Riches for the world

David Klinghoffer argues in his Why the Jews Rejeced Jesus that pagan Europeans would not have embraced Jesus if the Jews had not rejected Him: “If you value the great achievements of Western civilization and of American society, thank the Jews for their decision to cleave to their ancestral religion instead of embracing the rival teachings of Jesus and his followers.” As a result, as Jacob Neusner recognizes, the world came to know the Torah: “Christianity really did bring the written Torah to the whole world,” Neusner observes, “Christianity really did form the ideal of an entire civilization framed around the principles of Torah, for instance, the Ten Commandments.”