State of Affairs
I finished reading the Cassuto book on the DH and I hope to write up my detailed analyses of each lecture soon - I am still catching up on Pesach induced workload.
My overall impressions are as follows - in general, I think the people who call Cassuto's analysis crap are not being fair. I think he presents a fairly comprehensive framework for analyzing the Tanach which is an alternative to the DH. However, my problem with Cassuto is that he seems to think that by presenting alternatives he is somehow demolishing the DH. What I saw while reading his book is that he present a bunch of ideas where some of them fit better than the DH and some of them don't quite work and in my opinion he really kvetches them. So in my mind, this is not very different from the DH approach.
I am tempted to read his detailed treatment of the subject, but I am not sure how much time I can devote to it - it is also quite expensive...
On a different topic, I read Douglas Rushkoff's Life, Inc. and it made a very profound impression on me - I am not sure the last time I felt this way after reading a book. Specifically, two things really unsettled me: the first was that I kept expecting him to propose a solution to the problem which I could attack, yet he was too smart to engage me. The second was that most of what he talked about, I had known superficially, but he managed to tie it all together in a very powerful way.
However, I am not convinced if he didn't twist the facts a little to make his points more powerful, and I really should follow up on some of the ideas he mentions to see if he presents them faithfully...
My overall impressions are as follows - in general, I think the people who call Cassuto's analysis crap are not being fair. I think he presents a fairly comprehensive framework for analyzing the Tanach which is an alternative to the DH. However, my problem with Cassuto is that he seems to think that by presenting alternatives he is somehow demolishing the DH. What I saw while reading his book is that he present a bunch of ideas where some of them fit better than the DH and some of them don't quite work and in my opinion he really kvetches them. So in my mind, this is not very different from the DH approach.
I am tempted to read his detailed treatment of the subject, but I am not sure how much time I can devote to it - it is also quite expensive...
On a different topic, I read Douglas Rushkoff's Life, Inc. and it made a very profound impression on me - I am not sure the last time I felt this way after reading a book. Specifically, two things really unsettled me: the first was that I kept expecting him to propose a solution to the problem which I could attack, yet he was too smart to engage me. The second was that most of what he talked about, I had known superficially, but he managed to tie it all together in a very powerful way.
However, I am not convinced if he didn't twist the facts a little to make his points more powerful, and I really should follow up on some of the ideas he mentions to see if he presents them faithfully...
posted by e-kvetcher at 11:59 AM
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