TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. THIS volume is the first of the three which Ewald devotes to the third and final epoch of the History of Israel. His general idea of the purpose and the course of the history of the nation of the true religion' necessarily led him to include within the scope of his work the History of the Rise of Christianity, as the true end and consummation of the two thousand years of national life under a divine training without a parallel. Without Christ and his Church, he would have regarded Israel and its strange sad career as an enigma and a failure; but with Christ and his Community of the Perfected True Religion, he traced divine purpose and necessity beneath the defects, disasters, and ruin of the nation, as well as in its matchless endowments and unapproached attainments. In the first volume of the three occupied with this closing portion of the history, he writes the history of the coming and rise of the Messiah, of his work on the earth, and of his death, leading to his eternal triumph. This is the volume here translated, and entitled by the Author, Geschichte Christus und seine Zeit. The second volume of the three sketches the history of the growth of the Church of Christ, in the midst of the Judean and the heathen world, and the establishment of the Religion of Christ, the divine outcome of Israel's national career, in the world. This volume is entitled by the Author Geschichte des Apostolischen Zeitalters bis zur Zerstörung Jerusalem's. The third volume of this section, and the last of the entire work, traces the history of the new and undying Community of the perfected Religion and of the old and perishing Community of Judeanism some seventy years further, until the latter finally suffered all but extinction in the War of Annihilation' to which the rising of Barcocheba conducted. This final volume bears the title Geschichte der Ausgänge des Volkes Israel und des nachapostolischen Zeitalters, the Ausgänge of the great Drama of the national history of two thousand years being described as, on the one hand, the entrance of Christianity into undying life and influence, and, on the other, the departure of Judeanism into decay and ruin. The Publishers have determined to complete the translation of the entire work, and this volume will be shortly followed by the next, dealing with the Apostolic Age, which is in the hands of the same Translator. In the translation of this volume the precedent of the Translators of the previous volumes with regard to the orthography of the proper names has been followed. References to this History, and other works of the Author, have been adapted to the English translations of the same works when they exist. In the case of vols. vi. and vii. of this History (which will be vii, and viii. of the English edition), the references are to the original, which is indicated by the addition [German],' as in previous volumes of this Translation. With regard to an untranslated work of the Author's, to which very frequent reference is made in this volume, it is needful to offer a word of explanation. The work quoted as Die drei ersten Evangelien, vol. i. 2nd ed., consists of an elaborate introduction to the Synoptical Gospels, On the Origin and Nature of the Gospels, and of a chrono |