According to Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony, this way of viewing the relation between philosophy and religion rests on a false dichotomy that arises from erroneously supposing that Athens and Tertullian's Christianised Jerusalem exhaust the ways philosophy and religion can square up. His bold, even audacious, thesis is that Hebrew scriptures were written to purvey a distinctive species of philosophy that is every bit as rigorous and rationally grounded as any produced in Athens, while also simultaneously underwriting a religion, Judaism, that is no less authentic and edifying than Christianity, and as potentially universal in appeal, despite not being proselytising.
This is an immensely important thesis, not just for secular Jews who have abandoned the religion of their forefathers, but also for their gentile counterparts who also have become convinced that religions are all predicated on rationally unjustifiable dogmas. Hazony seeks to show that, rightly understood as its authors intended, not only does Hebrew scripture not conflict with reason, but emanates from it, by advancing a coherent and distinctive set of philosophical claims as to how humans should live to achieve wellbeing and fulfilment.
Hazony lays bare the philosophical teaching that he claims Hebrew scripture contains through several detailed illustrative accounts of the literary devices and methods that it deploys to advance philosophical arguments and theses. In so doing, he also explains the most seminal of these. Moreover, and this is what makes his book unique and outstandingly brilliant, he does so in a pellucid prose that is entirely free of the technical jargon that renders so much contemporary academic philosophy inaccessible to all but professionals.
According to Hazony, the central vehicle that Hebrew scripture uses to purvey its philosophy is what he calls its history of the Jewish people from the dawn of time to the destruction of the First Temple and their exile in Babylon. Composed to rally and inspire them not to abandon their distinctive identity by discarding the law of their forefathers, this history serves to establish, by reference to its chief episodes, that faith and trust in God, plus adherence to the Mosaic law, afford the best, indeed only real, prospects for human wellbeing, not only in the case of Jews but all humankind. That potentially universal teaching is also endorsed and elaborated in the prophetic orations, Psalms, Proverbs, and other constituent books of Hebrew scripture.
It would, indeed, be hard to exaggerate the importance of Hazony's splendid work. This bold attempt to distil the intellectual essence of biblical wisdom deserves the widest possible audience and the most careful attention, regardless of religious denomination or lack of it, from philosophers.
