Niebuhr, Reinhold
Ninkasi (Sumerian goddess)
Ninkilim (Sumerian goddess)
Ninsun (Sumerian goddess, mother of Gilgamesh), 1.1, 1.2, 1.3
Ninurta (Sumerian god)
Noah
Sumerian antecedent to, 1.1, 1.2
Obed (son of Ruth)
Odyssey (Homer), 2.1
Old Testament. See Bible; Commandments; Torah; specific books
Oral tradition
Bible and, itr.1, 2.1, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3
of nomads
Original sin, doctrine of
Palestine, term origin
Passover
Patriarchs
Joseph (son of Yaakov/Israel)
Yaakov/Jacob/Israel (son of Yitzhak), 2.1, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3
See also Avraham (formerly Avram); Avram (later Avraham); Moshe (Moses); Yitzhak (son of Avraham)
Patronal gods, of Sumer, 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3
Persians
Pharaohs, of Egypt
Akhnaton
Avram and, 2.1, 3.1
dynastic marriage arranged with Solomon
Joseph and, 3.1, 3.2
Moshe and, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4
Rameses II, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1
Tutankhamon
unnamed who enslaves Israelites (Seti I), 3.1, 3.2
See also Egypt
Philistines
David as vassal to
as enemies of Israelites, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.7
Phoenicians
Pottery
Present moment, concept of, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3
Processive worldview, vs. cyclical worldview
Prophets
Amos, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3
Elijah the Tishbite
Hosea
Isaiah of Judah, 6.1, 7.1
Jeremiah
Joel
Micah
Nathan, 5.1, 5.2, 6.1, 6.2
Samuel, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 6.1
Prostitutes
in Epic of Gilgamesh, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3
in Sumerian rituals, 1.1, 1.2
Psalms (Book of), 5.1, 5.2, 6.1, 7.1, 7.2
See also David (king of Israel), poetry of
Pua (midwife)
Puech, Henri-Charles, Man and Time, itr.1
Ra (Egyptian god)
Rachel (wife of Yaakov/Israel)
Rameses II (Egyptian pharaoh), 3.1, 3.2, 4.1
Reality. See Cyclical worldview
Rebecca/Rivka (wife of Yitzhak)
Rehoboam (son of Solomon)
Rivka/Rebecca (wife of Yitzhak)
Rosenzweig, Franz
Ruach (wind, breath), 5.1, 6.1
Rublev, Andrei
Ruth (Book of), 6.1, 7.1, 7.2
Sabbath, innovation of
Sacrifice. See Human sacrifice
Samaria, capital of Kingdom of Israel, 6.1, 6.2
Samuel (prophet), 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 6.1
Sappho
Sara (formerly Sarai, wife of Avraham)
death and burial of
pregnancy of, 2.1, 2.2
renamed by God
See also Sarai (later Sara, wife of Avram)
Sarai (later Sara, wife of Avram)
barrenness of, 2.1, 2.2
in Egypt
migration to Canaan
See also Sara (formerly Sarai, wife of Avraham)
Sarna, Nahum
Saul (king of Israelites)
David laments death of
Goliath terrifies
hatred of David
loses YHWH’S favor, 5.1, 5.2
YHWH chooses, 5.1
Scriptures. See Bible; Commandments; Torah; specific books
Septuagint, 3.1, 7.1, 7.2
Seti I (Egyptian pharaoh), 3.1, 3.2
Shaddai (“Mountain God,” “God of High Place”), 2.1, 2.2
Shakespeare, William
Shekhem, 2.1, 3.1
Sheol
Shifra (midwife)
Shulamite, in Song of Songs
Sinai, desert of, Israelites in, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3
Sinai, Mount, Moshe encounters YHWH on, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4
Snakes, symbolism of
Sodom
destruction of
location of
Solomon (son of David), as king of Israelites, 6.1, 6.2
Song of Songs, 1.1, 6.1, 7.1, 7.2
Spiders, symbolism of
Spieser, E. A., 2.1
Spiral, symbolism of
Suffering, unmerited
Sumer
agriculture in, 1.1, 1.2
Biblical antecedents from, 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2
cosmology of, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3
development of urban communities in
language of, 1.1, 1.2
mythic stories of, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2.1
Semitic conquest of, 1.1, 2.1
sense of history lacking m
sexual practices
Temple of the Moon (Ur), 1.1, 1.2
