ABSTRACT
In the English-speaking world, there has been in the last twenty years or so a clear drift in the direction of exegesis of the final form' of the text as the preferred style for biblical interpretation. One of the common features of final form exegesis is an interest in reading holistically, that is, reading the text in its final form as an aesthetic or communicative unity. The unity of the text for the rabbis rests on it's inter- and intratextuality, not on a unified rhetorical thrust. The drift has been so marked that it is now sometimes described as a paradigm-shift, using Thomas Kuhn's controversial term from the history of science. It has produced a sharp cleft between the English- and the German-speaking worlds in biblical studies. It can be applied, and Robert Alter does apply it, to Genesis as a whole, or to the historical books as a whole.
