Comparing and contrasting Judaism, Christianity and Islam
[student]
[professor]
[class/course]
11 May 2014
Comparing Judaism, Christianity and Islam
Judaism is one of the only monotheistic religions is the world to not have a single founder or central leader. According to Fisher, Jews are those who experience their long and often difficult history as a continuing dialogue with God. As a nation, Israel was a very nomadic people and has been repeatedly oppressed and dispersed throughout their history. Given the persecution, dispersion, and even lack of religiosity among many Jews, they have managed to retain a remarkable amount of cohesiveness in their practices and beliefs. A unique belief introduced into Jewish theology was the idea of a special covenant relationship between god and the Jewish people. On the peoples side, obedience to god is expected and as a consequence, god will grant special favors to them and keep them protected. The paradigm for this special relationship is the covenant between Abraham and god. According to the scriptural book of genesis, god promises to make Abrahams descendants more numerous than the stars and promised to give ham a land which most believed at the time to be Canaan and/or Mesopotamia. In order for god to be able to keep this covenant, the Jewish people must have no other god than YHWH and worship him alone. Abraham was instructed to circumcise every male in his household so that that the circumcision could serve as an outward sign of the inward covenant they had made with god. At the point when god promised that his descendants would outnumber the stars, Abraham had no children and his wife was approximately ninety years old. Abraham then took his wife Sarah’s maidservant, Hagar to have a child and she did. After Hagar had Ishmael, god spoke to Abraham and said according to the book of genesis that, “she would be the mother of nation” and blessed her womb. Sarah then bore a son whom they named Isaac. When Isaac was a youth, god spoke to him telling him to sacrifice his son as
[professor]
[class/course]
11 May 2014
Comparing Judaism, Christianity and Islam
Judaism is one of the only monotheistic religions is the world to not have a single founder or central leader. According to Fisher, Jews are those who experience their long and often difficult history as a continuing dialogue with God. As a nation, Israel was a very nomadic people and has been repeatedly oppressed and dispersed throughout their history. Given the persecution, dispersion, and even lack of religiosity among many Jews, they have managed to retain a remarkable amount of cohesiveness in their practices and beliefs. A unique belief introduced into Jewish theology was the idea of a special covenant relationship between god and the Jewish people. On the peoples side, obedience to god is expected and as a consequence, god will grant special favors to them and keep them protected. The paradigm for this special relationship is the covenant between Abraham and god. According to the scriptural book of genesis, god promises to make Abrahams descendants more numerous than the stars and promised to give ham a land which most believed at the time to be Canaan and/or Mesopotamia. In order for god to be able to keep this covenant, the Jewish people must have no other god than YHWH and worship him alone. Abraham was instructed to circumcise every male in his household so that that the circumcision could serve as an outward sign of the inward covenant they had made with god. At the point when god promised that his descendants would outnumber the stars, Abraham had no children and his wife was approximately ninety years old. Abraham then took his wife Sarah’s maidservant, Hagar to have a child and she did. After Hagar had Ishmael, god spoke to Abraham and said according to the book of genesis that, “she would be the mother of nation” and blessed her womb. Sarah then bore a son whom they named Isaac. When Isaac was a youth, god spoke to him telling him to sacrifice his son as