Glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem

This is a great book and a great collection of articles about Jerusalem around 600 B.C.E., i.e. the world of Lehi. I love the fact that it covers various aspects of this world and helps a reader get a greater understanding and appreciation for what it was like living there at that time. It also brings together all the socio-economic and political implications on the spiritual state of Israel. It starts with a "culturegram" or an overview of the culture and everything an ancient traveler might want to know about that place before setting out on his journey to Jerusalem of 600 B.C.E. Among things included in this culturegram are coinage, units of measure, markets and stuff one would encounter there, calendar, languages spoken, etc. The next article "Dramatis Personae: The World of Lehi" gives brief bios of kings, pharaohs and prophets (true and false prophets) that lived in or around that time. The book also has a lot of useful charts, pictures and drawings that are also very helpful. Other articles deal with other interesting aspects of this ancient world such as politics, economics, agriculture, woman's world, housing and family ties, inscriptions and writings from that era, relations of Israel and Egypt, aspects of Egyptian society, effects of Babylonian expansion, relations to Arabia, and at last but not least with spiritual aspects of that world -- prophets and prophetic callings, covenants, messianic expectations, temple, religious reforms and at last the fall and destruction of Jerusalem. There is another thing that i like a lot about this book and that the fact that authors of several articles (Pike & Chadwick for example) are not afraid to challenge some incorrect assumptions made by other prominent scholars, which have nonetheless become widely accepted among many Latter-day Saints. Pike and Chadwick in particular, do a very good job of correcting some of these misconceptions by carefully presenting and evaluating existing evidence and documenting all their sources. Good stuff. The one and probably the only thing I did not like is that there were a few articles that did not really contribute anything new to the overall picture. I don't doubt that they were well intended, but they were in effect a re-hash of information already presented elsewhere in the book -- just a repackaged approach. I kept reading through them and waiting for the point and it never came. All that was stated in them was already mentioned before. However, to anyone interested in this pivotal period in the life of ancient Israel, I would highly recommend this book.