The Makers and Teachers of Judaism

Excerpt

The period represented by this volume is in many ways the most complex and
confusing in Israel’s history.  The record is not that of the life of a
nation but of the scattered remnants of a race.  It was inevitable that
under the influence of their varied environment, the survivors of the
Jewish race should develop very different beliefs and characteristics. 
The result is that many different currents of thought and shades of belief
are reflected in the literature of this period; some of it is dross, but
much of it is purest gold.  While the period following the destruction of
Jerusalem was a reflective and a retrospective age in which the teaching
of the earlier priests and prophets gained wide acceptance, it was also a
creative era.  Fully half of the literature of the Old Testament and all of
the important writings of the Apocrypha come from these tragic five
centuries.  Although the historical records are by no means complete, the
great crises in Israel’s life are illuminated by such remarkable
historical writings as the memoirs of Nehemiah, the first book of
Maccabees, and the detailed histories of Josephus.