The "Children of Abraham"
The Biblical prophet Abraham is a central religious figure for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. He is claimed by each as a biological progenitor: Jews (and thus Christians) trace their descent through Isaac, Abraham's son by his wife Sarah, while Muslims claim descent through Ishmael, his son by Sarah's handmaid Hagar (see Genesis 16 and 21). More important still, he is seen as a religious paradigm. Abraham's virtue as a religious figure stemmed from his uncompromising faith in his God, and his willingness to do whatever he was commanded: to leave his home and family in Ur, in search of a land his God had promised him, and even to sacrifice his only son as a testimony to his obedience. Jews see Abraham as making their original covenant with God, later refined at Sinai, while Muslims describe him as a paradigm for true "submission" (islam) to God.
Central to all three traditions is the belief in one supreme God as the sole divine power in the universe. This God has no history, no mythology, no beginning, and no end; this Deity (which has traditionally been described using male pronouns, probably reflecting the social conditions of the time) has created the world and rules over it, but is not subject to its laws. Judaism and Islam profess a strict monotheism that sees this God as utterly undivided, while the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, formed to incorporate Christian convictions about Jesus, describes this One God as having three separate Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
All of these traditions also affirm that this God reveals the divine Presence and will to human beings, in an effort to build relationships with them, as individuals and communities. There are many channels for such revelation, channels seen as reflecting both God's mercy, and God's wish to be known. All three traditions accept the existence of angels, who act as minions and messengers. All three believe in prophecy, the notion that certain human beings can function as channels for God's commands. Another medium revealing God's activity is history--one of the fundamental assumptions for all three groups is that this a God revealed in history, and that one can discern the divine Will by studying the course of events. Finally, mystics in all three traditions have affirmed that if one looks deeply enough, God's presence can be found in every heart. Given this stress on revelation, it is also not surprising that in all three a written scripture is central, as a way to preserve the insights of this revelation for human guidance.
This is also a God who makes demands--not only for worship, but also for followers to live their lives according to certain divinely ordained standards. Inattention or infidelity to these demands brings punishment, while adhering to them brings rewards--either in the community's prosperity on earth, or in individual felicity after death. All three stress human moral responsibility, and this has often involved a call for social justice, to build a society in harmony with this moral law.
These similarities are striking, but there are also many differences. Given the emphasis that all these traditions have put on history, and their assumption that God reveals himself IN history, it could not be otherwise, since the unique circumstances in which each community was formed have helped to shape their self-understanding.
Judaism is generally considered the oldest of the three communities, and is the only one which has not generated extensive missionary activity. To a large extent, Judaism remains an ethnic religion, the religion of the Jewish people. Even though the number of of Jews is extremely small--by one estimate about 15 million people--the community has had immense historical importance. Christianity and Islam are missionary religions that have spread to every corner of the globe, and between them command about 4.2 billion adherents. In terms of their historical relationships, Christianity is clearly a product of Judaism. Jesus and all of his early followers were Jews, although the early Christians reinterpreted the Jewish tradition. The relationship between Islam and the other two traditions is less clear-cut. There are unmistakable relationships, parallels, and similarities, but no clear causal arc leading from either of them to Islam
Jews
The central conception in Jewish self-understanding has been the idea of a covenant between the Jewish people and their God--formed first through the actions of Abraham, who was promised that his obedience would make him a father of nations, and ratified on Mt. Sinai, with the giving of the Torah ("teaching"). This covenant was a solemn agreement between the two parties, in which each had obligations to the other. The Jewish people would prosper if they were faithful to God and followed God's commandments--not the Ten Commandments that Christians know so well, but 613 Commandments drawn from close reading of the Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible. Disobeying these commandments would bring punishment upon the whole people, yet they could regain God's favor by repentance and reforming their lives. Much of the Hebrew Bible describes the Jewish understanding of this relationship's changing contours. This cycle of sin, punishment, repentance, reconciliation, and redemption has been the paradigm through which they have interpreted their long and difficult history. Although their divinity has no myth, this paradigm is certainly mythic, since it seeks to give meaning and purpose to historical events (which by themselves are simply events, ascribing MEANING to those events means interpreting them according to certain assumptions).
