Forgiveness in a Wounded World

The brief book of Jonah is the mighty mite of scriptural narratives. The story of the prophet swallowed by the giant fish is simple enough to delight a child and complex enough to confound a scholar. Human beings hesitate and falter, like Jonah, when trying to accept or imitate a model of divine forgiveness. This book culminates in a dialogue, informed by the best of modern biblical scholarship, between Jonah and modern dilemmas of forgiveness in accounts from the Jewish Holocaust and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The author illumines Jonah’s dilemma with literature from Henri Nouwen to Herman Melville, from the Talmud to Greek myth.

Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org).