History of the Destruction of the City and Temple of Jerusalem, The, and of the Ruin and Dispersion of the Jewish Nation. With Dr. Priestley's LETTERS TO THE JEWS, and an answer by David Levi.
[Judaica]. Brown, Thomas. The History of the Destruction of the City and Temple of Jerusalem and of the Ruin and Dispersion of the Jewish Nation….To Which Is Added, Dr. Priestly’s Letters to the Jews, and an Answer by David Levi, a Learned Jew. Albany: Published by Thomas Brown, 1825.
8vo.; foxing throughout, not affecting legibility of text; rear endpapers and blanks water-stained, not affecting text; 16 index bound in at rear; ownership stamp (“Tempes Tiffany”) on front cover; signed bookplate of previous owner (“Ann Waldron”) on first blank, with the 1825 price of $1.25 printed on its border; brown mottled calf boards, stamped in gilt; boards lightly scuffed; a sturdy copy of an old and uncommon title.
First edition thus. Three volumes in one, bound together and continuously paginated, each distinct title with separate title pages.
The first two “books” within this volume are histories of Jews written by non-Jews in which the authors seek to trace the reasons why God has treated the Jews as he has. The books are notable as early histories of Judaism but are also notable for the running thread throughout each work that implicitly blames the Jews themselves for their plight. Despite these persistent themes (i.e., that the Jews' non-Christian faith was somehow responsible for their disparate history), the books are for their time liberal in that they plead against explicit prejudice against the Jews. The third and final book (“An Answer by David Levi, a Learned Jew”) is a fascinating although convoluted rebuke to the first two books, point by point. Levi takes on elements of the first two texts in an attempt to politely refute the arguments made by the previous authors that (essentially) the Jews are responsible for their own dilemma; yet at times he slips into a more blunt and frustrated tone, as in this excerpt on page 86, in which he inquires sardonically:
I must now ask you once more, whether this is the religion, that you with
so much sincerity and good will invite the Jews to embrace? Were it not
that charity forbids my entertaining such a thought, I should be apt to
pronounce the whole a farce. And if you are really in earnest, and wish to
convert the Jews, to what you call Christianity, I think you must produce
more substantial proofs in support of your hypothesis, than what you have
yet done…
A scarce book which provides a (sometimes unpleasant) window into the treatment of the Jewish people in the early nineteenth century.
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