Thomas Cahill’s fourth book, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, is
part of his ongoing seven book history of western civilization entitled The Hinges
of History. The book is a spectacular, wild ride through Grecian philosophy,
art, politics and culture from its infancy through to its demise. Cahill writes
so fluidly and descriptively one would think of him as an accomplished novelist
first, historian second. This is not the case however as Cahill exhibits
historical brilliance throughout the entire text.

The book culminates with the advent of Western history in
what Cahill describes as “the Meeting of the Waters, the point at which the two
great rivers of our cultural patrimony – the Greco-Roman and the
Judeo-Christian – flow into each other to become the mighty torrent of Western
Civilization.”

Having been recently reading N.T. Wright’s excellent, and
exhaustive book – The Resurrection of the Son of God, I recognized immediately
Cahill’s historical support of a main premise of Wright’s that the concept of
bodily resurrection, though foreshadowed in Hebrew history, was unexpected and
a new work of God reflected in Christianity and borrowed from no one.

Cahill writes “…the idea of physical resurrection struck
them (the Greeks) as ghoulish. Who wants his body back anyway, once he’s got
rid of it? Matter is the very principle of unintelligibility. Best to be done
with it. For the Jews, who had little or no belief in the immortality of the
soul, only salvation in one’s body could have any meaning."

I highly recommend this book as a must read. Cahill packs ridiculous
amounts of information into a small space and much of it spectacularly relevant
to our own experience today. I should warn readers that Cahill often becomes
vulgar as he is describing sexual attitudes in Grecian art and culture. Whether this is because he
wants to reflect the culture as realistically as possible or this is simply his
own character it is hard to tell though I suspect a mix of both is the truth.

The book is a classic as his series is bound to be…read it.