The Destruction of the Jews

HISTORY, WE ARE TOLD, IS THE RECORD OF THE CRIMES and follies of mankind. Anyone reading The Jewish War - of which this edition, under the title of The Destruction of the Jews, contains all the material relevant to the war itself, but not the preceding historical survey - will certainly feel this to be true. It is a tale of unrelieved horror - of brutalities committed by Herod and the other Palestinian kings, by provincial governors, by the most enlightened and reason/ able of the Roman emperors, by the leaders of the Jewish insurgents, and by Josephus himself. It is a tale of hopeless revolts, of suicidal strife between rival gangsters and warring factions, of incredible heroism achieving nothing but universal ruin and destruction. It is a tale, too, of a country filled with such a wealth of architectural and artistic splendor as has perhaps never been seen elsewhere since the world began, and reduced by crimes and follies to a desert, a mass of shapeless ruins. Yet it is a tale of surpassing interest, a tale of achievements none the less magnificent because they ended in dust. Has any country had such a history as Palestine has had? a history so colorful, so rich in incidents that grip the imagination, stir the emotions, and haunt the memory? Does any country possess a geographical character so astounding in its diversity, so fascinating in its uniqueness? In this book we have a graphic record of the most exciting period of that history: we have too some remarkable descriptions of many of the geographical features ; and a great deal of space is given up to bringing before our eyes the cities, palaces, and temples which filled this little land with beauty and made it one of the greatest creations of Hellenism, as different as could be imagined from the Palestine of our Sunday School memories. Here too we find the information that WIT serve as the necessary background for our understanding of recent research in Palestine.