Chronicle of the Old Testament Kings: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the…

Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0500050953, Hardcover)

Chronicle of the Old Testament Kings charts the rise and fall of the leaders of Israel from Abraham to Herod. The first founders of the nation (such as David, Solomon, and Moses) and the prophets who first judged their leadership (such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Elijah) are brought vividly to life, with lavish color maps, time lines, photographs of archaeological treasures, and reproductions of later artists' imaginative renderings of each figure. These features alone make Chronicle of the Old Testament Kings a whiz-bang coffee-table book. In addition, author John Rogerson, a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sheffield, also provides an accessible, absorbing set of profiles of Israel's leaders. He considers all of the crucial debates in biblical scholarship today: Did the earliest biblical leaders of Israel actually exist? How much can we know about them? And how should that historical knowledge influence our reading of the Bible? Rogerson's intrepid exploration of these questions, presented in such a stylish volume, makes Chronicle of the Old Testament Kings a valuable addition to any library of books about religion.