Do the Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God....?

[Tarheeler]

Islam is directly related to Judaism. The Al-Quran quotes and paraphrases many passages from the Babylonian Talmud, the great legal encyclopedia of Judaism. Muhammad had close relations with Jews until, when they would not convert to his religion and politics, he massacred thousands.

Islam also takes directly from the Christian Bible, and creates a completely separate religion than either of the two that came before it. It was never a "sect" of Judaism as claimed by the OP.

Christianity is the continuation of the religion of Adam, Noah, Abraham and Moses, not a new religion.

Incorrect. Christianity became a separate and distinct religion not too long after it's creation. It isn't a "continuation" of Judaism anymore than Islam is a continuation of Christianity.

 

[rosends]

Source delivered as per request
A Jewish View of Jesus - The Neshamah Center

That source (one guy's opinion) says, "Jews wouldn’t call Jesus a prophet, because we say the era of prophecy ended with Malachi, yet his message was one that was clearly in the prophetic tradition."

In the prophetic tradition -- that is, his message is structured like and presented as part of a tradition of prophets even though Jews don't consider Jesus one. Therefore, your claim "Jesus too is being accepted as an important prophetic figure in his own right among the Jewish scholarship" is inaccurate. This author denies that Jesus is a prophetic figure at all.

Do you have any other source to back up your claim about Jewish scholarship and the viewing of Jesus as an "important prophetic figure"?

 

[sayak83]

That source (one guy's opinion) says, "Jews wouldn’t call Jesus a prophet, because we say the era of prophecy ended with Malachi, yet his message was one that was clearly in the prophetic tradition."

In the prophetic tradition -- that is, his message is structured like and presented as part of a tradition of prophets even though Jews don't consider Jesus one. Therefore, your claim "Jesus too is being accepted as an important prophetic figure in his own right among the Jewish scholarship" is inaccurate. This author denies that Jesus is a prophetic figure at all.

Do you have any other source to back up your claim about Jewish scholarship and the viewing of Jesus as an "important prophetic figure"?

I meant it in exactly the way the guy in the article said. It's also consistent with the view mentioned by Jewish scholars who annotated the NT book I linked previously.

 

[rosends]

I meant it in exactly the way the guy in the article said. It's also consistent with the view mentioned by Jewish scholars who annotated the NT book I linked previously.

But that's just it -- what you said and what you quoted do not agree, and the fact that scholars annotated the Christian bible does not in any way reflect the attitude you are imputing. Scholars also annotated The Wizard of Oz but that doesn't mean that they feel that Dorothy was a prophetic figure.

 

[ThePainefulTruth]

And is theologically speaking Christianity and Islam sects of Judaism?

I hope I am posting this in the correct forum. Recently, during the course of a debate elsewhere these two propositions have been asserted as factual statements:

1. Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God
2. Theologically, Christianity and Islam are sects of Judaism

​

I am interested in the views of others, especially Jews, Christians and Muslims on whether they agree with either one or both of the propositions, and if not why not?

All revealed religions worship an invented God or gods, but there is absolutely not evidence for (or against) any supernatural spirit being(s). If there is a God, the evidence is overwhelming that It must necessarily be non-interactive in order to maintain our free will. And spawning creatures with free will must then necessarily be the sole reason for creating the universe. An omnipotent God could do anything else instantly.

 

[Tumah]

Edit: Nevermind. I see it was already pointed out.

 

[J2hapydna]

s

If the word is used as generic term for God, that is one thing, referring to the bogus god of mohammed is definitely another. There are names of God in The OT, most notably YHWH, in the NT, written in Koine Greek, the words used are " God", ' Lord", no where associated with Christianity or Judaism is "allah" found in the foundation documents of the Faith's

The only pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions of Allah that have been discovered so far, seem to be references to the god of the Arab Christians made by Arab Christians. Furthermore, even among the Christian Arabs, Allah is not used to, for example, describe the the golden calf or Baal etc. It seems to be exclusively used to describe their own god.

