Robin Sykes graduated from Cambridge in 1966. Following visits to Sinai and Ethiopia in 1999, as part of a study of the story of the Ark of the Covenant from its origin in Sinai (according to the book of Exodus) to its final resting place in Axum (according to the Orthodox Ethiopian Church), he became interested in the relationship between the process of writing what would come to be Scripture and the geographical, economic and political circumstances of the writers. Although there are many books on the background to the Bible, he found that the history they used was often that which the writers of the Bible had themselves chosen to expound, and that this contrasted not a little with that which is revealed by the archeaological evidence as interpreted by secular historians. Even those scholarly works that avoided this pitfall, often provided their biblical citations simply as chapter and verse references, which put the reader to the trouble of looking them all up - sometimes only to find that, at least in the translation used, the citations did not always support the scholar's arguments. In this book, the history used is that which is supported by the archeaolgical evidence validated by historians specialising in the history of the Ancient Middle East; the structure, source analysis and likely authorship of the biblical writings is largely based on evidence accepted by the academic community of scholars interested in the literary history of the books of bible, although the analysis of this evidence has sometimes led the author to different conclusions, (but where that is the case, the reasons are given so that the reader may consider whether such departures from orthodoxy are justified.) Where biblical verses are cited, they are quoted - so the reader does not have to look them up. Where difficulties in translation obscure the original meaning, the issues and possible resolutions are discussed.