The Israelite oratorios of Handel have never received the popular acclaim accorded to his Messiah but they have nevertheless been steadily performed from time to time, especially in recent decades. But they remain familiar only to the Handelian scholar and enthusiast. What writing there has been on these musical works generally begins with their historical origins – Handel's failure to introduce Italian opera per se into English society, which led him to develop the operatic style to portray dramatic narratives from the Old Testament and so created a significant sequence of oratorios between 1732 and 1752 which proved to be extremely popular. Other studies have been on the musical aspects of these extended works, but until recently contextual issues regarding biblical interpretation and theology expressed in these oratorios have been little considered. Ruth Smith, Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) broke new ground by examining the libretti of these works within the contexts of their time. Tassilo Erhardt, Handels Messiah: Text, Musik, Theologie (Bad Reichenhall: Comes Verlag, 2007), sheds new light on the libretti of the biblical oratorios because a substantial part of the discussion relates to the theological library of Charles Jennens, who was Handel's librettist for Saul, Belshazar, and probably Israel in Egypt as well as for Messiah. In this study, Deborah W. Rooke provides a systematic and detailed chronological examination of the libretti of ten of the oratorios: Esther (1732), Deborah (1733), Athalia (1733), Saul (1739), Samson (1743), Joseph and his Brethren (1744), Judas Maccabaeus (1747), Solomon (1749), Susanna (1749) and Jephtha (1752). As a biblical scholar, the author first establishes the narrative on which each of the libretti is based and then examines in detail how each libretto interprets and expounds the details of the unfolding drama. Here the author draws on contemporary biblical studies as well as modern Handelian studies. But what is fundamental and new in this study is the investigation of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sermons, poetic paraphrases of scripture, biblical commentaries and other literature, in which can be found the complexities of context within which these oratorios were first received. And these contexts were as much cultural and political as they were biblical and religious. For example, the chapter on Judas Maccabaeus, subtitled ‘Justifying the 1745 Anti-Jacobite Campaign’, draws strong parallels between the biblical warfare and the recent British campaign, a militarism which also recurs in both Joshua and Solomon. The author is also known for her feminist studies, which may well have been a primary reason for her being drawn into the study of these oratorio libretti, since many of the primary characters were women: Esther, Deborah, Athalia, Susanna and Jephtha. Here these discussions are a fascinating juxtaposition of biblical Jewish culture and British eighteenth-century conventions. As Dr Rooke demonstrates, in these libretti the two worlds are harmonised by the Jewish stories being reconceptualised to fulfil the demands of a specifically Christian religiosity. The book is well-written and carefully documented. It is of course essential reading for anyone involved in the preparation of performances of these important works by Handel. But anyone interested in the way that the English of the eighteenth century interpreted the Bible will find this an invaluable resource. Not all Handel's biblical oratorios are discussed. Three are missing: Israel in Egypt (1739), Belshazzar (1745) and Joshua (1748). The reason is that these libretti are not connected narratives but are made up of selected passages, similar to the way in which the libretto of Messiah was created. I understand the reason but wish these libretti had also been discussed – especially Israel in Egypt – so that a complete picture of Handelian biblical oratorios would have been presented. But this is a small criticism of what is clearly an important study.