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From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible

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In "From Eden to Exile," Eric H. Cline takes several library stacks' worth of biblical, archaeological and enthusiasts' ponderings on the mysteries of the Bible and delivers a highly readable, cogent explanation of their findings. Written in part as a companion piece to National Geographic Channel's television series on the same topics, this is no lightweight transcription of those shows, but rather a scholarly work of merit. Cline's writing is clear, conversational and at times witty as he weighs theories about each of these biblical mysteries against three points of evidence: biblical sources, non-biblical sources and empirical archaeology. Most impressive, however, is that "From Eden to Exile" does not simply present the data; Cline bravely delivers conclusions based on the evidence and his own well-respected expertise in the fields of ancient history and archaeology. Alternative theories by armchair archaeologists and untrained amateurs are given their due where appropriate, but Cline does not hesitate to dash unfounded notions with fact and reason. The reader is left with an unambiguous pronouncement on each of the mysteries addressed; even when the pronouncement is that the data is inconclusive, the reader clearly understands the wherefore and the why. Reading "From Eden to Exile" is like sitting in on a distinguished lecture series about the most enduring biblical and archaeological questions of the modern era.

The single most valuable item for me is the author's explanation of the scholarly processes or methodologies which are needed to undertake any investigation. Wrong premises or presuppositions can result in wrong-headed conclusions. Cline explains these scholarly methodologies and uses them in his investigations. Subjects he adresses are: (1) The Garden of Eden; (2) Noah's Ark and the Flood; (3) Sodom and Gomorrah's location; (4)The dating of the Exodus; (5) The Fall of Jericho; (6) The Ark of the Covenant; (7) The Lost Tribes of Israel. Each of the seven has its own "problems" and he carefully notes them and attempts to come to grips with them. Are we dealing with truth or fiction? How to determine which? The book is an engrossing read and its scholarly methodologies ought to be helpful to all who are interested in these subjects.

I just finished Eric H. Cline's book From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible. It examines seven "mysteries" of the Hebrew Bible from an archaeological perspective. Mr. Cline is a biblical archaeology scholar and is the associate directory of an ongoing excavation in Meggido (the biblical Armaggedon) in Israel.

The book is aimed at the interested layman and his writing style is very readable and easy to understand. His treatment of the various mysteries in the Hebrew Bible is short but informative. While I question some of his positions, on the whole the book is a great resource and I recommend it to everyone.

The seven mysteries his book tackles are:

1) The Garden of Eden

2) Noah's Ark

3) Sodom and Gomorrah

4) Moses and the Exodus

5) Joshua and the Battle of Jericho

6) The Ark of the Covenant

7) The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel

What's surprising in his book is his acknowledgement and treatment of crackpots. I'm used to scholars ignoring works by the lunatic fringe, for even acknowledging their theories gives them too much credibility. Not with Cline's book. In each of the mysteries, he enumerates both sober and fantastical ideas, challenging them for their consistency with the archaeological record. His dismissal of some fringe works can be acerbic, but not unwarranted as most of these "theories" get more media attention and gives genuine research a bad name.

I won't go into detail on each of the mysteries (go out and buy a copy if you want to know more!) but I will have to nitpick on his chapter about the Ark of the Covenant. I think he gives too much credibility with the biblical claim that King Josiah rediscovered the Ark (p. 151, "Since no one has seen the ark since at least Josiah's time"). It seems to me that Josiah concocted the story to give divine credence to his religious reforms. I think it's much too convenient that Josiah would suddenly stumble upon the Ark, with its Deuteronomic revisions of the Law, and how it so happens to justify his reforms.

Maybe I'm being too unsympathetic in my reading of that rather innocuous line, but at the very least Mr. Cline should've hinted at the possibility of Josiah's fabrication of the story about the ark. (Cline admits that he's less interested with examining the text of the bible and more with what archaeology has to say, so I guess he doesn't want to wade into contentious textual criticism territory.)

