It was a rare, possibly unprecedented, but none the less welcome sight to see numbers of newspaper vans running about London streets, with placards bearing the slogan, which forms the heading “Science Admits the Bible was Right”.
The message advertised a series of articles published in the London Evening News, containing extracts from a then forthcoming book entitled The Bible as History by a German writer, Mr. Werner Keller: The book had a wide circulation on the Continent and had been translated from the German by William Neil, M:A:, B.D., Ph.D: It was published in England in early November. The articles aroused very great interest in the London area and also in places in the provinces, where they were reproduced in the local press. In themselves they proved rather disappointing, since, while they drew attention to the remarkable agreement between the Biblical records and modem archaeological and scientific discoveries, they tended to explain the Old Testament miracles on merely naturalistic grounds.
On publication the book proved to be a volume of some 429 pages, very well illustrated and printed in easily readable type, albeit for that reason somewhat bulky: It is interestingly written and comprehensive, and while the naturalistic interpretations which were present in the articles are also to be found in the book, they are to some extent pushed into the background by the references to Bible accuracy concerning historical events. The relations of the Jews and the Assyrians are particularly well and convincingly dealt with. Sometimes, however, the writer seems satisfied with less than conclusive evidence.
This is shown notably when he explains his belief that Abraham never really lived in Ur and, later, by the quite unsatisfying though extended endeavour which he makes to sustain the unimportant and meaningless theory that the tomb of Peter is under the Vatican. He has also accepted, without reference to any other view, the theory that Rameses II, was the Pharaoh of the Oppression. This leads him to do far less than justice to the archaeologically very important Thothmes III, whom many good judges, including Professor Garstang, think was the Oppressor, and the Princess Hatshepsut. For the same reason, the Amama Letters, surely among the most important of modern finds, receive but scant mention.
In spite of defects, however, the book is a valuable work of archaeological and other reference, regarding the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, Manna, Israel, Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, the Return from the Exile, the Period between the Testaments and the time of Jesus.
Review of “The Early Earth” by John Whitcomb (1972)