This book reflects the multilayered history of transmission traversed by Amos' message over the course of numerous centuries. But difficulties attaching to any multilayered textual reading also imply a significant advantage for the contemporary reader. The gulf of history separating us from Amos diminishes; our own updated engagement with this message in sermon and instruction can take as its point of departure the similar updating by later biblical authors, who were themselves already far removed from the historical Amos. Taken from the Introduction