The Gifts Of The Jews

The Gifts Of The Jews is Volume II of Thomas Cahill’s The Hinges of History series. In it, Cahill traces the birth of a new belief system from the ancient Sumerian civilization to Abraham’s encounter with the voice of God, following the Israelites to captivity and eventual escape from Egypt led by Moses and into the promised land of Canaan with some history of the kings and events following that arrival thrown in for good measure. And although the subtitle of the book is “How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels”, I think a better description would be “a concise retelling of stories from the Hebrew Bible with witty comments interspersed in an attempt to amuse the reader”.

The reason I even have this book is that I read Volume I How The Irish Saved Civilization back in college and remembered enjoying it enough that when I saw another Cahill book I purchased it. However, at the time I didn’t realize this was a series of books (it doesn’t say on the cover) and the one I purchased was actually Volume III. And because I’m a crazy person who won’t read books out of order even if they aren’t actually sequels, instead of just reading Volume III, I went out and bought Volume II and then left it sitting on my shelf for years until I finally picked it up last month.

Anyway, I enjoyed the way Cahill retold the Bible stories and put some of the action in context of other events happening in history at the time, or at least the time historians think the events took place, assuming of course that they actually took place. But I kept waiting for him to explain what exactly the Jews did to change the world. As near as I can tell his thesis revolves simply around the idea that this new belief system (what became Judaism) is the foundation of thoughts like future, individuality, and justice and that without the Jews these would not have come about. He spends the last chapter trying to wrap it up and tie everything together, but it left me wanting more explanation. You won’t miss anything by skipping this book, but as just a history of the Old Testament for dummies, it was entertaining and at least a little thought provoking. Since I have Volume III I’m sure I’ll be reading that down the road at some point.

Next up: I Only Roast The Ones I Love by Jeffrey Ross