Europeans explained African and American religions as derivatives of Judaism.

Evidence

The real problem arose with the religious systems of Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific, and of the lesser-known Asiatic religions. Frequently the beliefs of such systems were compared to the religions or systems of the ancient world more or less known to Europeans (particularly to Judaism) and the religious systems of the ancient Near East, and were assumed to be derived from them. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 310

Categorization

• XREF: Straight line to Edward Said’s Orientalism and to the diffusionist/ancient-Israel-origins discourse that also saturated British Israelism and Mormon origin narratives.
• SEED: An essay angle: how the European ‘decipherment’ of non-European religion consistently defaulted to Jewish ancestry as the master key — the Judeocentric template in comparative religion.