, the
"chosen people," whose history is recorded in the Old Testament
Scriptures. They reached their greatest power and glory during the
reigns of David and Solomon, and they occupied Palestine, with Jerusalem
as their capital city. Within this small territory, some six thousand
square miles in extent, have occurred some of the most important events
of history, and the Jewish race has been the representative of God's
purposes toward man. The Almighty communicated directly with his people,
who were thus made acquainted with the divine will. The early Jews were
nomadic in their habits, living in tents, and tending their flocks. The
patriarch, who was at the head of a family or tribe, made laws for the
people under him and governed them according to the command of God,
whose representative he was. Because God directly or through the
patriarch led and instructed the people, their education, like their
government, is called _theocratic_.

The Jews lost their independence B.C. 63 in becoming subject to
the Romans, and in A.D. 70 Jerusalem was destroyed and the
Jews were dispersed. Since that time they have been wanderers on the
face of the earth, and there is no part of the world where they are not
to be found. They have maintained their racial characteristics with
remarkable purity. They were an agricultural people until the Babylonian
captivity, after which they became a commercial people. Persecutions,
which have universally followed them, making the acquirement of fixed
property unsafe, had much to do with this change.

=The Home.=--The Jewish family was the purest of antiquity. In general,
monogamy was practiced, and the wife was regarded as the companion and
equal of the husband. Children being accepted as the gift of God, the
father stood in the same relation to his children as Jehovah stood to
man. Therefore the father's highest aim was to bring up his children in
the knowledge and service of the Lord. We have here the highest and best
type of family training to be found in history, a characteristic that
still holds in Jewish families wherever they exist, and that has
contributed largely to the maintenance of the strong racial
peculiarities of the Jews. The father taught his boys reading and
writing, and the mother taught the girls household duties; but the
latter were not entirely excluded from intellectual training.

Great attention was given to the rites and ceremonies of the tabernacle
and the Jewish law. Histo