Eleazar Ben Asher Ha-Levi - The Chronicles of Jerahmeel: Or, the Hebrew Bible Historiale. Being a Collection of Apocryphal and Pseudo-Epigraphical Books Dealing With the History of the World from the

The chronicle which I publish here for thefirst time is not a chronicle in the strict sense of the word. It does notrelate true events which have happened in the history of mankind, but itbelongs more to that class of legendary history which was so much in vogue inthe Middle Ages, and which owes its original conception to the attempt, fromvery ancient times, to embellish the biblical narrative. The history of theworld began with the narrative of the Biblefirst for the Jews, and then forall the nations who have derived their knowledge and their faith from the samesource. The careful reader of the Bible must have been struck with whatappeared to him to be incoherence of narrative, want of details, and at timesgreat lacun. Hence the desire for filling them up.

An old problem has also been to establish afixed chronology upon the basis of the biblical narrative. This last was, infact, the oldest attempt to construct exact history out of the Bible. Thecomputation of the era of the world, and the desire for fixing the age of everyperson mentioned in the Bible, and of every event contained therein, wasimposed upon Jews almost as soon as they came in contact with the highlyfantastical chronologies of Manetho and Berossus, who gave to the world and tothe reigning dynasties of Egypt and Assyria millions of years. The Jews,especially those who lived in Alexandria, the ancient focus of civilization,where all the currents of thought, myth and learning combined, felt thenecessity of comparing these fabulous histories with the true history of theworld as contained in the Bible. We therefore find among the oldest Alexandrianwriters like Demetrios and others the very first rudiments of biblicalchronology. Egypt was also the land where myths and legends flourished inabundance, and no wonder that the lives of Biblical personages connectedespecially with Egypt and Egyptian history, like Joseph, Moses, Solomon andothers, should have been embellished with legendary and poetic details drawnfrom sources hitherto not yet accounted for.

Biblical legends occur, therefore, veryfrequently in the works of the Alexandrian writers referred to, especially inArtapanos and Philo, and, derived from such sources, also in Josephus. Thisactivity was, however, not limited to Egypt. The desire for rounding off thebiblical narrative, for filling up the lacun, for answering all the questionsof the enquiring mind of the ancient reader, was also carried on in Palestineand probably so in Babylon. Hence a new literature grew out of the Bible, andclustered round the Bible, which goes under the name of the Apocrypha, orpseudo-epigraphical literature.

Some of these writings are written with aspecial purpose, either to inculcate certain doctrines, or to show theantiquity of certain precepts in order to justify some religious ceremony. Someassume the form of historical narratives of events that happened to thePatriarchs, others appear in the form of ancient revelations also ascribed tobiblical personages, and either try to lift the veil of the future or toencourage the people in time of trial and trouble. This literature has had achequered career; very little has come down to us in its primitive form, and inthe Hebrew language. Even those that were written in Greek, and have beentranslated from that language, had to undergo considerable changes at the handsof those who afterwards utilized the ancient records for the purpose ofspreading their own religious views. Books that went under the names ofPatriarchs claimed a great respect and veneration. And, therefore, if theycontained announcements as to events that were to happen, Christian writers andthen heads of sects would not fail to interpret or to interpolate sentences orpassages by which Christian or specific doctrines would appear to have beenforetold from ancient times. Such interpolations and the use made of the bookssufficed to condemn them in the eyes of the Jews, and even in the eyes of theruling Church, and to cause their disappearance at a very early period. Othersthat were written in Hebrew and claimed to be a kind of prophecy, having beenbelied by the non-fulfilment of those prophecies, fell into contempt, weredisregarded, and therefore partly lost; the purely historical and legendaryportions, however, seem to have fared somewhat better. They lived on becauseage did not affect them, and people at all times were inclined to bestowbenevolent attention upon poetical descriptions or pseudo-historicalnarratives.