Audiobook · read by volunteers
Legends of the Jews, Volume 1
Louis Ginzberg (1873–1953)
Read by Scott Sherris, Kirsten Ferreri, dinobuddy, Leon Mire, Robert Scott, Bryan Ness, ML Cohen, Jason Mayoff, Sibella Denton, D.E. Wittkower · 50 chapters · 13 h 50
About the book
Before there was a printed page, there were stories passed from teacher to student, from rabbi to congregation, and from one generation of storytellers to the next. Louis Ginzberg spent years gathering these traditions of the Jewish people into a single flowing narrative, and Henrietta Szold gave it to English readers. This first volume begins at the very beginning: the creation of the world, the first humans, and the earliest generations that followed them. The retelling blends the accounts of the Bible with the legends, commentaries and sayings that grew around them, so that familiar episodes open out into surprising detail. It reads less like a scholarly study than like a long, richly coloured story. Fifty recordings take you through the preface and the opening chapters, in nearly fourteen hours of listening that rewards patience and curiosity.
Introduction
Louis Ginzberg was born in Kovno, Lithuania, in 1873 and died in New York in 1953. He was one of the leading Talmudic scholars of the twentieth century and taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary from 1903 until the end of his life. The Legends of the Jews, translated by Henrietta Szold (1860-1945), is the work for which he is most widely known beyond the circle of specialists. The English edition appeared in 1909.
The book is a collection of legends, but it is not a loose assortment. Ginzberg arranged material from ancient and medieval Jewish sources so that it follows the course of the biblical story, and he supported them with notes, gathered in the later volumes, for those who wanted to trace each tradition to its origin. The first volume runs from the creation of the world to the patriarch Jacob.
What the listener finds is a narrative in which scripture and legend are woven together. The familiar stories are enlarged by details that are not in the Bible but belonged, for centuries, to the living memory of the community that read it.
The recording was made by LibriVox volunteers. It has fifty files, starting with the preface and moving through the chapters, and it runs to almost fourteen hours. It suits readers of religious history, folklore and ancient literature, and anyone who enjoys stories that have been told many times and still surprise. Because the book is divided into many short sections, it is easy to listen in small portions, and each section tends to stand as a complete story. Those who know the Bible well will enjoy noticing where the legends fill gaps or answer questions, and newcomers will find that the narrative explains itself as it goes.
Public domain
Louis Ginzberg died in 1953: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text