Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all world religions which originated in the Middle East, with Judaism being the oldest of the three traditions: Christianity being the second, and Islam being the more recent of the three. Christianity emerged out of Judaism in the first century of the common era, and Islam emerged as a religion in the seventh century, with elements of both Jewish and Christian theology and practice. The connections between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are varied, including scriptural canon, systematic theology, and a communal nature. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are sometimes called the “Abrahamic traditions” because of the way in which all three religions claim the figure of Abraham is central to their respective faith tradition. Another way to think about the relationship between the three religions is to compare religious development to language developments. For example, French, Spanish, and Italian are three different languages with different grammatical rules, vocabulary, and parts of speech. However, they are each considered “romance languages” because of their shared linguistic heritage, which means they share some overlapping concepts and word roots. In this way, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share some mutually intelligible beliefs, practices, and ideas because of the way in which the three faiths emerged in world history, almost like the ways in which Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism share overlapping concepts.
This is the historical way in which Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are connected. The reality of this historical connection has meant that there are many practical points of connection. Judaism and Christianity are connected, particularly when it comes to the Hebrew Bible. which both of those traditions consider to be a sacred, canonical text. The earliest Christians, or followers of Jesus, were almost all Jews, because Jesus himself was a Jewish man who practiced an observant Jewish life. As a result, the origins of many Christian practices were developed during a time when some Christians understood their faith to be a reformation of Judaism, and not an entirely separate religion. This means that some of the central rituals of Christian worship derive from Jewish practices. For example, every Friday night Jewish people ritually bless wine and bread in consecration of Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath, which is a practice that existed in the first century CE. In most Christian congregations today, the ritual of communion is celebrated on Sunday morning, the Christian sabbath, where a priest or minister will consecrate bread and wine as the body and blood of Jesus Christ. While the Christian ritual of communion derives from Jesus’ teaching in the gospel, most religious studies scholars understand that Jesus was likely utilizing ritual aspects of religion in which his community would have already been familiar. Theologically, the world of Christianity emerged during a time when Jewish worship remained centered around the Temple in Jerusalem, where people who had sinned could come and bring animal sacrifices in order to receive atonement for their sins. The theological concept of Jesus Christ as the perfect sacrifice, which atones for the sins of the world, builds on the theology of sacrifice, sin, and atonement, already present in Judaism.
In a similar vein, the Quran—the most holy book of Islam—make reference to many stories and figures found in both the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament. In Islam, many of the holy figures of both Judaism and Christianity are also considered holy. For example, Islam embraces Abraham, Moses, and Jesus as prophets of God, among others; and the Angel Gabriel figures prominently as God’s messenger in many Muslim stories. Islam understands itself to be the final and perfect revelation of God’s revealed religion, which builds on the corrupted (but still valuable) prophecies of earlier Christian and Jewish prophets. As a result, Jews and Christians have a special status in Islam, where they are considered “the People of the Book.” Judaism and Islam also share many similar approaches to religious law, as well as similar practices of worship. Judaism teaches one should pray three times a day at set times, and Shia Muslims also pray three times a day at set times. Of course, in a similar vein, Sunni Muslims pray five times a day at set times. Both Judaism and Islam have restrictions on eating pork and insects, and both require special methods of slaughter for meat to be proper to eat. In the daily practice of religious worship, observant Jews and Muslims find many similarities in their methods and forms.
Learn more about world religions here.
3/31/2021 11:08:04 PM
Islamic thought was deeply influenced by earlier Greek, Jewish, and Christian thinkers; and so, to understand Islamic thought reveals things about those earlier traditions that might otherwise go missing.
Islam was itself the source of the transmission of much pre-Christian literature and philosophy, especially Greek philosophy, to Western Christendom. These also picked up a good bit of insight on a series of important topics from the Islamic philosophers and lawyers themselves.
Also, Islam serves in a way as a kind of internal critic of the mainstream of Western thinking about evil; a critic who is both within and without this mainstream. It not only serves as a useful contrastive option to the main line of thinking that Western ideas of evil follow, but it also serves as a vital account that has its own integrity, even if it is somewhat oblique to that mainstream.
This is a transcript from the video series Why Evil Exists. Watch it now, Wondrium.
