David Rohls book are written with the popular market in mind, but he remains an academic author.His books are never a short
a read, and contain a wealth of information and imply some previous knowledge in the subjects he tackles, generaly Egyptology and Biblical history. That said, they are a very rewarding read and are laid out and presented in such a way that they are open all, but I would not recommend them as a first toe in the water as it were.
David Rohls is known for presenting his theory of the New Chronology, a re-interpretation of historical and archaeological information to re-date the relative reignal dates of near eastern ancient times, a theory still largely ignored by the academic world.
Legend examines the earliest recorded histories of the biblical world, and starts off with a real bomb shell, the search for the Garden of Eden. Rather that looking at the problem from the point of view of a religious subject, he tackles the question through geography. Taking the physical descriptions from Biblical and Non-Biblical writtings he manages to find a posible location for a physical location for the Garden. Once you view early writtings as being folk memories, distantly remembered and elaborated with religious thought and propaganda, you can then follow Rohls process of stripping back to the solid facts. Once a point of origin for the first "remembered" ancestor of the people that eventually wrote the bible is found, the process then works its way through everything that follows. The surrounding lands of Cush and Nod are located, using again geography as well as linguistics, which plays a larger part in the detective work than you would have thought.
Once you can accept this process, and if you can`t you will probably have put the book down by now, fixing other locations flows fairly rapidly, and also the characters that go with them. Through the rise of Sumer, the biblical Patriarchs,the Flood and even the birth of Dynastic Egypt follow. I dont want to give too much detail away, as the joy of the book is in following the detective process, and seeing if the evidence convinces you. In my opinion most of it does seem to work well but I will leave the individual to me thei own judge.
One nice touch is that at the end of each chapter is a series of conclusions that the chapter has resultied in, enabling you to make sure you have understood the process he has taken. There are many diagrams, pictures and chronological charts, but most of all there are a lot of words, over 500 pages of them.
The book falls into a sort of no-mans land, the academic world would never take on board lightly such a series of wide ranging re-interpretations, and those who clutch their bible close to their chest will probably not take to some of the ideas. I will say however, that at no point does Rohl suggest that any of this undermine the religious ideas associated with it. This is a scientific, broadminded piece of detective work based on the factual evidence found within the Old Testament period. The sort of person who reads this will be the person who reads Graham Hancock, Andrew Collins, Graham Philips and the like.
If you like the new interpretations of history which are becoming popular these days, have an interest in the Bible or the near east and are prepared to take on board a lot of new information, then this book is for you and its one that will launch a thousand conversations and arguments.