sodium

Are there Judeo-Christian values? Of course, Jews and Christians often hold values in common, just as Hindus and Muslims do. But did Christians adopt the values of Jews? Was the Christian era in some sense a continuation of Jewish civilization?

premjan

isn't the belief in the rule of law a result of the ten commandments? this is shared by Jews, Christians and Muslims. The belief is that laws are not only secular but also divine.

Peter Kirby

We may have to credit the Sumerians for that one. According to Kramer, they had the first court system based on written law (in cuneiform).

best,
Peter Kirby

judge

From Professor harold bermans book, law and revolution(the formation of the western legal tradition), p26-27.

...a Christian eschatology, which in turn was based on the
Judaic vision of history as moving toward a final denoument,
a climax. In contrast to the other indo-european peoles
including the greeks, who beleived that time moved in ever
recurring cycles, the Hebrew people conceived of time as
continuous, irreversible, and historical, leading to
ultimate redemption at the end. They also believed ,however,
that time has periods within it. It is not cyclical but may
be interrupted or accelerated. It develops. The old
testament is not merely a story of change but of development
, of growth, of movement toward the messianic age-very
uneven movement to be sure, with much backsliding but
nevertheless a movement toward. Christianity, however added
an important element to the Judaic concept of time: that of
the transformation of the old into the new. The hebrew bible
became the old testament. its meaning transformed by it's
fulfillment in the new testament. In the story of the
resurrection, death was transformed into a new beginning.
The times were not only accelerated but regenerated. This
introduced a new structure into history, in which there was
a fundamental transformation of one age into another. This
transformation, it was believed, could only happen once: the
life death and resurrection of Christ was thought to be the
the only major interruption in the course of linear time
from the creation of the world until it ends altogether.

This book also looks at the idea of "multiple sovereignties". That there one one transcendent lawgiver but that there could be more than one institution that would have it's own area of sovereignty.

Thus someone may be able to appeal to the church in one area and the civil government in another etc....

This does perhaps seem to be a particularly "biblical" concept. Some concerns are those of the individual some of the family some for the church and others for the civil government, but no earthly institution had total sovereignty, all were sanctioned from heaven. all had limited though legitimate areas of concern.
Apart from Israel in the ancient world we do not find this concept. Instead we find the total sovereignty of the civil government over all else (as far as I am aware).

Javaman

I think this thread strayed pretty quickly away from values to laws. While I had many Jewish friends in school, most of my close friends were some flavor of Christianity and those were the ones with which I was able to interact among their families. These families (and ones I've been close to in adulthood) display(ed) a wide variety of what I would deem 'values'. So, even if there was a commonality with respect to Jewish values of which I'm unaware, I doubt there's a 'Judeo-Christian' link as, on a case-by-case basis, I rarely see commonality among Christians.

If someone thinks they want to define a value set, I may ammend my answer.

Heathen Dawn

“Judeo-Christian” is a Christian term.

There are Princeton, Yale and Harvard. Princeton talks about the “Big Three” universities; Yale talks about “Yale-Harvard”; and Harvard only talks about Harvard. Similarly, Islam talks about the “Three Abrahamic religions”, Christianity talks about “Judeo-Christianity”, and Judaism talks only about Judaism.

premjan

Princeton is clearly the best of the three. I wonder if that means anything.

Javaman

Funny, I never thought about that but it seems pretty darned obvious.

sodium

It seems to me that the Greeks had some sense of a changing history. For example, the idea of Ages: Gold, Silver, etc. They looked to the past as being in some way closer to the divine. As far as I can see, this was much the same as the Jewish view. It may be true that many non-Jewish peoples thought the cycle of history would eventually repeat, but I don't personally know of anything in Jewish scriptures that addresses this question one way or the other.

Jews in exile came to believe that one day God would end their subjugation. But is that the same as saying they viewed their whole history as leading to ultimate redemption? That seems more like a Christian view of the Old Testament.

And both views are different again from the Enlightenment view of history as potentially progressive, due to the increase of knowledge.

Obviously many societies have had both Kings and Priests as separate groups. The only possible novelty is the idea that neither would be fully subservient to the other.

But is that really a Jewish idea? It may well be a Roman idea. The Romans decided that Jews should be given limited religious autonomy while being forced to surrender political autonomy. This, in effect, created the kind of division your talking about.

You obviously view Biblical Israel as having a division of this kind, so I'm prepared to be educated.

sodium

Oops!