'The Old Testament is not a book that fell from heaven; human beings wrote it, and it is important to understand the words of the writers'. So Dr Ohler begins her Introduction. The rich variety of Israelite life has meant that a great kaleidoscope of different kinds of speech and writings has been preserved in the Old Testament in narrative, law and poetry. Of first importance in understanding any document is to know what kind of writings it is. Annemarie Ohler gives a full account of these different genres, or categories, of literature that are found in the Old Testament. She traces how they developed in the tradition and finally took fixed form in the Christian Bible. At key points throughout the book Dr Ohler includes short biblical passages together with examples of the way modern scholars interpret the text. In this way the reader is kept very close to the Bible itself.