Fictitious Book Blurb 2

Biblical Redaction from the Book of Ibid.: The Evidences
The Reverend Dr. Jebediah McDowell
Self-published.

Reverend McDowell, when examining a volume of the Soncino Babylonian Talmud in English, noticed a large number of references to a book of Ibid. in the footnotes. Knowing a thing or two about Semitic linguistics, he realized that the title of this work derives from the Semitic root ayin-bet-dalet, a morpheme which means to worship or serve, hence the Book of Ibid. should be translated as the Book of Worship. His search for the book Ibid. yielded nothing, so, convinced he had seen references to a lost work, he proceeded to reconstruct the text as much as possible from the citations and references. From his painstaking reconstruction of fragments, he noticed a startling similarity of the fragments to the text of the Bible. Familiar with the Wellhausen hypothesis of Biblical redaction from plural sources, as well as the Bible’s own references to the lost books The Wars of the Lord (mentioned in Numbers 21:14-15) and Sefer Ha-Yashar (mentioned in Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18), Reverend McDowell conjectured that the Bible is likely a redaction of the book Ibid. and a few other lost sources.
Reverend McDowell attempted to present his hypothesis to the academic community but was met with contemptuous ridicule, as no journal would publish his article. His query letters to various Biblical scholars went unanswered. He deduced a vast and secret conspiracy to cover up the true origins of the Bible, and expanded his article into a monograph. Yet neither agents nor publishers would give it due consideration. As self-publishing has become easier with the advent of e-books and marketing outlets for e-books, the Reverend Jebediah McDowell is finally able to share with the world the truth, unhindered by sneering academics and censorial publishers.