Jewish history is the history of the Jewish people, religion, and culture. Since Jewish history is over four thousand years long and includes hundreds of different populations, any treatment can only be provided in broad strokes. Additional information can be found in the main articles listed below. For the first two periods the history of the Jews is mainly that of the Fertile Crescent. It begins among those people who occupied the area lying between the Nile, Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. Surrounded by ancient seats of culture in Egypt and Babylonia, by the deserts of Arabia, and by the highlands of Asia Minor, the land of Canaan (later known as Israel, then at various times Judah, Coele-Syria, Judea, Palestine, the Levant, the Holy Land, and finally Israel) was a meeting place of civilizations. The land was traversed by old-established trade routes and possessed important harbors on the Gulf of Akaba and on the Mediterranean coast, the latter exposing it to the influence of other cultures of the Fertile Crescent.
In the year 1741 BCE, Abraham began his long journey from Haran to Canaan - a journey which would change the history of the world and have a profound effect on the development of most major religions. Throughout the ages there has been a fascination with Jewish history. People have questioned the "miracle of the continual existence of the Jewish people" - this despite the almost consistent world delight in their persecution and ridicule. Studying history hopefully gives us a deeper understanding of who we are and why we are here. It is in the spirit of making Jewish history more meaningful and relevant that this site is presented. For the past 12 years, Jewish-History.com has provided full digital text of primary historical documents previously unavailable to the general public except in historical society archives or on reels of microfilm. As one of the first Internet sites to provide these valuable texts free of charge, without the need to travel to a distant library or archive vault, we have revolutionized the nature of research.