Is there a Judeo-Christian Tradition?

Emmanuel Nathan, Anya Topolski, Emmanuel Nathan, Anya Topolski

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9783110416671
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Jewish History
• Index: History

The term 'Judeo-Christian' in reference to a tradition, heritage, ethic, civilization, faith etc. has been used in a wide variety of contexts with widely diverging meanings. Contrary to popular belief, the term was not coined in the United States in the middle of the 20th century but in 1831 in Germany by Ferdinand Christian Baur. By acknowledging and returning to this European perspective and context, the volume engages the historical, theological, philosophical and political dimensions of the term's development. Scholars of European intellectual history will find this volume timely and relevant.

Emmanuel Nathan and Anya Topolski

1The Myth of a Judeo-Christian Tradition: Introducing a European Perspective

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain there has been a steady rise in the use of the term ‘Judeo-Christian’ by European theologians, politicians, historians and philosophers. Is it possible that such divergent public figures as Geert Wilders, a right-wing populist politician in The Netherlands, Jacques Derrida, a left-leaning French philosopher, and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, use the term ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’ in the same manner? Is there any means to pin down the meaning of this term as it is now being used in Europe? Or is this term, which ‘has achieved considerable currency’ throughout Europe – both popular and scholarly, a shibboleth as was claimed by Mark Silk in his 1984 ‘Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition in America’ (Silk 1984, 65). Silk was responding to Arthur Cohen’s American-based analysis of this term in ‘The Myth of the Judeo-Christian tradition’ (Cohen 1971, original essay 1957). Cohen decried the use and abuse of the term ‘Judeo-Christian Tradition’ in North America in the post-Shoah decades. He was quite explicit with regard to his thesis.

And it is here that we can identify the myth. Jews and Christians have conspired together to promote a tradition of common experience and common belief, whereas in fact they have joined together to reinforce themselves in the face of a common disaster … before a world that regards them as hopelessly irrelevant, and meaningless. The myth is a projection of the will to endure of both Jews and Christians, an identification of common enemies, an abandonment of millennial antagonisms in the face of threats which do not discriminate between Judaism and Christianity. (Cohen 1971, xix)

According to Cohen there is no Judeo-Christian tradition; this tradition is an ideologically motivated myth. For those unfamiliar with this essay and its historical context, the common enemy Cohen refers to is the rise of atheism and its ties to ‘the Red Threat’ of Communism. Given that Cohen was writing not only from an American perspective, but also in the 1950s, it is worth considering if his thesis is still accurate. He writes: “It is in our time that the ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’ has come to full expression. … [and] has particular currency and significance in the Unites States. It is not a commonplace in Europe as it is here” (ibid. xviii–xix). While this may have been true in the 1950s, it is no longer the case sixty years later. The term ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’ was central to the debates about the EU Constitution between 2003 and 2005 1 and is currently used by politicians from all parties as well as religious leaders of all denominations. As such it has become part of common parlance in all European languages in the 21st century. It is this European ‘coming to full expression’ in the 21st century that is central to this current volume.

Before trying to disentangle the many diverse uses of the term ‘Judeo-Christian’ in contemporary European discourse, let us briefly consider the possible origins of the concept or signification of Judeo-Christianity.2 To help navigate this complex concept, we begin by sifting through the theological, philosophical, and political literature on the notion of Judeo-Christianity. Three possible historical origins emerge: the early Church period prior to the ‘parting of the ways’ between Judaism and Christianity (200–400 ce) (Dunn 1999; Boyarin 2006; Becker and Reed 2007), 17th century Enlightenment thought, and 19th century theology (greatly inspired by German Idealism). As there is a clear theological connection between the first and third hypothesis, we can consider them together by way of the writings of Bernard Heller and Simon Claude Mimouni, both theologians, the former in Jewish studies in the US and the latter in early Christianity in France (Heller 1951; Mimouni 2012). As a second step, we consider the authors that locate the origins of this tradition in the Enlightenment period (very broadly construed) such as: Joel Sebban, Isaac Rottenberg, Marshall Grossman, and Arthur A. Cohen (Sebban 2012; Gover 1989; Rottenberg 2000; Grossman 1989; Cohen, Stern, and Mendes-Flohr 1998). Within this group, Sebban is the only author writing about this signifier on the (European) Continent. All the other authors are explicitly interested in the role of this term in American public discourse. What we hope to make clear is that these distinctions, European or American, theological or political, Jewish or Christian, affect the frame of each author and as such influences what they take to be the origins and meaning of this signifier.

