An interesting book that I bought because of my interest in the author as a Maine regionalist, but I have some reservations about its accuracy. For example, on page 169 Chase (comparing the early, Classical Age of Hebrew literature with the later, Romantic Age) wrote:

The stars and constellations, mentioned only occasionally by the poets of the Classical Age, are referred to again and again [by the poets of the later, Romantic Age], sometimes identified, as in Job, as Orion, Arcturus, the Pleiades, sometimes, as in the imagination of the Psalmist, numbered by God and called by him by their familiar names.

I know that Job 9:9 (KJV) reads, "Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south," and it's the KJV on which Chase largely relied (aside from her own purported reading of the Hebrew original), but I'm puzzled at the idea that the ancient Hebrew author of Job would actually have been using names from Graeco-Roman myth.

In other words, Chase relied too heavily on translation (specifically, in her case, the KJV, but it really doesn't matter what English version you use) rather than on the original Hebrew. While I'm not suggesting that Chase should have engaged in literary analysis of the original Hebrew texts, considering that this is a book for the common reader, I'm afraid that her literary analysis, while purporting to be of the original Hebrew, may have been too heavily translation-dependent. ( )