Among the pagan Arabs, Allah doesn't appear to be a generic term for god either. For example, Hubal wasn't described as the Allah of the pagans in the Quran. Similarly, LAAT, UZZA and MANAAT weren't described as the Allahs of the pagans. no such preIslamic inscriptions exist stating such. The generic term for god is ILAH in Arabic. So the pagan gods and non pagan gods were all called ILAH by Arabs

ALLAH may have been all along, some pagan god of the pagan Arabs, such as the moon god, but no Arabic inscriptions have so far been found describing him as such. The pagans of Mecca seem to be trying to get their LAAT UZZA MANAAT etc accepted as family members of ALLAH, but they appear to be encountering resistance. Perhaps this was because Christian Arabs were using the term exclusively to describe their god. I don't know.


Then MP seems to appear, uses the term ALLAH to describe the god of the Bible, in a way that Arab Christians did, but mingles many Jewish and heretic Christian stories and concepts in a way that would have been unfamiliar to traditional Christians. He also presented their Christian god (Allah) as a Unitarian god that would also have displeased trinitarians. Then he left his text in the hands of ex pagans who had no education or understanding of any of Allah's previous revelations (OT, NT etc)

 

[sayak83]

But that's just it -- what you said and what you quoted do not agree, and the fact that scholars annotated the Christian bible does not in any way reflect the attitude you are imputing. Scholars also annotated The Wizard of Oz but that doesn't mean that they feel that Dorothy was a prophetic figure.

Once again, you are interpreting my words in technical Jewish theological context that, i, a non-Jew is not much familiar with and did not intend. All I wanted to say is that many scholars in modern Judaism is beginning to see Jesus in a more positive light than simply a false messiah.
Jews reclaim Jesus as one of their own

 

[rosends]

Once again, you are interpreting my words in technical Jewish theological context that, i, a non-Jew is not much familiar with and did not intend. All I wanted to say is that many scholars in modern Judaism is beginning to see Jesus in a more positive light than simply a false messiah.
Jews reclaim Jesus as one of their own

Then you should go back and change what you actually said, and instead of telling Jews (who are familiar with what we believe) what we say, just ask.

 

[Flankerl]

Once again, you are interpreting my words in technical Jewish theological context that, i, a non-Jew is not much familiar with and did not intend. All I wanted to say is that many scholars in modern Judaism is beginning to see Jesus in a more positive light than simply a false messiah.
Jews reclaim Jesus as one of their own

Which is not what you wrote. You wrote that Jewish scholars see him as a Prophet. Which is just not true.

Jews reclaim Jesus as one of their own

"Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a media personality"

Oh goody a "media personality".


"And Benyamin Cohen, an Orthodox Jew who spent a recent year going to church, admitted that he's jealous that Christians have Jesus.


"He's a tangible icon that everybody can latch on to. Judaism doesn't have a superhero like that," said Cohen, the author of the 2009 book "My Jesus Year.""

Yeah if you ignore God we don't have someone like that. Really sucks.


""I'm not advocating for Moses dolls," he said, but he argued that "it's hard to believe in a God you can't see. I'm jealous of Christians in that regard, that they have this physical manifestation of the divine that they can pray to.


"There could be more devout Jews than me who don't need that, but to a young Jew living in the 21st century, I wish we had something more tangible," he said."

So he wants to be an idol worshipper. Should ask his Rabbi how that turned out for the northern Kingdom.


"Boteach agrees, writing in "Kosher Jesus" that "Jews will gain much from re-embracing him as a hero."


"The truth is important," Boteach writes. "A patriot of our people has been lost. Worse still, he's been painted as the father of a long and murderous tradition of anti-Semitism."


Boteach aims to claim, or reclaim, Jesus as a political rebel against Rome and to exonerate the Jews of his death. But Boteach's book has attracted plenty of criticism, for instance for blaming the Apostle Paul for everything he doesn't like about Christianity, such as hailing Jesus as divine and cutting his ties to Judaism."

This smells of Christianity and its disgusting.
We know absolutely nothing of the historical Jesus. For all we know it was like in the Life of Brian. Or not because we don't know anything. All we know comes from the Christians.


""Paul never met Jesus, and Jesus certainly never would have sanctioned Paul's actions and embellishments," Boteach argues about the apostle who wrote much of the New Testament. "Jesus ... would have been appalled at how his followers would later define him."


"Jews will never accept his divinity. Nor should they," Boteach writes, in one of many instances of presuming to know what Jesus really thought and meant. "The belief that any man is God is an abomination to Judaism, a position that Jesus himself would maintain."

So much guessing since we only know the Christian version. Let's interpret whatever we want and write a book about it.


