Western exceptionalism and Western civilization are intimately tied to Hebraic exceptionalism and the Hebrew Bible

 

Hebraic Exceptionalism and Western Exceptionalism

by Paul Kraue


Western civilization is back in vogue, or, at least, is starting to have defenders again in the midst of civilizational malaise, crisis, and desecration. But what is the West? That question is essential moving forward and our answer will have serious consequences. As such, it is one of the most important questions to wrestle with in the still young 21st century.

“We must understand the Bible is not exceptional.” That is how my Hebrew Bible professor began his first lecture when I attended Yale as a theology student, concentrating in historical theology and the Hebrew Bible. By “de-mythologizing” the Bible and placing it in its Near Eastern context, the point of the Hebrew Bible curriculum was to cut the Bible down to size and show that it was just one text of many texts containing a number of ideas among many similar competing ideas. Or so that was the intent.

The Hebrew Bible, however, is exceptional. It is exceptional in its Near Eastern context not for what it shared in similarity with other Mesopotamian and North African texts but what it radically differed in. It is also exceptional in the mere fact that it survived in its fullness for posterity, something that cannot be said for much of the literature of Sumer, Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt, however inspiring these antecedent texts are and were.

Regardless of how we wrestle with Scripture, the reality remains: The Bible is exceptional precisely because the Bible persevered into modernity while its many competitors did not. As a result of this, Western history and our intellectual traditions are tied to the Bible whether we like it or not, or whether we want to admit it or not. Refusing to acknowledge this doesn’t change historical reality; but it does have serious ramifications for our intellectual culture and its future.

Students of philosophy will tend to recognize that much of Western sensibilities and values—the dignity of persons (made in the image of God); liberation against forces of oppression; social justice; compassion for the widow, orphan, resident alien, and sick; equality before judge, jury, and law; the true understanding of democracy as national self-determination to cultivate a national destiny—has its very roots in the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible. This is not, in and of itself, triumphalistic. It’s a historical fact that the Hebrew Bible among many competitors just happened to win out and became a major source of nourishment for Western civilization.

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This was originally published with the same title in The Imaginative Conservative on November 8, 2020.

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