Happy New Year everyone. I trust 2012 is a better year than 2011 or, if 2011 was the best year of your life so far, that at least the comedown is unspectacular. In between eating, sleeping and watching cricket I've been reading The Bible Unearthed, an earlier book by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, authors of David and Solomon . This book operates on a broader canvas, providing an overview of the latest (at least up to their time of writing in 2001) archaeological evidence about the times in which the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, are set. Finkelstein and Silbermann are serious and distinguished historians and archaeologists, not eccentric amateurs like Tony Bushby or Stephan Huller . They carefully cite and sift their sources, build their arguments from evidence and are careful to avoid overclaiming. Nonetheless it is important to remember that archaeological evidence is intrinsically partial. In a country which has been continuously occupied for m
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson