Rating: 
Summary: Too Speculation riddled
Review: "The Mythic Past" is one of the best books on how to read the Bible I have yet encountered. The style is dense, but consistently insightful. I realized the Bible made no literal or historical sense back when I was 14. Since then, I have struggled to understand its continued cultural importance and its potential personal usefulness. Thompson addresses both of these in a startling way, by dismissing the Bible as history, and examining it as literature in the context of archeology and the broader, more verifiable history of the Middle East from non-Biblical sources. He places the Bible's composition at a much later date than most scholars, to the post-exilic, Persian and, perhaps most importantly, Hellenistic periods, and he relates it to the intellectual world of the time. I found the book to be a thought-provoking, door-opening and stimulating intellectual experience. His view might be considered minimalist, but for me, it contains more possibilty and usefulness than literal interpretations of Biblical history.
Rating: 
Summary: an athiest's view
Review: I see a considerable discrepancy between this book and Finkelstein and Silberman's The Bible Unearthed, about when the old testament was put together, before and after the exile and return (Finkelstein and Silberman), or much later in the time of the Maccabees (Thompson). None of the reviews here in Amazon take up this question. I am an outsider with no special expertise, but I think Finkelstein and Silberman make a more convincing case. Thompson's book is much padded and in places opaque and/or wandering, and without references, and his argument for the timing of the bible's composition is not sufficiently detailed. However, his analysis of the spread of languages around the fringes of Northern Africa during the desications of the sahara was new to me and quite interesting.
To move on to the provocative paragraph: I am probably not the only atheist with an interest in biblical archeology, but they aren't common among the reviewers of this book, or of Finkelstein and Silberman. Neither of these books leaves much of the Old Testament standing as a theological map for the faithful. How a Judeo or Judeo-Christian faith can reasonably survive acdeptance of these writers' works is not clear to me.
Rating: 
Summary: Separating Myth from History
Review: I see that most reviews of this book give either five stars or just one star. Not surprising...books like these polarize people. Which is the way it naturally is. The theme is so similar to, and supported by, the book "The Bible Unearthed" by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman: the Israelites were natives of Canaan, and there never was a historical exodus from Egypt. OF COURSE people are going to get their hackles up when you challenge biblical quasi-historical ideas. The truth is hard to digest. If you wrote a book years ago that the earth is round, you'd have got all one-star reviews, for sure. Same with this book. The author says in page 190: "The patriarchs of Genesis were not historical." What a relief to see more and more authors accepting and voicing this understanding.
Raja
Rating:
Summary: An insult to our intelligence
Review: I'm a Pagan who, to put it very mildly, does not have a high opinion of the Old Testament. But Thompson has managed to write something even worse.
It is one thing to point out that Biblical stories of the Exodus and the conquest of Israel by Joshua are contradicted by archaeological evidence (they are). It is quite another to throw out genuine archaeological evidence as well as any connections to Biblical stories from the Book of Judges onwards, as though neither people nor history existed back then!
If folks want to say that there were ancient Israelites back in the 13th century BC, and have some evidence for it (including, say, Merneptah's Stele, which appears to refer to them explicitly), then right or wrong, that's scholarship. If others want to say that the actual Israelites did not appear until the 12th or 11th century BC, and present some evidence for that (including explaining the Stele, of course), well, that's scholarship as well. I'd refer interested readers to works such as "The First Historians" by Baruch Halpern (1988), "The Archaeology of the Land of Israel" by Yohanan Aharoni (1978) and "Who Were the Israelites and Where Did They Come From?" by William Dever (2003).
Thompson, however, is an anti-scholar. He knows that people existed from the 13th through the 3rd centuries BC. He knows there's enormous amounts of corroborating evidence about what those people were like. And he's out to denounce anyone who says anything about them, no matter what they say! It's simply ridiculous.
The claim that there were no such people as the ancient Israelites is not scholarly unless it is backed up by some rather striking evidence. Thompson has nothing of the sort.
This guy is worse than the Bible-is-truth fundamentalists. At least, those who believe the accounts in the Old Testament will get some of the later history right, once in a while. Thompson, by denying that there is any truth anywhere, won't get anything right.
Rating:
Summary: Seeks to reveal the Bible as it was understood then
Review: The book assembles a collection of arguments that compare the past portrayed by the Bible against historical fact, and in doing so reveals that it is misleading to view the Bible as history, or that its purpose was ever to be historical. The book convinced me that most of what I believed to be true was understood as mythological at the time of the Bible's writing. Even showing how the original mythical meaning of the garden story was changed during the Middle Ages to the one generally held today. And although the argument that the Bible was a late development seems rather pretentious, he also suggests that the traditions that the Bible drew upon understood events from the past, but that it is difficult to extract history from myth. Both the New and Old Testaments are discussed, including parallel metaphors in each. But the main message is that if the Bible is viewed as history, its true meaning is no longer understood from its symbolism, which is at the heart of understanding the Bible's theology. Although much more interesting at first, this book could have been 100 pages shorter without any real loss. Another book that tries to explain the source of the myths used to create the Bible is "The Bible Myth" by Gary Greenberg.
Rating:
Summary: A well-organized jumping-off point. Fulfills its promise.
Review: The emphasis is on what the author knows, Biblical scholarship. The "Old Testament" is examined meticulously, and the author points to the issues that archaeologists have with it. If anything strikes you as dubious, or interesting, you have the pointer to what to research.Those savaging this book because the author is not an archaeologist need to face squarely the fact that the Judaeo-Christian history they believe in comes not at all from a consensus of archaeologists, but entirely from Biblical scholars like this author. All three of the great faiths of the MidEast seem to have become openly hostile to science, history, and archaeology if it impinges on their chauvinism. Quite the irony, considering how Catholics (Roman and Orthodox), Jews and Moslems preserved the humanistic heritage that works like this are in the tradition of, through the Dark Ages.
