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Chapters on Jewish Literature
Project Gutenberg's Chapters on Jewish Literature, by Israel Abrahams This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Chapters on Jewish Literature
Author: Israel Abrahams
Release Date: October 6, 2004 [EBook #13678]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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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 brillia