it all started with the Jews

A few weeks back i read Thoma Cahill's book on how the Irish saved Civilzation - inspired by this I have since read another two of his books, The Gift of the Jews i am enjoying at the moment.
Stand out quote
The Jews strated it all - and by 'it" I mean so many of the things we care about the underlying values that make all of us. Jew and gentile, believer and atheist. Without the Jews, we would see the world through different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings."
I guess in reading some of Cahill's work it has struck me how much shapping past civilizatins have done. I am irish and bare the temperament of such. I am a pseudo greek that understand the world, life and the life after that in certain terms. I am an english commoner who knows the values of serving others. I am a Christian not by birth rite or even by whakapapa but by belief and an inherited history. I have so many things pulling me shapping me and forming me, i am glad of the gifts they have all given me, and cherish the life that i have as a result
I think when paul said that there is neither jew nor greek, male or female, we can often interpret it that our cultural baggage does not matter, maybe what he is saying that they bleed into each other - froming a new identity that is not the same as the old, but shapped by it.