If having a brilliant idea were truly the secret of success, there would be far fewer patent lawyers in the world.

The idea here is simple but excellent: Take each book of the Bible and see what archaeology can do to illuminate it. For example, the story of the Flood in Genesis is compared with the GIlgamesh tale found by archaeologists. Sarah's decision to let Abraham have children by a concubine is compared to the customs of Nuzi. Throw in a lot of excellent illustrations and you should have a great book.

I really, really wanted that to be true. And I still like the illustrations. But my experience is that the book simply has too many errors. My copy, at least, gives the impression of being a proof copy, not the final published edition. If someone would go and clean those up, we could have something brilliant on our hands. As it is, everything has to be checked against other sources.... ( )