By no means are neither Judaism nor Christianity "European" religions. Judaism originated several centuries BC (or roughly 3000 years ago) as a systematic approach to a monotheistic deity through prophets, wise men and priests, the deity being Yahweh, and His chosen folk - the Israelis, a Semitic people from the Levante/Arabian region. Judaism as a religion was intrinsically tied to this chosen folk, which developed a proto sense of national identity amongst Jews, as they all belonged to the same people, and religion, wandering between Judea (hence the name), Western Arabia, and Egypt, as I said, centuries BC. Enter Joshua Ben Joseph, roughly on the year 25 AD, a young Jewish preacher that opposed the dogmatic views of the by then well established Jewish system of priests and patriarchs, and travelled through much of Judea spreading his message and causing upheaval amongst the authorities, political and religious alike. A reason why the Roman's didn't tolerate Jews as much was because they had one eternal, omnipotent and omnipresent god, which went against the divine Caesar, as espoused by Jesus when he said "Give to the Caesar what is his, and to God what is his" (excuse my poor, swift translation). At the time however, Judea was a kingdom under Roman occupation, not a province per se. Jesus was eventually crucified, and a cult around him sprawled, which led to prosecution of the followers of this one both earthly and divine man. A prosecutor of such, Saul, whose family had purchased the right to Roman citizenship, ended up converting to Christianity, and upon capture demanded to be tried in Rome itself, effectively taking the cult with him to Europe, and upon dying on his faith, christianity began expanding like wildfire, to the point that not 400 years later, the Roman Empire would de-criminalize the religion, and eventually accept it as the state cult. Christian belief became interwoven with Roman citizenship, and by the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the rise of the Germanic Kingdoms, virtually all areas under Roman control were Christian in nature. For Judaism I can't come with a clear answer, but it is known that the folks living upriver from the Black and Caspian seas, known as the Khazars, converted to Judaism in the 8th or 9th centuries at its latest. Ultimately, the point is that neither religion is European: that's a fact. They just spread to Europe fairly quickly, and due to a variety of reasons, caught roots in the continent, and endured into this day and age. Judaism is of course massively overshadowed by Christianity because, as I mentioned, there's an element of being part of God's chosen people to the religion, which gives it an aspect of exclusivity. In fact, this was an early dilemma between Saul, who adopted the name of Paul, and Peter, both apostles, as the former sustained that the Christian belief was to be universally accepting - or from the ancient Greek, Catholic-, and the latter argued that in order to become a Christian, one had to be Jewish in origin. Obviously, Paul's stance prevailed.