100 books like The Miracles of Exodus

Though I write inspirational fiction, my true passion is research. In this fascinating and one-of-a-kind resource, not only did I discover the names and stories of pharaohs and their succession accounts but also the names and stories of the mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives who ruled alongside Egypt’s great men. When I began searching for the mysterious pharaoh’s daughter who pulled Moses from the Nile after an unnamed Pharaoh’s genocidal edict, I needed information on the often-overlooked women of Egypt. This complete family resource provided charts, lists, photos, and concise explanations of Egyptian history from the Early Dynastic Period and Old Kingdom through the Late and Ptolemaic Period. 

I always start my research at a library. I find the shelves on Egyptian history, grab a stack of books, plop down on the floor, and read until I can’t feel my legs. There’s never a shortage of Egyptology resources, but why must the scholars always disagree? Only by reading widely can I find a golden thread of agreement across the many sources. Oftentimes, a particular scholar will emerge as the leading expert on a particular time period and appear in a majority of quoted material and/or bibliographies. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt was both easy to understand and included interesting details while also following the consensus of the best New Kingdom scholars.

When I started writing biblical historical fiction in the early 2000s, I found only one or two novels about Moses. Shadow Women was especially helpful because it spanned Moses’s whole life, which meant it also encompassed the biblical narrative from Exodus to Deuteronomy. It was like Cliff Notes for four Books of the Bible! As my writing friendships have expanded over the past two decades, I’ve come to know Angela Hunt personally and discovered that she holds a PhD in Biblical Studies, which gives me even more confidence in the historical and biblical accuracy of her many biblical novels. She continues to be one of my favorite authors. 

I love biblical historical fiction because there are so many ways to write it. Some write about specific biblical characters, while others—like Connilyn Cossette—write about biblical events and then create fictional characters who become swept up in actual historical events. I’m also completely captured by Cossette’s romantic threads. She expertly hooks my heart into a series by choosing a minor character from the first story and making me care deeply for that hero/heroine by page three of the next book. Her irresistible characters and settings embody the dust, heat, and hardships of Egypt, and the tender romances linger in my memory for years.

I loved Miriam—one of many of Mesu Andrew’s novels of Old Testament women—because this aged woman brings a fresh perspective to the well-known story of the Exodus from Egypt. Her lived experience from slavery to freedom—and from despair to hope—as she searches for the God of her brother, Moses, is both familiar and utterly new. Mesu Andrews weaves a beautiful tapestry of a story that breathes new and fascinating life into a familiar story.

A historian, lecturer, researcher, and author, Ahmed Osman is a British Egyptologist born in Cairo who published three books: Stranger in the Valley of the Kings (1987), Moses: Pharaoh of Egypt (1990) and The House of the Messiah (1992) says that Tut-Ankh-Amun had a very similar “story” to Jesus.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead contains the Ancient Egyptian Negative Confessions that were originally written on Temple walls and as the burial texts, and were "I have not stolen...", "I have not killed", etc., a letter written to Gods, engraved on Temples walls and prepared as Papyruses 2,000 BC and were equal to "Thou shalt not", the Ten Commandments of Jewish and Christian ethics, later perceived as divine revelation. The Negative Confession is accompanied by a list of protective sounds and symbols that kept souls safe from demons. Just for the history lovers, the timeline of these is the following:… show more.

“Black-Jewish relations” occurs everywhere African Americans and Jewish Americans engage. Scholars and journalists have considered “Black-Jewish relations” in music and film, in economic and social spheres, in education and housing. Sundquist offers an incredibly rich exploration of this broad cultural landscape shaped by African and Jewish Americans. He explores the ways both groups struggled to understand themselves and engage with each other through literature and other forms of cultural expression and in legal, intellectual, and political forums. Black and Jewish authors and thinkers struggled over issues from the nature of citizenship, liberalism, and community to the challenges of racism, anti-Semitism, and historical reckoning. In this extensive and wide-ranging conversation, Sundquist frames the central concerns and beliefs that underlie the complex political relationship so many of us are trying to understand.

This is a collection of primary sources from Mao Zedong’s China, and a very curious type of source at that — newspaper stories about people who experienced miracles after reading Mao’s works. Unlike Jesus, who performed his miracles in person, Mao did not even need to be in the vicinity to make wondrous things happen to his followers. The mere act of reciting his words and believing them was enough to cure cancer, save you from drowning or even emerge victorious in in international ping-pong championships. The full extent of the madness that gripped China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution is little understood in the West, so reading Urban’s collection is like opening a portal into another, bizarre world. Urban’s book takes us to the outer limits of propaganda.

Who Wrote the Bible? is my go-to book for explaining to undergraduates the classic Documentary Hypothesis, that is, the theory that describes how humans wrote and edited the Bible. Friedman’s style is clear and engaging, and he frames his explanation as an academic mystery. I (with other scholars) don’t always agree with his conclusions, but they responsible and worth considering. My students regularly note that this was their favorite book of the semester.

Although this is my fun pick, it is also a serious book that I use in the classroom. There have been countless attempts by modern authors to retell biblical stories. Horn’s book creatively transfers the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers to the modern period, with a feminist twist. This book is engaging and coherent enough that it can be read and enjoyed without any knowledge of the Bible or Jewish history, although such knowledge makes it all the better!