© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi �0.��63/�5685330-� �34� �47 Vetus Testamentum 66 (�0 �6) �55-�80 brill.com/vt Vetus Testamentum Book List ∵ Joel S. Baden The Promise to the Patriarchs. x+ 228 pp. OUP, Oxford, 2013. Baden’s advocacy of a so-called neo-documentarian approach to the Pentateuch is well known, and it will be no surprise to most readers to learn that in this volume he discovers that almost every instance of the patriarchal promise can be attributed to one or other of the classical Pentateuchal sources, J, E and P (the only exception is Gen 22:15-18). This argument sets him at odds with Rolf Rendtorff’s devastating methodological critique of twentieth cen- tury Pentateuchal criticism. Rendtorff, it will be recalled, argued for a consis- tent form-critical approach that saw the patriarchal promise as a secondary means to unite blocks of tradition. A central part of Baden’s clearly written book, therefore, is a detailed description of Pentateuchal scholarship on the promises, and a critique of earlier discussions of the promises, most especially, Rendtorff and the direction in which much continental scholarship has moved since his study published in 1977. Baden’s critiques are often incisive, though the difficulties in analysing the subtle differences between the patriarchal promises, the bloated claims for Deuteronomism, or the basis for excising sup- posed secondary passages are problems that have been raised before and are much debated. Problems arise, however, in Baden’s overly simple portrayal of his interlocutors. There is no “nondocumentary school” except in the perspec- tive of neo-documentarians who wish to construct the debate as a binary con- test. The constructive element of Baden’s book is found in the last two chapters. In the first of these Baden discusses the theology of the patriarchal promises in each of the Pentateuchal sources. The value of this discussion does depend on whether or not the reader believes in the Pentateuchal sources, whose existence Baden does not demonstrate here. Nor are any of the questions that have troubled the documentary theory raised. In favour of his analysis Baden does claim the resolution of the narrative contradictions that the reader of the canonical Pentateuch encounters. The final chapter returns to the canoni- cal text, which is where Baden began his book. Commendably Baden tries to