Rating: 
Summary: Missed the point, deliberately
Review: Let's face it, Jewish values wouldn't be part of the basis of Western civilization if it weren't for the embracing of Christianity, notably by Constantine in the 4th century, i.e., Christianity was the conduit for certain Jewish values reaching Western civilization. Thus, as far as the latter is concerned, the true gift of the Jews was Jesus Christ - that's the point. At the end of the book, Cahill says "we must ever contemplate the awful Day of YHWH, the coming destruction of our wealth and security, the razing ......etc." To Christians of course, this is the Day of the LORD - Judgement Day, the second coming. YHWH = Jesus Christ
Rating: 
Summary: I didn't think I'd like this book...
Review: but I did. I had to read it for Dr. Duffy's class, and I'm sure I was one of the three people who actually enjoyed doing this particular bit of homework. I'm not the most familiar with the bible, but it made the time period interesting, at least, so that I might actually go back and read that long, boring book.
Rating: 
Summary: Naivete, Nomads, Novelty, Newness, and NOW-ness...
Review: Mention the Bible and the Jews in any public room these days, and you'll get 12 different reactions. From the most wooden-headed believer to the most petulant skeptic, everyone's got an opinion. Cahill is no different, but he is a man of complex tastes, training, and viewpoints. It's wise not to judge him one-dimensionally on a first pass. Nor, I must add, should we do the same to his subject matter. It's tempting to take the Bible at face value--either producing letter-abiding fundamentalists of every monotheistic stripe, or reductionists on every lens. Cahill does the Jewish people and tradition a service by trying to shatter naivete--theirs and ours. Some people blissfully assume that we were all semi-divine flower-children before this hideous smudge called the Bible detached us from our roots; others also blissfully assume that the God of "beating swords into ploughshares" is not the same deity who, according to our handed-down stories, started out a patriarchal back-pocket fixit guy who had a SERIOUS thing for fire & brimstone! What Cahill tries to do is to educate both and all sides that the story of the Jews--and, as such, the story of the Bible--is more complex than either hymns or heresy. These were real people, real faith, real triumphs, real tragedies, real atrocities, real apogees. All of it held together with the glue of worldview--and, in his excellent (if sometimes humorous) prose, Cahill tries to inform us what the language of this sacred story does for worldview. Love it or hate it, Jews and the Bible, through their "myth" (read: WORLDVIEW) have, wittingly or unwittingly, shaped ours. This, in a nutshell, is Cahill's thesis, and a compelling one at that. Hurl all the charges of patriarchy, chauvanism, intolerance, and whatever else you please--the Bible's influence and impact are undeniable, as are the ideas it spawned. This God, this forceful, jealous, get-in-your-face kind of God, this God who seems inordinately obsessed with the affairs and hearts of mortals, is something we owe to the Jews. Prophet and potentate alike have invoked this deity, but neither would be able to lay claim to such if not for the Jews. Call ethical monotheism what you will, but it has made its indelible mark on human history. This wily people with their quixotic relationship with a peculiar God; what are we to make of them? Destroy them, belittle them, exterminate them? No; we've already tried the former, much to our own shame. Instead, we must learn from them and share in their legacy, whether we admit it or not.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Insights
Review: Cahill gives a dispationate and insightful view of our early history. Read it and understand whgy we do and think many of the things we do.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Overview, a bit Modernist
Review: With any book, the author's belief guides his conclusions. But with Cahill I found it difficult to discern whether he believes in God or not. He oscillates throughout down to the last topic of "if God exists, how can 500,000 get slaughtered in Ugonda".As a person confident in God's existence and consistency and wonder of His word, I enjoy the sections when Cahill's open analysis of the Bible leads him to accept God's reality....Cahill willingly accepts the validity and accuracy of Amos and Hosea's divine inspiration. In other sections, however, Cahill extrapolates missing details in ways that challenge and modernize the Bible's message. He portrays Abraham as an ancient used-car salesman who triumphs from his own wits, and Moses a man who can make God change his mind. To me, the real interpretation of the Moses/God exchange about not destroying the 'revelers' represents God molding Moses' character and testing his love for the people he led, more than a genocide averted by Moses' powers of argument against our omnipotent creator. Similarly, he hypothesizes that the Jewish religious leaders editorialized the Bible, adding human ideas for their own purposes and agendas. All my knowledge of ancient scribes says that if in making a scriptural copy a single mistake was made, the scribe had to begin again from scratch....
Rating: 
Summary: Sarcastic and Sardonic
Review: Considering its name, The Gifts of the Jews is not a book I (as a Jew) think Jews would enjoy. The author, Thomas Cahill, spends over 250 pages using a tone that could generally be described as sardonic and sarcastic. Mr. Cahill repeatedly cites the King James Bible to back up arguments which are often disrespectful to Judaism and seemingly designed to put biblical heroes in the most negative light possible. Kings of Israel and Judah are mentioned to "seldom measure up to expectations, exhibiting ... Solomon's cruelties or undesirable qualities all their own..." (209) while God Himself is referred to many times as "cruel" or "inhumane" while the circumstances and accepted levels of biblical exaggeration are rarely mentioned in these contexts. If the reader desires a narrative of Jewish history, he can attain a much less eccentric angle in Rabbi Wayne Dosick's Living Judaism, or Rabbi Benjamin Blech's Complete Idiot's Guide to Jewish History and Culture. Both of these contain large amounts of well organized information without the distortion evident in Mr. Cahill's book. Your series is a novel idea Mr. Cahill, but I find this book to be very poorly done.
