• Aubin Opening Remarks, 199-202.
• Response to Marta Høyland Lavik: The Kushite Mission’s Historical Context, 203-12.
• Response to Song-Mi Suzie Park: Some Theological Issues in 2 Kings 18-19, 213-19.
• Response to Christopher Hays: Hays Poses a Timely Question on Scholarship, 220-32.
• Response to Jeremy Pope: The Emptiness of the Theory of Hezekiah’s Surrender, 233-48.
• Response to Aidan Dodson: Assessing the Strength of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty’s Army in 701 BCE, 249-64.
• Response to Lester Grabbe: Was the Battle of Eltekeh Decisive?, 265-74.
• Response to Alan B. Lloyd: Why Minimize the Kushite Role in 701 BCE?, 275-82.
• Response to K. Lawson Younger, Jr.: The Puzzle of Taharqo’s Route to Judah, 283-92.

• Donald Harman Akenson, professor at Queen’s University and author of Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds, in a book review in Toronto’s Globe & Mail, 2002:

“A special circle in Paradise is reserved for writers such as Henry Aubin: those able to deal with really big ideas or occasions,  and to do so convincingly in tight, readable, unpretentious language. The issue here is a terribly big one: (…) why was Jerusalem not trashed by the Assyrians in 701 BC? That was one of those contingent moments in world history on which whole civilizations pivot….

“Aubin argues with real brilliance [that a Nubian-led army repelled the Assyrians]. Yet I doubt his argument will go far: Not that it will be defeated, just ignored. There are few congregations whose rabbis or ministers are apt to be keen on building into their mindset the idea that the Judaeo-Christian tradition was saved from extinction by a bunch of blacks from the Upper Nile.

“Nor is the academy likely to be welcoming. Aubin is no Black Athena headcase. Quite the contrary. But not only is he suggesting that probably an entire century of scholarship — the 20th — was dead wrong on one of the turning points of Western history, he is the wrong sort of person to make the case. He makes his living as a journalist and he writes very well, neither of these being forgivable characteristics to the academy…. This is a fine book, and as a result, one can already smell the oil being boiled to repel this inconvenient intruder.”

 

• Jean Leclant, former secretary-general of the International Association of Egyptologists, former Egyptology chair at the Collège  de France, and Balzan Prize-winning archaeologist in Egypt and Nubia (2003):

“I am greatly impressed by the scope of Aubin’s evidence and the trustworthiness of his thesis. I sincerely hope his important book will receive a vast audience among Egyptologists, Nubiologists and specialists on the Middle East.”

 

• Bruce Trigger, former professor of anthropology, McGill University. Author of Early Civilizations: Ancient Egypt in Context, History of Archaeologicals Thought and  History and Settlement in Lower Nubia. When publishers rejected the book on grounds that its author was an uncredentialed non-academic, he wrote the following letter to publishers:

“As someone who has spent much of his professional life studying ancient Egypt and the Sudan, I have read with great interest and admiration Henry Aubin’s The Rescue of Jerusalem. The author addresses a poorly understood, but important, historical episode — King Sennacherib’s abandonment of the siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C.E., an event which is widely held to have made possible the development of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In his powerful, wide-ranging analysis, Aubin has demonstrated that a key problem that has hindered the analysis of this event is the pervasive racism that led scholars to discount the effectiveness of the Kushite kings who controlled Egypt during the 25th Dynasty. By successfully countering this image, Aubin is able to construct a highly plausible argument that it was the arrival of an Egyptian army that saved Jerusalem at this time. He is also able to account for why this explanation does not survive in the Hebrew accounts that are available to us.

“Aubin successfully achieves his primary goal: he provides the most convincing explanation of what caused the Assyrians to retreat from Jerusalem. In the course of doing this, however, he accomplishes three other goals that in my opinion are of even greater importance. First, he presents the most persuasive panorama I have read of interstate relations from Babylon all the way to Meroe around 700 B.C.E.

“Second, his unbiased view of the Kushite rulers of Egypt during the 25th Dynasty completely revises our understanding of Egyptian society at this period. As someone familiar with the evidence he uses, I reproach myself for not drawing the revolutionary and totally convincing conclusions about these rulers that Aubin has formulated.

“Third, he has unmasked, thoroughly and effectively, the unconscious racism that has mangled the scholarly understanding of Egypt for more than a century.

“Aubin’s insights are of astonishing breadth, originality and importance and deserve to be known to as many readers as possible.”

 

• William H. McNeill, former professor of history at the University of Chicago. National Book Award-winning author of The  Rise of the West and Plagues and Peoples. He wrote the following letter to publishers:

To whom it may concern:

Having read Henry Aubin’s MS about what probably happened in 701 BCE, when King Sennacherib’s Assyrian army showed up un-der the walls of Jerusalem, but after threatening to attack suddenly withdrew, I am glad to say that I found his argument about how an Egyptian army commanded by Pharaohs from Nubia compelled Sennacherib’s retreat to be very convincing. So much so indeed that I feel compelled to retract my own previous belief that a lethal epidemic […] was what made the Assyrians withdraw.

I know that Aubin is not a professional scholar, but his explanation of why the Egyptian military role has been overlooked and re-jected by recent scholarship struck me as very plausible indeed. And it is a fact that when professionally learned men arrive at a consensus it often takes an outsider to challenge established views.

This is what Aubin has done and he certainly deserves a hearing. Whoever publishes this book will therefore be doing a service to learning and one of far from trivial importance inasmuch as the sub-sequent history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam all hinged on the interpretation Biblical writers made of how God—not the Egyptians—demonstrated his universal power by saving Jerusalem from the mightiest army of the age. (Letter dated Nov. 19, 2000.)

 

• Timothy Kendall, a leading archaeologist at Kushite sites since the 1980s and former vice-president of the International Society of Nubian Studies:

“Absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in the Nubian pharaohs, in biblical history, or in Assyrian imperialism… Well researched, brilliantly reasoned, and a mine of new information for the ancient historian — as well as the historian of modern racism.”