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JEWISH WESTERN BULLETIN
New Year Issue, Friday, October 2, 7959
Bulletin Bookshelf
Rivers In the desek-t; King of flesh and blood
By ABE AVERBACH
RIVERS IN THE DESERT: HISTORY OF THE NEGEV,
By Nelson Glueck. Illustrated. Ambassador Books: Jewish Publication Society. 302 pp.
ONE of the finest and the most enjoyable books read during this past summer was the volume "Rivers in the Desert" by Dr. Nelson Glueck, president of the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion and a leading field archeblogist.
Dr. Glueck is a most unusual and gifted man. He was born in Cincinnati and studied for his rabbinate in Hebrew Union College. He received his doctorate in Semitics in Germany, followed by several years study in Jerusalem.
It became an obsession with" him to return to Palestine to learn all he could of the art of excavation. During the years of 1932 to 1947, he searched and excavated close to a thousand sites, becoming physically lean and dark like any of the Bedouins he encountered in Palestine east of the Jordan. Dr. Glueck was the one who found the unique copper refineries, dating back to the age of Solomon, on the Gulf of Aqaba.
For the past decade he has been the spiritual, leader of Reform Jewry in America. However he has still found time every summer since 1951 t6 return to his'archaeological exploration of the Negev.
Rivers in the Desert is therefore the
DR. NELSON GLUECK
at ancient wells and springs at which the Queen of. Sheba may have halted on her journey from Arabia to Jerusalem, Names of places that stir the imagination like Aqaba, Elath, Gaza, Qumran coupled with the Biblical character^ of Abraham, Jacob, Elijah make this book one of the most read-abfe and rewarding experiences in the field of history and archaeology.
* * *
THE KING OF FLESH AND BLOOD
by Moshe Shamir. Translated from the Hetirew by David Patterson. Copp Clark Co. Ltd. 542 pages. $5.50.
r[E art of blendmg fiction and history has always been
product of this brUliant disciplined I a contentious issue. The.historian mind; a history of the Negev from | P«5^sts have always looke^^ prehistoric times to the Arab conquest. It is easy to read, for it, is'written in a rambling conversational style, with
with a certain amount of disdain on the poets and novelists who embellished some historical
lukk'aaZeroi^nkn^^^^ I? turn some historical
jjjent novelists looked upon the purists
Dr. Glueck argues convincingly that I pedestrian and dull, the land has not changed much from
ancient times. Though the land looks forbidding and grim, the real motives for the move from this great ancient crossroads were social and economic. He continues his argument by saying that when peace and security prevailed, the successive civilizations learned the art of conservation and irrigation. They maintained cities and farms supporting tens of thousands of inhabitants in the Nabatean and Byzantine eras.
The author is firmly convinced of the historicity of the Bible. "It may be stated categorically that no archae-ogolical discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference". On the other hand, "scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible".
With Dr. Glueck we travel the ancient trade routes mentioned in the Bible. We follow the trail used by the Israelites through the Negev from Sinai to the Promised Land. We stop
Luckily, Moshe Shamir has chosen a period in our history that lends it-j self magnificently to a historical novel; He gives it a dramatic treatment that is exciting and realistic. In 1954 when ! this novel was first published in Israel
it was . acclaimed throughout the length and the breath of the land, not only because, of the story and the vivid prose, but because it was a definite turning point in Israeli contemporary writing.
Till this point Shamir and the most important Israeli writers were concerned only in depicting the life of the Sabra, the Kibbutz, and the war of independence as themes for stories. (Continued on page 84) .
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