Reviews for A history of the Jews
Choice
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Johnson's book has all the virtues and defects of a work composed by a talented writer foraying into an unfamiliar field. The author, an English Catholic, possesses broad intellectual background and literary style. Focusing on Jewish relations with the non-Jewish world and those Jews best known to non-Jews, Johnson's ambitious study of the full length of Jewish history presents some interesting perspectives. He does not, however, know Jewish history from the inside; the freshness of his acquaintance is all too apparent, for example, in the omission of significant individuals like Mordecai Kaplan, in numerous errors of unawareness and inattention, and in the uncritical use of secondary sources. For a recent, more reliable, and thorough one-volume history of the Jews, the best choice remains A History of the Jewish People, ed. by H.H. Ben-Sasson (English ed., 1976). But Johnson's personal overview has its place, especially for readers who are themselves outsiders interested in exploring the long and fascinating course of Jewish history.-M.A. Meyer, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Ohio
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
Johnson, author of A History of Christianity (Booklist 73:101 S 15 76), offers a similar tome on Jewish history, examining the impact of Judaic thought (philosophical, ethical, religious, social, and political) on world history. ``To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person,'' he writes.``Without the Jews it might have been a much emptier place.'' The author emphasizes the ``magnitude of the debt'' that Christianity owes to Judaism as well as the ability of the Jewish people to survive for 4,000 years in a world of ``inexplicable hatred.'' A comprehensive and enlightening addition to the works of Judaic history. Glossary; notes; to be indexed. GC. 296.09 Jews History
Library Journal
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Famous author-historian Johnson ( Modern Times, LJ 5/1/83; A History of Christianity, LJ 7/76) presents a provocative history of the Jewish people, religion, and culture from earliest times to the present. Astutely divided into seven sections, (Israelites, Judaism, Cathedocracy, Ghetto, Emancipation, Holocaust, and Zion), the work describes the complex interplay between Jewish and world history and shows how the course of Western civilization has been immensely influenced by this numerically small group. It's no mean feat to successfully compress 4000 years of history into 645 pages, but Johnson has more than met the challenge. Despite a few reservationsE. G. Johnson's theories regarding Jesus and the incipient Christian movement are debatablethis is an excellent, nonscholarly history for general readers. Highly recommended for public libraries. Robert A. Silver, Shaker Heights P.L., Ohio (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
A sympathetic portrait of Jewish history that is, unavoidably, sometimes idiosyncratic in its selection of material to include or omit; it's also purposefully careful to focus more on external than internal Jewish life. Indeed, the Jews come off here as a focal point of world history, so that all of civilization's story can be told simply by following the course of Jewish history and fully considering its background. Johnson attempts to do that with mixed, though generally good, results. His focus is on the Jewish people's central message--ethical monotheism--and how that message has been heard and accepted, ignored, or increasingly attacked by a hostile world. Johnson does have a sense that the Jews have been one unified people hurtling their way through a tormented history; this misleading sense of oneness is why he consistently and incorrectly calls the Jews a ""race."" There are many valuable sections of the book. The Biblical section is forthright in its claims that Biblical persons lived, for example. But the strongest part of the book is about the rise of modern Israel. Although the choice of material is even here sometimes arguable, there is no doubt that Johnson captures the spirit of Zionism and explains it with enviable lucidity, care, and depth of feeling. Nor have the extraordinary incidents of Jewish history been robbed of their drama by pedestrian prose. Johnson rises to each occasion as he needs to invoke a setting or a person. A very readable, useful introduction, then, especially to modern Jewish history. Copyright ŠKirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Publishers Weekly
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Less a seminal contribution than a distillation of a wide range of sources, this history of the Jews focuses on their four-millennia interplay with, and adaption to, other, often hostile, civilizationsa ``world history seen from the viewpoint of a learned and intelligent victim.'' Weaving biblical and archeological data, Johnson (Modern Times and A History of Christianity is particularly deft at placing the patriarchs and early Israelites (the Bronze Age through the destruction of the First Temple) in their historical context. His dense, somewhat arbitrary, capsule extols Judaic rational scholarshipwhich contributed to ethical monotheism and the 18th-century economic system, in turnand denigrates mystic kabbalah``heresy of the most pernicious kind.'' Although Johnson, who seeks to acknowledge ``the magnitude of the debt Christianity owes to Judaism,'' traces ``an inherent conflict'' between the religion and the state of Israel through the various ages, the work is incontrovertibly sympathetic to Zionism. BOMC and QPBC featured alternates; author tour. (April) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
