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A review by ehays84
Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses by Bruce Feiler
3.0
Well, I'm glad this book is out there, and it might be a helpful starting point for some folks to learn about the Bible and the Middle East, but for me, who actually does know a fairly decent bit about both, this was too simplistic and not incredibly well-written. Certainly doesn't help that the book I just read before this was The Old Ways, which is a similar sort of book but completely blows it out of the water.
I did learn a few new things that I hadn't known, such as the possibility that the Israelites spent a good chunk of the 40 years at modern day Petra before entering the Promised Land and somehow I hadn't known or remembered that the concept of the Promised Land isn't in the Quran's account of the people of Israel.
But at the same time, there were many things that I just knew too much about to really accept. Just as one example, he says that Ishmael is seen as the father of the Muslims. That's not true--he's seen as the father of the Arabs. Yes, an Arab started Islam, but many Arabs through history have been other religions and today a majority of Muslims aren't Arabs. So, really, that's a big thing to mistake/leave out.
As for the author's personal journey of quasi-faith in this book, well, being in the land (although Walking the Bible is a huge misnomer--it should really be something like "Getting Chauffeured through the Pentateuch with an Archaeologist who knew much more than I did") did help him in some ways come to more faith, but it was such a watered down Oprah/Joel Osteen kind of faith, that there wasn't really much to latch onto here.
Another problem here of course is politics. He really sympathizes much more with ILLEGAL Israeli settlers in the West Bank than he does with the Palestinians. No mention of settlements as illegal. That said, the author isn't a Zionist as far as I could tell, and does well to get along with Muslims and Christians on his travels.
Not planning to read any more of his books at this point.
I did learn a few new things that I hadn't known, such as the possibility that the Israelites spent a good chunk of the 40 years at modern day Petra before entering the Promised Land and somehow I hadn't known or remembered that the concept of the Promised Land isn't in the Quran's account of the people of Israel.
But at the same time, there were many things that I just knew too much about to really accept. Just as one example, he says that Ishmael is seen as the father of the Muslims. That's not true--he's seen as the father of the Arabs. Yes, an Arab started Islam, but many Arabs through history have been other religions and today a majority of Muslims aren't Arabs. So, really, that's a big thing to mistake/leave out.
As for the author's personal journey of quasi-faith in this book, well, being in the land (although Walking the Bible is a huge misnomer--it should really be something like "Getting Chauffeured through the Pentateuch with an Archaeologist who knew much more than I did") did help him in some ways come to more faith, but it was such a watered down Oprah/Joel Osteen kind of faith, that there wasn't really much to latch onto here.
Another problem here of course is politics. He really sympathizes much more with ILLEGAL Israeli settlers in the West Bank than he does with the Palestinians. No mention of settlements as illegal. That said, the author isn't a Zionist as far as I could tell, and does well to get along with Muslims and Christians on his travels.
Not planning to read any more of his books at this point.