The concept of the One God still is affirmed by the daily Jewish prayer, the Shema:
Hear, O Israel
The Lord God is one Lord
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart
And with all your soul
And with all your might.28
When they reached the Promised Land, the Israelites were told to destroy other cities completely – including Jericho29 and that of the Midianites.30 This is one of the earliest examples of one group being denied their own humanity and then turning around and doing the same to another. There are of course many similar examples throughout history – up to our own day – of those who claim the superiority of their own group or beliefs and deny the validity of others.
Long-term settlements became possible with the advent of agriculture, which allowed previously nomadic groups to remain in one place, vastly expanding the number of people who could be fed.31 It could be argued that agriculture was the greatest invention of all time. Clearly it had to be developed via a series of other innovations, including the plow, which was used throughout the ancient world, and the domestication of animals and plants. It seems likely that there was an element of cooperation and freedom in this development, because – as we will discuss – great inventions rarely are developed in a tyrannical state. Inventiveness requires long-term experimentation plus confidence and trust between individuals to yield viable results. Such an environment is rare under the distrust imposed by tyranny. In China, for example, innovations such as the voyages to discover new trade routes, or even the invention of the clock, were aborted due to lack of governmental interest in improving the lives of people.32
Hammurabi, King of Babylon in the eighteenth century BCE, formulated the first comprehensive code of law that has survived. It was written on a large stone and contains 282 laws, including “an eye for eye,” later reflected in the Hebrew Bible. This area of what is now the Mideast was called the Fertile Crescent due to the seasonal rainfall that allowed the development of agriculture. There was frequent warfare between the groups inhabiting the area. The inhabitants of what is present-day Syria and Palestine were known as Canaanites starting about 1600 BCE.33
Wine is a part of the weekly Shabbat ceremony in Jewish Homes on Friday night, which marks the beginning of the Sabbath. Wine also is included during the annual Passover Seder, as well as at other holidays. (The Passover Seder was the setting of the Last Supper by Jesus and his disciplines.) Jews are commanded by the Torah to keep Shabbat (the seventh day) as a day of prayer and rest, because that is the day that God rested from creating the universe. The Fourth Commandment states: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”
The prayer used before drinking the cup of wine:
The Jewish community in Palestine was divided between those who assimilated the lifestyle of their hosts and those who wanted to maintain a separate existence and engaged in rebellion that was put down brutally. According to the Hebrew Bible34 Jerusalem was destroyed after three rebellions against the Persians in about 600 BCE. They were allowed to return under Cyrus in 537 BCE. A Jewish rebellion against the Romans under Titus was put down in 70 CE, and after a revolt in 135 CE the Jews were expelled from the area.35
The earliest known Greek civilization goes back to the Minoans on the island of Crete starting about 2000 BCE, although evidence of human habitation there begins 5000 years earlier. Their religion was centered on the Earth Goddess and sacrifice of animals and children in times of danger. They engaged in trade with other Greek city states and societies as far away as Egypt and Palestine, but yielded to the Mycenaean culture from the mainland around 1600 BCE.36
Early Greek city states were ruled by kings with loyal followers. One of the great mythical heroes of the ancient Greek world was Ulysses, otherwise known as Odysseus.37 He is a key figure in both the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, who was revered as the chronicler of these two epics that revolve around the Trojan War, believed to have occurred about 1200 BCE. Homer, who may have been a composite figure, wrote down these oral traditions hundreds of years after the actual events.38 They were the most pervasive myths of the Greeks at the time of Plato and Aristotle in the fourth century BCE and influenced hundreds of plays (most of them lost) by the tragic playwrights of that time, including Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. They provided the everyday entertainment of the Greeks in addition to shaping their myths and history.
The Iliad tells most of the story of the expedition to Troy by about 1000 ships under the leadership of King Agamemnon of Mycenae.39 The goal was to retrieve the legendary beauty Helen, who left her husband Menelaus (Agamemnon’s brother), to run off with Paris, prince of Troy. The Odyssey follows Ulysses home after this war of ten years and on further adventures. In these myths and the plays based on them there is little reference to democracy. There were clear consequences for the losers of these wars – and not much had changed by the time of Thucydides, who wrote a history of the Peloponnesian war in which Athens was ultimately defeated by Sparta in 405 BCE. The pattern in most of these wars was that the winners shared the spoils of the cities that were defeated. The men were killed or enslaved and the women and children became the property of the victors.40
Solon was the legendary giver of the laws that led to Athenian democracy. In about 570 BCE he reformed aristocratic rule and created a system that provided shared governance among a greater number of land owners. He reversed the slide toward tyranny in which the wealthiest aristocrats took away the property and liberty of farmers and others who had become indebted to them.41
According to legend the Olympic Games began in 776 BCE, and were held every four years.42 The competitions included racing, boxing, wrestling and horse racing. The extensive site of Olympia still can be visited, including the housing area for athletes who spent months traveling from the cities they represented throughout the Greek world, and the stadium where the foot race took place on the second of five days of competition.
Delphi, high in the hills northwest of Athens, was the religious center of ancient Greece. Those in search of answers to life’s problems – personal or political – made the pilgrimage and awaited the wisdom of the Oracle, sometimes for months, which often was delivered in vague terms that made interpretation uncertain.
The Athenians practiced a form of participatory democracy that was very different from the style of representative government found in modern democracies. Those who were allowed to participate – about 10% of the population – voted on major state decisions such as whether to go to war and also were required to participate in juries by lottery.43 It was an Athenian jury that voted in 399 BCE to execute Socrates.
In 431 BCE, when a war began between Athens and Sparta, each engaged a large group of city states to fight on their side. Athens was led by Pericles, who evoked the spirit of democracy as perhaps has not been done as effectively until Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Pericles’ Funeral Oration – as related by Thucydides – gave an account of Athenian democracy at the battle site where the bodies of many still awaited removal:
Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration