Because most philosophies that frown on reproduction don't survive.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Judeo-Christian or Judeo-Islamic?

Razib has an interesting post up on what exactly the term "Judeo-Christian" means, precipitated by his observation that in some ways Judaism is more similar to Islam than to Christianity.

A slection from near the end:
One reason most Americans find the idea of Judeo-Christianity so plausible is that the Jews they encounter are disproportionately Reform or secular. To caricature it one could sum up the minimalist Judaism normative in the Untied States as mainline Christianity with the Son and the Holy Ghost subtracted. In contrast, it is in Orthodox Judaism that the similarities to Islam become stark as the legal dimension of the faith comes to the fore. Though Orthodox Judaism and Islam give due respect to their foundational written scriptures, the Hebrew Bible and the Koran, both are incomprehensible without consideration of the mass of commentary built around the original written law. In Judaism this would be the collection of writings which comprise the Talmud, and in Islam it would be the Hadiths. I predict that there is a strong chance that in this century we will see a "Reform Islam" coalesce in the West which is analogous to Reform Judaism, an adherence to a minimalist Koranically inspired religion which gives short-shrift to the relevance of the Hadiths in the modern world. In this way, there will be a dyad of Judeo-Christian-Islamic and Judeo-Islamic (there are legalistic movements in modern Christianity, but obviously unlike Islam or Judaism they are created de novo rather than looking back to a long history of commentary and precedent).

2 comments:

Joseph said...

It's a well-known fact that Islam is just like Judaism ... but with an extra Y chromosome.

Razib Khan said...

xxy? or xyy? the two karyotypes are different.