SOURCE: Brague, Rémi. “Athens, Jerusalem, Mecca: Leo Strauss's ‘Muslim’ Understanding of Greek Philosophy.” Poetics Today 19, no. 2 (summer 1998): 235-59.

In the following essay from an issue devoted to “Hellenism and Hebraism Reconsidered,” Brague argues that the contrast between Hebraism and Hellenism was important to the late work of Strauss but that Strauss was also indebted to Muslim philosopher Fârâbî's explanation of the Islamic concept of revelation.

The Athens and Jerusalem Theme

The second-century church father Tertullian may have been the first to declare, What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?, but it was not until the Russian philosopher Leo Shestov used the two city names as the title of a book (1951, posthumous) that they became a kind of catchword for the opposition between Hellenism and Hebraism. Among the people who took up Shestov's yoked pair, Leo Strauss must probably be given pride of place.

Leo...