Jewish history was promoted by the scribes or the Levites in early Jewish history and later on the popular educator and teachers promoted learning of the scriptures within the Jewish people so that history would be preserved however, at the time Christianity emerged this factor influenced the ancient writings in terms of how this history was related.
Some of Jewish history is so ancient that it has only been related by word of mouth however, there are writings which support history as it is told of the Jewish people. Furthermore, Christianity's emergence affected the form in which some of these ancient writings were reproduced and even the forms of recorded history characterized as genuine and credible Jewish history.
INTRODUCTION
In the initiative of attempting to understand Jewish history, it is necessary to understand the varying influences upon the recorded history of the Jewish people and it is most particularly to understand the influences that early Christianity had upon Jewish history and its recorded translation.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The work of Spiro (2007) entitled: "The Miracle of Jewish History" states "when we look back at the history of the Jewish people...we have to keep one thing in mind: The very survival of the Jewish people through recorded time is nothing short of miraculous. The very fact that Jews exist as a nation today stands in testimony to the existence of God who acts in history. By any historical measure the Jewish people should have disappeared long ago." Spiro states that Jewish history "simply doesn't comply with the rest of history; it does not make sense." (2007) Spiro notes that Mark Twain, "the great American writer" both an agnostic and had acknowledge that he was a skeptic wrote in an 1899 Harper's Magazine article:
The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away. The Greek and Roman followed, made a vast noise and they are gone. Other peoples have sprung up, and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight now or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal, but the Jew. All other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?" (Spiro, 2007)
Spiro also notes the statement of Leo Nikolaivitch Tolstoy, a very religious Russian Orthodox Christian who wrote:
The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He who neither slaughter nor torture of thousands of years could destroy, he who neither fire, nor sword, nor Inquisition was able to wipe off the face of the earth. He who was the first to produce the Oracles of God. He who has been for so long the Guardian of Prophecy and has transmitted it to the rest of the world. Such a nation cannot be destroyed. The Jew is as everlasting as Eternity itself." (2007)
Spiro additionally notes in his work the statement of Nikolai Derdyaev, a famous Russian philosopher who in 1935 wrote:
The Jews have played an all-important role in history. Their destiny is too imbued with the "metaphysical" to be explained either in material or positive historical terms....Its survival is a mysterious and wonderful phenomenon demonstrating that the life of this people is governed by special predetermination, transcending the process of adaptation... The survival of the Jews, their resistance to destruction, their endurance under absolute peculiar conditions and the fateful role played by them in history; all point to the particular and mysterious foundations of their destiny." (2007)
Spiro states as another reason for the survival of the Jewish people the fact that "they have clung to their religion." (2007) Spiro states that it is more than the Jews having "kept the Sabbath...the Sabbath has kept the Jews." (2007) Spiro states that the 12 to 13 million Jews living in the world today, without the persecution and assimilation of these people would total 500 million. Spiro likens Jewish history to a "6,000- piece puzzle" and states "At the beginning you dump the pieces on the table and it makes no sense. But as you assemble piece after piece, a picture emerges. A picture that records the action of God in history." (2007)
Jewish history begins with the creation of Adam "who is seen as the physical and spiritual pinnacle in terms of the creation of the world." (Spiro, 2007) The Jewish conception of God is "that of Creator, Sustainer, and Supervisor, which means not a God who created the world, and then when on vacation...but an infinite Being who is actively involved in creation." (Spiro, 2007) Jewish history relates that upon God creating Adam and Eve in the...
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