Whenever the heroes from the Bible are trotted out in Sunday school, people are quick to point out their flaws and failings, going straight to the moral of the story rather than paying attention to what the text actually says. In this short but adventurous book, Jordan shows that the Biblical narratives are about so much more than Sunday School lessons and that in fact the patriarchs are not held up for us as examples of failure or sin, but are rather are great moral exemplars. In contrast to Adam, Cain, and other characters in the early pages of Genesis, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Judah were great heroes of the faith and by paying careful attention to the details of their lives, we can discover much more from the Bible than we often think. One of Jim Jordan's great strengths in handling the text is his eye for "detail." The reader of this book is invited to consider some passages of the Bible that are considered all too rarely and when we do consider them, certain key details are too frequently glossed over. Jim Jordan has done well in introducing us once again to our fathers in the faith, the primeval saints. --Douglas Wilson (pastor & author) James B. Jordan, Th.M., D. Litt., is author of several books, including Creation in Six Days: A Defense of the Traditional Reading of Genesis One and Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World . He is the director of Biblical Horizons Ministries and a fellow at Theopolis, Institute in Birmingham, Alabama.