In so many ways, this book is more interesting for what Halivni thinks he is doing and the meta-conversation about how religious academics grapple with the conclusions of academia than his argument itself which, while it gets the job done and gets us from there to here, is more about what he needs from revelation.
Which, yes, is how this whole thing works. And Halivni has more of a knack than other people for identifying lacunae and reconstructing them in a manner not merely defensible, but later corroborated. And also, this book is fundamentally a theological argument for how to believe in Torah MiSinai after biblical criticism couched in academic language.
And that theological work and the drive he feels is far more interesting than the results.