"Ironically, she added, Jews can understand their own history more thoroughly through studying the life of Jesus.

"The best source on the period for Jewish history other than (the first-century historian) Josephus is the New Testament," she said."

lol so I guess we are just expected to ignore the blatant anti-semitism in the so called NT and focus on something else. Quite the quote mining.



It seems some of these Jews might want to take a good long look at the Shma.

 

[sayak83]

Which is not what you wrote. You wrote that Jewish scholars see him as a Prophet. Which is just not true.




"Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a media personality"

Oh goody a "media personality".


"And Benyamin Cohen, an Orthodox Jew who spent a recent year going to church, admitted that he's jealous that Christians have Jesus.


"He's a tangible icon that everybody can latch on to. Judaism doesn't have a superhero like that," said Cohen, the author of the 2009 book "My Jesus Year.""

Yeah if you ignore God we don't have someone like that. Really sucks.


""I'm not advocating for Moses dolls," he said, but he argued that "it's hard to believe in a God you can't see. I'm jealous of Christians in that regard, that they have this physical manifestation of the divine that they can pray to.


"There could be more devout Jews than me who don't need that, but to a young Jew living in the 21st century, I wish we had something more tangible," he said."

So he wants to be an idol worshipper. Should ask his Rabbi how that turned out for the northern Kingdom.


"Boteach agrees, writing in "Kosher Jesus" that "Jews will gain much from re-embracing him as a hero."


"The truth is important," Boteach writes. "A patriot of our people has been lost. Worse still, he's been painted as the father of a long and murderous tradition of anti-Semitism."


Boteach aims to claim, or reclaim, Jesus as a political rebel against Rome and to exonerate the Jews of his death. But Boteach's book has attracted plenty of criticism, for instance for blaming the Apostle Paul for everything he doesn't like about Christianity, such as hailing Jesus as divine and cutting his ties to Judaism."

This smells of Christianity and its disgusting.
We know absolutely nothing of the historical Jesus. For all we know it was like in the Life of Brian. Or not because we don't know anything. All we know comes from the Christians.


""Paul never met Jesus, and Jesus certainly never would have sanctioned Paul's actions and embellishments," Boteach argues about the apostle who wrote much of the New Testament. "Jesus ... would have been appalled at how his followers would later define him."


"Jews will never accept his divinity. Nor should they," Boteach writes, in one of many instances of presuming to know what Jesus really thought and meant. "The belief that any man is God is an abomination to Judaism, a position that Jesus himself would maintain."

So much guessing since we only know the Christian version. Let's interpret whatever we want and write a book about it.


"Ironically, she added, Jews can understand their own history more thoroughly through studying the life of Jesus.

"The best source on the period for Jewish history other than (the first-century historian) Josephus is the New Testament," she said."

lol so I guess we are just expected to ignore the blatant anti-semitism in the so called NT and focus on something else. Quite the quote mining.



It seems some of these Jews might want to take a good long look at the Shma.

Like Hindu-s no two Jews are said to agree on anything. I have posted adequate links to support my impressions of what some Jewish scholars are saying. I have no desire or intention to convince you of this, or even that you ought to go along with it.

 

[Flankerl]

I have posted adequate links to support my impressions of what some Jewish scholars are saying.

We can thus conclude that the vast majority of Jewish scholars and average Jews absolutely disagree.

Good.

 

[Tarheeler]

Like Hindu-s no two Jews are said to agree on anything. I have posted adequate links to support my impressions of what some Jewish scholars are saying. I have no desire or intention to convince you of this, or even that you ought to go along with it.

You're being dishonest. You've provided no proof of your claim that Jewish scholarship sees Jesus as a prophetic figure.

 

[sayak83]

We can thus conclude that the vast majority of Jewish scholars and average Jews absolutely disagree.

Good.

You conclude. No we.

 

[sayak83]

You're being dishonest. You've provided no proof of your claim that Jewish scholarship sees Jesus as a prophetic figure.

Is a scholarly text reviewing the rapidly changing attitude of Jews towards Jesus in 20 th century scholarly enough for you?
Other and Brother

 

[rosends]

Nothing in that text points to anything about his being a prophet. The changing attitudes which have had Jews (scholar and not) acknowledge that if Jesus existed, he was a Jew and can be viewed through that lens only intensifies the truism that he was never a prophetic figure.

