Press kit

500-word research summary:

Lamborelle takes readers back to the Bronze Age, some 3,500 years ago, at a time when men of power were viewed as living gods. Using a holistic, literal, and secular interpretation, the author first demonstrates that the Abrahamic narrative (Ge 12-25) is far more coherent when considered from the standpoint of a mortal lord and the establishment of an earthly, rather than divine, covenant. Using biblical, historical and archeological evidence, it then shows how, through the Bronze Age nomadic practices of necromancy and the cult of the ancestors, the descendants of Abraham would have celebrated the memory of their benevolent lord, and how, through the “gift of the land” they would have adopted a sedentary lifestyle that would have led to the emergence of Baal Berith (“Lord of Covenant” in Hebrew), the enigmatic pagan deity of Shechem.

By studying the evolutionary stages of devotion through a comparative analysis of Near Eastern cultual practices, it shows how each time Israel was submitted to a new foreign power its exclusive deity underwent a visible transformation. Baal Berith would have first been venerated beside the Canaanite deities inherited from the Babylonian pantheon. As Canaan became a vassal of Egypt, a nation fond of compounded deities, Baal Berith would have taken on the attributes of El, Baal and Asherah and morphed into a new super deity: Yahweh. Initially venerated alongside the former pagan deities, theological and political struggles would have compelled the Israelites to monolatrism and the refutation of lesser Baals. It would finally be in the aftermath of the Babylonian exile, under Assyrian influence, that the religion of Yahweh would adopt its final ontological concepts. Modern monotheism would therefore be the result of this slow evolutionary process.

The quest to identify the Lord of the Covenant shows that the chronologies reported in the Bible can be surprisingly accurate, but only after the errors introduced by Nabonidus’ scribes while converting them from the Babylonian sexagesimal system are corrected. Using archeological, chronological and dendrochronological (i.e., tree rings) evidence, the lives of Abraham and king Hammurabi are correlated in order to show how the later could very well prove to be the mythical Lord of the Bible. In what is more than just a stream of coincidences, the long chain of biblical events line up with astonishing accuracy with the history of the region. The dates and events, people’s tradition and cultual practices, laws and structure of governance all come together to give this biblical story a rational interpretation. Common sense finally prevails in the meeting of myth and history.