Judeo-Christian

Judeo-Christian has two main meanings. The first refers to Jews who have converted to Christianity. The second, and today more common, meaning refers to the common ethical and cultural values of Judaism and Christianity. This second meaning originally grew out of desire for inclusivity, but the term Judeo-Christian is now increasingly used to exclude other religions.

The etymology is simple. It’s a straightforward compounding of the standard combining form Judeo-, referring to Judaism, and the adjective Christian.

We see the first sense, that of Jews who have converted to Christianity, in a letter written from Warsaw and published in December 1821 issue of The Jewish Expositor, the journal of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews:

From all I can see there is but one way to bring about the object of the Society, that is by erecting a Judæo Christian community, a city of refuge, where all who wish to be baptized could be supplied with the means of earning their bread.

Another early use in this sense is from the United States, in the Guardian, or Youth’s Religious Instructor of 1 June 1822:

The operations among the Jews in Poland and Germany are going forward, with encouraging success. In Frankfort [sic], and the adjacent places, fifteen Jews have lately embraced Christianity. Tracts and Testaments are received with avidity and read with attention. A Jew in Germany has ordered 1000 Testaments to be printed at his own expense, and another is endeavouring to establish a Bible Society among the Jews. The urgent necessity of establishing a Judӕo Christian Community, to afford an asylum for those Jews who embrace Christianity, becomes daily more apparent.

Slightly later, we see Judeo-Christian used in a historical context, referring to the early Christian church made up of converted Jews, primarily in Jerusalem, in contrast to the Pauline churches made up of Gentiles that were scattered across the eastern Mediterranean. Samuel Taylor Coleridge uses this sense in an 1827 commentary on Edward Irving’s translation of Manuel de Lacunza y Diaz’s “The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty.” Lacunza (1731–1801) was a Jesuit priest who wrote under the pseudonym Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra:

But there is yet another and worse wresting of the text. Who that reads Lacunza, p. 108, last line but twelve, would not understand that the Apocalypt [sic] had asserted this enthronement of the souls of the Gentile and Judaeo-Christian Martyrs which he beheld in the train or suite of the descending Messiah.

This historical sense has similar terms in other languages at appear somewhat earlier, the German Judenchrist and the Latin Judaeo-Christianus. The English term may be modeled after one or both of these.

The second sense of Judeo-Christian relates to those values and customs shared by Judaism and Christianity and is rooted in the idea that Christianity supersedes Judaism. While it may seem to reflect a spirit of inclusivity, the supersession and the exclusion of other religion belies that reflection. The Oxford English Dictionary has a quotation in this sense from January 1881 from Dickinson’s Theological Quarterly:

They have learned in their studies that pure and complete theism never existed, in a general manner, save in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

I have been unable to locate a copy of this text, so I cannot provide any further context.

Of course, not all uses of the Judeo-Christian have such negative connotations. One such use is in the context of a June 1934 resolution by the Central Conference of American Rabbis in response to a call by others for Jews to engage the Nazis with good will:

We protest with all our might against the oppression of any individual on these grounds as contrary to the great Judaeo-Christian heritage of our civilization.

We are deeply grateful for the many evidences of understanding and sympathy which Christian leaders have manifested and for the outspoken opposition to the Hitler terrorism on the part of all the truly liberal forces of the world.

But today the term is more likely to be used to differentiate and exclude other religious faiths from participation in the American polity. For example, there is this from a November 2015 op-ed in the New York Times:

Working our way down the roster, what of the former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee or Gov. John Kasich of Ohio? Mr. Huckabee has called Islam “a religion that promotes the most murderous mayhem on the planet,” and Mr. Kasich has proposed a federal agency to spread “Judeo-Christian Western values.”

The denotation, the dictionary definition, of this second sense hasn’t changed, but its connotation has.

The term Abrahamic has been proposed as one that would include Islam in the same cultural tradition, but like Judeo-Christian, it fails to include Buddhism, Hinduism, or other religions.

Sources:

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Notes on Irving’s Ben-Ezra” (1827). Literary Remains, vol. 4. Henry Nelson Coleridge, ed. London: William Pickering, 1839, 406. HathiTrust Digital Library.

“Foreign.” The Guardian, or Youth’s Religious Instructor (New Haven, Connecticut), 1 June 1822, 215. Gale Primary Sources: American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society.

“Good-Will Barred to Nazis by Rabbis.” New York Times, 16 June 1934, 16/6–7.

Hasan, Mehdi. “Why I Miss George W. Bush.” New York Times, 30 November 2015, A23/3.

Hawley, C. S. “Extract of a Letter from Mr. McCaul.” The Jewish Expositor and Friend of Israel, December 1821, 478/1. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, December 2013, s.v. Judaeo-Christian | Judeo-Christian, adj. and n., Judaeo-Christianity | Judeo-Christianity, n.