Throughout their history this faith in and fidelity to the covenant has helped them ride through a series of setbacks and crises that would have destroyed many other communities. The first of these came in 587 BCE, when the Babylonians destroyed the First temple (built by Solomon) and carried the Jewish intelligentsia to exile in Babylon. The Jews refused to accept that this disaster demonstrated the superiority of the Babylonian gods over the Jewish god, which would have been the general interpretation in the ancient world. Instead, they maintained that the root of this misfortune was their disobedience to their God, who had used the Babylonians as an instrument to punish them, and who would restore them to Israel when they were again faithful to the covenant. The Babylonian exile saw the final revisions for much of the Hebrew Bible, although many of the books first date from a much earlier time.
After roughly fifty years, the Persians conquered Babylon, and the Jews in Babylon were allowed to return to Israel. The first returnees immediately began to rebuild the Temple, which was completed in 515 BCE. This Second Temple stood until 70 CE (nearly 600 years), and was the central focus of the Jewish community: for the daily sacrificial offerings, for individual atonement (through expiatory sacrifices known as sin-offerings), and as the concrete symbol of the relationship between God and Jewish people.
Despite the Temple's ritual and symbolic importance, Jewish religion at the end of this period was highly diverse, with many different emphases: the cult of sacrifice and service at the Temple (the priests), learning and the study of the Hebrew scriptures (the scribes), ritual purity, piety, and obedience to the Law (the Pharisees and the Qumran community), the expectation of the imminent coming of God's kingdom (the apocalyptic writers and Zealots), and the conviction that the messiah had already come, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth (the early Christians).
This age of diversity ended with the crisis created by the destruction of the Second Temple, by the Romans in 70 CE. Rabbinic Judaism was developed from the two groups who remained viable after this event: the Scribes, with their emphasis on scriptural study, and the Pharisees, with their emphasis on practice and purity. Both of these could be practiced anywhere (including in the home), which adapted them well to a world in which the Temple and its worship no longer existed. In place of this, rabbinic Judaism developed as a way of life faithful to God's commandments, and particularly stressed learning and scriptural study as religious duties. The ideal religious figure shifted from the priest to the teacher/scholar (rabbi), albeit a scholar for whom the ultimate purpose of learning was living a sanctified life.
Just as Christians interpret the meaning of the Old Testament through a second document, the New Testament, in the same way rabbinic Judaism interprets the Hebrew Bible (the written Torah) through a second document. This is the Mishnah, which was written down around 200 CE. According to the rabbis, God had given the Mishnah to Moses on Mt. Sinai, as the oral commentary on the written Torah. The Mishnah is essentially a law book, although in a broader sense than the usual use of "law"--the aim of the Mishnah is to detail a way of life whose every aspect is obedient to God's command. In the following centuries the rabbis argued and investigated the implications of the Mishnah's injunctions, writing extensive commentaries; around 500 CE these commentaries were combined with the Mishnah to form the Talmuds. Yet even after the compilation of the Talmud, learning and argument form the backbone of Jewish religious thought. In every generation, the truth can be found only through investigation, discussion, and argument.
The Judaism of the dual Torah (written and oral) was the normative Judaism until the late 1700s, when the social changes brought on by the Enlightenment began to dissolve the traditional corporate boundaries of European society. Whereas before the Enlightenment society had been seen as composed of different communities, the Enlightenment premise was that political rights were held by individuals. Individual Jews were offered the chance to participate fully in national life, but this entailed the loss of their corporate identity. The United States was the first country to grant Jews full citizenship, and George Washington's 1789 letter to the Touro (RI) synagogue explicitly affirms this; France followed suit several years later. Many Jews sought to take advantage of this offer, leading to splits between Jewish groups wishing to assimilate (Reform Judaism) and those unwilling to change (Orthodox Judaism). Yet at least in Europe the promise of equality was never fully realized, and had two major effects. The conviction among some Jews that they would never be fully accepted in Europe spawned Zionism, which emphasized that the Jews needed a homeland (and thus a political identity) of their own. The other side of this imperfect acceptance was cyclical eruptions of anti-Semitism, culminating in the Holocaust. In the 50 years after the Holocaust the struggles to find meaning in that event have further fragmented the community, and the jpast two hundred years have seen the shift from a remarkably uniform tradition to a second age of Jewish religious diversity.
