Roger Sabbah

I meant to finish this book before writing a review. It's so awful, though, that I don't know whether I'll ever make it to the end, so I thought a word of warning might be helpful to other people.

First, let it be known that I approached this book with an open mind. The idea that Moses et al. were (Egyptian) followers of Akhenaten, the pharaoh who temporarily imposed monotheism on Egypt, is a plausible one. Plenty of evidence for Akhenaten's monotheism exists, while there's no evidence for a huge exodus of slaves from Egypt.

Unfortunately, the author of this book seems to make no distinction between what's plausible and what actually happened. In his view, if something could have happened, then it really did happen. The book is full of leaps of logic of this sort, with few arguments that are actually convincing or even coherent.

I'm not sure who the intended audience of this book is, but I suspect that it may be for those who believe in a literal interpretation of Exodus. At least, that's the most charitable justification I can give for the fact that much more time is spent explaining why the exodus as described in the Bible didn't actually take place, as opposed to explaining why his own theory is correct. The less charitable view is that it's much easier to disprove the Biblical exodus than to prove his alternative theory, and by equating possibility with reality, proof isn't necessary anyway.

Either way, this book has an interesting premise and presents some interesting, if not conclusive, evidence; but for me at least, the faulty logic made it an extremely painful read.… (más)