Joseph's Bones

A work of stunning originality . . . Nothing quite like it has appeared in years.-Jack Miles, author of God: A Biography In this groundbreaking book, Jerome Segal offers a fresh and vigorous reexamination of the oldest part of the Bible. What if we knew nothing about Judaism or Christianity and one day picked up the first six books of the Bible? How could we possibly understand them? Who is God? Who are the Israelites? What is the relationship between God and humanity? Segal maintains that to approach the Bible from this perspective-one framed by the story of the Israelites' fidelity to Joseph-is to find something unexpected: an account of the human condition that reads like an existential novel about the struggle of mankind against the unpredictable and often unwarranted wrath of God. A radically new way of understanding the Bible and a brilliant exploration of it, Joseph's Bones is a rarity in Biblical interpretation: brilliant, rigorously argued, and thoroughly original. Joseph's Bones makes [an] audacious argument. . . . Reading the Bible as a novel about the struggle between God and humankind, Segal produces a work of interpretation that is itself novelistic in its humanistic vision and emotional force.-Naomi Seidman, author of Faithful Renderings Perceptive and intelligent.-Booklist Arrestingly original.-Tikkun Compelling . . . transforming.-Forward