Rating:
Summary: A well-organized jumping-off point. Fulfills its promise.
Review: The emphasis is on what the author knows, Biblical scholarship. The "Old Testament" is examined meticulously, and the author points to the issues that archaeologists have with it. If anything strikes you as dubious, or interesting, you have the pointer to what to research. Those savaging this book because the author is not an archaeologist need to face squarely the fact that the Judaeo-Christian history they believe in comes not at all from a consensus of archaeologists, but entirely from Biblical scholars like this author. All three of the great faiths of the MidEast seem to have become openly hostile to science, history, and archaeology if it impinges on their chauvinism. Quite the irony, considering how Catholics (Roman and Orthodox), Jews and Moslems preserved the humanistic heritage that works like this are in the tradition of, through the Dark Ages.
Rating:
Summary: Where are the citations and bibliography
Review: The Mythic Past, by Thomas Thompson, is certainly a work, but the scholarship conatained within it is lacking. First and foremost, Dr. Thompson either forgot, chose not to, or simply saw himself above a bibliography, citations of works alluded to or used ... this is problematical for the theme and nature of Thompson's book. Who is he refuting? Who is he agreeing with? Where is Thompson getting his material? This omission in and of itself casts a shadow of doubt upon Thompson as a serious scholar. Attendant to the above, when Thompson procedes to relegate the entirety of the Hebrew Bible to the Hellenistic Period, dismissing archaeological analyses, literary criticism, and historical research, he needs to bring in compelling evidence for his stance. To wit: The continued debate over the historicity of King David. Through a long analysis Thompson would have us believe that the name "David" is an eponymous allusion to YHWH, and that in actuality David is a fiction that was created to give credence to the Second Temple (in Thompson's analysis there was only one Temple) and its leadership. What of the "Beit David" stele found at Tel Dan by Biran? Either it is a "salted" forgery (a total slap at an honorable scholar and archaeologist), or it has been badly misunderstood (it, according to Thompson, should be read "Belonging to the House of the Beloved {temple of Yahweh}, and not the present understandign of "Belonging to the House of David" ... an affirmation of a dynastic house), and "hijacked" by fundamentalists eager to prove the Bible as history. This is fine, but where is Thompson's evidence outside of his own theoretical musings. The same can be applied to his analysis of the "Exile." Is the Bible precise history? No, and the books by Dever, Silverman and Finklestein demonstrate such; but the Bible is not a fictive myth created after Alexander the Great in Palestine to give a nondescript people an identity. No teacher or professor would accept such undocumented work for an assignment, and no reader should be prepared to spend money on such.
Rating:
Summary: The Literary Creation of the Bible and the Bible's God
Review: The Old Testament is best understood as a complex composite literary creation. The Bible is best understood as literature, and not as a history of the ancient world. This is the major premise of The Mythic Past. One of the major temptations in reading the Bible is to think that the ancient writers thought and wrote about events like modern historians, carefully checking their facts and qualifying their interpretations. It has been a slow process, but Biblical scholars and archaeologists have begun to realize that trying to dig to establish specific Biblical events is a futile enterprise. It is important to understand what Thomson is saying and what he is not saying. Thomson is not saying that there was no historical Israel. He is not even saying that there was no David - only that there is no conclusive evidence for King David. In his words he is drawing a contrast between Israel and the Biblical Israel to emphasize a specific point. It matters little whether the Bible was composed in part during pre-exilic or post-exilic times or earlier. When you read the Bible, you are reading stories and interpretations of stories. The main concern of the writers was the way these stories were told, modified and interpreted. Whether the stories had a kernel of accuracy was a secondary concern to them. The Biblical writers collected these stories (including poems, songs, etc.) and shaped them into specific books and added chronological anachronisms to place them into a historical framework of the past. But the purpose of this was not to create an accurate history, but to debate and illustrate specific theological points. It is not that the Biblical writers didn't believe in their God or that these events didn't occur; it is that their major concern was storytelling to illustrate best the different shades of meaning the story aimed to evoke. They weren't modern fundamentalists or literalists, concerned primarily with the literal details of miraculous events. They were conscious molders and shapers of inherited traditions, arguing with one another within the boundaries of those traditions. I think of the Bible, like Shakespeare or Homer, a great epic whose stories can inspire and evoke shock, surprise and outrage depending on the particular narrative. Evoking a crass literalism to stories seems to me to destroy the meaning and looses the point. I predict that Mr. Thomson's approach will become ever more widespread over time, not only because of the inherent sensibility of it, but through archaeology and the ever increasing awareness that Biblical writers, lived composed in the same Hellenistic thought world of the Ancient Near East.
Rating: 
Summary: A Meta-review
Review: Thompson's book is advertised as radical, but in many respects it is an old story. What is new is not the recognition that Bible history is fiction--scholars have known that for a very long time--but at most a new way of delivering the bad news. Thompson spends as many pages defending the importance of a body of writing that is literally false than he does in making the case that it is false. Folks who dismiss Thompson's book tend to impunge his motives even though motives don't matter as far as truth is concerned. Ibn Warraq, compiler of The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, has been similarly vilified in Amazon reviews. Fact is, all the great religious traditions are based on what are, by our standards, literary frauds. One is at liberty to claim that this fact doesn't make any difference to the faith, but blaiming the messenger doesn't change anything.
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