How should we read the Bible? What we lose when source analysis replaces literary analysis

The dominant scholarly understanding of the Bible (for the past 150 years or so) is that the books of the Old Testaments were not written by single authors; rather, each book – indeed, each story! – is composed of literary fragments cobbled together into a single text. This understanding of the Bible calls on us, therefore, to read each book not as a literary whole, but to identify the different sources that make up a Biblical story to understand who wrote each fragment, when, where, for what audience, and for what purpose. Because it requires readers to read the Bible historically – to identify the history of the text itself – this method of Biblical analysis (source analysis) precludes a traditional literary reading of the Bible. In doing so, it robs readers of a unique literary experience, and perhaps also robs an ancient author of literary credit he had rightly earned.