The Uniqueness of the Qur’an
The Qur’an is unique among the scriptures of the Abrahamic faiths in explicitly rendering the episode of the origin of evil in Creation by recounting the rebellion of Iblis, the rebellious spirit. Iblis is the one who becomes ash-Shaitan, the primordial rebel against God.
The Qur’an is the sacred text of Islam, but it is not viewed, per se, as the Muslim Bible. Yes, it’s roughly as long as the Christian New Testament and similarly divided into sections. There are 114 suras (chapters) in the Qur’an and each of those suras is composed of verses called ayahs, which is also translated as the word ‘sign’.
Each of the verses, thus, of each of the suras of the Qur’an is a sign of God’s providence and love towards humanity. So far so good; it looks like another holy book.
Learn more about the idea of evil in Abrahamic religions.
A Complex Relationship
But the similarities can mislead in some important ways. The Qur’an is complicatedly related to both Torah and the Christian Bible, New Testament and Old Testament.
First of all, Islam respects the sacred books of both the Jewish and Christian positions; it claims, in fact, that those books themselves contain significant dimensions of God’s revelation through the sending of the prophets of God. Islam incorporates significant segments of the narratives of both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament into its teachings; and, at times, the story themselves appear, slightly differently told, in the Qur’an.
The Written Revelation
Secondly, the Qur’an is not quite the same thing as a ‘bible’. A bible literally comes from the Greek word ‘the book’; the Qur’an literally means ‘the recitation’. The Qur’an is the revelation accorded to Muhammad, transmitted to him by the angel Gabriel; and Muhammad, then, would go recite it to his followers and to rivals and other people interested in the towns.
It was written down actually only in bits and pieces during Muhammad’s life, and then it was only compiled, collected, organized, and fixed textually after his death and canonized in the form that we have it, it seems to be, by Uthman, the third Caliph, who ruled about 20 or so years after Muhammad’s death.
The Perfect Record of the Divine
The vast majority of Muslims across the centuries have believed the Qur’an to be the perfect record of what the archangel Gabriel recited to Muhammad as God told him to recite. The Qur’an is composed entirely of exceptionally powerful lyric poetry, some of the most beautiful Arabic poetry ever written.
In a way that’s different from the Torah and the Christian New Testament and Old Testament, the Qur’an itself is sacramental; a material means of holiness; a way of participating in God; in some sense, more akin to the Christian Eucharist than to the Christian Bible or the Jewish Torah.
Form and Language of the Qur’an
The Qur’an is the word of God for Muslims, but in this case it is somewhat akin to how Jesus is the word of God for Christians because the Qur’an was recited by God to Gabriel in Arabic. In other words, there’s no distance whatsoever between the content of God’s message and the linguistic form in which it exists in the Qur’an.
In Islam, it’s very clear that the poetic form and the linguistic form of the Qur’an are exactly what God meant to give his people. At one point in the Qur’an God says, “I have given you an Arabic Qur’an, an Arabic recitation”; and that means that this language and this recitation, these poems, are intrinsically very theologically rich and dense.
Learn more about the Hebrew Bible and the fear of God.
Not Just Legal but Philosophical
Many people, in the West, perhaps—also many Muslims—think that the Qur’an is a rigorously legal text; but, in fact, it is literally an assemblage of poetic verses that shape the soul and informs the mind as much as guide the will, direct the will, of the believer. Of the roughly 6,000 verses in the Qur’an, only around 500 have the form of law, directly commanding or forbidding believers to do something or other.
Indeed, the entire Qur’an has only about 200 verses directly commanding believers to pray, but 600 verses commanding believers to reflect, to ponder, and to analyze God’s magnificence in nature, in plants, in stars, and in the solar system as a whole.
Q. What is the link between Islam, Greek thought and Christianity?
Islam was the source of the transmission of much pre-Christian literature and philosophy, especially Greek philosophy, to Western Christendom. These also picked up a good bit of insight on a series of important topics from the Islamic philosophers and lawyers themselves.
Q. How is the Qur’an different from the Bible, in terms of how the book itself is viewed?
In a way that’s different from the Torah and the Christian New Testament and Old Testament, the Qur’an itself is sacramental; a material means of holiness; a way of participating in God. The Qur’an is the word of God for Muslims.
Q. Is the Quran only about legal aspects?
No. Of the roughly 6,000 verses in the Qur’an, only around 500 have the form of law.