The controversial premise of History and Prophecy is that the Bible was created from the very outset as a work of literature and not simply handed down in the form of oral stories from one generation to another. In this explosive survey of the whole Hebrew Bible, author Brian Peckham cuts against the grain of scholarly opinion by taking seriously the fact that the Bible is a work of literature modeled on such ancient authors as Homer and Hesiod and was undoubtedly the product of a literate society: the creation of people who knew how to read and write for an audience that read, listened and understood.