Thanks for articulating better what I meant. That’s the point: no one views James Kugel as “frum.” I don’t even think he would use the word to describe himself, and not only because of his non-Ashkenazic roots.

As for Leiman, whether he is a jack of all trades and master of none, or jack of all trades AND master of some, he does indeed know a lot about biblical issues. In fact, his doctorate is on the canonization of the Bible, and one of his early publications was as editor of a collection of seminal (and some not so-seminal) articles on the Bible canon and masorah. And as Andy said, he addressed the issue head on in that Orthodox Forum essay (albeit, not necessarily to anyone’s satisfaction – he acknowledged that the issue is a problem [for Orthodoxy], and maintained that Breuer’s solution is no solution for Orthodoxy.

It is indeed available online:

http://tinyurl.com/leimanbreuer

Well, I’m probably a bit more left-wing than S., and am probably at the extreme left wing of MO. I have problems with Kugel’s approach. Many of the folks in my shul who read his latest similarly have problems with it. He is not viewed, even in our world, as a “frum scholar”. He is viewed, at best, as an academic who happens to be Orthoprax.

I don’t have a problem with his academic work — not that I agree wholeheartedly with it, but he’s an academic, that’s what they do. My problem is with him trying to say that it’s ok for a frum Jew to believe this, particularly since he doesn’t do a terribly good job explaining how one can reconcile critical scholarship with a belief, heck any belief, in divine revelation.

We may read Kugel to be edgy, but I keep my copy in my office and not in my house, and we’re not going out agitating for more discussion of Bible Crit in shul.

S.: I think R. Prof. Leiman does a good job in exploring historical oddities of halacha, but does he tackle core issues like Biblical authorship? I don’t know that I’ve seen anything like that.

It depends on which sub-set of the Orthodox community one is trying to approach. You are right that S. Leiman would be able to “speak the language” of certain sectors that Kugel probably couldn’t reach, but neither of them are theologians or even skilled polemicists.