The Hebraic Educational Tradition
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(Ancient Greece is discussed later in this chapter.) According to this interpretation, ancient Egyptian civilization was a highly static despotism, and its major cultural legacy was its great architectural monuments such as the pyramids. Challenging the standard interpretation, the historian Martin Bernal argues that the ancient Greeks borrowed many of their ideas about government, philosophy, the arts and sciences, and medicine from the Egyptians.14 Furthermore, the Egyptians, living in North Africa, were an African people and the origins of Western culture were African rather than Greco-Roman. Bernal’s critics contend that he has overgeneralized Egypt’s influence on the Greeks.15 While historians debate the issue, findings indicate that Egyptian–Greek contacts, particularly at Crete, introduced Egyptian knowledge and art to the Greeks. This controversy has important educational significance. Whoever interprets the past gains the power of illuminating and shaping the present. In particular, the controversy relates to debates about an Afrocentric curriculum in schools. Did Western civilization originate in Africa or in Greece?
3-4 The Hebraic Educational Tradition Judeo-Christian tradition
The Western cultural tradition that has been shaped by Judaism and Christianity.
Abrahamic tradition
Monotheism, the belief in one God, which originated with Abraham in Judaism and has shaped Christianity and Islam.
Torah The first five Books of Moses that form the foundation of Hebraic religion, culture, and education.
American education, like Western culture, is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. (The sections on the Middle Ages and Reformation in this chapter discuss the Christian roots.) Here, we examine Hebraic or Judaic education, an ongoing religious and cultural tradition for the Jewish people, and an important reference point for Christians and Muslims. All three religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—are monotheistic in their belief in one God, a spiritual Creator, and in their reverence for a sacred book, the Torah, the Bible, or the Koran, respectively, whose contents, for the believers, were revealed by God to prophets. With their emphasis on reading and studying sacred scriptures, all three religions emphasize literacy to read the holy book and education to learn and apply its message to life. Early Hebraic history began when Jacob, the son of the great patriarch Abraham, united the nomadic Jewish tribes into the nation of Israel. The Jews embraced the Abrahamic tradition of monotheism, the belief in one God, which distinguished them from the other ancient peoples who practiced polytheism, the belief in many gods. A defining event in Hebraic history occurred in 1270 BCE when Moses led the Israelites from bondage in Egypt across the desert to Judea in Palestine. The Israelites, who believed Moses had received divine revelations on Mount Sinai, developed the belief that God had chosen them to be a special people. The Mosaic revelations created a holy covenant, a religiously based and sanctioned agreement, that bound the Jews to their Creator.16 These revelations formed an essential part of the Torah, Judaism’s sacred scripture. Hebraic education developed its literary structure when Ezra, a noted scholar and scribe in 445 BCE, collected and organized the five books of the Old Testament— Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—into a written text. Education
Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785–1985 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), pp. 2–3. Also, see Robert Bauval and Thomas Brophy, Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt (Rochester, VT: Bear & Co., 2011). The later Greek influence on Egyptian education is discussed in Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). 15 For a discussion of ancient Egypt’s influence on Greece, access Philip Coppens, “Egypt: Origin of Greek Culture” at www.philipcoppens.com/egyptgreece.html. 16 Hanan A. Alexander and Shmuel Glick, “The Judaic Tradition,” in Randall Curren, ed., A Companion to the Philosophy of Education (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 33–49. 14
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