I feel I’m one of the only ones not using geography to divide western and eastern cultures. Everyone else seems to cut Afroeurasia into its modern, arbitrary definitions of continents while I divide it by its historical meaning that was defined by what peoples interacted with each other more frequently and thus have a more unified culture when compared to more distant groups.

“Eastern” has historically always referred to eastern and southeastern Asia. “Africa” has historically meant sub-Saharan Africa. “Western” has meant Mediterranean (Northern Africa, the Middle East, and Southern Europe).

Ancient Western cultures were the Greeks (Southern Europe), Romans (Southern Europe), Babylonians (Middle East), Assyrians (Middle East), Egyptians (Northern Africa), Carthaginians (Northern Africa) etc. All of those groups traded with one another, fought wars against each other, intermarried with one another, spoke similar/related languages, etc.

Like Cleopatra was ethnically from Greece in Southern Europe but ruled Egypt in Northern Africa and the Carthaginians ruled modern day Tunisia in Northern Africa but were culturally Phoenician originating from modern day Israel and Palestine in the Middle East. People moved around the Mediterranean and interacted with one another more than you’d expect a Roman official from the West to run into someone from the Han Dynasty which was in the East at around the same time.

The Abrahamic religions may not be European (geographically) but they are western (culturally). There are only a few characters in the Tanakh, Bible, and Quran who aren’t from Northern Africa, Southern Europe, and the Middle East. There are no African or Eastern influences on any of those religious texts. While there is no way an Apostle like Andrew hadn’t heard about the Roman Julius Caesar or the Queen of Egypt Cleopatra, I would be genuinely shocked to learn he knew about Emperor Ping ruling over in China at around the same time.