Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah

"Since Wellhausen's day many biblical scholars have become more 'orthodox' in accepting the Hebew Bible's own evaluation and reconstruction of early Israelite religion. But the historian should not accept the Bible's testimony at face value, but should seek to get below the surface - the historian's job, after all, is always to 'torture' the evidence, not to absorb it passively. And below the surface of the Hebrew Bible there is ample testimony to the rich, varied, and often surprising or even, to some, shocking -(일전에 이스라엘 종교세미나에서 스승님께서 종종 말씀하셨던 '놀라 자빠지는' 현실이란 표현)- reality that was the religion of ancient Israel and Judah. ... It still makes sense to reflect on theological themes and trains of thought in the Hebrew Bible, and even beneath its surface, even if the quest for 'the' theology of the Old Testament is nowadays looking decidely dubious. ... Judaism has produced a huge body of reflective literature thinking rigorously about the being of God and human response to him, and Judaism's forebears, the authors of the Hebrew Bible, were already in the business of thinking about YHWH as well as worshipping him."

John Barton, Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah, 192-3.