Why Ancient Israel and Arabia Produced No Theoretical Scientists

Why did the Greeks give us Euclid and Archimedes while the Israelites and the Arabs of Arabia gave us prophets and poets? Why did geometry blossom in Athens, while theology flowered in Jerusalem and Mecca? The answer is not intelligence or opportunity—it’s orientation. Some civilizations sought to explain the cosmos; others sought to sanctify it. The result is a striking historical asymmetry: ancient Israel and Arabia, though rich in moral and spiritual insight, produced no mathematicians, physicists, or chemists comparable to their European, Indian, or Chinese contemporaries.

The ancient Israelites were a literate, observant, and technically capable people. They built Hezekiah’s Tunnel, smelted copper in the desert furnaces of Timna, and kept an accurate lunisolar calendar that synchronized the rhythms of ritual and agriculture. But none of these achievements became theoretical. They were the products of necessity, not curiosity. To the Israelite mind, nature was not a riddle to be solved but a creation to be revered. The stars and the seasons were signs of divine order, not laboratories for experimentation. The purpose of knowledge was to know God’s will, not to uncover natural law. As a result, ancient Israel produced prophets, not physicists; commandments, not calculations.

Ancient Arabia—the region that is now Saudi Arabia—followed a parallel path. Its pre-Islamic tribes mastered star navigation, desert hydrology, and herbal medicine. They built dams, oases, and caravan networks that demanded acute observation and practical skill. Yet like Israel, they left no trace of theoretical science. Their knowledge was empirical but not analytical, oral but not mathematical. The harshness of the desert bred a culture of endurance and memory rather than abstraction. The Bedouin knew the heavens intimately but never reduced them to geometry. Their wisdom was poetic, not systematic; their science was survival.

Meanwhile, Greece, India, and China were building the foundations of theoretical inquiry. Thales and Pythagoras turned observation into reasoning. Euclid and Archimedes transformed geometry into logic. In India, scholars formalized the decimal system and the concept of zero, paving the way for algebra and astronomy. In China, thinkers like Zhang Heng explored magnetism, mechanics, and the motion of the stars. These cultures shared a critical premise: that nature could be studied on its own terms, without sacrilege. Knowledge was not confined to revelation; it was liberated into inquiry.

The difference lay as much in theology as in geography. The Israelites saw creation as a sacred text already written by God. To alter or analyze it seemed impious. The Arabs of the Hejaz, living on the margins of great empires, never built the institutions—scribal schools, observatories, academies—that theory requires. Greece, by contrast, thrived on debate. Its pantheon allowed nature to be imperfect, even lawlike. To question the cosmos was not to blaspheme but to think. The same sea that linked Athens to Egypt and Babylon also carried ideas. Trade and dialogue bred abstraction. The Mediterranean was an incubator of geometry; the desert, a crucible of endurance.

By the dawn of the Common Era, the pattern was fixed. Greece and India had produced mathematicians and astronomers; China, inventors and natural philosophers. Israel had produced ethical monotheism, and Arabia, oral poetry. Theoretical science took root where curiosity was a virtue and nature was lawful. It did not emerge where revelation was absolute and nature was sacred. That divergence would shape the next two millennia.

After Islam’s rise in the seventh century, the Arabian Peninsula briefly became the bridge between Greek rationalism and Semitic faith. But even then, the great scientists of the Islamic Golden Age—al-Khwarizmi, Ibn Sina, Ibn al-Haytham—worked in Baghdad, Rayy, and Cairo, not in Mecca or Medina. The desert provided faith and direction; the cities of empire provided mathematics and theory. The pattern of antiquity held firm.

What, then, did Israel and Arabia give the world? They gave it the moral architecture that science alone cannot provide. Israel taught the world that truth must serve justice; Arabia, that endurance is a form of wisdom. Their failure to produce theoretical science was not a defect but a decision: they chose meaning over mechanism. And yet, the modern world was built when Athens and Jerusalem finally met—when moral conscience fused with mathematical reason. Science gained a soul, and faith gained a method.

Today, as we wrestle with the balance between technology and ethics, that ancient divide still haunts us. We have the equations of Archimedes, but we still need the conscience of Moses. The Israelites and the early Arabs did not calculate the laws of nature—but they defined the laws of human purpose. Perhaps civilization needs both: the mind that measures the stars, and the spirit that asks why they shine at all.

Notes 

1. Archaeology of Hezekiah’s Tunnel and the Siloam Inscription: see Reich & Shukron, Biblical Archaeology Review (2011).
2. Copper-smelting at Timna Valley: see Erez Ben-Yosef et al., Journal of Archaeological Science 40 (2013).
3. Hillel II’s fixed Hebrew calendar: discussion in Sacha Stern, Calendar and Community (Oxford UP, 2001).
4. Absence of mathematical or natural-philosophical texts in the Hebrew corpus: summarized in Noel Swerdlow, “The Ancient Near East and the Origins of Greek Science,” Isis 83 (1992).
5. Pre-Islamic Arabian navigation and anwāʾ star lore: Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Anwāʾ.”
6. Nabataean and Hejazi irrigation systems: UNESCO, “Hegra Archaeological Site (Madā’in Ṣāliḥ)” (2008).
7. Comparison of classical scientific traditions: Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China (vols. I–VI); A. Rahman, Science in India (1968).
8. Greek theoretical science: Euclid’s Elements; Archimedes’ On the Sphere and Cylinder; Aristotle’s Physics.
9. Indian theoretical science: Āryabhaṭa’s Āryabhaṭīya; Brahmagupta’s Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta.
10. Islamic-era distinction between Arabian origin and non-Arab centers of science: Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (Routledge, 1998).