Challenging scholars who trace the core of Judaism only as far back as the Babylonian exile in sixth-century BCE, Cook (Virginia Theological Seminary) delves beneath the texts of the Hebrew Bible to explore what he sees as the actual social roots of Israel's ancient covenant beliefs revealed at Mount Sinai. They are not the product of a long history of Israelite religious and cultural development, he argues, but an early, minority perspective from outside of Israel's and Judah's central state culture. He finds that the perspective seen in the book of Deuteronomy and its many related texts eventually earned a dominating position among biblical traditions, and played a major role in the editorial shaping of the Bible. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR