>>Michael, you are in the wrong context. "Judeo-Christian" AS A TERM does not exist in English until late in the 20th century. What you are talking about here is the enormous influence of the OT on 16th/17th century Protestant theology. This has been discussed off and on for a long time. One Milton scholar spent his life trying to prove that Milton had read a number of Rabbinic commentaries -- not generally accepted now.>>
Could Carrol or Max give us a definitive quote showing where the term comes into existence? It seems far more likely to have been coined by either a Mormon in the 19th century, or a Jewish immigrant leader trying to get the Protestants off his people's collective backs in the late 19th or early 20th century. Now, as for affinities with things 'Hebrew' in American history, the Puritans had an inclination for this, because they wanted to connect quite explicitly the Old Testament with the New Testament (CONTINUITY you see) and they also wanted to get back to the untranslated GOD/WORD/LOGOS (though they were sadly mistaken on that account, linguistically speaking, since it doesn't seem either Moses or Jesus spoke Hebrew). Deist weirdos (not monotheists hellbent on revelation) in US foundational mythology, like Jefferson, had 'Hebrew' affinities because of their interests in ancient civilisations and languages, and their belief in the idea that right reason was in direct contact with LOGOS and did not need prophets or angels.
Also, Carrol anachronistically begs the question. If there is and has been a Judeo-Christian 'tradition' (or Abrahamic, to bring in Islam), it wouldn't matter when the hyphenated term was coined for it to refer to that tradition (even if Carrol has good reasons for doubting the reality of the concept). I have doubts about the tradition being of much substance for intellectuals or rabbinic Jews (now mostly secular and/or zionist) in the post-modern world, but surely surely Cold War ideologues weren't the first to see connections across Christian, Jewish and Islamic religions that were obvious enough to warrant the idea that they formed some sort of 'tradition'. Why did English speaking people in Milton's time see the Koran as an elaborate forgery? Perhaps because its parallels to their own text-based religion were close enough to scare them but different enough that they couldn't assimilate them.
Some suggested reading below, excerpts and urls. Some of it is pretty scary, especially the Mormon and Townhall stuff. F
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http://www.facsnet.org/issues/faith/goff.php
>>In the 1950s, Judaism became more accepted in the mainstream, largely because of the Cold War, and the struggle against an atheistic ideology, Goff said.
gYou had to present a united front against godless communism,h he said. gAnd popular culture helped mainstream Judaism through movies like "The Ten Commandments."... What began as Protestant pluralism, over time becomes Christian pluralism, to eJudeo-Christian.fh
The balance further tilted further away from the old Protestant order with the Immigration Act of 1965, which opened the country to a more diverse group of new Americans than ever, especially Asians and Hispanics.>>
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4803.htm
>>The Myth of a Judeo-Christian Tradition
The following article from New Dawn Magazine No.23 Feb-March 1994.
This is an age in which news has been superseded by propaganda, and education by brain-washing and indoctrination. From the advertising used to sell poor quality goods, to the classes in schools designed to make children into conditioned robots of the State, the art of persuasion has displaced the simple virtue of truth.
Since the end of the Second World War we have been bombarded from all sides with references to the Western world's "Judeo-Christian religion," and "our Judeo-Christian heritage." We are told by both church leaders and scholars that our society is based on a supposed "Judeo-Christian tradition".>>
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=188
>>Third, the civil sense of the term has an inner contradiction. The New England Puritans and their putative heirs have to draw on the "Judeo"- side, since it is the law of Moses that provides scripts for their theocratic intentions (intentions that survive in much "Judeo-Christian" talk today). The "-Christian" side of the hyphen, which would draw on the New Testament, is not of much help in defining laws for civil society. The New Testament is too eschatological to display many values for a Christian society; its writers are preoccupied with life in a cosmos not of their making, not to be made by them, and ruled by "principalities and powers, Caesars and the Antichrist. What the Hebrew Scriptures set up theocratically, the New Testament knocks down eschatologically. >>
http://freebooks.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/221a_47e.htm http://freebooks.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/a_pdfs/gnjt.pdf A study of the theology of Judaism that shows why some Jews have denied that there has ever been a Judeo-Christian tradition. They argue that this idea came out of American Protestant liberalism, not out of the facts of European history. This book takes seriously this claim. It reveals the permanent dividing lines between orthodox Christianity and Orthodox Judaism regarding the proper interpretation of the Old Testament.
http://www.au.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5572&abbr=cs_
>>When speakers at this event talked about "Christians" exercising dominion or rebuilding America, it was clear the reference was to ultra-conservative, fundamentalist Christians. No lip service was given to "Judeo-Christian" values. This crowd wanted exclusively Christian values, and only a certain type of Christian values fundamentalist ones.
