Esther / Ruth / Jonah Deciphered
The Complete Hebrew And English Text
With A New Historical Commentary

by Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg, Ph.D.


In the Book of ESTHER, the Jews of the Persian Empire are threatened with death but given eleven months’ notice of their day of destruction, is that credible? On RUTH, the Midrash quotes Rabbi Ze’ira, of the Third Century CE, as saying, “this Scroll tells us nothing of ritual purity or impurity, of prohibition or permission…” but is that correct? And the wretched JONAH, tossed on the high seas, is swallowed by a great fish, spewed back onto dry land, and thus forced to go to Nineveh. Can this really be believed? Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg gives rational answers to these and other difficult questions and in doing so, forces the reader to re-think many of his pre-conceived notions about these books, no matter how many times he has read them or how well he thinks he understands their meaning.

Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg, Ph.D., is an architect with a second career in archaeology, in which he gained his doctorate from University College, London. Dr. Rosenberg has lectured at the British Museum and the Spiro Institute in London, as well as the Albright Institute and Bar-Ilan University in Israel; and has published extensively in scholarly journals and the London Jewish Chronicle. Stephen has Talmudic and Bible training, and is the great-great-grandson of the two leading Rabbis of Modern Orthodoxy, Samson Raphael Hirsch and Azriel Hildesheimer.

“By providing us with his always insightful and often original reflections, Stephen Rosenberg has enriched the scope of Jewish thought. It takes a fine teacher to let us see the old in the new and the new in the old, and that is what he has done”. Rabbi Professor Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of England and the Commonwealth

“Stephen Rosenberg combines deep erudition with a lively historical imagination. Whether you agree or disagree with his strikingly original proposals, there is little doubt that your reading of these familiar stories will be transformed and so enriched.” H.G.M. Williamson, Regius Professor of Hebrew, University of Oxford

210 pages
Trim Size: 6 x 9		 Hard Cover:
$21.95 		ISBN:
1-930143-90-7		 Quantity:

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