I got this book, because it was the next one in line for a book club discussion, but after leafing through it, I had second thoughts. In general, I like reading historical fiction where the story reflects life at that time - in other words, where the facts have been researched properly and I can rely on at least getting somewhat of an education of the circumstances and customs of the time. I did not see any recommendations on the back of the book by any scholars as to how well researched it was, or how accurately it portrays the life of bronze-age people in Canaan.
So I went to the reviews here and on Amazon. While there are many positive reviews, the (fewer) bad ones had the ring of being based on facts. Scholars apparently agree that Ms. Diamant did do very little research and reading of source materials about the customs and practices of this time, getting names, genealogies, and gods wrong, etc. When I read historical fiction, I at least do not want to be misinformed.
Some of the bad reviews were based on the unflattering portrayal of biblical characters, even calling the book "blasphemous". If your "faith" cannot take such a portrayal, well ... then you should reexamine what exactly you believe in, anyway. It's definitely not a book for people who need to believe that the Bible is literally true.
In any case, I ended up not reading this book, because I do not trust its historical accuracy. It received high marks for story-telling from nearly everyone - so read it as an imaginative story.
So I went to the reviews here and on Amazon. While there are many positive reviews, the (fewer) bad ones had the ring of being based on facts. Scholars apparently agree that Ms. Diamant did do very little research and reading of source materials about the customs and practices of this time, getting names, genealogies, and gods wrong, etc. When I read historical fiction, I at least do not want to be misinformed.
Some of the bad reviews were based on the unflattering portrayal of biblical characters, even calling the book "blasphemous". If your "faith" cannot take such a portrayal, well ... then you should reexamine what exactly you believe in, anyway. It's definitely not a book for people who need to believe that the Bible is literally true.
In any case, I ended up not reading this book, because I do not trust its historical accuracy. It received high marks for story-telling from nearly everyone - so read it as an imaginative story.
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