Elie Wiesel is inexorably linked with the Holocaust, a storyteller determined to keep the world from forgetting the lessons of the immediate past. But there is another side to him—that of Biblical and Talmudic scholar—known largely to his students and lecture attendees. It is this facet which is limned in [Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends, a] series of capsule reflections on Biblical household names…. By blending ancient texts with commentaries and legends, Wiesel removes the patriarchs and prophets from the pantheon—as it were—and enables us to see them as ordinary men, with all their shortcomings and strengths—a contemporary view of what they were in their time, as well as what they would become in ours. (p. 153)

Michael J. Bandler, in Commonweal (copyright © 1977 Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc.; reprinted by permission of Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc.), March 4, 1977.