In the 1950s the light shed by archaeology on the veracity of the Bible was fascinating enough; but this volume seeks to take the story up to the century's end. Among the issues it explores are the possible evidence for a Great Flood found at Ur, the discovery of thousands of clay tablets in Syria purporting to relate to Abraham, Esau and Ishmail, the evidence for the Biblical plagues and for the destruction of Jericho, the whereabouts of the Ark, the provenance of the gospels, and the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is written neither for the religious fundamentalist nor the blinkered atheist, but for the thinking layman eager to know to what extent the events described in the Bible may have been historically true, and is illustrated with colour photographs, maps and reconstructions of Biblical cities and buildings.