The idea that the Bible speaks to all areas of life and is infallible in what it addresses was the companion theme of the event. Bob Cornuke, a would-be archaeologist who describes himself as a type of Christian Indiana Jones, regaled the crowd with tales of his efforts to find Noah's Ark and the real location of Mt. Sinai in the Holy Land. Cornuke insisted that the Bible can be read like a history book and an archaeology text, remarking, "The Bible is always historically accurate always. It is never proven to be wrong."
Conference organizers also believe the Bible is a science book. While no speakers addressed evolution specifically during the Pearland meeting, other Worldview events have featured Ken Ham, a prominent "young Earth" creationist. A number of anti-evolution books were available for sale in the church lobby which was pressed into service as an exhibit hall and during breaks in the meeting a cartoon of Charles Darwin's head on a monkey's body appeared frequently on two huge screens behind the pulpit. The caption read, "Is this Charles Darwin's ancestor? Evolutionists think so!">>
http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/basic/bom/biblical_culture_eom.htm
>>In five important ways, the Book of Mormon seems to some who are not members of the Church to strengthen the authority of Holy Scripture. First in importance is the volume's affirmation that the Christian religion is grounded upon both the Old and New Testaments. The book affirms what recent biblical scholarship is now making plain: the continuity of the theology, ethics, and spirituality that the two Testaments proclaimed. In the Book of Mormon, Jesus is the Lord who gave the law to Moses, and the risen Christ is identical to the prophet Isaiah's messiah. He delivers exactly the same message of redemption, faith, and a new life of righteousness through the Holy Spirit that the New Testament attributes to him.
Second, the Book of Mormon reinforces the unifying vision of biblical religion, grounding it in the conviction of a common humanity that the stories of creation declared, God's promise to Abraham implied, and Jesus affirmed. Puritan millenarianism may have inspired an ethnocentric view of Anglo-Saxon destiny, but the image of the future in the Book of Mormon is a wholly opposite one. It envisions a worldwide conversion of believers and their final gathering into the kingdom of God. This begins where John Wesley's "world parish" leaves off.
Third, the biblical bond linking holiness to hope for salvation, both individual and social, also finds confirmation in the Book of Mormon. Certainly, Methodists had no corner on that linkage, for Baptist preachers, Charles G. Finney's Congregationalists, Alexander Campbell's Disciples of Christ, and Unitarians like William E. Channing affirmed it. Ancient Nephites heeded the word of their prophets and looked forward to the second coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of Righteousness. When he appeared to their descendants in the New World, Jesus repeated even more understandably the words of the Sermon on the Mount that he had proclaimed in the Old.
Fourth, Joseph Smith's translation of an ancient sacred book helped bring to fruition another movement, long growing among Puritans, Pietists, Quakers, and Methodists, to restore to Christian doctrine the idea of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. Charles G. Finney came eventually to believe, for example, that the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or the experience of entire sanctification, would remedy the inadequacies of righteousness and love that he saw in his converts. So, of course, did almost all Methodists. Observers from both inside and outside the restored Church testified that in the early years something akin to modern Pentecostal phenomena took place among at least the inner circle of the Saints. By the 1830s, evangelicals in several traditions were greatly expanding their use of the example of the Day of Pentecost to declare that God's power is at work in the world.
Fifth, the Book of Mormon shared in the restoration of some Christian expectations that in the last days biblical prophecies will be literally fulfilled. Those who by faith and baptism become Saints will be included among God's people, chosen in "the eleventh hour." They, too, should gather in Zion, a New Jerusalem for the New World, and a restored Jerusalem in the Old; and Christ will indeed return.>>
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/dp20040330.shtml
>>But what does "Judeo-Christian" mean? We need to know. Along with the belief in liberty -- as opposed to, for example, the European belief in equality, the Muslim belief in theocracy, and the Eastern belief in social conformity -- Judeo-Christian values are what distinguish America from all other countries. That is why American coins feature these two messages: "In God we trust" and "Liberty.">>
>>The significance of this belief in American chosenness cannot be overstated. It accounts for the mission that Americans have uniquely felt called to -- to spread liberty in the world.
This sense of mission is why more Americans have died for the liberty of others than any other nation's soldiers.>>
>>That is why those who most affirm Judeo-Christian values believe that war, while always tragic, is on more than a few occasions a moral duty. Nothing "Judeo" ever sanctioned pacifism. Of course, the Hebrew Prophet Isaiah yearned for the day that nations will beat their swords into plowshares. But another Hebrew Prophet, Joel, who is never cited by those who wish to read the secular value of pacifism into the Bible, said precisely the opposite: "Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weakling say, 'I am strong!'">>
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