Method
Ellis does not ask whether scripture is “true.” He asks whether its characters can be found in the historical record once the dates are allowed to move. Chronology has been shifted, and the shift is what hides the kings.
I · Old Testament
Josephus Flavius already identified the Israelites with the Hyksos — the Shepherd Kings of Lower Egypt. Ellis follows that identification through. The Exodus is then the Hyksos expulsion of the sixteenth century BC, not a Ramesside labour-walk in the thirteenth.
II · New Testament
The gospels call him King of the Jews; Persian Magi attend the birth; he commands men and money. Ellis reconstructs a genealogy from Cleopatra VII into a first-century royal house of northern Syria. A coin of Edessa still shows the spiked radiate crown later remembered as thorns.
III · Britain
After the Revolt: crucifixion, reprieve, exile to a Roman prison in Britain. Twelve companions. A table. A wounded king. A Grail. Ellis reads the Arthurian cycle as the British afterlife of the Edessan house.
