The Invention of the Jewish People

Notwithstanding its provocative, almost scandalous title, this is not a belligerent pamphlet but a sober analytical study. It is neither sensational in outlook, nor discourteous in tone. For all its radical assertions, it is an exercise in historiography that is both rational and dispassionate, a notable exemplar of detached objectivity which Western writers normally reserve for non-Western nations and civilizations. In fact, all that the professional historian Sand does is to allow full rein to the historian’s vision and then confront the disenchanted world of modernity without the comfort of myth or fable, allegory or parable. Little wonder that his gaze, the historian’s vision at its starkest, is unsettling. Disentangling history from myth may be his cardinal virtue, but it is an affront to the incumbent custodians of meaning, secular as well as sacral. For an unbiased reader however Sand’s text is a splendid feat of intellectual history, lucid in style, panoramic in scope and utterly, utterly cogent.