Churchill had long been fascinated by Jewish history, by the Jewish involvement with the events of the time, and above all by the Jews' monotheism and ethics. These seemed to him a central factor in the evolution and maintenance of modern civilisation. He published his thoughts about this on 8 November 1931, in an article in the Sunday Chronicle about Moses. Noting that the Biblical story had often been portrayed as myth, Churchill declared: 'We reject, however, with scorn all those learned and laboured myths that Moses was but a legendary figure upon whom the priesthood and the people hung their essential social, moral and religious ordinances. We believe that the most scientific view, the most up-to-date and rationalistic conception, will find its fullest satisfaction in taking the Bible story literally, and in identifying one of the greatest of human beings with the most decisive leap-forward ever discernible in the human story.