The History of the Jews (Free PDF)

Have you ever entered a room where people were finishing a movie you’ve never seen and found yourself unable to understand what’s going on in the film? Or have you ever opened a novel to the last 10 pages only to find yourself utterly lost? Due to your faulty starting point, you don’t know the characters, their motivations or any of the drama that led to the conclusion of that story.

Unfortunately, it’s often that way with we Christians—especially we Gentile Christians. You see, when we accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, we are grafted into a very Jewish heritage and history. In this, our Messianic Jewish brothers and sisters are ahead of us (hopefully, but not always.)

Through my own studies, I have come to realize understanding Jewish history is vital to understanding the Bible. This history is foundational to the hermeneutic that helps us understand those tougher-to-grasp passages in Scripture. If we don’t understand our Jewish history, we can (and many do, regrettably) make all sorts of wild leaps to explain those prophetic passages many pastors would rather avoid.

The History of the Jews, originally published in 1878, is in the public domain. Feel free to share this edition, print it, post it, build classes around it, etc. The copy you’re reading now was initially developed from Google’s Book Search project. Unfortunately, not only were there no good keyword-searchable copies available, but the scans were incomplete. While this edition attempts to solve the first problem, this means not all images—or even all pages—are present. Some pages were duplicated. In some places, the employee doing the scanning covered text with their thumb or removed the page as it was still scanning, resulting in hidden or illegible text. We have done our best to clean things up and present them as the original author intended. Where there are gaps, you’ll usually see “…” or “[MISSING]”. And finally, if you have a copy of The History of the Jews and would like to fill in the missing pieces, that is a contribution we will happily accept. You may contact us through our website at https://levaire.com.

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I hope you enjoy this edition of Milman’s The History of the Jews. I pray that it furthers your understanding of the biblical text and advances you in your relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ.

Matthew Schoenherr