Stephen R. Ruth

Stephen Ruth, an Annapolis graduate and former Navy Captain, is a professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, specializing in technology policy. As a hobby he has been studying Judeo-Christian faith traditions for over forty years. Although a Christian, he attends weekly Torah study at Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, Virginia, and has developed proficiency in Biblical Hebrew. He started to read the entire Bible every year, including Apocrypha, early in his life and about ten years ago began to assemble daily reflections on the entire Old and New Testament based on hundreds of commentators from all fields—religion, politics, sports, drama and many more. As a layperson, he felt that the best approach was to consider himself as a “stranger in a strange land”, like Abraham (Genesis 23:4) and later Moses (Exodus 2:22), new to the territory but respectful of it. Even though his academic studies concern the very newest high-tech developments in the world, he finds parallels in the Tanach (Hebrew Bible) and the New Testament that are directly applicable to current issues. Professor Ruth says that he hopes to reach a certain type of reader with this book of daily reflections: “The person who wants to finish the entire Bible in a side-by-side partnership with a layperson—but who also expects the experts to be assisting all the way”. Ruth quotes hundreds of specialists and commentators, from Augustine to Martin Luther to Pope Benedict XVI, and also liberally includes selections from Shakespeare, Dickens and other great authors. But his primary concern is to deliver ten to fifteen minutes of scripture and reflections every say so that after the year is over, the reader will be able to say, like the old Alka-Seltzer ad, “I can’t believe I read the whole thing”.

Stephen Ruth is a graduate of the US Naval Academy and holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in Business and Applied Economics. He lives in Falls Church, Virginia and he and his wife Diana Ross Ruth have six children and thirteen grandchildren.