 

[Tarheeler]

Is a scholarly text reviewing the rapidly changing attitude of Jews towards Jesus in 20 th century scholarly enough for you?
Other and Brother

Absolutely nothing in that suggests that Jewish scholarship treats Jesus as a prophetic figure.

Do you even read the stuff you link to?

 

[Flankerl]

Do you even read the stuff you link to?

No of course not.

 

[J2hapydna]

sayak83

The link you posted suggests to me that the rabbi actually believes Jesus belonged to a gentile prophetic tradition not to the Jewish prophetic tradition. It clearly says Jesus is not a prophet for the Jews. So I think you are misunderstanding what the rabbis are saying.

For example, many Jews believe that Unitarian Christians, such as JWs belong to the Jewish Noachide tradition or the same DEEN as Judaism . In which case Jesus is considered an acceptable prophet for non Jews.

Same could be said about MP and Islam. Although the case of Islam is a little different because the concept of a single invisible god is built in. So whether MP is considered an acceptable prophet for non Jews depends on the type of message he preached. Consequently MP of ISIS may not be acceptable for its extremism, but Sufi or Baha'i might be acceptable

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

Why are you interested? What is your personal contribution, and what do you believe or would believe if the question were put to you?

I am interested, because I want to see how true these two propositions are made by my opponent. I have taken a back seat so far to hear others people views on the matter. As I expected it produced controversial answers, although the opinion was more divided than I thought. I a priori thought the majority will strongly repudiate the statements. This was not exactly the case with (1) but it was more so with (2) Now I will share my own views

(1) It can be argued that we(humans) all worship the same God with our own different understanding and ways --- however the understanding here is the key, we do not understand God in the same way and in this manner we are giving worship to our understanding of God rather than God itself. An analogy by an Islamic scholar who rejects that Muslims worship the same God is that of a telephone line. Several people might be trying to call me on a line, but only one number is going to be the correct one and directly reach me, the other are wrong numbers. This analogy recently became the theme of a popular Indian religious satire "PK" where an alien from another planet comes to Earth for a visit, but his remote control device that communicates with his spaceship is stolen when he arrives, somebody tells him he needs to ask God where his device is and this becomes the plot of the movie -- the search of an alien for the God that humans worship. He soon realises the ways with which they understand him and worship him all were going to a "wrong number God" They all are thinking they are connecting with God, but they are in fact connecting with some false God who is deceiving them.

This dichotomy of true God and false God is found across several theistic religions. In Judaism it is explicit, this is a 'jealous' God who wants no partners or no equals, and it is a grave sin to worship any other God. All other god's are false. It is doubtful the ancient Jews would not have accepted postmodern universalist argument that the God of Canaanites and other heathen tribes was just their God worshipped in a different way. Hence Jews reject Christ as a partner and equal of God, and this has been the fundamental opposition between Jews and Christians over the millennia. The rejection is a violent rejection, because Christians see the Jews as the one who crucified Christ because they did not recognise him as God.

In Christianity the same theme is articulated as a true religion vs false religion. True religion is only the religion of Christianity, because Jesus is the way, the life and the truth and the only way to God is through Jesus, his son aspect, and there is no other way. This is what hundreds of millions Christians around the world believe. False religion is religions founded by Satan to deceive people and these are all religions that are of Jesus, these are all wrong numbers. Islam rejects Jesus as the way, life and truth, they see Jesus as only one among hundreds of prophets and not as God and do not worship Jesus as Christians do.

In Islam the same theme carries on, but it is more true in spirit to the original God of the Jews. Only one God who has no partners and no equals. They see Christianity as a massive perversion. So does this mean that Muslims worship exactly the same God of the Jews? Well no. The God of the Jews is the truth of God communicated by an old prophet Moses which was relevant for an older time period, but the God of the Muslims is the truth of God communicated by the latest and final prophet Mohammed This is a fundamental distinction which sets them apart. Mohammed cannot be separated from Islam. Recently, a scientist trying to study Islam objectively, found compiling the Quran and Hadiths, that Mohammed is mentioned some 80% of the times and Allah is only 20% of the times(dont quote me exactly on figures, buts its something like that) Hence, the Muslims regard Islam to have superseded the religion of the Moses and Mohammed's position in Islam is central.

