Cascione and Rav-Noy Host Book Signing

Gioacchino Cascione and Eyal Rav-Noy held a joint reception and signing of their books In Search of the Biblical Order and Who Really Wrote the Bible? in Santa Ana, California, on Sunday, April 22, 2012.

The public was invited to a rare event where both a Christian and a Jewish author defended the authenticity of the Bible in two separate volumes. The authors discussed their books and answered questions from those in attendance.

Stressing the importance of identifying Moses as the author of the first five books of the Bible, Cascione and Rav-Noy spoke alternately for about 90 minutes. Both In Search of the Biblical Order and Who Really Wrote the Bible? identify patterns unique to the Biblical text as evidence of single authorship.

Both authors, working independently on opposite sides of the United States, came to surprisingly similar conclusions on how the Bible is written and who wrote it. Beginning his research in 1978, Cascione—a long-time Lutheran parish pastor and former assistant professor of art—identified patterns in the original Greek text, and found that these patterns have their source in Genesis. Beginning with Genesis and working with Hebrew, Rav-Noy—director of the Jewish Learning Academy and a Biblical scholar and lecturer—and co-author Gil Weinreich have identified similar patterns that all appear to originate in the writings of Moses. The implication of their evidence has profound significance for both Christianity and Judaism. These books are not commentaries on the Bible; rather, they show how the Bible is written unlike any other book.

Gioacchino Cascione, his wife Virginia, Tzippy and Eyal Rav-Noy

Cascione spoke about the significance of patterns in the text

What is the source of patterns in the Biblical text, and what is their purpose? Questions such as these were posed by many lay people, clergy, and scholars who read the author's 1987 first edition of In Search of the Biblical Order. That volume focused on the presentation of patterns in the Biblical text. Published 25 years later, following additional research and accumulation of data, the second edition delves into the meaning and significance of these patterns and their profound implication for the origin, authenticity, and quality of the Biblical text we have today. The new edition also explores the mysteries of divine revelation, the shape of divine communication, the Biblical text as an art form, and the possibility of discovering the divine style.

Based on the astonishing accuracy of Codex Leningradensis, the book presents the most important internal evidence confirming the authenticity of Daniel, Genesis, and other books of the Old Testament since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Gioacchino and Virginia Cascione with reception hostess Georgann McKee

Rav-Noy expounded on the following issues

Were the Five Books of Moses actually written by Moses? Rabbis, priests, and ministers advance agendas at odds with biblical morality. Bible "scholars" spend more time deconstructing the Bible than meditating on its message. The Bible seems to command less respect with each generation. How did this happen? Who Really Wrote the Bible? traces the assault on the Bible's authority to an outmoded academic theory—the so-called "documentary hypothesis"—that claims the Five Books of Moses were composed by four different authors (called J, E, P, and D) writing hundreds of years apart.

By undermining the notion of unified authorship, "the Bible critics" undermine the Bible itself, claiming to show a Creator who not only contradicts Himself, but cannot even tell a coherent narrative of His own creation. Thus the critics erode the Bible's moral authority and turn the world's greatest book into a meaningless mess. Here's the good news. The scholars are wrong, their "scholarship" two hundred and fifty years behind the times.

Who Really Wrote the Bible? confronts head-on the follies and foibles of "the Bible critics"—the class of professional scholars and theologians whose dogmatic thinking and intellectual laziness keep them from properly understanding the one book they have a responsibility to teach. Using examples from well-known narratives such as the stories of Creation and the Ten Plagues, Who Really Wrote the Bible? introduces readers to unique literary patterns that show just how carefully planned and unified the Bible really is.