141. Desire of the Everlasting Hills
Rating: ☆☆☆1/2
Recommended by: Beth Roach
Author: Thomas Cahill
Genre: Non-Fiction, History, Theology, Christian
368 pages, published 1997
Reading Format: Book
Summary
In Desire of the Everlasting Hills, historian Thomas Cahill explores the impact of Jesus Christ on Western civilization and ascertain whether Jesus made a difference. His answer is unequivocal. Introducing us first to “the people Jesus knew,” Cahill describes the oppressive Roman political presence, the pervasive Greek cultural influence, and the widely varied social and religious context of the Judaism at the time when Jesus lived. These backgrounds, essential to a complete understanding of Jesus, lead to the author’s original interpretation of the New Testament. We see Jesus as a real person who is haunted by his inevitable crucifixion, the cruelest form of execution ever devised by humankind. Mary is a vivid presence and forceful influence on her son. And the apostle Paul, the carrier of Jesus’ message and most important figure in the early Jesus movement (which became Christianity), finds rehabilitation in Cahill’s realistic, revealing portrait of him.
Quotes
“Jesus was no ivory-tower philosopher but a down-to-earth man who understood that much of the good of human life is to be found in taste, touch, smell, and the small attentions of one human being for another.”
“In the cities of the Jewish diaspora (especially Alexandria, Antioch, Tarsus, Ephesus, and Rome), Jews were widely admired by their gentile neighbors. For one thing, they had a real religion, not a clutter of gods and goddesses and pro forma rituals that almost nobody took seriously anymore. They actually believed in their one God; and, imagine, they even set aside one day a week to pray to him and reflect on their lives. They possessed a dignified library of sacred books that they studied reverently as part of this weekly reflection and which, if more than a little odd in their Greek translation, seemed to point toward a consistent worldview. Besides their religious seriousness, Jews were unusual in a number of ways that caught the attention of gentiles. They were faithful spouses—no, really—who maintained strong families in which even grown children remained affectively attached and respectful to their parents. Despite Caesar Nero’s shining example, matricide was virtually unknown among them. Despite their growing economic success, they tended to be more scrupulous in business than non-Jews. And they were downright finicky when it came to taking human life, seeming to value even a slave’s or a plebeian’s life as much as anyone else’s. Perhaps in nothing did the gentiles find the Jews so admirable as in their acts of charity. Communities of urban Jews, in addition to opening synagogues, built welfare centers for aiding the poor, the miserable, the sick, the homebound, the imprisoned, and those, such as widows and orphans, who had no family to care for them. For all these reasons, the diaspora cities of the first century saw a marked increase in gentile initiates to Judaism.”
“That the Roman empire was, like all its predecessors, a form of extortion by force, an enriching of well-connected Romans (who “make a desolation and call it peace”) at the expense of hapless conquered peoples, would also not have carried much weight with most readers. Hadn’t Philip of Macedon’s first conquest been the seizure of the Balkan gold mines? Hadn’t Alexander’s last planned campaign been for the sake of controlling the lucrative Arabian spice trade? How could anyone demur over such things? What would be the point of holding out against the nature of man and of the universe itself? Augustus set up in the midst of the Roman Forum a statue of himself that loomed eleven times the size of a normal man,10 and similarly awesome statues were erected in central shrines throughout the empire. Augustus was not a normal man; he was a god, deserving of worship. And, like all gods, he was terrifying.”
“Alexander was, therefore, “the Great,” the greatest man who had ever lived. If Plato was the measure of all subsequent philosophy and Phidias of all attempts to carve a man in marble, Alexander was the measure of man himself. We may think such a value system outmoded or remote, but it was not so long ago that Napolean enchanted Europe in his quest to be the modern Alexander, nor were such values unknown to the generals and kommandants of the twentieth century, and God knows they continue to infect the brains of all those who take up weapons of destruction in what they believe to be a noble cause. Indeed, down the whole course of history, the invincible warrior with raised sword has been the archetypal hero of the human race.”
“since a Samaritan as the model of Christ-like behavior would rub so many Jewish Christians the wrong way? But Luke’s gentile Christians needed to be reassured that there was more than one way to be Christ-like, more than one path that could be taken if you would follow in the footsteps of the Master. You needn’t be a born Jew, raised in the traditions of the ancestors. There was no background that was unthinkable: it was even possible to be something as freaky as a Samaritan. As we stand now at the entrance to the third millennium since Jesus, we can look back over the horrors of Christian history, never doubting for an instant that if Christians had put kindness ahead of devotion to good order, theological correctness, and our own justifications—if we had followed in the humble footsteps of a heretical Samaritan who was willing to wash someone else’s wounds, rather than in the self-regarding steps of the priest and the immaculate steps of the levite—the world we inhabit would be a very different one.”
“To the Greek mind, the unwillingness to compromise in religious matters—which were not all that important, anyway—was impious, unpatriotic, maybe even seditious. For the Jews, religion was the Way of Life; it had nothing in common with the empty rituals of the Greeks.”
My Take
While a bit dense at times, Desire of the Everlasting Hills is an interesting read. With discussions of Alexander the Great, the Greeks and the Roman Empire, Cahill lays the foundation for the world entered by Jesus and shows how truly disruptive Christ and the new Christians were to the old order. I have always enjoyed history and am particularly interested in learning more about Jesus. Desire of the Everlasting Hills fulfills both of these pursuits and is worthy of reading.