He’s the first great writer of American history and is written by a man so central. (Public domain)īurns, an award-winning filmmaker who is part of a renowned documentary duo with his brother Ken Burns, told The Times of Israel that Bradford “is the key. This portrait from a 1904 postcard claims to show the likeness of William Bradford. They note that Bradford was a member of the Separatists, a Protestant Christian sect that broke away from the Church of England and which believed that the Bible was better understood in its original language, Hebrew.
But the author suddenly veers off to what appears to be an unrelated subject: his interest in Hebrew, which is reflected in lists of proverbs, numbers, months of the year and other words, all written in the letters of the Hebrew aleph-bet with their English-language equivalents.Įxperts who spoke with The Times of Israel this week say this is actually not unrelated at all. In the midst of the narrative are a number of pages written in Hebrew, out of place from the rest of the book - or so it would seem.īradford’s account, “Of Plymouth Plantation,” mostly follows the story of the Pilgrims, the nickname of the voyagers aboard the Mayflower who landed in present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, 400 years ago in November 1620. After leading the Pilgrims through a difficult first winter at Plymouth Colony and going on to help establish and govern the second successful English colony in North America, William Bradford penned an acclaimed account of his group’s early decades there.