***or do we also need to go back to earthier pagan ideas?***
You might want to read THE GOLDEN BOUGH by Frasier before you start looking back at the pagan world. Too many human sacrifices to insure a good grain crop in all the pagan world for me.
This is why the Judeo-Christian world view was so different from paganism, barbarianism and savagery.
I agree that the “the Judeo-Christian world view” was a wonderful advance on “paganism, barbarianism and savagery.”
....... but within those things there was also a humanity upon which christianity, and the rest ,was, in part, built