Comparison of the Three Abrahamic Religions, Essay Example

“Revelation” is the term that members of the Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, use to describe the ways in which God communicates with them. For all three religions, revelation from God has had a direct impact on the laws that each group follows; Jewish people believe that the Torah was handed down to them through God to Moses, the Muslim people believe that God passed the Qur’an to them through the prophet Mohammed, and many Christian people believe that the both Old Testament and the New Testament were passed down to them by God through prophets. Although the Abrahamic religions seem to be in constant conflict in the modern world, it is important for them to recognize that they are every similar. While Christianity, Judaism, and Islam follow books of rules with different names and honor different prophet who gave them these books, the basis of all three religions are the same due to their common origin.

In the Jewish religion, the sacred text is the Torah and this list of laws was believed to have been handed down to the Jewish people by Moses as a direct revelation from God when he traveled to Mt. Sinai. Jewish monotheism was one of the first concepts that people had of only being one God existing; however, during the early years of this religion, this concept could’ve been taken to mean either that the Jewish people only believed in one God or that they believed their God was more powerful than the gods of other religions. The Torah itself is written in Hebrew and contains the ten basic commandments that all Jewish people are required to follow; these rules include commandments telling people not to kill, not to steal, and other moralities that we consider to be basic in the modern world. The remainder of the Torah, which was believed to have been handed down from God to various prophets, contains five books, also known as the Pentateuch.

In the Muslim religion, the sacred text is the Qur’an and it was handed down from Angel Jibril to Mohammed. This law book is only meaningful in its native Arabic tongue and represents the final revelation because their God, Allah, speaks directly in it. It is important to note that the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim God are all the same, but he is occasionally called by different names. A major difference between the Muslim sacred text and the Jewish sacred text is that it addresses all people in the world, not just a single religious group.

The Christian religion adapted the Torah (called the Old Testament) and used it as the basis of their religion. However, they used the New Testament to tell the story of the miracles of Jesus. The main difference between Christianity and Judaism is the acceptance of Christ as the messiah. Christians believe that the New and Old Testaments were handed down to them from God through the word of various prophets. The four main gospels in the New Testament were named after the prophets that received the messages from God: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. A major component of Christianity is atoning for natural sins.

In conclusion, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are not as different as they first seem. All three religions accepted their laws from God through the word of prophets, collect these laws in sacred books, and even all worship the same God. In addition, all believe in the same basic ethics; the Ten Commandments appears in all three holy books in some form. Although many ideas overlap among these three religions, there is still major disagreement between how to worship God, what prophets are legitimate, and the identity of the messiah. Unfortunately, these differences are the main cause of conflict between these religions and prevents them from seeing the similarities among themselves that is needed to make peace.