NeoWayland's Lexicon

Supposedly the joining of Jewish and Christian values under one label that inspires the world. There is an underlying assumption that Christianity is the successor to Judaism and therefore uniquely qualified to proclaim what is right.

Except it doesn't work that way.

❝Western Civilization, especially the American version, had it's pagan roots among it's Christian and Jewish roots. One house of Congress is called the Senate, the other has a ceremonial fasces. It also drew from some of the more civilized indigenous tribes the colonists encountered.❞

❝…a term that groups Judaism and Christianity, either in reference to Christianity's derivation from Judaism, both religions' common use of the Torah, or due to perceived parallels or commonalities shared values between those two religions, which has contained as part of Western culture.

The term became prevalent towards the middle of the 20th century in the United States to link broader principles of Judeo-Christian ethics such as the dignity of human life, adherence to the Abrahamic covenant, common decency, and support of traditional family values.

The concept of "Judeo-Christian values" in an ethical (rather than theological or liturgical) sense was used by George Orwell in 1939, with the phrase "the Judaeo-Christian scheme of morals." It has become part of the American civil religion since the 1940s.❞

➢ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-Christian

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❝First, Judeo-Christian America has differed from Christian countries in Europe in at least two important ways. One is that the Christians who founded America saw themselves as heirs to the Hebrew Bible, as much as to theirs. And even more importantly, they strongly identified with the Jews.
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The second meaning of Judeo-Christian is a belief in the biblical G-d of Israel, in His Ten Commandments and His biblical moral laws. It is a belief in universal, not relative, morality. It is a belief that America must answer morally to this G-d, not to the mortal, usually venal, governments of the world.
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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!'"

And that is why those who want Judeo-Christian values to disappear from American public life affirm multiculturalism, seek to remove mention of G-d from all public life, and make Christmas a private, not a national, holiday. ❞

➢ What does 'Judeo-Christian' mean? from Jewish World Review

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❝Is there then any truth in this term, "Judeo-Christian"? Is Christianity derived from Judaism? Does Christianity have anything in common with Judaism?

Reviewing the last two thousand years of Western Christian history there is really no evidence of a Judeo-Christian tradition and this has not escaped the attention of honest Christian and Jewish commentators.

The Jewish scholar Dr. Joseph Klausner in his book Jesus of Nazareth expressed the Judaic viewpoint that "there was something contrary to the world outlook of Israel" in Christ's teachings, "a new teaching so irreconcilable with the spirit of Judaism, " containing "within it the germs from which there could and must develop in course of time a non-Jewish and even anti-Jewish teaching."

Dr. Klausner quotes the outstanding Christian theologian, Adolf Harnack, who in his last work rejected the hypothesis of the Jewish origin of Christ's doctrine: "Virtually every word He taught is made to be of permanent and universal humanitarian interest. The Messianic features are abolished entirely, and virtually no importance is attached to Judaism in its capacity of Jesus' environment."

Gershon Mamlak, an award-winning Jewish Zionist intellectual, recently claimed that the "Jesus tradition" is essentially the ultimate extension of ancient Greek Hellenism and is in direct conflict to Judaism's "role as the Chosen people".

Dr. Mamlak, writing in the Theodor Herzl Foundation's magazine of Jewish thought, Midstream, maintains that the prevailing theory that Christianity originated in the spiritual realm of Judaism "is anchored in a twofold misconception: 1) the uniqueness of Judaism is confined to its monotheistic God-concept; 2) the 'parting of the ways' between the Jesus coterie and Judaism is seen as the result of the former's adaptation of the doctrines of Christology."

The first misconception means: "When the affinity of the Jesus coterie with Judaism is evaluated by common faith in the One, severed from the believer's duty to execute the Law of the One and to acknowledge the Chosen Nation of Israel as His instrument-faith in the One becomes anti-Judaism par excellence!"

In Gershon Mamlak's view, "The conflict between Judaism and the Jesus tradition goes beyond the confines of theology. [The Jesus tradition] was the cosmopolitan renunciation of the national phenomenon in general and extreme hostility to Israel's idea of a Chosen Nation as the divine instrument for the perfection of the world."

