Vermes has the rare gift of wearing his immense scholarship lightly

A bracing and moving book...a reminder of the ardour, hardship and energy invested in the pursuit of knowledge and that endlessly inquiring and industrious Victorian age

This pacy tale involves not only an Indiana Jones-like quest, but camel rides across the Sinai desert, trips up the Nile, bickerings, misunderstandings and confusions... A cracking tale of two irresistible characters

[A] luminous new study... Sisters of Sinai is by turns a rattling adventure yarn - thick with roving Bedouin and ancient tombs - and a testament to the power of perseverance

Marvellous... A fine, fascinating account

In Sisters of Sinai Janet Soskice has achieved the impossible - she has brought biblical scholarship to life. A gripping story of two spirited women determined to pursue the truth whatever the cost, with camels to boot. Wonderful

An extraordinary and compelling book, combining vivid travel adventures, wonderful characters, and absorbing journeys of the mind and heart. Janet Soskice brilliantly and accessibly unfolds one of the most gripping sagas of Biblical detection, while telling the story of two magnificent women who trespassed intrepidly in worlds that sought to exclude them

This rattling tale appears to come straight from an Indiana Jones adventure... Janet Soskice had done an excellent job in piecing together the lives of two remarkable, and largely forgotten women

Soskice tells the story with scholarly conviction... [This] biography is one to be earmarked

An ambitious and attractive book. Its tone is learned, thoughtful and usually intimate...a finely balanced and well-told experiment that will echo with many readers