With any book, the author's belief guides his conclusions. But with Cahill I found it difficult to discern whether he believes in God or not. He oscillates throughout down to the last topic of "if God exists, how can 500,000 get slaughtered in Ugonda".

As a person confident in God's existence and consistency and wonder of His word, I enjoy the sections when Cahill's open analysis of the Bible leads him to accept God's reality....Cahill willingly accepts the validity and accuracy of Amos and Hosea's divine inspiration.

In other sections, however, Cahill extrapolates missing details in ways that challenge and modernize the Bible's message. He portrays Abraham as an ancient used-car salesman who triumphs from his own wits, and Moses a man who can make God change his mind. To me, the real interpretation of the Moses/God exchange about not destroying the 'revelers' represents God molding Moses' character and testing his love for the people he led, more than a genocide averted by Moses' powers of argument against our omnipotent creator.

Similarly, he hypothesizes that the Jewish religious leaders editorialized the Bible, adding human ideas for their own purposes and agendas. All my knowledge of ancient scribes says that if in making a scriptural copy a single mistake was made, the scribe had to begin again from scratch....

-- MattWalsh - 09 Apr 2002