Study of the Hebrew Bible has tended to bifurcate into a historical approach which seeks for the various sources out of which the text was composed and a literary approach which concentrates on the literary and structuring devices which hold the text together and assist in conveying its message. Why are there two approaches – one of which emphasizes the diversity of the text and another which recognizes its unity? A foundational period of scholarship came with the assumptions that the original "authors" would have been incapable of sophisticated literary technique; sophistication could only come later.

This conclusion was reinforced by claims that the "bits put together" were redundant and/or contradictory. As scholarship has come to recognize the complexity of the narrative, that complexity has been ascribed to a later stage. Yet this later stage that is capable of providing sophistication and complexity is also regarded as being unable to see blatant contradictions. This work investigates Genesis, Judges, the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, looking at the way the message is conveyed and how that has been misunderstood through assumptions about the capacities and intentions of original writers. It shows how retention of the original premise of the inability of early writers to be sophisticated, and the more recent recognition of the sophistication of the text, must inevitably lead to theories of the late origin of the text.