Rating: 6/10
- Accuracy: Broadly informed on the archaeology and religious history of the Holy Land, though the families and many episodes are invented composites.
- Readability: Clear sentence by sentence, but exhausting at over a thousand pages.
- Plot: Archaeologists excavate a tell in Galilee, and each layer opens a story from the site’s history, from the Stone Age to modern Israel.
- Science bonus: The frame is an archaeological excavation, and stratigraphy, artefact dating and field method structure the whole novel.
In a frame set in the early 1960s, an archaeological team digs at Tell Makor, a fictional mound in Galilee. They uncover fifteen layers of settlement, and each layer becomes a story: prehistoric hunters, Canaanite worshippers, Hebrew kings, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Muslims and finally modern Israelis.
Michener’s method, as in Hawaii, is to tell history through representative people. The approach works well in the early sections, where he imagines the birth of religion and the development of monotheism with real curiosity. The chapter on the building of a water tunnel under a besieged town is especially memorable.
The frame is weaker. The archaeologists, including an Irish-American Catholic, an Israeli Jew and an Arab Muslim, spend long passages debating religion and politics, and their discussions often read like essays.
The later historical sections become more predictable. Characters increasingly exist to represent ideas or communities, and the moral arc bends heavily toward the modern Israeli state, which will not persuade every reader.
Michener’s research was extensive, and much of what he describes is well grounded. But his desire to explain everything, and his reliance on composite families, flatten history into a lecture series.
The 6 reflects an ambitious, often informative book that works best in its first half. As an introduction to the layered history of the region it has value, but readers should treat its conclusions with care.
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