rt. The Jews read history as a mere commentary
on their own fate, and hence they were unable to take the wide outlook
into the world required for the compilation of objective histories.
Thus, in their aim to find religious consolation for their sufferings in
the Middle Ages, the Jewish historians sought rather to trace the hand
of Providence than to analyze the human causes of the changes in the
affairs of mankind.

But in another sense the Jews were essentially gifted with the
historical spirit. The great men of Israel were not local heroes. Just
as Plutarch's Lives were part of the history of the world's politics, so
Jewish biographies of learned men were part of the history of the
world's civilization. With the "Order of the Tannaim and Amoraim"
(written about the year 1100) begins a series of such biographical
works, in which more appreciation of sober fact is displayed than might
have been expected from the period. In the same way the famous Letter of
Sherira Gaon on the compilation of the Rabbinical literature (980)
marked great progress in the critical examination of historical
problems. Later works did not maintain the same level.

In the Middle Ages, Jewish histories mostly took the form of uncritical
Chronicles, which included legends and traditions as well as assured
facts. Their interest and importance lie in the personal and communal
details with which they abound. Sometimes they are confessedly local.
This is the case with the "Chronicle of Achimaaz," written by him in
1055 in rhymed prose. In an entertaining style, he tells of the early
settlements of the Jews in Southern Italy, and throws much light on the
intercommunication between the scattered Jewish congregations of his
time. A larger canvas was filled by Abraham Ibn Daud, the physician and
philosopher who was born in Toledo in 1110, and met a martyr's end at
the age of seventy. His "Book of Tradition" (_Sefer ha-Kabbalah_),
written in 1161, was designed to present, in opposition to the Karaites,
the chain of Jewish tradition as a series of unbroken links from the
age of Moses to Ibn Baud's own times. Starting with the Creation, his
history ends with the anti-Karaitic crusade of Judah Ibn Ezra in Granada
(1150). Abraham Ibn Daud shows in this work considerable critical power,
but in his two other histories, one dealing with the history of Rome
from its foundation to the time of King Reccared in Spain, the other a
narrative of the history of the Jews