Eric Cline, who has served as a consultant to National Geographic's "Science of the Bible" series, has written a great book for the layman who's curious about a scholarly perspective on the bible. More beginner-oriented than "The Bible Unearthed," "From Eden to Exile" explores 7 "mysteries" of the bible:

*The Garden of Eden- There have been theories that the Eden story has a kernel of truth to it. Many archaeologists have tried to locate the Garden of Eden, in places from Iraq to Missouri, but no hypothesis has ever gained wide acceptance in the archaeological community. We'll probably never find the Garden of Eden outside the bible.

*Noah's Ark- Expeditions are launched every year to locate Noah's Ark, but none of them have panned out. Cline wonders why no one is looking for the ark in Gilgamesh or the other ancient flood stories. Contrary to what many think, the bible never says that the Ark landed on Mt. Ararat, only on "the mountains of Ararat," which is much more vague.

*Sodom and Gomorrah- Many attempts have been made to locate the cities, but none have succeeded definitively. If the flood story is purely mythical, then quite frankly, it's all moot.

*Moses & The Exodus- Cline notes that the story of Moses' birth, flight, and discovery is probably a foundation myth, similar to Sargon of Akkad, Romulus and Remus, and Cyrus the Great. How much truth is there to the Exodus story? We don't know, and probably never will. Efforts to pin down the Pharoah who would have been alive during the Exodus have not succeeded, nor have efforts to locate archaeological evidence for a mass exodus. Egyptian scriptural evidence for such an event is not to be had.

*Joshua and Jericho- Essentially, all evidence indicates that Jericho was destroyed long before Joshua and the Israelites were supposed to have arrived. "In short, it would seem that the only mystery still remaining about the story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho is how it came to be written in the first place." (p. 120)

*The Ark of the Covenant- No end of theories, expeditions, and excavations have been undertaken to find the Ark, but it has not been found. The most popular theories are that it is in a monastery in Ethiopia and that it's somewhere underneath the Temple Mount. In Ethiopia, no one but the head priest of the monastery is allowed to see the Ark, so we can't verify what they really have. Cline, however, quotes an author who was able to see it in 1941, and evidently it was simply constructed in medieval times. As for the Temple Mount, archaeologists have not obtained permission for excavations, and are unlilely to get it any time soon. Cline's view is that if there was an Ark, it was destroyed during the Babylonian invasion.

*The Ten Lost Tribes- Although the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel have been believed to be everywhere from Africa to America, Cline says that most of them were probably never lost. All the Assyrian evidence indicates that about 20,000 were taken from the Northern Kingdom of Israel and moved to parts of the Assyrian Empire. Now the population at the time was 200,000, so the remaining either stayed and intermarried with the Assyrians, or fled to the southern Kingdom of Judah.

This is an excellent treatment of biblical issues that anyone can profit from.

With "From Eden to Exile", Eric Cline has written a great book that I would like to describe with a sequence of adjectives: beautifully clear, concise, short but all encompassing, understanding of problems with religious readership, based on profound studies, knowledge and experience. If I could I would make this book a "compulsory" reading in many "religious societies".

This book was published by National Geographic, and sure enough, it reads like the text for a National Geographic TV special. Eric Cline is an ancient historian and an archaeologist, and he attempts to unravel seven mysteries of the Hebrew Bible. While it would be a mistake to call Cline a biblical minimalist, he does seem to value secular and archaeological data more than the data found within the Hebrew text itself, a predilection that will color some of his conclusions.