Christians
Christianity began its existence as a Jewish sect. Jesus and his earliest followers were all Jews--the Gospels describe them reading the Jewish Bible, celebrating Jewish religious festivals, and undergoing Jewish life-cycle rites. The Jewish world view was an essential element in shaping early Christianity. Palestine at the time of Jesus was bubbling with social and religious ferment--the Jews were chafing under Roman rule, the economy was in a shambles, many people were poverty-stricken, and wandering religious teachers abounded. Given the tone of the times, there was widespread speculation that a decisive moment in history was near, when God would send the Messiah ("Chosen One") who would free the country from foreign domination and inaugurate a new and golden age.
Like other itinerant preachers at that time, most notably John the Baptist, Jesus called people to repentance and proclaimed the imminent arrival of God's kingdom. According to the Gospels, he also performed healings and other miracles that convinced his followers he was the Messiah. The difficult task for the earliest Jewish Christian community was to reconcile this conviction with his ignominious death by crucifixion--at the time a punishment for common criminals--and with his apparent worldly failure, which given Jewish expectations for the Messiah left many Jews unconvinced. The early Christians reinterpreted the notion of the Messiah in understanding that the messianic activity of Jesus had not been to establish an earthly kingdom, but to point human beings toward a heavenly kingdom, which they believed was coming very soon. Nor was his death on the cross a sign of utter failure, but an act of sacrifice for the whole human race, to conquer sin, alienation, and ultimately death itself. His followers saw him as bringing a "new covenant," which superseded the earlier one, and they eagerly awaited the imminent end. If you would like to learn more about this process, as explained by eminent scholars, I recommend the PBS Frontline Series titled "From Jesus to Christ" (this link currently leads to the first of 4 segments, but may not be stable over time).
Had Christianity remained confined to the Jews--a small community at the margins of the Roman empire--its influence would have been limited. The earliest Jewish Christians seem to have done their preaching in synagogues, but in a relatively short time the new members were largely non-Jews (Gentiles), probably starting with the "righteous Gentiles" who went to synagogues, but did not have full status as Jews. The community's early years saw considerable disagreement regarding how closely the new community should follow Jewish practice, and on questions of social and commensal relations between Jews and Gentiles (see Paul's Epistle to the Galations, and Acts 10:9 ff.). This issue faded within a generation, when most Christians had come from non-Jewish backgrounds, and was replaced by organizational and theological controversies.
Since the earliest Christians were Jews, it was natural that their holy text would be the Jewish Bible (probably the Greek translation known as the Septuagint), but after a time distinctively Christian texts emerged. The earliest texts in the New Testament are the letters of Paul, which were written to churches in Asia Minor to advise them on points of doctrine. As described in Acts, Paul had vigorously persecuted the early Christian community, but after receiving a vision of the risen Christ, became an equally tireless advocate. His missionary journeys and his use of Greek (the lingua franca of the eastern world) made him a major force behind the spread of Christianity, particularly among the Gentiles. The next texts were the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles: the former gave four differing perspectives on the life and ministry of Jesus, whereas the latter described the spread of the early church. The other writings in the New Testament were composed in the first through third centuries CE, usually to respond to specific organizational and theological problems.
For the first 250 years of its history Christianity had no political power. It was a socially marginal, underground movement, at times subject to persecution. This changed with the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine, who believed that the Christian God had helped him win a battle in 312 CE. With his conversion Christianity not only became socially respectable, but in time gained wealth and significant political power. Whereas the early church had been decentralized, with bishops in each area having control over their jurisdiction, in later centuries the bishop of Rome gained primacy, and with the development of the Papacy came to be regarded as the leader of the Christian church.
