Analysis of The Gift of Jews, Thomas Cahill

Freedom, Moral Responsibility and the "Still Small Voice" of individual Conscience

This book is important for several reasons. First of all, it offers a controversial and stimulating interpretation of the history of Western thought. Second, in a world where anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic literature have proven regrettably tenacious, this book stands out as a dramatic and comprehensive tribute to the Jewish people, their history and literature, directed largely at a popular readership. Aside from Biblical scholarship or studies of esoteric aspects of Jewish mysticism, it is somewhat rare to find a work praising the Jewish cultural contribution to Western Civilization, even rarer to find such a work so broadly targeted (Thomas, pp.304). Not that the book is without serious flaws, especially from a scholarly perspective. In fact, like Cahill's earlier volume, How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe (1995), this book may be as interesting for what it tells us about the place of historiography in contemporary popular culture as in its stated purpose.

Anyone familiar with the history of Western Civilization is obviously familiar with the persecutions aimed at the Jewish people and their cultural legacy. It would be fair to say, then, that any disinterested observer would be prone to agree with the opening assertion of The Gifts of the Jews that, considering the extent of their persecution, this tribe of desert nomads must be a special people. Indeed, it is a major premise of this work that not only are the Jews a special people but that without them the entire edifice of modern Western Civilization would be far different and much poorer. For, according to Cahill, the Jews are the primary inventors of Western Civilization's basic worldview (Thomas, pp.304). This is, of course, quite a claim, particularly in the context of a generally accepted history of ideas, which traces Western Civilization's foundations to various sources other than the Jewish tribesman of the Sinai Desert--the Greek and Roman Worlds or Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe being the most conspicuous contenders. This book is thus intended not only as a singular tribute to the ideals, experiences, and worldview of the Jewish people, but also as a radical revision of mainstream opinion on the development of Western thought. Consequently, anyone interested in the history of philosophy or cross-cultural theology will want to take time to examine Cahill's revisionist argument.

As previously mentioned, The Gifts of the Jews is actually the second installment in a projected series--The Hinges of History--whose stated goal is "to retell the story of the Western world as the story of the great gift-givers, those who entrusted to our keeping one or another of the singular treasures that make up the patrimony of the West" (iii). Notwithstanding this common goal, The Gifts of the Jews is distinct in style and scope from Cahill's earlier volume How the Irish Saved Civilization, representing a more mature and scholarly ...