Heller’s 1951 piece, ‘The Judeo-Christian tradition concept: air or deterrent to goodwill?’, published in the journal Judaism, ambitiously claims that this tradition has “a long and cherished history” (Heller 1951, 133). This history has four phases: its origin in the period directly following the birth of Jesus, 19th century German theological supersessionism, 20th century racial anti-Semitism (which he connects to Nietzsche), and most recently political Orientalism. Explicitly demarcated by the horrors of the Shoah, Heller’s frame leads him to narrate the transformations of the notion of Judeo-Christianity in terms of shifting anti-Semitism e.g. from theological to political via racial anti-Semitism. Framed in a similar vein to Marshall Grossman’s 1989 deconstructive analysis of the ‘violence of the hyphen in Judeo-Christian’, Heller’s ideological motivation to prove that anti-Semitism is as old as Christianity prevents him from appreciating the Foucauldian inspired concern in Grossman’s analysis – the role of power, and its relation to discourse. Concretely, Heller wants to paint a picture of 2000 years of uninterrupted anti-Semitism from the birth of Christianity to the Shoah. He thus fails to acknowledge the radical difference between Early Church (pre-Constantine) inter-community tensions and the latter three phases. While there was undoubtedly a great deal of anti-Judaism in the period when Christianity was born, this phase of Judeo-Christianity was one in which there was an unambiguous relationship between these communities and their followers, an ambiguity that caused tension and sometimes led to violence, but was by no means – in terms of power dynamics – an early form of anti-Semitism (Boyarin 2006). Heller’s account of the origin and history of the term ‘Judeo-Christianity’ is entirely focused on anti-Semitism and its roots in Christianity.

This type of bias is clearly avoided by Claude Mimouni in his highly detailed analysis of the concept of Judeo-Christianity. He corrects Heller’s anachronistic error by tracing its origins to the 19th century and specifically the writings of F.C. Baur (influenced by both Schleiermacher and Hegel), who he claims was the first person to use this term in print. Mimouni thus demonstrates that the term Judeo-Christianity was introduced by the 19th century German Protestant theologians who sought to bring attention to the period of the early Church in which there was much tension between the competing notions of Christianity (many of which were seeking to define themselves vis-a-vis Judaism). In this vein, the first use of this term was theological in origin and served to identify different early Christian communities that were close to Judaism in terms of either praxis or dogma. While Baur’s later usage of this term varies, its original purpose was one of classification, part and parcel of the new academic discipline of religious studies (Religionsgeschichte). It is perhaps Mimouni’s restricted interest in the discipline of theology that accounts for his neglect of the term’s pre-theological origins in the wider political space. Yet if one does not take this wider context into consideration, one could just as easily declare its origin to be much earlier given that scholars several centuries before began to study these same early Christian communities and their relationship to Judaism showing a surprisingly strong interest in Hebrew and scripture. It is upon this basis that Javier Teixiodor dates Judeo-Christianity’s conceptual origin to the authors of the 15th and early 16th century engaged in translating the Bible, such as Valla and Erasmus, who emphasised the importance of its Hebraic or Judaic roots (Teixidor 2006). While Mimouni is correct to acknowledge that Baur was the first to explicitly use this term Judeo-Christianity, he (and Teixiodor) fails to appreciate the political motives that led to a renewed interest in these early Christian communities, and the reading of the Bible in Hebrew, its original language (Nelson 2011; Topolski 2016).

