Behind the academic and innocently descriptive title of this book is to be found one of the most explosive works of biblical scholarship to be published this century. Certainly many of those who read it on its first appearance were never the same again, and it signalled the end of what had hitherto been a flourishing literature on 'biblical theology'. 'In recent years, ' Professor Bar wrote in his Preface, 'I have come to believe that one of the greatest...