I am finishing "Who wrote the bible". Interesting. I still think that
Finkelstein is by far the best in this genre. Friedman does not have
the benefit of archeological advances of the last 15-some years so he
actually believes that exodus from Egypt (and maybe that the Earth was
created in six days too) happened for real. However, it is surprising
how much mileage he gets out of textual analysis alone. I remember
Finkelstein did not go into so much detail and overall dismissed the
book.