Illustrated Historical Bible Commentary

The author, a Jewish scholar born in Vienna in 1825, is recognized worldwide as the foremost authority on the analysis of Jewish thought. Edersheim, with his historical and cultural clarifications, makes the Old and New Testaments fit together to show us God's plan for man, acting as Sovereign of the universe and Lord of history.

Edersheim has been worldwide recognized and appreciated as the man who best analyzed and explained to the Christian world the context of Jewish customs and practices that form the historical context of the Old and New Test Testaments. His two fundamental and globally renowned works, still reissued in English today, are:

Old Testament Bible History, in which he analyzes the historical environment of the biblical text of the Old Testament from creation to the Babylonian captivity.

The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, where he sets forth in rich detail the situation of the Jewish world in the first century in relation to the events narrated in the Gospels.

Together, they form a scholarly exegetical tool unmatched to date for the study of the Bible. His profound erudition and the depth with which he treats each and every one of the topics presented place it among the highest intellectual level of evangelical Christian literature. References to rabbinic writings in Hebrew – for which he indicates the exact source, including the cited line – are constant.

Loose facts and details of human behavior that at first glance seem incomprehensible, in his pages, in light of the historical context, take on all their logic and meaning. Genealogies acquire under Edersheim's pen a meaning and value that we would never have imagined. His historical and cultural clarifications make the puzzle between the Old and New Testaments fit together, in a masterful assembly, showing God's plan for man acting as Sovereign of the universe and Lord of history.

This volume contains the complete text of both works, arranged in a biblical commentary format, with complete headings indicating the topic, books, chapters, and biblical verses commented on each page, which allows for quick location of the passage or biblical text on which we desire historical information. In addition, it is enriched with hundreds of archaeological photographs, which are related to the commented facts in order to illustrate them graphically.

It includes nineteen extensive appendices that deal with other topics and customs of the time, not directly cited in the biblical text, but which the author considers important to include for a greater understanding of the events narrated therein.

It is completed with a general analytical index and an index of authors cited in the work.