The ideas the world inherited

Ancient cosmologies saw time as an endless circle of eternal recurrence. The Hebrew Bible introduced a history with a beginning, a direction and a destination — the very idea that tomorrow can be different from yesterday.

“The Jews were the first people to break out of this circle… theirs is the only new idea that human beings have ever had.”

The notion that a life — and history itself — can have a calling and a purpose enters Western culture through the Hebrew prophets.

“No people has ever insisted more firmly than the Jews that history has a purpose and humanity a destiny.”

One law for king and shepherd alike: the biblical insistence that no one stands above the law shaped every later constitutional tradition.

“To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human.”

Every human being made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27): the root of the inviolable dignity of the person.

“…the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person… constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind.”

Individual conscience and personal redemption on one side; collective conscience and social responsibility on the other. Both entered the moral vocabulary through Jewish thought.

“…of the individual conscience, and so of personal redemption; of the collective conscience, and so of social responsibility.”

Peace (shalom) as an abstract ideal to strive for — and love of neighbor as the foundation of justice — are biblical inheritances.

“…of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice.”

Monotheism separated the Creator from the creation, so the world itself is not divine: it can be questioned, investigated, experimented with. Historians see here one root of the scientific impulse.

“Above all, the Jews taught us how to rationalize the unknown. The result was monotheism…”

The American founders read themselves as a new Israel: Jefferson proposed the children of Israel guided by the pillar of fire for the Seal of the United States. Liberty, equality and progress reached them through the Hebrew Bible.

“That light was a Biblical light… the idea of the sacred and equal importance of every man, as made in the image of God.”