[1] It was published in Philadelphia by the Jewish Publication Society of America from 1909 to 1938.

According to Ginzberg's son Eli, Clarence Darrow consulted Ginzberg while preparing for the Scopes Trial in order to find out who Cain had married, a subject on which Darrow later cross-examined William Jennings Bryan during the trial.

Legends of the Jews, which present the non-legal traditions of the Talmud and the Midrash, make pleasurable reading, which does not prevent the two volumes of 'Notes' that follow them from being documents of meticulous research into the original texts and their variants, as well as into general and Jewish folklore, into comparative religion and ancient Near Eastern thought.

"[3] In 2014, Benjamin Ivry wrote, "If any work of stunning erudition can be called loveable, then surely Legends retains this allure.

"[4] In 2009, the Legends of the Jews was the subject of a colloquium held by the World Association for Jewish Studies, papers from which were published as Louis Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews: Ancient Jewish Folk Literature Reconsidered.