Gelernter's grandiose boasts
Dom
way of Being," on the NPR program "On Point," which is available at:
http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/12/david-gelernter
It is unfortunate that Tom Ashbrook did not deflate Gelernter's claims
by asking why Herodotus, ["The Histories" trans. by Robin Waterfield,
Oxford Univ. Press (1998)], made no mention of ancient Israel or
Judaism. Herodotus mentioned various religious practices of the
Egyptians and Persians, which may have influenced the development of
Judaism. He wrote the following about the Egyptians in Book II.
“Egyptians practice circumcision … write … from right to left …” [36]
“Everyone, without any exception, scrubs clean the bronze cup he uses
for drinking every day.” [37]
“… there is just one day of the year–the day of the festival of Zeus–
when they chop up a single ram [...]" [42]
“Egyptians consider pigs to be unclean animals.” [47]
"Cholcians, Egyptians and Ethiopians are the only peoples in the world
who practice circumcision and they have always done so. The
Phoenicians and Palestinian Syrians are the first to admit that they
learnt the practice from Egypt, and the Syrians who live in the land
between the Thermodon and Parthenius rivers, and their neighbors the
Macrones, say that in their case it is a recent import from Colchis.
[...] The Phoenicians who have come in contact with Greece have
stopped copying the Egyptians with respect to their genitalia, and do
not cut off their children’s foreskins." [104]
In Book I [131] Herodotus wrote the following about the Persians: “It
is not one of their customs to construct statues, temples, and altars;
in fact they count those who do so as fools because (I suppose) they
do not anthropomorphize their gods as the Greeks do. Their worship of
Zeus consists in going up to the highest mountain peaks and performing
sacrifices; they call the whole vault of heaven Zeus.”
Gelernter's claims are also at odds with the NOVA broadcast “The
Bible’s Buried Secrets” at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bible/
which it is much more mind-opening than Gelernter’s narrowness.