Symbol(s)
bull as, 2.1, 4.1, 4.2
for moon cycles, 2.1, 2.2
See also Writing
Tablets
containing commandments, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3
as recording medium
Talmuds
Tammuz
Temple of the Moon (Ur), 1.1, 1.2
Temples
architecture of
of Ishtar, 1.1, 1.2
in Jerusalem, 4.1, 6.1, 6.2
Temple of the Moon (Ur), 1.1, 1.2
Ten Commandments. See Commandments
Thomas Aquinas
Tiglath-pileser III
Tigris-Euphrates plain, early communities in, 1.1, 1.2
Time. See Cyclical worldview; History
Tools, invention of agricultural
Torah
books of, 7.1, 7.2
evolution of, 6.1, 6.2
influence of environment in
moral prescriptions in
See also specific books
Tower of Babel
Trade
Sumerian
of United Kingdom of Israel
Tribes, of Israel, 3.1, 5.1, 6.1
Tutankhamon (Egyptian pharaoh)
Tzippora (wife of Moshe), 3.1, 3.2
United Kingdom of Israel. See Israel, United Kingdom of
Ur (Sumer)
Temple of the Moon, 1.1, 1.2
Terah of
Urbanization, development of
Uriah the Hittite, 5.1, 5.2
Uruk (Sumer)
description in Epic of Gilgamesh, 1.1
temple of Ishtar, 1.1, 1.2
Ut-napishtim (Sumerian mythical figure), in Epic of Gilgamesh, 1.1, 1.2, 2.1
Venereal disease
Vocation (personal destiny)
See also Individuality
Warka (Iraq)
Waugh, Evelyn
Wheeled transport
Wheel of Life. See Cyclical worldview
Wisdom of Solomon (Book of)
Women
civilizing influence of
moon associated with
in post-exilic literature
symbols for, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3
Writing
evolution of pictographs
invention of alphabet, 4.1, 6.1
Sumerian invention of, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4
See also Symbols
YHWH
anger at broken commandments, 4.1, 4.2
awakening spiritual realm
breath of, 5.1, 6.1
champion of poor and powerless, 4.1, 5.1, 6.1, 6.2, 7.1
comforts Israelites in Sinai, 4.1, 4.2
commandments to Israelites
David and, 5.1, 5.2
Egyptian plagues
meaning of name
Moshe and, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4
Saul and, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3
self-description, 4.1, 4.2
voice of, as revealed by Elijah, 6.1, 6.2
See also
Hebrew God
Yaakov/Jacob/Israel (son of Yitzhak), 2.1, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3
Yahweh. See YHWH
Yehoshua (Joshua), 5.1, 5.2
Yishmael (son of Avraham), 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4
Yisrael. See Yaakov/Jacob/Israel (son of Yitzhak)
Yitzhak (son of Avraham)
deprives firstborn of birthright, 2.1, 3.1
marriage to Rivka
sacrificial offering of
Zedekiah (king of Judah)
Ziggurats, Sumerian, 1.1, 2.1
Thomas Cahill
The Gifts of the Jews
Thomas Cahill is the author of the bestselling Hinges of History series, published to great acclaim throughout the English-speaking world and in translation in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Born in New York City, Cahill graduated from Fordham University and earned an MFA in film and dramatic literature from Columbia University. A lifelong scholar, he has taught at Queens College, Fordham University, and Seton Hall University and studied scripture at Union Theological Seminary and Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible as a Visiting Scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He served as North American education correspondent for The Times of London and was for many years a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Book Review. For six years he was Director of Religious Publishing at Doubleday before retiring to write full-time. In addition to The Hinges of History, Cahill has published Pope John XXIII and Jesus’ Little Instruction Book, and with his wife, Susan Cahill, A Literary Guide to Ireland and Big City Stories by Modern American Writers. In 1999 Cahill was awarded an honorary doctorate from Alfred University. He and his wife divide their time between New York City and Rome.
