Five Biblical Portraits // Books // University of Notre Dame Press

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Five Biblical Portraits

Elie Wiesel

ISBN: 978-0-268-00957-1
166 pages
Publication Year: 1981

Elie Wiesel is the author of more than twenty books, including Night, Souls on Fire, Messengers of God, Four Hasidic Masters and Their Struggle Against Melancholy (Notre Dame Press, 1978), and Five Biblical Portraits (Notre Dame Press, 1981).

“This collection of biographies of prophets—Joshua, Elijah, Saul, Jeremiah, and Jonah—does a masterful job of humanizing these figures. However, in the course of his descriptions, Elie Wiesel does more than inform us about their lives and supposed thoughts. He asks today’s questions in the context of the past . . . There is no ambiguity or vagueness in Wiesel’s writing. He promises us portraits, and there is not a wasted brushstroke, not a blurred line.” — The Christian Century

“Jonah the unlucky, Joshua the lucky, Saul the complex, Jeremiah the tearful—all stride through semi-narrative episodes which the masterful story-teller weaves as a historical vignette of prophetic destiny.” — Commonweal

“Deeply moving and enlightening.” — The Chicago Tribune

Wiesel’s sketches will stir the imagination in ways that will open readers to new depths in ancient texts.” — Religious Studies Review

“Elie Wiesel asks: What went on within the minds and souls of these biblical figures; what were their hopes and their hurts; and what do they have to say to our hopes and our hurts?” — America