Beacon Lights of History, Volume 02: Jewish Heroes and Prophets

John LordProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
560K words
Chapters
57

Tags

English Originals World HistoryReligion Historical ReappraisalChurch HistoryPortrait GalleryBiblical FigureJewish HeroesPatriotismMoral CultivationAcademic StudyProphetic TraditionCultural Transmission

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Beacon Lights of History, Volume 02: Jewish Heroes and Prophets by John LordAuthor: Lord, John, 1810-1894,Language: English, Class: D: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere, Release Date: Dec 1, 2003

Editor's review

This volume continues the lecture format of Beacon Lights of History, turning to Jewish heroes and prophets. Through biographical sketches, the author links together the historical thread of ancient Israel, focusing not on scholarly detail but on drawing historical lessons from character and faith choices. Its value for readers is threefold: first, it quickly builds a framework impression of the key figures in this tradition; second, it shows how a nineteenth-century English author organized religious and national history through moral narrative; third, its clear English suits general reading in history and letters. The chapters stand independently and the language is plain, making it suitable for advancing one chapter a day. Readers should keep a comparative awareness, treating the author's judgments as one historical narrative stance rather than settled conclusions; this will better reveal the book's layers.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read in the order of the figures; for each, first write down your initial impression before comparing it with the author's evaluation.
  2. Place the figures back on a timeline and jot down a simple chronology to help orient yourself.
  3. When the author makes a strong moral judgment, pause and ask yourself what the basis is.
  4. Read alongside relevant chapters in modern general histories and compare differences in narrative emphasis.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57

FAQ

Is this book suitable as an introduction to religious history? It can serve as an introduction to the figures and their connections, but it is not a neutral textbook of religious history. The author organizes the narrative through moral judgments and carries a nineteenth-century standpoint. It is safer to treat it as a sample of historical narrative and read it alongside modern general histories.
Will it affect reading if I haven't read Volume 1? Not much. The two volumes center on different themes, and this volume focuses on Jewish heroes and prophets, with relatively independent chapters. You can start directly with this volume; if you want to understand the series' overall style, you can go back to Volume 1 later.
How difficult is the English, and what level is it suitable for? It belongs to the nineteenth-century English lecture style: sentences are long but the vocabulary is not obscure, so readers with intermediate English can make progress. It is advisable to read extensively with a dictionary and prioritize passages on character evaluation and historical judgment.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

John Lord Author · American · 1810–1894

John Lord (1810–1894) was an American historian and lecturer. Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and a graduate of Dartmouth College, he spent many years on the lecture circuit and served as a lecturer in history at Dartmouth from 1866 to 1876. His best-known work is the fourteen-volume Beacon Lights of History, which treats figures and eras ranging from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and Reformation to European statesmen, great rulers, the American founders, great writers, and the modern era; among his other works is A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon. Nineteen of his works are held in this collection. Writing for general readers, he was skilled at linking events and personalities in clear, lecture-style narrative, and his accessible prose helped popularize historical knowledge in nineteenth-century America.