The Discovery of the First Prose Masterpiece
Using a creative blend of scholarship and detective work, Richard Friedman has joined together the story from the dawn of written history, the Bible, and what emerges is astonishing. Far from a primitive first attempt at writing, it is an exciting and complex saga, a passionate work of love, deception, war, and redemption. Readers will experience the story that has not been read as a single continuous narrative for almost three millennia.
The work is presented in a bold translation that is remarkably faithful to the original. It begins with a well-known tale of the deity's creation of a paradise that goes wrong and then conveys a sweep of history, telling the story of a family through twelve generations: a story of deception and recompense, of powerful loves and sibling rivalries, of wars and spies. The family becomes a nation, the nation finds a ruling family, and they find their way to peace. The author of this saga crafts a compelling and densely woven tale of family struggles, bitter betrayal, and finally the birth of a great kingdom under Solomon, the son of David.
