Judeo-Christian is a contradiction in terms

Jeez, you guys are nice here. Well done. I thank you in the traditional way of the internet... http://images.cheezburger.com... --- "The relationship itself goes deeper than the text. The first Christians as well as Jesus himself, were of course Jews. They revered the same scriptures because they shared the same faith and cultural history. The New Testament does not replace or override The Old Testament from a Christian perspective, it adds to it and draws heavily upon it." Many, many things are overridden, according to Christianity, by the events described in the New Testament. Kosher laws, laws concerning the sabbath--Actually, virtually all of the laws. Jews, like I said up before, are very much bound by law and the concept. The NT overwrites (specifically it says it "fulfills" the law, which I never understood but the end result is that it's no longer applicable) Mosaic law replacing it with a separate covenant. The body of text is indeed somewhat shared--Christians don't have all the Jew's books, and vice versa--But the precepts and morals referred to as Judeo-Christian have very little to do with the application of those passages to greater moral debates or political concepts, from a Jewish perspective. Christianity, in it's modern incarnation, shares some things with Judaism but many, many more things with other faiths and religious outlooks. Human God-form, resurrection, human sacrifice, original sin--Those are all European Pagan ideas. Without, oh, Zeus, Dionysus, Odin, Pandora, Balder--Christianity wouldn't exist either. Yet no one ever refers to Greco-Christianity or Pago-Christianty. There are, I concede, ideas that could be referred to as Judeo-Christian. Probably the prohibition against blasphemy, for a good example. Monotheism. A connection and shared reverence for the patriarchs-Moses, Abraham, Isaac, etc. But none of these ever seem to be cited as what constitutes a Judeo-Christian idea. --- Jewish World Reviewing. Harvard is...not the best example for a positive unification of Judaism and Christianity. I'd very much like to tell this to the people at the JWR site, but since they're not here, I'll go with you. We probably shouldn't go with "behavior of Harvard" as a good standard of embracing Hebrew tradition. Harvard taught Hebrew, certainly. Later on, they put quotas on Jews being allowed to attend. "We have too many Jews" is, I think you'll agree, not a great unifying sentiment. For more information on that, you can go here: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org... As for the liberty bell inscription, that is indeed from Leviticus. The full verse is actually sort of pretty: "and ye have hallowed the year, the fiftieth year; and ye have proclaimed liberty in the land to all its inhabitants; a jubilee it is to you; and ye have turned back each unto his possession; yea, each unto his family ye do turn back." I'm just putting it up there for general interests sake. I can't really call that a no, that is what's written there. Uh...I'm calling No-refuting on that one. As for vast numbers of Americans taking Hebrew names...I'm not sure about that. Benjamin Franklin didn't TAKE the name Benjamin, I'm pretty sure he was born with it. I think what would be more accurate to say is "Many names of the founding fathers, and many people in genera for that matterl, stem from Hebrew." As to the Exodus, I think it's a nice that the early Americans identified with the Jews after enslavement. I think it's telling that they chose to go a different way, also. The story of the Exodus, while culturally important to Jews, is not rhetorically unique to them. Using comparisons from the Torah doesn't neccesarily make you validly Judeo-Christian. Governor Sanford, the fellow that had the affair in Argentina, described himself as being comparable to David and Bathsheba. He...somewhat missed the point of the story, but the usage of that isn't a Judeo-Christian usage. It certainly doesn't make his affair Jewish. ---- Equating Judeo-Christian with "Everything shared by the two faiths" might, if applied as a rule on other things, cause some problems. Heaven and Hell are concepts shared by Moslems and Christians, but we don't refer to that as a "Christo-Islamic afterlife". We could start, I suppose. I don't think it'll catch on, though. --- Regarding monotheism and Christianity--It's not that I want to question the validity of any faith, but the idea that simply stating something is valid makes it so when comparing it to previous pieces of evidence. For example--Christians often say they worship the same God as the Jews. The problem with that is that the Jewish G-d doesn't do what the Christian God does. It's actually logically incapable of doing so, which leads to a whole other set of problems. I don't know how to say it, but...we can't just take that sort of statement at it's word. --- The issue of Messianic Jews is always an interesting one. Maybe I have contradicted myself a little bit, so I'll try and explain further. Membership in Judaism is complicated. Technically, you can be a Jew and be whatever you want--Christian, Moslem, Buddhist, Martian. If your mother was Jewish, you're automatically Jewish. If not, no luck. So conversion doesn't invalidate Jewishness. But there is a Jewish belief structure, certain principles that need to be met to be called Jewish in a religious sense: Sort of Jewish religious precepts. One of them is that G-d is immaterial and that the Messiah hasn't come yet. So, if your religion has either of those as part of it, it's not a Jewish religion. It can be done in Hebrew and the holidays can be the same, but it's still not the Jewish religion. --- And you're right, I'm sure not all Christians support Israel to bring about Armageddon. That was probably a bit spiteful of me. Sorry about that. The goal of the IFCJ is, as stated in the about page, promoting shared issues of interest to Christians and Jews. I think these issues certainly exist, just like all issues interest an intersection of groups. BUT we don't refer to those issues by a conflation of those groups names. Legalization of marijuana interests, probably, both Libertarians and farmers, but we wouldn't refer to the issues as "Libertario-Agricultural", despite how fun that would be. There's something special about Judeo-Christian that marks it for this sort of usage, and I don't think we've hit upon exactly what that is yet. -- I concede defeat on the Jews not liking the term. There are clearly Jews who like the term. I want to have a long discussion with them about that, but for that particular point, I was wrong. -- The problem with Judeo-Christian, as I see it, is that while it is a reminder of shared values, it's also in a sense co-opting certain parts of Judaism to fulfill Christian needs. No one seems to be arguing that America was founded on a Jewish basis, just a Judeo-Christian one (or an outright Christian one, when discussing that particular side of that debate). It saddens me to see things used inaccurately, to see the concepts of Judaism tied so firmly to things that Judaism actually opposes, and often opposes Jews themselves. --- Hope you slept. Pro.