Since the earliest Christians were convinced that the end of time was imminent, there was little interest in theology. As time went by conflicting opinions arose, bringing with them the need to define doctrine more specifically. Historically, the Christian church has laid great stress on orthodoxy ("having correct beliefs") as a way to separate those who belonged in the community from those who did not. Not surprisingly, the earliest disagreements had to do with the status of Jesus. The first important statement of faith, The Apostle's Creed, affirmed the genuine humanity of Jesus, in opposition to Gnosticism, an early Christian heresy. The Gnostics sharply differentiated between Spirit (good) and the material world (vile and disgusting), and portrayed Jesus as a enlightened being who came to give saving knowledge to an elite minority. In contrast, the early Christians not only affirmed the goodness of the material world--since it was created by God, who also created people as embodied souls--but also stressed that Jesus came to bring universal salvation. The next major controversy regarding the person of Jesus came about in trying to describe his relationship to the Creator God. Arius of Alexandria (d. 336) insisted that because Jesus had suffered and died, he was not fully divine, but of some lower status (based on the premise that God, as perfect, could not suffer). This controversy was addressed at the Council of Nicea, an assembly of bishops called by the Emperor Constantine in 325 CE. The Nicene Creed, the Council's summary document, affirmed the full divinity of Jesus and stressed that the same divine power was responsible for both creation and redemption. Further controversies arose on other theological questions. Two of the most prominent were the relationship between the divine and human natures of Jesus (affirmed as both fully present in one person by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE), and over the propriety of creating icons (upheld).
Other controversies arose on political, moral, and organizational grounds--disagreements on how the Church should be organized, the issue of corruption in the Church, and particularly the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. In 1054, these tensions produced the schism between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches, which remains to this day. In the 1500s disagreements over theology, organization, and politics led to the Protestant Reformation; the Protestants were "protesting" the corruption of the Catholic church, and (in their minds) "re-forming" it to recapture the spirit of the earliest Christian community. The Protestant Reformation sparked a Counter-Reformation in the Catholic Church, which made some much-needed organizational reforms.
In terms of practice, the Catholic (and Orthodox) churches have stressed the importance of the sacraments as channels for receiving divine grace, and have insisted on the authority of their traditions as well as the scriptures. Although some Protestant churches have retained sacraments, they have tended to put far more emphasis on the Word--both on preaching the Gospel, and on the principle that all believers should read and interpret the Bible for themselves. This stress on individual interpretation has tended to fragment Protestant Christianity, as people have disagreed on interpretation of scripture or its application, a process that continues to the present.
Muslims
Islam ("submission" to Allah) is the youngest of the Children of Abraham, although from its beginning it has claimed to be the latest in a series of revelations by the same divine being. Unlike Christianity, which clearly grew out of Second Temple Judaism, Islam has no clear antecedents in Judaism or Christianity. Both traditions were certainly present in seventh century Arabia--there were Jewish communities scattered through the peninsula, the bishop of Yemen had sent missionaries to Mecca to preach the gospel, and both Jews and Christians were involved in trade with the Meccan Arabs. Nevertheless, the best guess is that these contacts were at best indirect influences in the formation of Islam.
The critical figure in the rise of Islam is the Prophet Muhammad (570-632), whom Muslims deem the final prophet in Allah's long history of revelation. Muhammad was born into a minor branch of the Quraysh, Mecca's ruling clan, and for most of his life did not seem marked for greatness, although he was respected as honest and upright, and had been fairly successful in business. This all changed in 610 CE, the year he turned 40. Muhammad had a reflective nature, and would often meditate in a cave outside Mecca, sometimes staying for days. One night he had a vision of an angel, who informed him that the one true God, Allah, had designated Muhammad as His messenger to the Arabs. At first Muhammad was frightened (not to mention worried that he was losing his mind), and even though the revelations continued, it was three years before he had the courage to preach publicly.
