From Eden to exile : the epic history of the people of the Bible

The earliest part of the Bible is recognized as the foundation-stone of three great religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - yet over the last century, archeologists and historians have signally failed to find any evidence to confirm the events described in the 'book of books' prior to the 9th century BC.

As a consequence, many scholars took the view that the Old Testament was little more than a work of fiction.

As the leading figure in the New Archaeology, David Rohl has been at the forefront of the movement to discover the archaeological evidence for events described in the Old Testament, which we have come to think of as myths.

His previous books, "The Test of Time and Legend" presented the arguments and counter arguments. In the "Lost Testament", this discursive approach is replaced by historical story-telling, which follows the sequence of events from the rise of Neolithic civilisation a region now part of Iran, which inspired the story of the Garden of Eden, through Noah, Abraham and the sojourn in Egypt, to the fall of Jerico, the dual kingdoms of the Promised Land and lastly, the exile in Babylon, where the stories of the Old Testament were collated into something very like their present form.