ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and evaluates the Judeo-Christian tradition. It focuses on to the matrix of the Judeo-Christian tradition during the period 400 B.C.–A.D.100. It was characterized by semi-nomadic life on the fringe of the Fertile Crescent, tribes wandering back and forth between Babylonia and Egypt. The Judaic tradition can only be explained in terms of the situation which gave it birth, the invasion of the rich agricultural and urban civilization of Canaan—that is to say, Palestine—by a semi-nomadic, highly tribalized people called the Israelites. In A.D 135, the Jews revolted against the Romans, and this time the Romans decided from their vantage point that they had had it. They destroyed Jerusalem; building on its ruins a new city called Aelia Capitolina, in whose center was the temple of Jupiter. Thus at least militarily, the Hellenistic spirit triumphed over the Judaic spirit.
