In this provocative, rigorous but highly readable work of scholarship, Dr Paul McGrane provides fresh insights and textual evidence that together forge a new understanding of the roots of Judaism and early Christianity. Adopting an entirely rationalistic approach, a close reading of the texts, not only the Bible but other contemporaneous sources, show how the historical truth has had meaning endlessly imposed on it, clouding the intentions of the original authors who were writing with very different historical criteria and for an audience of their time. There has never been anything like this in scope, in approach, and in its findings. A stunning, often riveting account of the foundations of the religion that preoccupies a third of the world's population, it will leave the reader staggered that so much has been, wilfully or otherwise, misunderstood and misrepresented for generations.

Ancestral Tales is the first volume in a three-book series called A Bonfire of Inanities: The Bible Dismantled

Christianity is based on the texts that make up the New Testament, but it has its roots in the books of the Jewish Old Testament which are also included in Christian Bibles. The stories of Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, Joseph (and his coat of many colours), Moses leading the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt - these are all treasured by Christians, alongside the narratives of Jesus and his disciples.

The five so-called Books of Moses relate these Jewish ancestral tales, and this first volume analyses in detail the various source texts that make up these Books, to discover how much of them are based on real history. It compares them with other ancient texts not found in the Bible, notably those preserved in ancient Egyptian records, to separate truth from myth. It argues that we can identify in this way, the historical figures behind Jacob, Joseph and, most importantly, Moses and the Pharaoh of the Exodus. This then makes possible a firm dating for the Exodus itself, and a resolution of the complex relationships between the ancient Hebrews, Canaanites, Egyptians and most surprisingly, the so-called 'Sea Peoples' who appeared in history out of the chaos surrounding the collapse of civilisation at the end of the Bronze Age.

It may be possible to continue in Jewish or Christian belief in the light of this trilogy, but it would be a very different kind of religious faith from the one normally espoused. Each volume has been written to stand alone, but there is a natural sequence to the arguments developed which is facilitated if they are read in order.

Volume Two, Mistaken Messiahs, traces how Jewish messianic belief finds its way into the New Testament and Christianity and identifies historical figures behind Jesus and the Apostles.

Volume Three, Apocalypse Postponed, focusses on the Christian belief in imminent apocalypse and traces how thoroughgoing misunderstanding of the relevant Old and New Testament texts has led to two centuries of fallacious expectation.