It is a truism that the West was formed by Athens and Jerusalem—meaning the rational thinking introduced by Greece and the moral and religious thought introduced by Israel.
Of the two, Jerusalem’s contribution was the more enduring. Relatively few Westerners read Aristotle and Plato. Virtually every citizen of the West—even the illiterate—until the last generation or two was familiar with the Bible. Europe was Westernized by the Catholic Church in the name of the Bible, not Homer.
Were it not for the Jews and their Bible, there would be no Christianity—and therefore no Western civilization. The abolition of slavery was led by Bible-believing Christians. The Bible, not Aristotle, was their moral inspiration.
With regard to America, its Founders, even the less religious ones, were rooted in biblical morality. Two of the least religious, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, designed a Great Seal of the United States that depicted the Jews leaving Egypt. The only inscription on the symbol of American Liberty, the Liberty Bell, is a verse from the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). The insignia of Yale University is in Hebrew, and it, too, is taken from the Torah. The Princeton University seal features an open Bible. Until about 1800, students at Yale, Harvard and other universities were required to study Hebrew.
Many American Founders described America as a “Second Israel.” In the words of Eran Shalev, a Fulbright scholar who became a professor of history at Haifa University:
So prevalent was the Old Testament in the early culture of the United States that for decades after the start of the nineteenth century it was, in the words of Perry Miller (a Harvard professor regarded as the cofounder of the field of American studies) as ‘omnipresent … as … the air that people breathed.’
The American Founders’ attitude toward the Jews is summed up in these words of John Adams, second president of the United States:
I will insist the Hebrews have (contributed) more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. … The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the Jews. They have given religion to three-quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind more, and more happily, than any other nation, ancient or modern.
As Israel once made the West, now it is saving the West. This was eloquently stated a few weeks ago by Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker in a column titled, “Israel Defends Itself—and May Save Western Civilization”:
How will we ever repay the debt we owe Israel? What the Jewish state has done in the past year—for its own defense, but in the process and not coincidentally for the security of all of us—will rank among the most important contributions to the defense of Western civilization in the past three-quarters of a century.
“Israel has in 12 months done nothing less than redraw the balance of global security, not just in the region but in the wider world. It has eliminated thousands of the terrorists whose commitment to a savage theocratic ideology has claimed so many lives across the region and the world for decades.
“Above all, it has provided an unexpected but crucial reminder to our enemies that there are at least some willing and able to pursue and defeat them, whatever the risk to our own lives and resources. The only appropriate responses to Israel’s gallantry, fortitude and skill from us—its nominal allies, especially in the U.S.—are ‘thank you’ and ‘how can we help?’
“Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few, Winston Churchill said of the men of the Royal Air Force after they had repelled Hitler’s Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain.
“We should echo those words today as we watch in awe what a country smaller in area than New Jersey, with a population less than North Carolina’s and an economy smaller than that of Washington state, has done for all of us.
Baker is not alone in understanding that Israel’s war is a war for the West. On the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacres, Brendan O’Neill, former editor of the British libertarian magazine Spiked, wrote:
The West’s moral failures in the aftermath of 7 October were of an entirely new order. They exceeded even my grim fears. They shone a harsh, inescapable light on the retreat from reason and abandonment of Enlightenment many of us have warned of for years. … The delirium of our post-civilizational era emerged into broad daylight. It was undeniable now: The West is in the stranglehold of a profound moral crisis. … The sympathy for Hamas on our campuses and streets is fundamentally an extension of the West’s own crisis of meaning, of our denial of our own insights, of our betrayal of our history.
“A war for the soul of humanity must now be fought. On two fronts. On the physical front of Israel’s borders … (a)nd on the intellectual front here at home. … Only a full-throated defense of the virtues and wonders of Western civilisation might see off the moral derangement of our times and the Jew hatred it has nurtured.
If you care about Western civilization, you need to care about ancient Israel and Israel today.
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Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His commentary on Numbers, the fourth volume of “The Rational Bible,” his five-volume commentary on the first five books of the Bible, will be released in November 2024 and is available now for presale on Amazon. He is the co-founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
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I think Mr. Prager is being a tad biased about this. True, the Christian religion, coming from Israel and being more or less indirectly filtered through the Greco-Roman world, had an undeniable and enduring influence on Western culture.
But downplaying the massive impact that Roman culture, philosophy, mores, law and–especially–government and social structure had on the West is myopic at best. I would go as far as to say that without Rome, Christianity may have stayed a relatively obscure religion and may have flamed out in a handful of centuries.
Charlemagne, whose contribution to the spread of Christianity throughout Europe remains unmatched, thought himself as part of the continuation of the Roman empire. His court intellectuals, first among whom was Alcuin of York, standardized the study of the liberal arts throughout Europe (also thanks to the invention of standard and easy-to-read Caroline script) and did more to propel Western culture than possibly anything before and after.
So even as a Christian Catholic and a proud Zionist, I am reluctant to give such preeminence to Jewish culture (as in, the unfiltered version) to the downplaying of the massive influence that Roman and secular culture had in the West. Just my 2 cents.
“A man’s got ta know his limitations”
And mine are none too small - in terms of truly comprehending and having a command of the breath of the influences you point out - re Rome, and Mr. Prager does re Jewish influence.
I must say, I felt as I was reading his piece - that it was just a tad too much on the “too pleased with itself”, Jewish side of the ledger; in terms of the praise he was heaping thereon - and I felt your assessment helped bring things more in line, in tune with reality.
So - not points I can comment on with anything to add specifically.
What I do believe though is that he is right in that Israel standing firm and going after the monsters that are Hamas - and radical Islam - wherever it raises its disgusting head - be it in London, America, or anywhere it has infested - cannot be avoided - nor gently coddled; violence of a terminal type being what they understand best.
Once upon a time there was a fool who was President of America who referred to Islam as “The Religion of Peace” - that same person is no less a fool now than he was back then and is still supporting the very force that would - and will - if they can destroy America and all that is good and meaningful about America and the West.
But they make perfect - temporary - confidants of the communists and Leftist who share with them the desire to destroy anything and anyone that dares to defy them.
Well - what’s good for the gander is good for the goose - and it’s time to give as good as we have gotten.
Attributing the existence of the West to Israel is simply one man’s opinion. This proposition denigrates the series of events over centuries contributing to the beliefs, culture, values resulting in what we call “The West”, with many actors, ideas and places playing parts throughout those centuries. Given that the West was extremely hostile to Jews for all of its history, it’s more than puzzling why anyone would link Israel to the creation of the West. It surely may have contributed ideas just as others who carried on trading and other contacts with those in Europe or America did, but the whole of Western culture is against this proposition, especially literature, which has not been kind to Jews in the West, most notably Shakespeare. The common (Western) belief is that Jews rejected Jesus, the Messiah, and therefore forfeited their place as God’s chosen people. All people who believed in Jesus whether Franks, Visigoths or Vikings, became chosen people and they certainly rejected the Jews. That, at least to this humble reader, was the underlying theme in the West.
Protestant Christians, Orthodox Christians, and Catholics have been arguing over the Bible and translating it for centuries, cutting out the inconvenient Maccabees in some versions and changing or losing meaning in those translations and edits. Prager is exhibiting chutzpah here. He is right about the West’s abandonment of its own history, culture and values. If Westerners have forgotten Plato, Aristotle and the Bible, they have no use for anything else of value. Knowledge is free to everyone. It only takes desire and effort to acquire it. Wisdom on the other hand, is something that comes only by the grace of God.