Abstract
<jats:p>The paper aims to trace hermeneutically some ideas that today are fundamental to the moral and political ethos of Western culture. This is done with a focus on the Iliad and on the Hebrew Bible, and its exegesis by the Talmudic rabbis. It is argued that combining ideas from both texts is key to overcoming the limitations inhering in each. Humanism in the Iliad is manifested by the absence of any moral source of authority outside human cycles. This compels the heroes who face human finitudes and the limits of brute force to apply rational deliberation. The humanism in the Hebrew Bible is manifested by the endorsement of the material world as good and in the idea of Imago Dei which grants humans a special moral status as well as a promise of tracts of happiness and fulfillment that are non-predatory and non-exclusionist. The Iliad offers a formal element — deliberation; the Bible a substantive element — human dignity. Hence, Biblical virtues are chiefly about cultivating a habit of seeing material reality as good and approaching social and material reality in ways that preempt conflict, and about human goals that are socially and environmentally friendly. The paper develops these ideas in light of Hobbes’s notion of the Leviathan and the option for “bottom-up” politics as envisioned by John Rawls. The experience of war and the reverse relationship between non-violent deliberation and women’s political power help understand both ancient and modern thought explored in the paper. </jats:p>