Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends

by Elie Wiesel

Publisher:

Simon & Schuster

, 2024

The Nobel winner’s classic look at Job and seven other Biblical characters as they grapple with their relationship with God and the question of His justice.

“[Elie] Wiesel has never allowed himself to be diverted from the role of witness for the martyred Jews and survivors of the Holocaust, and by extension for all those who through the centuries have asked Job’s question: ‘What is God doing and where is His justice?’ Here in a masterful series of mythic portraits, drawing upon Bible tales and the Midrashim (a body of commentary), Wiesel explores ‘the distant and haunting figures that molded him’: Adam, Cain and Abel, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Job. With the dramatic invention of a Father Mapple and the exquisite care of a Talmudic scholar, Wiesel interprets the wellsprings of Jewish religious tradition as the many faces of man’s greatness facing the inexplicable. In an intimate relationship with God it is possible to complain, to demand. Adam and Eve in sinning ‘cried out’ against the injustice of their entrapment; Cain assaulted God rather than his brother; and Abraham’s agreement to sacrifice his son placed the burden of guilt on Him who demanded it. As for Job, Wiesel concludes that he abdicated his defiance as did the confessing Communists of Stalin’s time to ‘underline the implausibility’ of his trial, and thus become the accuser. Wiesel’s concern with the imponderables of fate seems to move from strength to strength.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The extraordinary thing that Elie Wiesel has done in this book is to take ancient tales and make them contemporary, in ways that are both dazzling and disturbing. Messengers of God is captivating.” —Robert McAfee Brown, author of Unexpected News

Product Details

• Title: Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends
• Author: Elie Wiesel
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Print Publication Date: 2024
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781476737676, 9780671541347, 067154134X, 1476737673
• Resource ID: LLS:9781476737676
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-11-01T07:58:19Z

About Elie Wiesel

Nobel Peace Prize winner and BU Professor Elie Wiesel has worked on behalf of oppressed people for much of his adult life. His personal experience of the Holocaust has led him to use his talents as an author, teacher and storyteller to defend human rights and peace throughout the world. His more than forty books have won numerous awards, including the Prix Médicis for A Beggar in Jerusalem, the Prix Livre Inter for The Testament, and the Grand Prize for Literature from the City of Paris for The Fifth Son. He has written two volumes of memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea and And the Sea is Never Full, in addition to his accounts of the Holocaust. After the war, Wiesel had studied in Paris and later became a journalist in that city, yet he had remained silent about what he had endured in the death camps. During an interview with the French writer François Mauriac, Wiesel was persuaded to end that silence. He subsequently wrote La Nuit (Night), which has been translated into thirty languages and has sold millions of copies since its 1958 publication. Since 1976, Wiesel has been the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at BU, where he also holds the title of University Professor. He is a member of the faculty in the Department of Philosophy as well as the Department of Religion. Courses RN 583: Literature of Memory V: Hidden Literature and Banned Books RN 584: Literature of Memory VI: Hasidic Portraits: Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav