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Article: The Sacred Chain.
- Article from:
- Judaism
- Article date:
- June 22, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 American Jewish Congress. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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How do we write religious history? are we caught without recourse between the alternatives of fundamentalism and complete disbelief in the historical foundations of our religions? These questions are raised by Norman Cantor's The Sacred Chain, a book claiming to be an up-to-date account of the whole of Jewish history.(1)
The innocent reader will learn a number of remarkable things from this book, should he or she take it at its own valuation. Among them are the following: All biblical history before the time of the monarchy is romantic fiction, without "a shred" of empirical basis. Although anti-Semitism is a reality, and one that the author does not minimize, ...