Theologically speaking, however, the Muslims and Jews do seem to be worshipping the same God and their God matches as well in personality as a 'jealous God' or the tyrant God as non-Muslims know him. Yet, if that is the case, why did the Jewish tribes in pre-Islamic Arabia reject Allah as God? If Allah is just the generic name meaning "God" then why do the Muslim scriptures explicitly talk about how the Jews rejected Mohammed's "Allah" and were beheaded enmasse for this insolence. This does not suggest kinship with the Jews at all. The question is resolved by history. Although Allah may have been a generic term for God or may have even been the greatest of Gods of pre-Islamic Arabia, at that time in history Allah had partners, sons and daughters. Its records are still retained in Islamic memory of Manaat, Al-Uzza, Al-Lat. Mohammed's Qureshi tribe worshipped this God. This prior to Mohammed was a Pagan God to the Jews. All Mohammed did was get rid of Allah's partners, and he thought this would make the Jews accept Allah as their God and hence submit to the supremacy of Mohammed's tribe, but this did not fly with the Jews, as they still retained the memory of Allah's pagan past. To them, it was no more valid, than declaring Zeus to be the one true God by removing the rest of the Gods in the Greek pantheon, and then declaring it is the same God as the Jews.

So you can see these are not minor disagreements in doctrine that you can overlook, they are mutual, fundamental and violent oppositions The rejection of Jesus Christ by the Jews was crucifying him and the rejection of the Jews of Allah was met by them being beheaded. Henceforth, it cannot be said that they are worshipping the same God. The oppositions are irreconcilable. That is my position on this matter.

(2) This one is far easier to refute, so I am not surprised the majority in this thread have rejected this. The original argument put forward in support of this assertion is an absurd argument just that because historically we can trace Islam and Christianity back to Judaism as its source, means that they are all sects of Judaism. However, this is like saying in that case all religions of the world are sects of Shamanism or animism because it was the original prehistorical religion or all races are actually descendent of Africians because Africa was the original home of humans. It is refuted by showing that there is a clear point of demarcation when one group split from another so to become newly independent group. The factors that affect that split are also important. Christianity is not simply a break off Judaism. Jesus might have been a Jewish rabbi, but he was a Jewsih Rabbi who was influenced by many pagan influences from Platonists, Buddhists, Zoroastrians at the time, hence he was not just merely a reformer within Judaism, he significantly changed Judaism's core beliefs to the extent that he was no longer considered Jewish. The lineage thereof of Christians followed a completely different course to Judaism.

We can argue Mormonism is a sect of Christianity, but Mormonism is widely rejected as a sect of Christianity, because it has fundamentally changed Christian beliefs, introducing a new founder, new scripture and new mythology and rejected core beliefs:

Are Mormons "Christians" as defined by traditional Christian orthodoxy? The answer to that question is easy and straightforward, and it is "no." Nevertheless, even as the question is clear, the answer requires some explanation.

The issue is clearly framed in this case. Christianity is rightly defined in terms of "traditional Christian orthodoxy." Thus, we have an objective standard by which to define what is and is not Christianity.

We are not talking here about the postmodern conception of Christianity that minimizes truth. We are not talking about Christianity as a mood or as a sociological movement. We are not talking about liberal Christianity that minimizes doctrine nor about sectarian Christianity which defines the faith in terms of eccentric doctrines. We are talking about historic, traditional, Christian orthodoxy.

Is Mormonism Christian?​

In summary the Abrahamic religions are therefore not, in my opinion, reconcilable, because they are mutually opposed to one another. The original proponent of the two propositions also made another absurd statement that Tantra Hinduism and and early non-Tantra Hinduism are more opposed to one another than Abrahamic religions are opposed to one another --- the irony here is Tantra Hinduism is not considered a separate religion from the rest of Hinduism, though it certainly considered less orthodox, but there is no clear point of demarcation where it splits of as an independent group because its core beliefs and practices are still very much Hindu. They also exaggerated the opposition between different schools of Hindu philosophy(though are all considered orthodox schools of Hinduism) saying they are more opposed than Abrahamic religions are, though they all share the same core beliefs and identify and accept the authority of the Veda. The irony here is though they considers three recognised separate religions which are mutually and violently opposed to one another as reconcilable, they considers different but complimentary sects or schools of the same religion which have co-existed together, link reverentially to one another and share the same core beliefs, scriptures, practices and eschatology as irreconcilable. I think they have it upside down.