Evidently the concept of a common Judeo-Christian tradition has more to do with post 1945 politics and a certain amount of 'public relations' than it does with historical and Biblical reality. Never the less a number of modern Christian polemicists have managed to rest certain New Testament verses in the drive to give a Scriptural basis to their argument.❞

➢ The Myth of a Judeo-Christian Tradition
originally from New Dawn Magazine No.23 Feb-March 1994

I'm pretty sure that "Judeo-Christian values" steal legitimacy and authenticity from Judaism for Christianity. Christianity doesn't need it. Judaism can't afford to lose it.

The origin date (1821? 1847?) of the phrase is uncertain. Widespread American use started during the mid 20th Century, probably around the same time that the national motto was changed. The phrase is intimately tied up with the idea of American exceptionalism.

For our purposes here, there are three significant differences between Christianity and Judaism. First are the textual differences. The Christian Old Testament alters meaning by changing the arrangement and emphasis of the Tanach. The entire New Testament (any version) is not found in Jewish law.

Second is the Christian assertion of Jesus as the Messiah (leaving aside the question of if he existed).

Finally the Christian belief in a new covenant that replaces Hebrews as G*D's chosen people. Suddenly they are just one of many peoples. This is a major alteration of the original convenant that G*D made with the Hebrews.

Taken together, these differences reduce Judaism from a living faith to a curious relic that exists only because Christians sometimes find it interesting. Why in the World would devout Jews be part of that?

Of course there are many more differences than those I listed. But the underlying assumption of "Judeo-Christian" thought is that men and women have moved on from Judaism because it is less important than Christianity. "Judeo-Christianity" claims to honor Judaism all while diminishing it's contributions. "Judeo-Christianity" is a one-sided exchange that treats Judaism as a second class source, occasionally tolerated but seldom valued on it's own merits.

In politics, this phrase supposedly signifies something almost holy, something beyond question, something beyond mere man’s law.

In other words, it’s another “sit down and shut the fuck up!”

❝There's no doubt that Christians have contributed heavily, but they are at their best when they aren't the only game around.

What Roy Moore and those like him want is to put their version of Christianity above all other faiths and beyond question from mere mortal men and women. It's about control of what is and what is not allowed, despite what the courts and voters might say. It's politics in one of it's worst permutations.

On private property it would have been fine. But on public property, specifically where the law was interpeted to apply to all people, it was a war cry that in that time, in that place, Christianity must reign supreme.❞

The people who use the phrase have appointed themselves cultural gatekeepers and arbiters. They believe that they are the ones who decide what does and does not fit in our society. And since it’s a matter of faith and not law, it can’t be challenged on legal or moral grounds.

After all, who are you to deny the Judeo-Christian heritage? You’re merely human, after all. You don’t have the inspired wisdom of the Almighty on your side.

See also

Christian nation,

Judeo-Christian,

NeoNote — There is no "Judeo-Christian faith.",

politics

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https://lexicon.neowayland.com/jj/#judeo-christian-heritage

❝The practice of jus primae noctis (“right of the first night”) is, in simplest terms, the right of the local noble to deflower local peasant brides on their wedding night before their newlywed husbands. Precedence for this practice supposedly goes back for many thousands of years, with the first reference of something like it going all the way back to the Epic of Gilgamesh from over four thousand years ago. This practiced (apparently) reached its crescendo during the Middle Ages in Europe, and today is popularly depicted in Hollywood in such films as Braveheart.

But did it really ever happen?

Numerous historians have studied the subject and the result is that it turns out there is no solid evidence of this practice happening in reality at all. Not a single well documented incident recorded, nor a single victim’s name passed down. It could be argued that women in these periods, in general, would not be considered noteworthy, especially peasant women, but with a practice spanning (supposedly) thousands of years, and the presumable rage it would induce in the peasant populace, not to mention occasional bastard offspring and perhaps a boatload of secret weddings to avoid the issue, odds are at least a few documented cases would manage to make it down through posterity. Or even just a record of the law in some court case, as there are such records of numerous other laws. But any such evidence simply doesn’t exist outside of fictional works or, for instance, cases where people were trying to rally the peasant class against their lords using the supposedly former practice of jus primae noctis to whip the mob up.❞

➣ Jus Primae Noctis: Fact Or Fiction? from Today I Found Out

Historians dispute if it actually was ever a law. It might (and I stress might) have existed as a custom in some areas.

Some modern spectulation draws from certain discredited works from Margaret Murray dealing with the idea of a sacred king wedded to the land.

There are older and independent sources that deal with the custom, not the phrase.