". . . [a] learned . . . but also robust book. . . . Forsyth is much at home amid the heroics, graphic laments and winged enormities and leviathans of the Sumerian, Hittite and Canaanite epic fables. . . . He sees the narrative links between Marduk and Zeus, between the death-king Mor and the classical underworld. At the close of the study, the chapters on Augustine glow with intelligence and sympathy."--George Steiner, The Times Literary Supplement "[The Old Enemy] really is one of the dozen most genuinely brilliant and original works I've encountered in the past few years."--Jeffrey Burton Russell, Commonweal