The Bible contains conflicting accounts of the same event. These have been seen as a challenge to faith: if the Bible is Words of God, how can it differ from itself? This book takes the historical view. It sees the Bible as words of men about God, and reads the many inconsistencies as the record of changing ideas of God, adapting human agendas to new conditions, as the centuries pass. The Kingship comes, bringing with it the military culture; the law, with a new legal status for women; and the money economy. This book follows these changes, in both the Hebrew and the Canaanite traditions, all the way to the new possibilities of both despair and faith which the Exile brought with it.