I received this book from the Member’s Giveaway program at LibraryThing. I am afraid I did not enjoy the book as I expected. From the description of it, I thought it would be interesting to see what Timmons found. However, starting from chapter 2, the author lost me. It seems to me that he had a theory and then he accommodated the facts to support it. I am not a Bible word-by-word follower, so this has nothing to do with the message the Bible is supposed to have. The thing is, I am a scientist as well, and the way Timmons presented his book was, for me and a couple of my friends to whom I read excerpts from the book, a mix between A Beautiful Mind and The number 23. I think the fact that the author went through writing his hypothesis and his defense, is really admirable, but I am afraid he fails to explain it properly, and it ends up coming as he wants the numbers to fall into cases he already draw.
The fact that he uses sentences as “this proves” or “this confirms” was a bit delicate for me, since all the reasoning s he makes goes round and round about his own point, but that does not mean anything proves anything. It would be as if I say that me taking a hot shower proves that water is supposed to be warm all the time. It simply doesn’t. Also, the fact that he kept mentioning the significance of the 365 number, since is the number of days in a year…that might be true, but the Gregorian Calendar, the one with 365 days in it wasn’t established until the late 1500’s, whereas by then there was already plenty copies of the ancient testament, with records of parts of the Bible on year 70 or 80 A. C.
Something I enjoy in non-fictional books is how authors tell you facts, while carrying a story. This is the example of A.J. Jacobs or Richard Dawkins, both extremely different styles, yet really compelling. They take you through a story. With Timmons I’m afraid I felt I was on a round point, circling his already established idea.
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