14 Benjamin D. Sommer
that to this day multivolume editions with commentary, most oft en consisting of
the Pentateuch alone (or Pentateuch with prophetic lectionaries), remain exceed-
ingly common.
- See chapter 16 by Yael Feldman and chapter 17 by Yair Zakovitch in this
volume on the centrality of the Bible in Zionist and Israeli identity. - To be sure, all religions are in some sense cultures, but in the case of Juda-
ism, nonreligious aspects of the culture are unusually prominent. - For such a discussion, see Chana Kronfeld, On the Margins of Modernism:
Decentering Literary Dynamics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996),
114 – 40 (originally published in Prooft exts 5 [1985]: 129 – 40), as well as Ruth Kar-
tun-Blum, Profane Scriptures: Refl ections on the Dialogue with the Bible in Modern
Hebrew Poetry (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1999). - See note 15.
- Smith, What Is Scripture?, 18 and passim.
- I think of James Barr, John Barton, Alexander Rofé, Yair Zakovitch, Avig-
dor Shinan, and Michael Fishbane. Th ese scholars followed up insights from their
predecessors, especially Yehezkel Kaufmann and Isac Leo Seeligmann.