One of the most significant contributions to the discussion about the origins of the term ‘Judeo-Christian’ that does consider the political motives is that by Joël Sebban (Sebban 2012). With an explicitly French focus, Sebban locates the roots of this term in the emancipation of the Jews in the year 1791. The French context is clearly influenced by events on the European continent and the role of the Catholic Church (as the writings of Jacques Maritain demonstrate, see (Maritain 2012; Andras and Hubert 1996)). In this vein, ‘la morale judéo-chrétienne’ has several ideologically different manifestations. Sebban develops several of these political responses to the idea of a Judeo-Christian tradition such as: a liberal Christian ideology (at the turn of the 20th century), a last attempt to save the life of the spirit by religious philosophers in the 19th century, and most recently in the form of a discourse of civilisations. While it is clear that, as Sebban argues, these competing ideas all came to the surface during the French Revolution, Sebban does not consider the events and intellectual climate prior to the French Revolution. Instead, he moves quickly from 1791 to 1831, Baur’s first usage of the term only then slowing down and engaging in a very close analysis of ‘la morale judéo-chrétienne’ from Baur to Renan via Nietzsche, an analysis that is confirmed in several contributions to this volume. As many scholars examining this term contend, its origins cannot be fully appreciated without its connection to questions first raised in the 17th century about the relationship between Church and State, between Judaism and Christianity, and between monarchists and republicans. For this reason it is surprising that Sebban does not connect the events of 1791 to the earlier debates about the role of religion in philosophy or the dialogue on modern forms of statecraft. To do so, we now turn to contributions by Gover, Rottenberg, and Cohen who all situate the origins of this term in the Enlightenment.

As Sebban demonstrates, the concept of Judeo-Christianity certainly goes beyond the boundaries of theology, a fact which all of the authors who locate its origins in the period between the 17th and 18th century equally appreciate. Yerach Gover, who shares Mimouni’s interest in theology, traces the origins of the concept of Judeo-Christianity from the renewed interest in Hebrew, the Bible and its critical study during the Reformation to the thinkers of the Enlightenment. While he recognises the essential connection between theology and philology in the 16th century, he neither connects this to the political project it enabled – the Respublica Hebraeorum, an integral part of the genealogy of the notion of Judeo-Christianity, nor does he connect the upsurge in interest in Hebrew, language and texts, to the Protestant Reformation. Instead he focuses on their role as the founders of several new fields of study, such as comparative religions. The latter is undoubtedly related to the political tensions within the Church, yet Gover’s frame does not call for a closer political analysis (in this vein his analysis is close to Mimouni’s). In the 16th century, primarily in Protestant milieu, the academic interest in other religions, both Christian and non-Christian, is facilitated by the political campaigns for tolerance and separation between Church and State as well as the search for a prisca theoloigca (an ur-religion). Evidence of this lineage are two students of John Selden (1584–1654), who wrote many renowned writings on the Hebrew Republic, James Harrington and Thomas Hobbes, both of whom also sought to draw political lessons from the Hebrew scriptures.3

While Cohen’s analysis is US-centred, he does state that there is more to the myth of the Judeo-Christian tradition than the American tale he tells. As such he dedicates a few paragraphs to the European history of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Drawing an analogy to its usage in the US in the 1950s, Cohen states that, “The Judeo-Christian connection was formed by the opponents of Judaism and Christianity, by the opponents of a system of unreason which had nearly destroyed Western Europe” (Cohen 1971, xviii). He refers specifically to both the rise of atheist thinkers in Europe from the 17th and 18th centuries, such as Spinoza and Voltaire, as well as those trying to carve an intellectual space for a rational religion in the 18th and 19th century such as Kant and Hegel. Though Cohen is less interested in the genealogy of the Judeo-Christian myth, he does clearly indicate that – for those interested in its historical origins – one ought to begin in the 17th century.

It could not be helped that in the attack on Christianity Judaism should suffer, for Christianity depended upon Judaism for the internal logic of its history … It could not be otherwise, then, but that a ‘Christo-Jewish tradition’ should come to be defined and characterized as one of irrationality and fanaticism. (Cohen, Stern, and Mendes-Flohr 1998, 34–5)

Cohen refers to this ‘Christo-Jewish tradition’ as the origins of the myth in that this link between Judaism and Christianity eventually leads to the ideological myth he seeks to debunk. While this strikes us as a plausible explanation, it would have been inconceivable in the 16th century....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• 1 The Myth of a Judeo-Christian Tradition: Introducing a European Perspective
• Part 1: History
• Part 2: Theology and Philosophy
• Part 3: Political
• Notes on Contributors
• Footnotes