Mr. Schama’s history commences around the time Jews began to be thought of, by scholars, as a unified people; it ends with the Spanish Inquisition and the Jews’ expulsion from Spain. In between, the author swivels among civilizations, depicting Jewish life in the ancient Near East, in the Roman and Hellenistic world, and mingled with early Christianity and Islam. His narrative stresses that Jews have not been, as is often imagined, a culture apart; their culture has busily intermingled with many others.

Mr. Schama mediates between historians. He lingers on the “procession of pink-faced Anglos — Bible scholars, missionaries, military engineers, mappers and surveyors, kitted out with their measuring tapes, their candles, notebooks, sketchbooks and pencils, accompanied by their NCOs and fellah-guides,” who have crisscrossed biblical lands, searching for relics.

The author himself combs through all manner of historical evidence, and is winsome about much of it. “So much classical history can be written in its plumbing,” he says. We realize that Josephus is the first real Jewish historian, Mr. Schama comments, “when, with a twinge of guilt, he introduces his mother into the action.”

Image Simon Schama Credit... Oxford Film and Television

At moments, this volume breaks into broad comedy. There is an extended riff on the surreptitious pickling that surely occurred on the Sabbath (“Woe betide you, O illicit pickler!”) that is nearly worth the price of admission alone.

But comedy “The Story of the Jews” is not. To study Jewish history is to study what it means to be hurt, to be despised, to be considered filthy and homicidal. Mr. Schama is thorough on the vindictive paranoia that has run rampant through history. He pauses to detail, in particular, the Judeophobic mobs in 12th- and 13th-century England who slaughtered and expelled Jews on the slightest of pretexts, a bit of history his country pretends, he suggests, did not occur.

Mr. Shama writes: “How can God permit such a thing to happen to His People? That’s what we always ask when cinders smart the eyes and we begin to spit soot.” Jewish faith and resilience are awesome to observe in this volume.