Once, the ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’ united Americans. Now it divides them | Hacker News Reader

Once, the ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’ united Americans. Now it divides them

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21 pointsUdik23 comments

"Judeo-Christian tradition" is a cultural label of dubious value and ambiguous meaning. I don't see what we have to gain by using the term.

What really strikes me as absurd about the insistence on "Judeo-Christian" roots (apart from the obvious historical enmity between the two religions and the difference in basic values), is the complete obliteration of the Greek and Latin roots of the Western world.

Greeks invented western philosophy, the Romans invented western jurisprudence. Insisting on Judaic roots (which are certainly in part conveyed, and transformed, by Christianity) and disregarding the cultural importance of Greece and Rome seems preposterous.

Because the Roman Empire eventually converted to Christianity, and many Greek and Roman works were transmitted down the ages through monasteries, the term "Judeo-Christian" does not necessarily deny the importance of Greek and Roman thought. It just underlines that what certain people may feel was really valuable from Antiquity, are those concepts that were compatible with Christianity (or, considering how many Jewish intellectuals figures grappled with Classical learning, Judaism).

The fact that Greek and Roman texts were preserved in monasteries has nothing to do with the cultural contribution of Christianity- it's more of a lucky accident. A lot of Greek texts were translated and preserved by Arab scholars, nobody speaks of "Arab roots" of our culture.

Christianity has had a profound and determinant influence on the Western culture; so did Greek and Roman culture, which found a way to integrate with Christianity while remaining mostly distinct from it.

Judaism? Not so much. If anything reached us of Judaism it was already entirely contained and transformed by Christianity.

> A lot of Greek texts were translated and preserved by Arab scholars, nobody speaks of "Arab roots" of our culture.

By the time Arab translations of Greek and Roman works were rediscovered by the West, the synthesis of Classical culture with Christianity had already been complete for centuries. So, the Arab contribution did not greatly affect the popular narrative.

> Judaism? Not so much. If anything reached us of Judaism it was already entirely contained and transformed by Christianity.

Certainly the impact of Judaism on the West is small compared to Christianity. But Spinoza, who came out of a Jewish intellectual tradition, was one of the founding figures of the Enlightenment.

there is no christianity without judaism. if christianity had a profound impact, than by transitive property, judaism did as well.

the only way to argue your "If anything reached us of Judaism it was already entirely contained and transformed by Christianity." is to argue a christian supersessionist worldview (which was certainly the primary christian viewpoint for the majority of its history)

It's exactly that. Christianity was historically born out of Judaism but (to simplify) in opposition to it. Any belief of Judaism that is not already included in Christianity is not part of the West's cultural heritage, and often in opposition to its values. Supersessionism was challenged only very recently, and out of purely political, not religious or cultural, reasons.

Claiming Judeo-Christian roots is a bit like saying that you're genetically the product of your father AND of your paternal great parents- pretty pointless, especially when you fail to mention the maternal contribution.

Btw, apparently the idea itself that Christianity separated from Judaism two thousand years ago is imprecise. What is considered to be Judaism today is just one of the sects that were born in Palestine approximately two thousand years ago- in other words, rabbinical Judaism is not even an ancestor of Christianity, it's a sibling.

The roots of the Western world are Greco-persian. Persia was as powerful of a civilization as the Greeks and Persian thought was commonly used by the Greeks.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/greece-iii

Maybe, and who knows what the roots of the Persian world were. The point is that if you want to find the immediate ancestors of Western culture those are Greco-Roman and Christian. Certainly nothing to do with Judaism.

No according to one theory the modern mono-theist version of Judaism was copied from the Greeks such as Plato. Before that Judaism was polytheist.

The point is that all of these things were there together sharing their ideas with each other. Each influencing the other. There is no one source. There are many different gradients of thought and knowledge. Stretching all the way from Europe to the Indian sub-continent.

There are three pillars of western civilization in the modern age: Greco-Roman philosophy and government, Christianity, and European nation-states.

I don't believe in the concept of "Judeo-Christian" because other than theological genealogy, the two systems are radically different, and historically opposed to one another.

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