Asimov's Guide to the Bible: The Old Testament

The most influential, the most published, the most widely read bookin the history of the world is the Bible. No other book has beenso studied and so analyzed and it is a tribute to the complexity ofthe Bible and the eagerness of its students that after thousands of yearsof study there are still endless books that can be written about it.I have myself written two short books for young people on theearlier books of the Bible* biit I have long wanted to take on a jobof more ambitious scope; one that I can most briefly describe as aconsideration of the secular aspects of the Bible.Most people who read the Bible do so in order to get the benefitof its ethical and spiritual teachings, but the Bible has a secular side,too. It is a history book covering the first four thousand years ofhuman civilization.The Bible is not a history book in modem sense, of course, sinceits writers lacked the benefit of modem archaeological techniques,did not have our concept of dating and documentation, and had differentstandards of what was and was not significant in history. Furthermore,Biblical interest was centered primarily on developments thatimpinged upon those dwelling in Canaan, a small section of Asiabordering on the Mediterranean Sea. This area makes only a smallmark on the history of early civilization (from the secular viewpoint)and modem histories, in contrast to the Bible, give it comparativelylittle space.Nevertheless, for most of the last two thousand, years, the Biblehas been virtually the only history book used in Western civilization.Even today, it remains the most popular, and its view of ancienthistory is still more widely and commonly known than is that of any! other.So it happens, therefore, that millions of people today know ofNebuchadnezzar, and have never heard of Pericles, simply becauseNebuchadnezzar is mentioned prominently in the Bible and Periclesis never mentioned at all.Millions know of Ahasuerus as a Persian king who married Esther,even though there is no record of such an event outside the Bible.Most of those same millions never suspect that he is better knownto modem historians as Xerxes and that the most important eventin his reign was an invasion of Greece that ended in utter defeat.That invasion is not mentioned in the Bible.*Words in Genesis and Words from the Exodus. Millions know certain minor Egyptian Pharaohs, such as Shishakand Necho, who are mentioned in the Bible, but have nevq heardof the great conquering Pharaoh, Thutmose 111, who is not. Peoplewhose very existence is doubtful, such as Nimrod and the queen ofSheba, are household words because they are mentioned in the Bible,while figures who were colossal in their day are sunk in oblivionbecause they are not.Again, small towns in Canaan, such as Shechem and Bethel, inwhich events of the Bible are described as taking place, are motefamiliar to us today than are large ancient metropolises such as Syracuseor Egyptian Thebes, which are mentioned only glancingly in theBible, or not at all.Moreover, usually only that is known about such places as happensto be mentioned in the Bible. Ecbatana, the capital of the MedianEmpire, is, remembered in connection with the story of Tobit, butits earlier and later history are dim indeed to most people, who might \be' surprised to know that it still exists today as a large provincialcapital in the modem nation of Iran. 'In this book, then, I am assuming' areader who is familiar withthe Bible, at least in its general aspects, but who knows little ofancient history outside the Bible. I assume a reader who would beinterested in filling in the fringe, so to speak, and who would expectmuch of the Bible to become easier to understand if some of theplaces and people mentioned in it are made less mysterious. (Afterall, those places and people were well known to the original readersof the Bible, and it would