[Albion Wilde]

Really? So Jews are still poor and starving then?

Certainly not. The impact of Judaism was very much the root of the Christian cultural hegemony which would follow Judaism's rise in the middle east and go on to flood the Western world. The reason why Christianity was a powerful force for society was simply demographic -- far greater numbers.

It may be politically correct to erase the impact of Christianity (and in fact, any virtue whatsoever) from the development of Western civilization due to its human imperfections, but it is historically inaccurate to do so.

It is also well to remember that the entire Jewish scripture is included in the Bible used by Christians and is routinely studied by them; and that both religions share the foundational ethics of the Decalogue.

One should also take note that corruption happens periodically in any large system; and that America was formed by Christians seeking relief from religious persecution by other Christians. It is tempting to think that Christ's teachings were at fault, when in fact it was human failure. The overall ideology contains self-correcting forces that have renewed the system over and over, whether it was rejection of theocracy, rejection of slavery or rejection of rigidly arbitrary class systems. These deep social changes take centuries to accomplish.

[Alberta's Child]

Good post. From a purely cultural perspective I would consider "Judaeo-Christianity" to be one and the same. The defining characteristic of this paradigm is that it was the first -- in a world of pagans and aborigines -- to embrace the concept of a physical world that had a beginning and would eventually come to an end.

The importance of this should never be underestimated. One defining characteristic of pagan and aboriginal cultures is that their worldview is cyclical in nature, not linear. That's why so many of their customs and folklore is rooted in the changing of the seasons, the passing of the years, the phases of the moon, etc. One day, one season, and one generation is no different than the next for these cultures.

A linear view of the physical world, on the other hand, is what makes someone wake up one day and figure out how to cultivate and harvest 15 acres instead of 5 . . . how to travel from one place to another in three days instead of seven . . . and how it would be a cool thing to get on a ship and sail past that distant point called "the horizon" that other people never bothered to think about.