As I began to read The Gift of the Jews I automatically saw the authors perspective on all of humanity. He says within the first sentences of his book that the Jews started it all, and by “it” he means everything we value as a society, everything that nonetheless makes us human. As the book progresses he goes on to talk about the story of the bible, from Egypt to Babylon all while interconnecting everything to the Jews or their version of the bible. Thomas Cahill begins his book with discussing “The Temple in the Moonlight.” This story begins in the 5th millennia where our history began, with the first human. He speaks of the progression of human evolution from construction to farming to the biggest step the first written human word. This
…show more content…
The focus sits on David’s poetic passages and how he was seen to the people. Chapter 6 begins with speaking of the events that have taken place in Babylon. Most explicitly focusing on Solomon, the son of David and Bathsheba, his reign, and the mess he left for his successor. At the end of this chapter Cahill goes back to focus on the Jews. He deeply believes that we cannot go a day without doing something Jewish, the dreams we dream, and our vocabulary is thanks to the Jews. To him, “The Jews gave us the Outside and the Inside- our outlook and our inner life,” (Cahill 240). The final chapter of the book, chapter 7 “From them till Now,” Cahill summarizes everything he has covered in the previous chapters briefly. For in the last six pages of this book he ties everything together. The most important points he makes are that of believing in a God that is just and unjust in the like. Without God, without the Jews we wouldn’t have had our beginning. To us westerner’s time has a beginning and an end. Whether it have been the first book of the bible Genesis or The Big Bang theory this is our beginning, but what is our end? We must believe in a God that is both a God of justice and a God of destruction. As Cahill says to end his book, “For without justice, there is no God,” (Cahill …show more content…
Although in class we did cover the idea that all of us Christians stem from Jewish background, there is not much else that has me strung on the idea that Jews are the reason for our existence. At most I accept the idea that the Jews gave us some words, some ideas of faith, but I do not believe that we can give them full credit for everything that has come to be a modern way of human life. What has me second guessing a lot of Cahill’s points are what proof do we have that the Jews are the ones that started it all, in retrospect was it not the other people groups with their radical ways and many Gods. Were they not the ones that began worshipping in any sense? the creators of it all. In my opinion Abraham was just the first man who was able to hear one God, one person to follow. The trend began with him, and onto the following patriarchs and has traveled several millennia’s to
The focus sits on David’s poetic passages and how he was seen to the people. Chapter 6 begins with speaking of the events that have taken place in Babylon. Most explicitly focusing on Solomon, the son of David and Bathsheba, his reign, and the mess he left for his successor. At the end of this chapter Cahill goes back to focus on the Jews. He deeply believes that we cannot go a day without doing something Jewish, the dreams we dream, and our vocabulary is thanks to the Jews. To him, “The Jews gave us the Outside and the Inside- our outlook and our inner life,” (Cahill 240). The final chapter of the book, chapter 7 “From them till Now,” Cahill summarizes everything he has covered in the previous chapters briefly. For in the last six pages of this book he ties everything together. The most important points he makes are that of believing in a God that is just and unjust in the like. Without God, without the Jews we wouldn’t have had our beginning. To us westerner’s time has a beginning and an end. Whether it have been the first book of the bible Genesis or The Big Bang theory this is our beginning, but what is our end? We must believe in a God that is both a God of justice and a God of destruction. As Cahill says to end his book, “For without justice, there is no God,” (Cahill …show more content…
Although in class we did cover the idea that all of us Christians stem from Jewish background, there is not much else that has me strung on the idea that Jews are the reason for our existence. At most I accept the idea that the Jews gave us some words, some ideas of faith, but I do not believe that we can give them full credit for everything that has come to be a modern way of human life. What has me second guessing a lot of Cahill’s points are what proof do we have that the Jews are the ones that started it all, in retrospect was it not the other people groups with their radical ways and many Gods. Were they not the ones that began worshipping in any sense? the creators of it all. In my opinion Abraham was just the first man who was able to hear one God, one person to follow. The trend began with him, and onto the following patriarchs and has traveled several millennia’s to