Ezra-Nehemiah (Anchor Bible Series, Vol. 14)
Ezra And Nememiah(Volume 14 in the acclaimed Anchor  Bible series) continue the spiritual history of Jerusalem begun inII Chronicles; they relate the return of the Jewish people to  their home from exile in Babylonia and the revitalization of the Jewish  religion.  Two remarkable personalities -- with strikingly different  approaches to the same objective -- played dominant roles in this  rebuilding of a nation.  Ezra, the learned, pious, scribal priest,  known among his contemporaries as "the second Moses," was the architect  of spiritual reform.  Nehemiah, the forceful, shrewd, resourceful  administrator, was the master international politician.The  importance ofEzra And Nememiahis, however, not only  historical.  WithI And II Chronicles, believed to be written by  the same author,Ezra And Nememiahcomprise of an exceedingly  complex jigsaw puzzle of parallels, direct quotes, and retellings, in  some cases, of the same stories--all of which is, perhaps, more  absorbing for the scholar than for the layman.  But a study ofEzra  And Nememiah-- and the conclusions to which it leads--is crucial  to an understanding of who wrote which portions of the Bible, how and  when they came to be written, and what that understanding tells us  ultimately about how the Bible, bit by bit over a period of almost a  thousand years, came into being.