Tanakh, An Owner's Manual: Authorship, Canonization, Masoretic Text, Exegesis, Modern Scholarship, and Pedagogy

Sokolow, a professor at the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration, has crafted a masterful and thorough volume of Torah scholarship that raises multiple questions inherent in Tanakh and provides cogent and articulate explanations and responses to them. His work, which takes a Jewish Orthodox viewpoint, includes segments on who penned the various portions of Tanakh (an acronym for Torah, Neviim, and Ketuvim); historic and rabbinic sources for inclusion in the canon; anomalies in the foundational Masoretic text; attitude toward narrative material (Aggadah); the history of, and insights into, eight prominent exegetes, including Rashi and Nahmanides; rebuttals to the arguments of biblical critics about textual origin, and principles for developing Tanakh curricula in yeshiva day schools. Sokolow's erudition is evident as he addresses the issues from all angles and offers rational proofs for his claims. Detailed footnotes provide much additional useful and fascinating information for further study. Hebrew text, which is always translated, is woven into the manual when Sokolow quotes original material so that readers can see firsthand the sources. Serious students of Torah will learn much from this important, comprehensive work. (Feb.)