“Both peoples had a clearly defined consciousness of being different from all other peoples: The Hebrews from the Gentiles, the Greeks from the Barbarians. The bearer of group consciousness was with them not king or priesthood but the people as a whole, every Hebrew or every Greek. With the other peoples of antiquity, only rulers and empires left their traces on history. With the Hebrews and the Greeks it was the national character and the spiritual creative energy of the people which endured. It is because their cultural continuity proved stronger than racial, political, or geographic continuity, that they live on today. The idea of a nation-state was unknown to them but they had the strong consciousness of a cultural mission.”

Hans Kohn