Posted by Walker on July 14, 1998 at 18:44:55:
Anyone read this book by Thomas Cahill?
A friend is recommending it to me; his review:
The book I'm reading is called "The Gift of the Jews", written by Thomas
Cahill (author of "How the Irish Saved Civilization", also a great
book). Basically, his writing style is such that both the believer and
non-believer can be satisfied with his prose, without becoming unduly
offended. He brings out points and events that most archeologists
and/or biblical scholars agree on, but he does so in a way that tends
not to offend (although fundamentalist Christians and staunch atheists
might both find his writing disagreeable). This includes the Reed Sea
vs. the Red Sea, Hebrew as a written language was not developed until
around 1000-800 BCE, Abraham and his descendants believed in other, less
powerful Gods other than Jehovah, etc. He often puts himself in a given
era and tries to portray what the people of that time probably thought
and believed. For me, it was an easy read, and a good way to better
understand the Old Testament, the beginning of the Jewish People (and
hence the Christian Peoples), and how Jewish philosophy evolved over
2000 years, and became the basis for much of the Western World's
philosophy about the human condition.
When I say that, I'm not talking about Socrates or Aristotle or the
other Greek and Roman scholars. I think (although I haven't read their
stuff) that they gave us the basis for rational, logical thinking. The
Jewish culture, on the other hand, gave us the idea that life is a
journey, not a cyclical repetition of past events, that we are all
individuals, that we can all experience fullness of life, that justice
is for all, that humans have certain inalienable rights, and that we can
all have a personal relationship with God. All of these concepts were
completely foreign to the civilized world before the Jews came to be.