Project Gutenberg's Chapters on Jewish Literature, by Israel Abrahams

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Title: Chapters on Jewish Literature

Author: Israel Abrahams

Release Date: October 6, 2004 [EBook #13678]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CHAPTERS ON JEWISH LITERATURE

BY
ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, M.A.
_Author of "Jewish Life in the Middle Ages"_

PHILADELPHIA
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA

COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA

The Lord Baltimore Press
BALTIMORE, MD., U.S.A.

PREFACE

These twenty-five short chapters on Jewish Literature open with the fall
of Jerusalem in the year 70 of the current era, and end with the death
of Moses Mendelssohn in 1786. Thus the period covered extends over more
than seventeen centuries. Yet, long as this period is, it is too brief.
To do justice to the literature of Judaism even in outline, it is
clearly necessary to include the Bible, the Apocrypha, and the writings
of Alexandrian Jews, such as Philo. Only by such an inclusion can the
genius of the Hebrew people be traced from its early manifestations
through its inspired prime to its brilliant after-glow in the centuries
with which this little volume deals.

One special reason has induced me to limit this book to the scope
indicated above. The Bible has been treated in England and America in a
variety of excellent text-books written by and for Jews and Jewesses. It
seemed to me very doubtful whether the time is, or ever will be, ripe
for dealing with the Scriptures from the purely literary stand-point in
teaching young students. But this is the stand-point of this volume.
Thus I have refrained from including the Bible, because, on the one
hand, I felt that I could not deal with it as I have tried to deal with
the rest of Hebrew literature, and because, on the other hand, there was
no necessity for me to attempt to add to the books already in use. The
sections to which I have restricted myself are only rarely taught to
y