Though the Old Testament apparently offers a distinction between facts that are considered mythical and facts that should be considered historical, in reality the only historical thing in the Bible is the Bible itself, a superb product of Jewish thought. What is narrated in the Bible is only myth, as the important monograph by Thomas L. Thompson, The Mythic Past (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999) has shown. But this myth about Israel's past (and on this point my position is slightly different from Thompson's) was built also with fragments of history, or rather with written traditions that were different from those expressed in the actual text, and obviously more ancient. When we read, in I Kgs 14.25, that pharaoh Shishak sacked Jerusalem, and we learn from Egyptian texts that this pharaoh conducted a military campaign in Palestine, we must admit that in tenth century вес in Jerusalem existed a royal palace, probably not very large, where the events concerning the town were recorded. But whether the king in Jerusalem was then a son of King Solomon is another matter. With this idea in mind, some years ago I wrote a book about the history and culture of the Philistines, largely using the Old Testament, where 1 discovered very interesting data that I would have never expected to find. As I often repeat to my students, quoting the title of a famous book, 'the Bible is right4; 'but1,1 add, 'biblical scholars are almost always wrong'...