But these three views, in different ways, all miss the fundamental point that the stories do exist side by side. The textual scholars have to explain why the redactor—who was obviously respected enough by the community to have an authoritative voice and scholarly enough to know the different traditions—couldn’t notice what any cursory read of the text reveals. The skeptics have the same problem, augmented by another: If the Bible is so badly written that it falls apart under even the most cursory of readings, why do so many people value it so highly? And the traditional explanations strike
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