Back in April of last year I wrote “Part of the Judeo-Christian tradition is reaction towards each other, and there is also some influence on each other's thought. Neither side lived in a vacuum. But there is no shared focus. The sharing, or overlap, is in source texts. So, chucking the gospels etcetera out of the window, one is left with a Judaic foundation.”
[See comments on this post: http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2006/04/haskafic-miscellany-faith-versus.html]
This was in response to Lipman, who wrote: "I'm afraid there is no Jewish-Christian heritage. If you subtract all things Christian, there'll be nothing left. Christianity did away with anything Jewish."
At that time I agreed with him in the main, while still stubbornly holding on to the term "Judeo-Christian".
BUT LOOKING AT IT AGAIN.......
The problem is that the term "Judeo-Christian" only works if one is standing entirely outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition, looking in. Much like an angry Jihadi speaking of the 'Zionist-Crusader Alliance'.
If you are on the inside, as anybody reading this blog is bound to be, it is a loaded term.
A Jew using the term would by doing so seem to admit that there is a parity, while a Christian would probably imply that there is an equivalence. A Mormon would use the term inclusionarily, with an un-said assumption that Mormonism perfects the tradition.
In point of fact, there is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian Tradition unless you're an anthropologist, nor is it correct to speak of shared Judeo-Christian values. Yes, Christianity is in some ways derived from a Judaic root, but the moment you accept the Nicaene creed, you have chucked Rabbi Akiva out of the window. Along with the mitzvos, the ikkarim, and much else.
When a Jew suggests such a commonality, that Jew is perilously close to the position of the messianics, and dangerously close to the precipice. One cannot remain Jewish if one accepts Jesus and the teachings of Christianity as within the tradition, or even as a reflection of the tradition.
Likewise, if one acknowledges the Jewish roots of Christianity, one must also recognize that Jesus, like one's own appendix, is not necessary and serves no purpose. Anything else fudges the distinctions.
One need not go so far as to label Christianity a form of idolatry, like the Rambam called the superstitious practices current in his day, but there can be no such thing as common observance, worship or prayer. Anything that has observant Jews and practicing Christians involved together in a religious context is, from both a Judaic and a Christian point of view, ab initio invalid - though both creeds assert the singularity of the deity, they do not share a deity. The Christian conception of the divine differs so much from the Judaic conception that there is no point of commonality, and from a Jewish point of view, taking part in a religious ritual with a believing Christian must be considered either heretical or heathen - in any case, a perverse waste of time.
WHO USES THAT TERM ANYHOW?
Another problem with the term Judeo-Christian is that the people most likely to use it are also often the ones who seek to convert Jews or who think that Jews should be converted.
The term contains the suggestion that there is much that both sides have in common and that the differences between Christianity and Judaism are mere details of hue and not of content. Consequently, because a secular non-observant Jew will likely know very little about Judaism, and may not have ever seriously studied any part of the texts, there is a great danger in the use of the term Judeo-Christian - the term, though resonant, is entirely false.
It is a seductive lie.
[More than mere suppresio veri, suggestio falsi - the usage and context of "Judeo-Christian" is blatanly destructive, in that it can twist and subvert truth. ]
If Jews convert to Christianity they lose much. When Christians convert to Judaism, it may turn out well. But Judaism does not demand converts.
There is only one side that needs to mind its own business. And stop using certain words.
FOG CAUSES FITS
When I woke up on Tuesday the fog was thick enough to cut it with a knife. Much much later it had disappeared. My late lunch in Chinatown wa...
9 comments:
Must have had a bad day back then...
Anyway, a couple of additional details are interesting.
The Judæo-Christian society seems to be just another expression for what is called the "modern Western" society - the same society that doesn't regard chareidim and the like to be part of it.
Jews, including non-chareidim and even non-O conscious Jews tend to call it the "general society", or the "host society", both implying Jews are either not part of it at all (or should at least), or in a dual/secondary affiliation at most.
When people use the term, it's often in order to evoke a positive, proud picture of society, in particular in contrast to dangers from other cultural sets, most prominently Islamism or simply Islam, but I don't think many people would realise if you'd use it to distinguish Society from Judaism.
Increasingly, it's used by people born into this post-Christian society when they rebel against it. As a rule, their idea has still less to do with Judaism: "Ha! I don't think anymore that all sex is an evil original sin, as the Judæo-Christian society made us believe."
Oh, and it might be a natural American understanding, melting pot or salad bowl, that the term means "mix of Jewish and Christian traditions", while in fact it's more "Christian, and we base ourselves on processed Judaism".
Dag!
Isn't there a tradition over the last several centuries of Roman-Catholics 'adopting' "Quabala"? - and then putting Xtian overlays on it. His name escapes me right now -but somewhere in my memory lurks a recollection of a French (late 19th Century) R.C. philosopher - who made a fine living from it
The Frenchman's psuedonym came to me after I just ate a pear.
He was Gerard Encausse who wrote under the name of "Papus" - and he was of course - anti-semitic...
Most of what is kabbala (in media, scholarship etc.) refers to Christian kabbala. This did look at Jewish kabbala originally, but completely developped on its own afterwards.
(Another question is how Jewish even "Jewish Kabbala" is anyway, how central or marginal it is to Judaism, and how much it took Islamic and Christian stuff itself.)
there is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian Tradition unless you're an anthropologist
Unless you're a Christian, Western anthropologist who knows nothing of Judaism except what you've learned through a Christian framework. No real anthropologist who knows anything about Judaism would use this term sincerely.
(grumble grumble... from the Jew who had to teach sections in an Anth of Religion class where the British (Christian) professor repeatedly, cluelessly, used the term)
the people most likely to use it are also often the ones who seek to convert Jews or who think that Jews should be converted.
Actually, I think more people use it who don't know jack about Judaism. They don't care about Jews or Judaism, don't care whether they convert, because they see them as a more "primitive" form of Christians.
Well, From what I've always seen islam shares far more in common with christianity than either do with judaism (although islam is marginaly the closer of the two). It would seem that in general one can range the existance of world cultures with the chinese and the indians on one side as easter cultures, roman culture and it's progany that it made by violating judaism (aka christianity and islam, both of which developed in the former roman empire) and judaism seemingly sitting over with the chinese looking at the romans and scared to cross the dividing line.
One can also seemingly devide these cultures based on the time in which they developed, being a post judaism culture (romans, greeks, christians, moslems) and judaism and its predicessors (chinese, hindues, and a whole bunch of idolworshiping religions.)
Basicaly traditional judaism seems to share more in common with the chinese than the christians, and seems to be the cultural devide between true east and west (with the muslems on the west)
"Likewise, if one acknowledges the Jewish roots of Christianity, one must also recognize that Jesus, like one's own appendix, is not necessary and serves no purpose. Anything else fudges the distinctions."
And what, pray tell, is necessary and serves a purpose to Christians, especially those outside the Roman Catholic tradition?
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