ReViews: A Lifetime of Biblical Insight

Philip J. King (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2008), xvii + 181 pp., $24.95

Picture in your mind a chance meeting of Fr. King with a homeless person in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. King as priest stops to chat. King as scholar is surprised to hear that the man in question spent hours as a prisoner in solitary confinement but was never bored because “he spent all of his time reading the Bible.” The inspiration of that encounter results in this book and provides a thread of exposition. The exposition is based on experience, not abstract reasoning.

Phil King as believer and priest, but also Phil King as scholar has written the book he has always wanted to write. That means that he distills his considerable experience with the Bible, with scholarship, with archaeology, with ancient Near Eastern Studies, with the languages, the people and the times into a single narrative for all those who wish they could read such a book.