The Gifts of the Jews by Thomas Cahill
Subtitle: “How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels.” This is my least favorite Thomas Cahill book. I thought it inferior to The Desire of the Everlasting Hills and to How the Irish Saved Civilization. For my taste, Cahill spent a little bit too much space just quoting passages and retelling stories from the Jewish Bible, our Christian Old Testament. Of course, he does manage to quote some key passages, and though he sometimes seems bent upon reducing the content of the faith tradition just for the sake of reduction, he also comes up with some observations that unbelief must wrestle with before it can callously reject the narratives of the Jews as just one more attempt alongside all others by an ancient people to understand their world.
Cahill proves to my satisfaction that of all the ancient peoples the Jews alone thought in terms of linear history. The primary gift of the Jews, says Cahill, is Time which had a beginning, and must also have an end. He writes:
In the Torah we learn that God is working his purposes in history and will effect its end, but in the Prophets we learn that our choices will also affect this end, and that our inner disposition toward our fellow human beings will make an enormous difference in the way this end appears to us. (p. 252)
Cahill’s work will not edify those who want easy answers, but it may just edify some who are casting around wanting to believe that God has done something in our world. Actually, Cahill succeeds in building a good foundation on which to build, “The Desire of the Everlasting Hills.” The book also serves to bring out the highlights of the Biblical texts, enabling us to hit the good parts without a lot of effort on our part.
Pluses: Cahill gives us reasons for believing in the historicity of the Patriarchs, Moses, etc. He is obviously a person of faith. Minuses: Cahill is too skeptical about Divine intervention in events many of us who belong to the household of faith take for granted. It is obvious from reading The Desire of the Everlasting Hills that Cahill believes, for instance, in the Resurrection of Christ. One wonders how he can swallow that “camel,” then reduce the “gnat” of God’s deliverance of Israel from the Egyptians at the Yom Suph/Reed Sea/Red Sea to a few chariots getting stuck in the mud. Somewhere between Cecil B. DeMille’s version of this event, and Cahill’s version of this event lies the truth. In a matter of less than a minute, Cecil B. DeMille shows the waters standing tall for the passage of Israel. According to Exodus 14:8-31 it took a strong east wind blowing through the night to stand the waters in a heap and make a path between them. Generations of Jews and Christians have regarded the deliverance at the Yom Suph as the defining moment in Israel’s history—Cahill would agree; but a less than careful reader might miss that. Buy the book at Amazon