Yoram Hazony

Most people think what the Bible's all about is miracles, people talking to God in a burning bush and all sorts of supernatural things. Which is okay if you want a Big Book of Jewish Stories for when you're tired of reading Holes and Where the Wild Things Are to your kids.

But outside religious circles, there aren't a lot of adults today who think the Bible could have something important to say to them.

My name's Yoram Hazony. I'm an Orthodox Jew from Jerusalem. I went to Princeton and majored in Japanese and was North American debate champion. I have Ph.D. in political philosophy. And I've devoted the last twenty-five years to trying to understand why reading the Bible in a satisfying way is so incredibly hard for people to do, and what we can do to change that.

Now I've written a book called "The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture" that explains simply and powerfully for readers of all backgrounds how the authors of the Bible used stories and prophetic poetry to make universal arguments about ethics and politics, truth and reason, struggle and faith.

And the lessons I offer will surprise you: Reading the Bible as reason, instead of revelation, I find a text that praises human disobedience and initiative, warns against unthinking piety, and presents a God who is not perfect at all, but imperfect and changing. My bold new readings of the stories of Abel, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, and David will change forever your understanding of what these stories were meant to teach us.

In a market flooded with simplistic arguments against religion or for it, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture is something unprecedented: UK Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks calls it "paradigm shifting." Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker calls it "lucid and deep." Eleonore Stump of the Society of Christian Philosophers says its "powerful," "superb."

Open the door to a book you never knew existed. You'll never read the Bible the same way again.

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