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Book No. – 48 (History)
Book Name – Western Civilisation: Their History and Their Culture (Edward Mcnall)
What’s Inside the Chapter? (After Subscription)
1. HEBREW BEGINNINGS
2. THE RECORD OF POLITICAL HOPES AND FRUSTRATIONS
3. HEBREW RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT
4. HEBREW LAW AND LITERATURE
5. THE MAGNITUDE OF THE HEBREW INFLUENCE
6. THE MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATIONS
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LANGUAGE
The Hebrew and Early Greek Civilisations
Chapter – 4
Table of Contents
- Lord thy God brought the Hebrews out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage.
- Commandments include:
- Have no other gods before God.
- Do not take the name of the Lord in vain.
- Agamemnon in The Iliad: Awoke from slumber, wore a soft tunic, a great cloak, and fair sandals.
- Agamemnon grasped his ancestral sceptre, indestructible forever.
- Hebrews were dwarfed by the great empires of Mesopotamia and Egypt in both territory and military power.
- Despite their political insignificance, the Hebrews had the greatest historical significance and influence on modern thought and life.
- The ancient Greek civilizations (there were two) are notable for their grace, sophistication, and being the earliest European civilizations.
HEBREW BEGINNINGS
- The Hebrews were members of the Semitic language family and first appeared in Mesopotamia.
- The patriarch Abraham‘s family was native to Sumer.
- Hebrews were initially a wandering pastoral people, making their exact whereabouts hard to trace.
- Between 1900 and 1500 B.C., the Hebrews migrated from Mesopotamia to southern Syria (Canaan) and then into Egypt.
- A tribe of Hebrews descended from Jacob’s grandson began to call themselves “Israelites” after Jacob’s name Israel, meaning “soldier of God”.
- Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt during the time of the New Kingdom pharaohs, who sought more slaves to fuel the Egyptian economy.
- Around 1250 B.C., Moses led the Exodus out of Egypt into the Sinai peninsula and introduced worship of Yahweh(later Jehovah).
- Moses united the Hebrews, convincing them that Yahweh was the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
- After wandering for a generation in the Sinai deserts, Hebrews aimed to return to Canaan, described as “flowing with milk and honey”.
- Canaan was already occupied by the Canaanites, a Semitic language people, leading to conflict over land.
- Hebrews faced difficulties in gaining territory, with Joshua gaining some land but not enough, as the Israelites were not equipped for siege warfare.
- After Joshua’s death, the Hebrews struggled with tribal particularism and failed to maintain military unity.
- They gained only some hills and fertile valleys in Canaan after a century of fighting.
- The Hebrews were also threatened by an invasion from the Philistines, a non-Semitic people from Asia Minor, who conquered much of Canaan by 1050 B.C..
- The region became known as Palestine, meaning “Philistine country.”
- To defend against the Philistine threat, the Hebrews transitioned from a tribal system of judges to a more unified national government.
- Around 1025 B.C., Samuel, a tribal judge, selected Saul as the first king to unite the Israelite tribes.