Here, for the first time, are the fascinating stories of the two dozen men and women who began writing the Hebrew Bible at Ziklag, a small frontier village in the Negev desert, over three thousand years ago. They were unlikely authors – a rebel warrior or mercenary who had grown up as the youngest of a prominent sheep-rancher's seven or eight sons… a scribe with a talent for story-telling, a woman member of Rehoboam's royal court in Jerusalem, various prophets, a spy who masqueraded as a tree surgeon and mad itinerant preacher, an assortment of priests, members of the library staff at Alexandria-translators, copyists, scholars, historians-who, while writing to serve their own or their clients' needs, created the world's all-time best seller.
Here, too, is the story of how a dozen or so indigenous Canaanite tribes and habiru rebelled and organized under a single strong leader to defend themselves against their already better organized neighbors… of how they built a nation… of how they quarreled and vied for power… and of how, having weakened themselves by their internal struggles, were then defeated and impoverished by their neighbors.
This is a guide to the stories behind the stories, distinguishing between allegory and history… here are clues to seeing how the history behind the façade of stories which, in many cases, were never intended to be taken as fact.