Acclaim for THOMAS CAHILL’S
The Gifts of the Jews
“Shrewd and impassioned.”
—David Denby, The New Yorker
“Generous, sweeping.… Colloquial and entertaining.… [Cahill’s] passion and breadth of knowledge are admirable.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Stunning.… Impassioned.… Imaginative.… The Gifts of the Jews is a very good read, a dramatically effective, often compelling retelling of the Hebrew Bible.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“Engaging, witty and entertaining, this book is a revelation.”
—Detroit Free Press
“Lively and idiosyncratic … written with humor, whimsy, and an engaging sensitivity to literary nuance.… Cahill shows a remarkable sensitivity to the biblical text, and his enthusiasm for the Bible as a whole is quite contagious.”
—Commentary
“An entertaining, compelling, and concise historical narrative … relayed to us with intelligence and clarity.”
—BookPage
“A witty and sophisticated … meditation on the interplay of cultural history and religious thought.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Hinges of History
We normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outrage by outrage—almost as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence. And surely this is, often enough, an adequate description. But history is also the narratives of grace, the recountings of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance.
In this series, THE HINGES OF HISTORY, I mean 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. This is also the story of the evolution of Western sensibility, a narration of how we became the people we are and why we think and feel the way we do. And it is, finally, a recounting of those essential moments when everything was at stake, when the mighty stream that became Western history was in ultimate danger and might have divided into a hundred useless tributaries or frozen in death or evaporated altogether. But the great gift-givers, arriving in the moment of crisis, provided for transition, for transformation, and even for transfiguration, leaving us a world more varied and complex, more awesome and delightful, more beautiful and strong than the one they had found.
—Thomas Cahill
The Hinges of History
VOLUME I
HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION
THE UNTOLD STORY OF IRELAND’S HEROIC ROLE FROM THE FALL OF ROME TO THE RISE OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE
This introductory volume presents the reader with a new way of looking at history. Its time period—the end of the classical period and the beginning of the medieval period—enables us to look back to our ancient roots and forward to the making of the modern world.
VOLUME II
THE GIFTS OF THE JEWS
HOW A TRIBE OF DESERT NOMADS CHANGED THE WAY EVERYONE THINKS AND FEELS
This is the first of three volumes on the creation of the Western world in ancient times. It is first because its subject matter takes us back to the earliest blossoming of Western sensibility, there being no West before the Jews.
VOLUME III
DESIRE OF THE EVERLASTING HILLS
THE WORLD BEFORE AND AFTER JESUS
This volume, which takes as its subject Jesus and the first Christians, comes directly after The Gifts of the Jews, because Christianity grows directly out of the unique culture of ancient Judaism.
VOLUME IV
SAILING THE WINE-DARK SEA
WHY THE GREEKS MATTER
The Greek contribution to our Western heritage comes to us largely through the cultural conduit of the Romans (who, though they do not have a volume of their own, are a presence in Volumes I, III, IV, and V). The Greek contribution, older than Christianity, nevertheless continues past the time of Jesus and his early followers and brings us to the medieval period. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea concludes our study of the making of the ancient world.
VOLUME V
MYSTERIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES
AND THE BEGINNING OF THE MODERN WORLD
The high Middle Ages are the first iteration of the combined sources of Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman cultures that make Western civilization singular. In the fruitful interaction of these sources, science and realistic art are rediscovered and feminism makes its first appearance in human history.
VOLUMES VI AND VII
These volumes will continue and conclude our investigation of the making of the modern world and the impact of its cultural innovations on the sensibility of the West.
By Thomas Cahill
THE HINGES OF HISTORY
INTRODUCTORY VOLUME:
How the Irish Saved Civilization
THE MAKING OF THE ANCIENT WORLD:
The Gifts of the Jews
Desire of the Everlasting Hills
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea
THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD:
Mysteries of the Middle Ages
Two additional volumes are planned on the making of the modern world.
Also by Thomas Cahill
A Literary Guide to Ireland (with Susan Cahill)
Jesus’ Little Instruction Book