Excerpt from The History of the Jews: From the Christian Era to the Dawn of the Reformation The people of Israel must ever be regarded with an interest unrivalled by that which attaches to any other of the nations of the earth. Where else shall we look for a people who can not only trace back their lineage with certainty to a single ancestor, but can point to historical records of their fortunes, detailing with indubitable truth, with inimitable pathos, and with minute particularity, their lights and shadows, their glories and their sorrows, du1ing a period which stretches away into an antiquity of nearly four thousand years? And what picture of national history could ever display lights so bright, or shadows so deep and dark as this? No people ever stood on such a pinnacle of moral elevation, none ever fell into such an abyss of crime: no nation ever possessed such true giandeur, none ever groaned in such a depth of misery. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.