Child Israel

Amos Funkenstein observes (Perceptions of Jewish History, 11-12) that “To ancient or primitive societies, in which antiquity or a long pedigree makes for a true aristocracy, youth is a sign of inferiority, and a memory of youth calls for compensatory elements, all the more so if this memory of youth was coupled with a memory of slavery and of otherwise low status.”

This was not the view of Israel, which had a “sense of youth,” that was “compensated” by its conviction of being God’s own territory and property. One of the things that made Israel new was this “sense of a recent beginning in historical times and the consciousness of chosenness, of distinction among others, albeit older nations,” two themes that are “intertwined throughout the Bible.”

Greeks too recognized their comparative youth, and honored older civilizations. They compensated by “freedom, a freedom made possible only in the framework of the polis.”

Together, these two newcomers brought “awareness of the unity of history as a whole” to the world.