Experience as both professor and pastor confirms that many Christians who take faith seriously yearn for ways to inhabit the Old Testament text and embrace it as a living organism. They ask, “How can I engage the Hebrew Bible in ways that simultaneously honor its integrity and display its functional benefit for living intentionally in complex, and sometimes disordered, times? How can the Old Testament be a resource for my development as a moral person?” In this highly suggestive and even sometimes edgy book, Paul Lewis has undertaken a novel approach for discerning how both Jews and Christians can learn about how their development as moral and wise persons are displayed in the Hebrew Bible. —The Rev. Dr. Harmon Smith, Emeritus Professor of Moral Theology (Divinity) and Emeritus Professor of Community and Family Medicine (Medicine) at Duke University

Paul Lewis is scholarly, spiritual and…well…worldly—in the best sense of the word. So, whether you wander the halls of academia, regularly sit in a church, or just hang out in coffee shops, his humor, heart, and insight will delight and benefit you. Paul shares a refreshing view of biblical literature that guides us past both the rigidity of legalistic answers and the murky, mysterious unanswerable questions of faith to a space of mature thought for our messy worlds. I’m guessing you’ll finish this book and think, “My bible, my life and my world make a little more sense to me now.” —Dr. Jim Dant, Pastor, First Baptist Greenville, Greenville, South Carolina

Paul Lewis gifts the reader with a path into the Old Testament that integrates religious and psychological frameworks. The book is engagingly written and entices the reader to move forward on the path to wisdom. We can all benefit from such assistance! —Dr. Darcia Narvaez, Professor of Psychology, University of Notre Dame

In this perceptive and noteworthy work, Paul Lewis applies criterion generally associated with wisdom literature to the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures, creating a very fresh focus that amplifies our understanding of these sacred texts. —Rabbi Larry Schlesinger, Temple Beth Israel, Macon, Georgia