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Summary: Gifts or pretext?
Review: Why is 'Western' culture so unlike that of the majority of other societies in the world? Cahill identifies the sources of our culture in ancient Judaism and relates the revolutionary changes the Jews introduced. In a conceptual treatise, he explains how a small band of people departed from their neighbours by revising their view of the universe and themselves. Viewing time as linear instead of cyclical, replacing a pantheon of deities with monotheism, and enhancing individuality are facets of our culture directly contrasted with those who view Nature as the basis of belief. These new cultural elements violently detached us from nature. We were given the arrogance to ignore natural rules, using 'divine' commands as an excuse to conquer nature and those who worship it. His opening quote from Black Elk represents the view of those displaced by the 'gifts' granted by the Jewish heritage to Christianity. This arrogance is superbly demonstrated by the book's subtitle: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels. Everyone? Or just those who believe that we have a divine grant to subjugate the rest of Nature? This book is an invitation to reflect on who it is we are. That's a question we should ask ourselves from time to time. Gifts doesn't make that query directly, but the implication is strongly felt. What is the impact of this novel way of thinking about ourselves? For one thing, the linear view of time is the basis for all Western scientific thought. Without such a concept we could never recognize how evolution controls the flow of life. Seeking the mechanics of the Big Bang wouldn't be among our enquiries. We would never have sought an answer to our origins either cosmic or biological. Cahill contends that adopting the new view of time imparted the concept of free will, which allowed us the freedom to pursue such inquiries. Monotheism is the most significant element in Cahill's account. Countless aspects of our society derive from this innovation. History is replete with accounts of gods who dealt directly with humanity, more often amicably than otherwise. Zeus descends from Olympus, frolicking with the peasant girls. Among the Australian Aborigines, Baiame joins the hunters, sometimes guiding them to game. Other gods play practical jokes, usually as object lessons. Their company was often sought, and while the gods sometimes acted on whim, fear was not the basis of peoples' relationship with their deities. The gods were as often joyful as terrible. The Jews' god, however, put it point blank: 'I am a jealous god!' In other words, 'I am a petty- minded god concerned with small things!' How much has followed from that dictum? Not only were the Jews forbidden to worship other deities, ultimately it came to mean that no others were permitted to exist. If they manifested themselves, they were to be eliminated. Since the only way a deity can reveal itself is through its followers, those believers must convert or be destroyed. The impact of the global sweep of Judeo-Christian culture over our planet resulting from that one decree remains to be assessed. Cahill describes this imperialism as having 'taken hold in' and being 'subscribed to' by all non-Western societies [p. 250]. He omits mentioning the subscriptions were achieved at gun point and the bill for the subscriptions paid for in human blood. Those who grizzle about this book not being 'scholarly' clearly have failed to discern its worth. Wrapping up such vast concepts in 290 pages is no mean feat. It is, after all, the foundation of today's Western society he's coping with here. Would this book actually benefit from more citations and a longer bibliography? I doubt it. Perhaps a few of you maligning his efforts should go back and take another look. Cahill's organization and writing ability combine to present the reader a worthy addition to any bookshelf. The only real downside is that it's clear we're going to have to buy the entire series to have the whole story. Not a bad investment for those with children.
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Summary: A wonderful introduction into western religion
Review: I disagree with many of the other reviewers of this book in that it should be recognized that this is not an authoritative history of the world. The author tries to make a point of the importance of Judaism in western culture. It's also an excellent introduction to the study of Judaism/Christianity/Islam. It's beautifully written and kept simple. If you are already well-educated about the subject matter, this book is a waste of time for you. Some of the other reviewers seem to have missed the fact that Cahill tries to make it clear that his book is not an all-inclusive or authoritative history and frequently gives references to other academic publications which would give you those qualities. This book is essentially like a 101 class for studying the heirs to Abraham. It was written to be an introduction and it fulfills this goal superbly.
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Summary: Just because it's in print, that doesn't make it true!
Review: This book should have been called, "Thomas Cahill LOVES Jews!" Individuals only started recognizing themselves as individuals since Abraham talked to the sky? What did they think they were before that, monkeys? Listen, if you are the kind of person who believes everything s/he reads without observing for yourself, this book is dangerous for you. It will warp your mind. (Hint: Just because a book contains an Appendix, that doesn't make it true, either.) If you are a thinking person, though, you might enjoy this work as the premier example of how an author can pick a title, then invent history to match it. We should all do it. In fact, I'm going to write a book called, "The Gifts of the Scandinavians." It's going to be about Henrik Ibsen and ABBA, and I'll relate a conversation I had with some whalers in which they revealed how the two girls from the band invented clothing in the "Waterloo" video. Before that, everyone went around naked. I'll claim, just like Cahill, that everyone who disagrees with me is "just plain evil." It shouldn't take me longer than the week Cahill obviously spent on his book.
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Summary: Brings New Meaning to Old Testament
Review: This book explains in a very entertaining way why one-half of the people in the world are now members of an Abrahamic faith. We all know that Christianity and Islam trace their inspirations back to Abraham, but Cahill tells us why faith in the all-powerful one God is such a revolutionary and compelling idea. If you are searching for a book to bring new meaning to the Old Testament, THE GIFTS OF THE JEWS is required reading.
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