1.02 - Monotheistic Religions

Islam

A religion based on the teachings of the prophet Mohammed which stresses belief in one god (Allah), Paradise and Hell, and a body of law written in the Quran. Followers are called Muslims.

Judaism

A religion with a belief in one god. It originated with Abraham and the Hebrew people. Yahweh was responsible for the world and everything within it. They preserved their early history in the Old Testament.

What are some similarities between the monotheistic religions?

All have holy texts, all believe in only one god, all of their texts talk about worshipping only them, the afterlife, holidays, concerns for the weak and vulnerable, all pray, Holy days which is when you go to pray with others for at least 1 day of every week

Common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

All three Abrahamic faiths believe there is only one creator God. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all trace their roots to one man named Abram making a covenant with the one God, about 2000 BCE. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all have in their sacred texts God repeatedly making the statement, "Be holy, for I am holy." This means, "I am different from all other gods, so you should be different from all other people."

Monotheistic

Belief in one God

What are some differences between the monotheistic religions?

Conflict between the followers of the religions because of the Jewish rejection of Jesus and Muhammad as true prophets, all the religions have different symbols

Unique to Islam

Only Muslims believe that Muhammad truly received revelations from the angel Gabriel. In the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament by Christians), the covenant was not extended to Ishmael and his descendants, only Isaac. However, in the Quran, the book of Muhammad's revelations, Ishmael and Isaac inherited the covenant. The Star and Crescent: The star and crescent has roots that reach back to pre-Islamic times, but today it is a symbol of Islam. Muslim congregations are led by imams.

Unique to Christianity

The Roman Cross

Denominations

branches or subgroups of a religion with specific beliefs or practices that distinguish them from other branches There are in fact more than 120 different Protestant denominations in the United States alone.

Sects

groups within a larger religion with distinctive beliefs that set them apart

2000 BCE to 632 CE

over a period of about 25,000 years, the religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam developed

Abraham, his wife Sarah, her servant Hagar, and the two sons Ishmael and Isaac

The only additional detail you should know is that God promised to give Abraham the land of the Canaanites as part of his covenant inheritance. This became known as the Promised Land or Holy Land. It is basically the land on the southeast coast of the Mediterranean Sea. This all would have occurred about 2000 BCE. Jacob, the younger of the two, conned his older brother out of his rights as the older son and had a generally rebellious youth. Then Jacob wrestled with a mysterious figure in a wrestling match that lasted a whole night. As the sun was about to rise, the person demanded that Jacob let him go, but Jacob refused unless he blessed him. The figure then dislocated Jacob's hip and said that his name would not be Jacob anymore, but Israel, which means "God-wrestler." Jacob/Israel had twelve sons. The most important sons you need to know about are Levi and Judah. The twelve sons of Israel along with their wives and children—70 people in all—moved to Egypt, where one of them was the prime minister to the pharaoh, to get food relief during a famine. On his death bed, Israel had stern words for his son Levi, but for Judah his blessing suggested that from his descendants would come a king—"your father's sons shall bow down before you." After four hundred years living in Egypt, the Israelites had multiplied from 70 people to more than a million, with the descendants of each son being its own tribe of Israel. Then God called Moses, a Levite, to warn the pharaoh that plagues would come if he did not free the Israelites and let them return to the Promised Land. Pharaoh did not let them go until the tenth disaster struck Egypt—the death of the firstborn sons of all Egyptians. In the exodus of the Israelites, they passed through the middle of the Red Sea in a miraculous splitting of the water. Then God made a renewed covenant with the whole people of Israel, giving them 613 laws they must obey, including an elaborate sacrificial system for the times when they broke the law. Though this supernatural history is well before any archaeological evidence or written records, it would have occurred sometime between 1400 and 1200 BCE. Over the next few centuries, the Israelites broke the covenant laws—a lot. (It was somewhere during this period that the pharaoh Merneptah put up his stele.) Despite this, God blessed them with three strong kings at the beginning of a monarchy. The most famous king by far was David, a descendant of Jacob's son Judah from about a thousand years before. Unfortunately, during the reign of David's grandson, the kingdom split into two and fought multiple civil wars. In 722 BCE, the Northern Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians. Then in 586 BCE, the southern Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonians. The Israelites became exiles from their Promised Land. Over the next six centuries, the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians, the Persians were conquered by Alexander the Great and the Macedonians, and the Macedonians were conquered by the Romans. As the Israelites struggled under different empires, they developed the hope for a new anointed who would restore their ancient kingdom. Starting about 27 CE, Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be that king, but he disappointed his followers when he began to suggest that his kingdom was spiritual rather than earthly. Then he enraged his fellow Jews when he hinted that he was not just the awaited Christ, but God in human form. They turned him over to the Roman governor to be executed as a political revolutionary. Shortly after his death, his most devoted disciples, known as the apostles, started to say they had seen him again, risen from the dead. In the generation that followed, his life was interpreted in the writings of the New Testament as the perfect prophet that Moses could not be, the perfect king that David could not be, and the perfect sacrifice that no animal could be. 500 years after the writing of the Christian New Testament, Muhammad grew up in Mecca in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula. His profession before becoming a prophet was a merchant organizing camel caravans, going up and down the desert as far north as Antioch on the northeastern Mediterranean coast and as far south as the southern tip of Arabia. During these travels, he would have had many conversations with fellow merchants of the Jewish and Christian faiths. According to Muslim tradition, he was so honest that he became known as Muhammad El-Amin—Muhammad the Trustworthy. Muhammad received revelations in various forms from 610 all the way to his death in 632 CE. By then, he had been run out of Mecca, established himself in nearby Medina, and then came back to Mecca at the head of an overwhelming army of followers. As you will see, followers of Islam spread their faith in nearly every direction out of the Arabian Peninsula in the hundred years following Muhammad's death. By the year 732 CE*, throughout the Mediterranean world there were three monotheistic religions with followers tracing their heritage back to Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Unique to Judaism

The star of david

Common only to Islam and Christianity

They both believe that prophets continued after the Hebrew scriptures were written.