A reviewer complains: "the use of David Irving's work is very unfortunate." PJ refers to Irving once (p. 492) in order to refute Irving's claim that Hilter was unaware of the Final Solution. PJ: "But this argument will not stand up."

Is the reviewer bothered that Irving is mentioned at all? I'm pleased that PJ took the trouble to put Irving in his place.

An incredible summary of the Jewish experience beginning with Abraham and ending with modern-day Israel. ( )

Rough draft of review:

Expansive in topic and often insightful, Johnson makes some very interesting points but the book is marred by a number of unnecessary issues:

1) referencing, the use of David Irving's work is very unfortunate, solely relying on David Wyman's work concerning WW2 is silly
2) the unnecessarily mixing history and Johnson's own political prejudices
3) first released in 1987, it could do with updating the statistics and bibliography
4) the prehistory part is very contentious.

Johnson's book, however, is not a failure as the breadth of his reading is clear from many passages and works. It is best when he has concrete historical sources to basis views on, for example, Josephus or when discussing the late Middle Ages.

It falls down in two particular areas, the discussion of Karl Marx and Marxism (very crude), and discussing Kristallnacht (over reliance on Irving's revisionist filth).

His discussion of Judaism and its reconciliation of secularism is very well argued

Many passages of Johnson's work are lucid and interesting but there is the impression that others were written hastily or after a good lunch.

Nevertheless, overall it is a good book that could do with considerable revision and updating to reflect the current state of the historiography. ( )

Survey ( )

Paul Johnson says that writing A History of the Jews was like writing a history of the world "seen from the viewpoint of a learned and intelligent victim." Johnson's history begins with the Bible and ends with the establishment of the State of Israel. Throughout, Johnson's history is driven by a philosophical interest: "The Jews," he writes, "stand right at the centre of the perennial attempt to give human life the dignity of a purpose. Does their own history suggest that such attempts are worth making? Or does it reveal their essential futility?" Johnson's history is lucid, thorough, and--as one would expect of almost any project with such a broad scope--a little wrong-headed. By the end of the book, readers will be grateful for Johnson's questioning of the Jews' confidence in their cosmic significance. However, readers may also be a little annoyed by his energetic inquiries as to whether this significance was man-made or providentially provided. Either way, it's a given: for a historian of Israel, this should adequately settle the question. Johnson's 600-page history is probably the best we've got by a living gentile--which is no small accomplishment at all. --Michael Joseph Gross

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.