21 Lessons for the 21st Century

by Yuval Noah Harari

Israelis often use the term “the three great religions,” thinking that these religions are Christianity (2.3 billion adherents), Islam (1.8 billion), and Judaism (15 million). Hinduism, with its 1 billion believers, and Buddhism, with its 500 million followers—not to mention the Shinto religion (50 million) and the Sikh religion (25 million)—don’t make the cut.2 This warped concept of “the three great religions” often implies in the mind of Israelis that all major religious and ethical traditions emerged out of the womb of Judaism, which was the first religion to preach universal ethical rules—as if humans prior to the days of Abraham and Moses lived in a Hobbesian state of nature without any moral commitments, and as if all of contemporary morality derives from the Ten Commandments. This is a baseless and insolent idea, which ignores many of the world’s most important ethical traditions.