Jerusalem and Athens: In Defense of Jerusalem

Abstract: The historiographical and theological-political contrast between Jerusalem and Athens has at times been understood as an opposition between, respectively, revelation, which necessarily demands pious obedience, and reason, which, as such, conveys the freedom of critical thought. The focus of this paper is to ascertain how faithful such an understanding is to reason, religion, the Bible, and the Hebraic tradition.

Biography: Steven Grosby is a professor of religion at Clemson University. He is the author of Biblical Ideas of Nationality (Eisenbrauns, 2002) and Nationalism-a Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005). He is also editor of The Virtue of Civility (Liberty Fund, 1997) and The Calling of Education (Chicago, 1997); coeditor of the four-volume Nationality and Nationalism (I.B. Tauris, 2004); and editor and translator of Hans Freyer, Theory of Objective Mind (Ohio, 1999). His numerous articles have appeared in such journals as Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, History of Religions, Journal for the Social and Economic History of the Orient, European Journal of Sociology, and Nations and Nationalism.