The first step of this large project, the draft of my translation of Genesis, was scrupulously read by my dear friend Amos Funkenstein in what proved to be, alas, the last year of his life. His acute understanding of Hebrew philology and his rare gift for coming up with unexpected solutions to familiar problems were a model that I have striven to internalize in the subsequent volumes. My amiable friend and colleague Ron Hendel read many of the books in draft, and I have palpably benefited from his good sense and his commanding knowledge of biblical scholarship. Because I write by hand and am dependent on transcribers to convert my scrawl into an electronic text, I am grateful to Janet Livingstone, who did a large part of the whole and then had to withdraw for reasons of health, and to Jenna Scarpelli and Stefan Gutermuth, who in turn took over for the last two phases of the project. I am grateful to my copyeditor, Trent Duffy, who patiently and scrupulously went through these many pages, detecting inconsistencies, spotting typos, correcting inaccurate cross-references, and much more. Over the years, support for this assistance and for other research expenses was provided by funds from the Class of 1937 Chair at the University of California, Berkeley. After my retirement, I benefited from a research grant for emeriti professors from the Mellon Foundation and then from a generous three-year grant provided by Howard and Roberta Ahmanson.