>>But the part I commenting was about making Western civilization possible.
That’s a different definition of Western civilization than I had in mind and certainly different than taught in the “Origins of Western Civilization” I studied at a conservative Christian school...
but that doesn’t make you wrong. And if the author is using your definition then I can see how he reached his conclusions.
We have no disagreement. Clearly, the Greek and Roman empires were a key part of our "origins." But they were a key part of the origins in Asia Minor also. What made Western Civilization different from the evolution the Roman heritage took in the east was Christianity.
Of course, the influence was not all one way. Much of Christianity was, and remains, Hellenized.
Just a couple of examples, one searches in vain for any concept of the "soul" in the Old or New Testaments--that is, something separate from the body that somehow attaches and detaches from the body at birth and death but who is, nevertheless, us. So there is no support in the Bible for widespread notions such as angels with harps playing music to disembodied souls. Yet that image is firmly planted in Christian culture. It is a very Hellenistic concept. So too, Purgatory. The Hellenization of Christianity makes a lot of modern Christians very unclear on what the New Testament actually says about life after death.
There's a great book detailing some of this: "The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success" by Rodney Stark. I too was surprised to see how much of our modern civilization arose from practices during the "Dark Ages" (which according to this book were not nearly as dark as we were taught in school!).