Why the Jews Rejected Jesus

is the new book by my old editor when I used to review books for National Review, David Klinghoffer. A devout Jew, David says:

The Jewish rejection of Jesus was the founding act of Western civilization. Had the Jews welcomed the Christian message, at any stage prior to the crucial council of Jerusalem at which Peter and James accepted Paul's belief that it was time to drop Jewish law from the requirements placed on Christians, the Jesus movement would have remained a Jewish sect with all the handicaps that implies. Unlike Christianity, and also unlike Islam, Judaism was never intended or suited to be a mass religion. Had the Jews embraced the Gospel of Jesus Christ in greater numbers, there would be no Christian Europe.

When Islam, that other daughter faith of Judaism, arose in the seventh century, its armies would have confronted a Europe that was a spiritual vaccum, which Muhammad's teachings would likely have filled..

If the historian Rodney Stark is correct in attributing the progress of Western science to the belief system of the Bible, then our world would be a poorer, less scientifically advanced one, not unlike the Muslim nations today would be, were it not for the technology they import from the nations of Europe and North America, cultures nourished on the Bible.

Interesting speculations...

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer