The Story of the Jews, Volume 1, Finding the Words, 1000BC -- 1492 AD, Simon Schama, c. 2013.

The Story of the Jews, Volume 1, Finding the Words, 1000BC -- 1492 AD, Simon Schama, c. 2013. 909SCH.

The author's alliteration is impossible to miss: "s" and "p," predominantly.

Part One: papyrus, potsherd, parchment

1: In Egypt

• the birthplace of Judaism, Egypt?
• the story of Elephantine: on the Nile, southern edge of Egypt
• at Elephantine:
• that pull beneath the surface was the fluvial valve that divided the torrent, sending half south to burning Nubia, and half north to feed the flood valley
• the author mentions "Nilometer" without explaining or defining a Nilometer.

2: The Words

• Jerusalem
• the two cities: Jerusalem vs Elephantine

Just how much of the books fo the Hebrew bible (and which ons) were wwritten before the mass deportation of 597 BCE and the final destruction of Jerusalem ten years later, and how much afterwards, we will never know with absolute certainty. But the most ancient elements of it (epic songs of triumph like the "song of the Seea" in Exodus 15, exulting over the drowning of Pharaoh and the army pursuing the Israelites ( have been identified by some scholars as having been composed as early as the eleventh century BCE -- in other words before the reign of David! 

The style of the song -- "I will sing unto the Lord, or he has triumphed gloriously: / the horse and the rider hath he thrown into the sea" -- has been convincingly associated with Canaanite mythic poetry in which the challenging god Baal conquers the sea in a a great storm. ....

....It's no accident that in their epic pitch they bring to mind the near contemporary war chants of the Iliad.

• wow

3: Delving, Divining ...

• the water-filled tunnel two hundred feet beneath the Temple Mount rock, from thee spring called the Virgin's Fount to the Pool of Siloam

 

 4: Classical Jews?

• Hellenes vs Hebrews
• a Hellenised Jew, then, was an oxymoron. Except it wasn't.

 Part One: papyrus, potsherd, parchment

5: The Menorah and the Cross

• Dura-Europos: upper Euphrates
• discovered in the late 1920s
• "the Pompeii of the desert"
• founded by the Seleucid Greeks around 303 BCE
• sited squarely on the trade route between Babylon and Palestine
• story of archaeology sounds like Harrison Ford / Indiana Jones
• Jews and Christians break up 

6: Among the Believers

• Muslims

7: The Women of Ashkenaz

• anti-semitism;
• Pope Urban II
• 12th century
  

8: Trials

• Moses Maimonides

9: Exile From Exile

• late 14thh century
• Jews of Majorca

Six maps.

Timeline.

Notes.

Bibliography.