GIFT OF THE JEWS BY THOMAS CAHILL

Thomas Cahill’s moving and intelligent book is largely not about its title, The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels. Cahill’s frequent intense points are about how the Jews changed the way everyone thinks and feels. The majority of the book is a relation to major stories of the Hebrew Bible telling the history of the Jewish people and the growth of their relationship with God, from Abraham to the prophets and the Hebrew Bible’s writings.
First of all, the Jewish Bible altered history by plainly creating history. Every religion in the world saw the world in cyclical terms. In describing the cyclical worldview, Cahill cites Henri-Charles Puech, author of Man and Time: "No event is unique, nothing is enacted but once . . . ; every event has been enacted, is enacted, and will be enacted perpetually; the same individuals have appeared, appear, and will appear at every turn of the circle."
On the other hand Judaism was different...