He concludes that 1) If the Garden of Eden exists, it is probably in the southern Mesopotamian area, and perhaps at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. 2) He stresses that the Noah's ark story is a Hebrew rewrite of ancient legendary flood stories from other cultures and that the ark is probably lost forever if it ever existed, and that we should be spending an equal amount of energy searching for the arks mentioned in other Ancient Near Eastern legends as well.3) He discusses the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah and concludes they are either lost somewhere under the Dead Sea, or that they existed along the Dead Sea and need to be further excavated. 4) He contends that the Exodus story could not have happened as the Bible portrays it because of its logistical improbabilities (2.5 million people marching through the desert for 40 years would not only be unlikely, they would have left some archaeological remains behind for us to examine). 5) While we do have some evidence of Israel in the land of Canaan as early as 1207 BC and there is some evidence that two of the Canaanite cities were overthrown and taken over by the Israelites, they were probably overthrown by the Sea Peoples, and the Israelites merely took advantage and occupied these towns. 6) The ark of the covenant was probably destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, but if it still exists, it's probably buried under the Temple Mount. 7) The ten lost tribes of Israel were never really lost, because the kings of Asyria and Babylon only deported about 10-20% of the people. Others were moved in rom the surrounding areas, and when they intermarried with the Israelites, they formed what we now know as the Samaritan people.

Cline is inclined to question the historicity of any Bible story that doesn't have corresponding evidence in the archaeological or historical records. This means that he is invariably more pessimistic about the Hebrew Bible's historicity up to the time of David than he is about the material after the time of David (though he has questions about some of this as well).

I am much more optimistic about the historicity of what we have in the Hebrew Bible narratives, and I must also say that Cline is not a biblical theologian/historian per se. But he writes well and he engages the reader throughout. He has discussions in every chapter about modern amateur archaeologists who have made unverifiable claims that they have solved and discovered some of these mysteries. He casually dismisses these claims, but he applauds their zeal. At the same time, he contends that we should only trust research performed by trained and reputable archaeologists and trained historians.

This is a very interesting book, and it should probably be read in conjunction with a book like the one edited by a reputable biblical historian, Daniel Block: "Israel: Ancient Kingdom or late Invention."

I bought this book for two of my grandchildren, who have just begun attending a Catholic elementary school, so they'd have something to refer to for balance. It's a bit too advanced for them (they're 9), but their parents can keep it at hand. I found it a very solid, certainly conservative, treatment of what we "know" about such biblically reported events, artifacts, and locations as the Garden of Eden, the Flood, the Exodus, and the Ark of the Covenant. I was disappointed to see that the treatment of the Flood didn't include Bruce Masse's arguments for a comet strike as the cause for something akin to a planet-wide tsunami, but Masse's work is sufficiently recent, and sufficiently out of the Biblical history/archaeology mainstream (He's an archaeologist with Sandia Labs) that it's not surprising it was missed.

Rarely does anyone manage to credibly combine Ancient Near Eastern studies and Classical studies, but Cline balances well between the two in his archaeological research and many publications. As this thoughtful and well-written book FROM EDEN TO EXILE shows, Cline has also managed something even rarer: to sensibly communicate biblical problems without taking sides in religious controversy or demeaning others' ideas. The topography and texts are carefully allowed to speak for themselves. Enormously fascinating topics like the location of Eden and where Noah's Ark purportedly went - old favorites that have been mystifying for millennia and will continue to do so - will have Cline's readers note how fair he is to divergent opinions. Very refreshing to find a scholar with a such a readable voice.

FROM EDEN TO EXILE: UNRAVELING MYSTERIES OF THE BIBLE is a recommended acquisition not just for spirituality collections, but for any public lending library interested in Biblical history. Archaeologist author Eric H. Cline uses a blend of Biblical history and archaeological evidence to probe some basic religious mysteries, from the Garden of Eden's location to what happened to Noah's Ark. What results is a pleasing juxtaposition of spirituality and Biblical history perfect for a wide reading audience, no matter what the faith.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

"From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible" by Prof. Eric Cline has been chosen to receive the Best Popular Book on Archaeology 2009 Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) Publication Award for books published in 2007-2008. The formal announcement will appear in the upcoming 200th anniversary issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

The book analyzes from an archaeological and historical perspective various "mysteries" in the Hebrew scriptures -- stories such as Noah's ark and Joshua's destruction of Jericho -- and proposes solutions that reconcile science, historical method, and traditional text.