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Read a discussion with author Thomas Cahill The Gifts of the Jews
Thomas Cahill
Doubleday, $23.50
Review by Karen Austin
April 30, 1998
Web posted at: 5:17 p.m. EDT (1717 GMT)"In the beginning ..."
According to Thomas Cahill, we would be without the very concept of a "beginning" without the contributions of the Jews. It was they, he says, who gave the world such concepts as history (both personal and national), destiny, and the impact of the individual.
Cahill isn't afraid of making a generalization now and then, and he acknowledges having written portions of his latest book"partly of my own invention." Still, those generalizations and the occasional imaginative embellishments help make this book what it is -- an engaging and lively story of how we came to see our world as we see it.
The Israelites had little impact on the world at large during the time of Abraham, Moses and David. They were, as Cahill writes, "a minor Semitic tribe that had not yet leaned to read and write, a tribe so unimportant that it makes virtually no appearance in the contemporary history of its powerful -- and literate -- neighbors." Still, they had a long-range impact. Even the most casual observer can cite the poetry of the Psalms, the legal code of the Ten Commandments, and the concept of a single omniscient and omnipotent God as Jewish influences on Western culture. Cahill goes beyond those obvious contributions, and in doing so brings the reader along on a fascinating journey through an ancient world of tent dwellers and temple prostitutes, Pharaohs and prophets.
His science might be on shaky ground in some instances, but Cahill's writing is unwaveringly strong. He breathes life into familiar Biblical figures, making his book a delight to read. Making extensive use of new translations of Mesopotamian myths and Hebrew texts, even familiar stories appear in a different light. Could these characters -- vibrant, bare-knuckled, exuberant, earthy -- be the same whey-faced patriarchs and prophets pictured on the leaflets I brought home from church school?
Although his interpretation of Biblical events might set off a fundamentalist or two, Cahill is a captivating storyteller. Consider his retelling of the infamous story of Sodom:
"Fade-in: Sodom's main square, where Lot, encountering the angels, invites them to stay at his house. (Though not as generous to his guests as Avraham, he's undoubtedly a good guy). But the men of the city surround the house like the ghouls in "Night of the Living Dead" and demand that Lot bring out the two handsome young men so they can, well, sodomize them. It becomes all too clear that there aren't ten innocents here. There's only Lot, who tries to buy time with a ploy that might not have occurred to most of us in his situation:
'Now pray, I have two daughters who have never known a man, pray let me bring them out to you, and you may deal with them however seems good in your eyes'..."
Cahill, in analyzing this "unhappy episode, beloved of sexually repressed fundamentalists throughout the ages," says that "It is only somewhat mollifying to realize that the sin of Sodom was not homosexuality but inhospitality. You can't tell from this episode whether God is against buggery, but you can be sure he takes a dim view of raping perfectly nice strangers when they come to visit."
This book is the second in Cahill's "Hinges of History" series, with five future volumes planned. His intention is to tell "the story of the evolution of Western sensibility, a narration of how we became the people that we are and why we think and feel the way we do".
That's a tall order. How could one cover such a broad topic without overwhelming all but the most scholarly reader? Cahill concentrates on the essential concepts, the philosophical building blocks of our culture, and their sources. He doesn't wander into the theological mine field surrounding questions of polytheism, monotheism, and the myriad other -isms lurking within his subject. His question isn't, "Were the Jews' beliefs right?" but "What did impact did their beliefs have on the world?" His answer is this insightful and thought-provoking book.
Karen Austin is a freelance writer and environmental activist based in Georgia.
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