Richard Freidman, Prof. of Hebrew, U. of Cal. at San Diego has a new book coming out on the Torah, I believe a commentary. His "Who Wrote the Bible" was very good, I don't agree with it all but I loveed the part on 2 flood stories.

Ish,

I did tape that special that was on the History Channel. It was about 2 hrs. and 45 min. long. It was interesting, but some of the points they made were a little "iffy". I also taped the specials that followed it for the rest of the week (Noah's Ark to a A Violent God)

I saw them all too, I had some problems with some of the presentations; I think Wolpe glossed over the 10 plagues of Egypt when he said God would have stopped them at any time if Pharaoh would let the Jews go, this is just not so, God hardened his heart, he WAS going to let them go, also they should have had an Egyptologist on to explain this era in Egyptian history, one can make an argument that the Jews were chased out of Egypt for being destructive or they just walked out during one of the civil wars of this period. They also played to the common misconception that 'Pagans'were barbarians & the Bible contains the first moral law, phooey! Though they did point out that the Babylonians & Egyptians based civil & criminal law on the Sumerian Code of Hamurabi, they did not point out the moral laws of Egypt contained in The Book of the Dead, the 24 confessions to Osiris, which predate the Bible by a thousand years. While its true that Hebrew's contributed much to western Civilization, this is no reason to denigrate the contributions of others. Sumer, Babylon & Egypt are the giants on who's shoulders western civilization stands, they were full blown societies with law, morality, culture & technology when Greece, Rome & Israel were still in diapers.

The book you alluded to is actually WHO WROTE THE NEW TESTAMENT: THE MAKING OF THE CHRISTIAN MYTH. It was published by Harper Collins in 1995, and, yes, it was written by Burton L. Mack.

Penatis, you are correct. Thanks.

Ish