A wide-ranging exploration of the story of Ruth, a foreigner who became the founding mother of the Davidic dynasty "[A]n insightful exploration of the book's themes of otherness, kindness, and loyalty. This is a valuable contribution to the literature on Ruth."-Publishers Weekly "A virtuoso exploration of the Book of Ruth as an admirable touchstone in the realms of literature, art, and human values. Ilana Pardes foregrounds the timeless emergency...

"The book of Job has often been called the greatest poem ever written. The book, in Edward Greenstein's characterization, is "a Wunderkind, a genius emerging out of the confluence of two literary streams" which "dazzles like Shakespeare with unrivaled vocabulary and a penchant for linguistic innovation." Despite the text's literary prestige and cultural prominence, no English translation has come close to conveying the proper sense of the original....