The Religious Roots

Knowledge, in general, requires legitimization, and the highest legitimization is divine. As seen in the previous chapters, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, and Hellenic higher learning was strictly connected to religious worships and a monopoly of priestly castes (Greek philosophers, however, began to mark an exception). The same occurred in Jewish monotheism, persisted, as we shall see, in the Islamic and Christian world, penetrated deeply into the European university, and has, to a certain extent, left traces even today. In a number of modern Western universities on the cutting edge of science, the faculty of theology formally maintains a place of pride.