The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (34 page)

David laments death of

Goliath terrifies

hatred of David

loses Y
HWH’S
favor,
5.1
,
5.2

Y
HWH
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 Y
HWH
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

Terah, migration to Harran

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

Y
HWH

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
Y
HWH

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)

birth of

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 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.

W
e 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.