In this eagerly awaited book, political theorist Michael Walzer reports his findings after decades of reading and thinking about the politics of the Hebrew Bible. Attentive to nuance while engagingly straightforward, Walzer examines the commentary of the ancient biblical writers and discusses the implications for such urgent modern topics as the nature of political society, hierarchy and justice, the use of political power, the justification for and rules of warfare, and the responsibilities of clerical figures, monarchs, and their subjects./divDIV DIVBecause there are many biblical writers, and because they represent different political views, pluralism is a central feature of biblical politics, Walzer observes. Yet pluralism is never explicitly defended in the Bible—indeed it couldn't be defended since God's word is one. There is, however, an anti-political teaching which recurs in biblical texts: if you have faith in God, you have no need for particular political institutions or prudent political leaders or deliberative assemblies or loyal citizens. And, Walzer finds a strong moral teaching common to the Bible's authors. He identifies God's decree for ethics and investigates its implications for just policymaking in our own times./div

Abraham Joshua Heschel was one of the most revered religious leaders of the 20th century, and God in Search of Man and its companion volume, Man Is Not Alone, two of his most important books, are classics of modern Jewish theology. God in Search of Man combines scholarship with lucidity, reverence, and compassion as Dr. Heschel discusses not man's search for God but God's for man--the notion of a Chosen People, an idea which, he writes, "signifies not a quality inherent in the people but a relationship between the people and God." It is an extraordinary description of the nature of Biblical thought, and how that thought becomes faith.

"The author recalls how, after becoming very familiar with the Biblical Old Testament in its original Hebrew growing up, an encounter with an English language version led her on a ten-year project of examining various translations of the Old Testament and their histories, "--Novelist.

Tryggve Mettinger's much-praised work analyzes the major names for God in the Old Testament to trace, through the many confrontations and challenges of individuals and groups that mark Israel's story, the historical development of Israel's conception of God.

Theodicy-defending God in the face of historical catastrophe and evil-is a central concern in the Hebrew Bible. Joel S. Burnett shows that the theme of divine absence was important in ancient near eastern reflection on the mystery of the divine and that it served both as a way of asking about the justice of God and of affirming God's justice in ancient Israel. Where is God? explores themes of divine presence and absence in creation and wisdom thought, in ritual, in prophetic threat, in narrative, and in apocalypse throughout the Hebrew Bible.

Many scholars and obervant Jews assume that rabbinic Judaism includes a dogmatic commitment to the notion that the Bible text, particularly the Torah text, is letter perfect. This study offers a very different picture of the textual reality.

The NIV is the world's best-selling modern translation, with over 150 million copies in print since its first full publication in 1978. This highly accurate and smooth-reading version of the Bible in modern English has the largest library of printed and electronic support material of any modern translation.