentence constructions, etc.), architecture (how would the Tabernacle have been built) and historical details, then culminating in a dramatic denouement when he reveals the author – or, in some cases where it’s been so far impossible to identify the author, at least give a plausible story to unify all the facts. I’m no biblical scholar, so I haven’t the foggiest idea whether he is right or not, but he seems very careful and meticulous and eager to point out where there is insufficient evidence to verify a fact. At the same time, he manages to give a pretty good background of the history of Israel during the time the Old Testament was being written (the book only deals with the Old Testament and not the new). I would recommend it to anyone who wishes to exercise their mind a little with some close textual analysis.