8vo. Volume I: xviii, 482 pp., / Volume II - Part I: xvi, 676 pp., / Volume II - Part II: a supplement ‘Die Alterthumer des Volkes Israel’: xxii, 392 pp., / Volume III - Part I: viii, 484 pp., / Volume III - Part II: xiii, 570 pp., contemporary half-calf with marbled boards, title gilt on spine, marbled endpaper, speckled outer edges, book plate Dampierre verso front cover of Volume I, spines lightly rubbed with top spine of Volume I professionally re-glued, round sticker on bottom spine of volume 1, light foxing throughout, otherwise set in good condition, Dieterich'schen Buchhandlung, Gottingen, 1843-1852.

Synopsis

Georg Heinrich Ewald was a German orientalist, theologian, and Biblical exegete. He studied at the University of Göttingen. In 1827 he became extraordinary professor there, and in 1835 professor of oriental languages.
Ewald’s Hebrew Grammar inaugurated a new era in biblical philology. Subsequent works in that department were avowedly based on his, and Hitzig referred to him as “the second founder of the science of the Hebrew language.” He made important contributions as an exegete, biblical critic and grammarian. In particular, his Geschichte des Volkes Israel, the result of thirty years’ labour, was important in that branch of research.
Taking up the idea of a divine education of the human race, and firmly believing that Providence assigned a special task to each of the leading nations of antiquity, Ewald felt no difficulty about Israel’s place in universal history, or about the problem which that race had been called upon to solve. The history of Israel, according to him, was the history how humanity acquired one true religion, beginning with the exodus and culminating in the appearing of Jesus.
The historical interval that separated these two events is treated as naturally dividing itself into three great periods, those of Moses, David and Ezra. The periods are externally indicated by the successive names by which the chosen people were called—Hebrews, Israelites, Jews. The events prior to the exodus are relegated by Ewald to a preliminary chapter of primitive history; and the events of the apostolic and post-apostolic age are treated as a kind of appendix. The entire construction of the history is based on a critical examination and chronological arrangement of the available documents.