JPS first published Pathways Through the Bible in 1946, selling over 250,000 copies. It featured selections from the 1917 translation of the JPS Tanakh, "bridged" by narrative summaries written by Rabbi Cohen. Rabbi Stein has replaced the 1917 JPS translation with the 1985 translation and has updated the prose and made the language gender-sensitive. This new edition shares the same essential features as the original, especially the core principle that Pathways Through the Bible, in Cohen's words, "is not intended to replace The Holy Scriptures ... it is rather to be regarded as preparatory to the reading of the Bible itself ... Its purpose is to open for you pathways into the magic realm of the greatest literature ever written."