conceived as a circle, then Jewish history occupies the position of
the diameter, the line passing through its centre, and the history of
every other nation is represented by a chord marking off a smaller
segment of the circle. The history of the Jewish people is like an
axis crossing the history of mankind from one of its poles to the
other. As an unbroken thread it runs through the ancient civilization
of Egypt and Mesopotamia, down to the present-day culture of France
and Germany. Its divisions are measured by thousands of years.

Jewish history, then, in its range, or, better, in its duration,
presents an unique phenomenon. It consists of the longest series of
events ever recorded in the annals of a single people. To sum up its
peculiarity briefly, it embraces a period of thirty-five hundred
years, and in all this vast extent it suffers no interruption. At
every point it is alive, full of sterling content. Presently we shall
see that in respect to content, too, it is distinguished by
exceptional characteristics.




II

THE CONTENT OF JEWISH HISTORY


From the point of view of content, or qualitative structure, Jewish
history, it is well known, falls into two parts. The dividing point
between the two parts is the moment in which the Jewish state
collapsed irretrievably under the blows of the Roman Empire (70 C.