Late sixth century Mecca was undergoing profound changes, brought on by its newfound prosperity as a trading city. This flush of wealth had made some individuals extremely rich, but these changes had also strained the social fabric, particularly the traditional tribal ethos that mandated caring for less fortunate members of the group: widows, orphans, and the poor. In this new situation people without protection found themselves in dire straits, since the major control regulating people's behavior was the fear of vengeance--at that time there seems to have been no conception of an afterlife, or of rewards and punishments for one's deeds. Meccan religion was polytheistic, with each clan worshipping its tutelary deities, and although people acknowledged the existence of Allah, the high god, they considered Him remote from human affairs.
Muhammad's earliest preaching centered around the demand to worship Allah alone, denunciations of polytheism, idolatry, and social injustice, and the continual reminder that all people would answer for their deeds on the Day of Judgment. In the first six years he had attracted a small band of about 100 followers, largely young men, but he was unpopular with many Meccans for several reasons. Some were alienated simply because the new message clearly attacked their ancestral traditions, but this message also posed an economic threat--Mecca's annual festival for the tribal deities brought a great deal of revenue, which was threatened by that Muhammad's monotheistic message. For several years Muhammad was protected by his uncle Abu Talib, but when his uncle died in 619, the situation became grim. His first wife Khadija also died that same year, known as the "Year of Sorrow."
Two years later he received an offer from the leaders of Yathrib, an agricultural oasis about 300 miles north of Mecca. That community's competing clans were hopelessly locked in conflict. They invited Muhammad to serve as an impartial arbitrator between them, and agreed that Muhammad could bring his followers with him. In 622 CE Muhammad and his followers went to Yathrib (later renamed Medina), and the Muslim community had become a reality. As a mark of how important this moment was perceived, the Islamic calendar dates from that event.
The Meccans were delighted to see Muhammad go, and were convinced that they had seen the last of him. When Muhammad and his followers began to disrupt the caravan trade, in a bid to strangle Meccan commerce, the Meccans realized that he was not going to simply fade away, and they actively sought to destroy him. The Meccans were the richest and most powerful group on the Arabian peninsula, but bad luck, unreliable allies, and (not least) Muhammad's diplomatic and military skills frustrated all their efforts. Muhammad's unlikely success helped convince others of the truth of his prophetic mission, and by 630 he had conquered Mecca (with almost no loss of life), removed the idols from the central shrine (the Kaba) and rededicated the site to the worship of Allah. By his death two years later, the entire Arabian peninsula had accepted Islam, and within 150 years Muslim territory stretched from the Indus to the Pyrenees.
While Muhammad was alive he served as the community's military, political, and religious leader, revealing the wishes of Allah and helping the community to implement them. Not surprisingly, his death was a severe blow to the community, especially since he had not designated a successor, and the community found itself scrambling for guidance. One clear source of the guidance was the Qur'an, the collected revelations received by Muhammad for the 32 years between 610 until his death. The Qur'an was originally transmitted orally--contemporary Arabic culture was an oral culture, and prized oratory and poetry--but within 20 years of Muhammad's death had been written down in a single authorized version. Another source of guidance was the character and behavior of Muhammad, who as Allah's Prophet was considered a model for other humans. These Hadith ("Traditions" of the Prophet) circulated widely after his death, and eventually became so influential that several outstanding scholars--such as Bukhari (d. 870)--devoted their lives to assessing their reliability. Click here for an overview on how this was done.
As these resources became codified, legal traditions began to develop. Legal scholars began from the premise that there was a way of life according to which human beings should live, in obedience to Allah, and they carefully worked out its dimensions in the Shari'a, the Muslim law. The Shari'a is less a lawbook than a blueprint for living a pious Muslim life, intended to guide the faithful in every facet of life. It was developed using four bases of authority: (1) the Qur'an (as Allah's revelation the most authoritative, but often concerned with more ideals and attitudes than actual behavior); (2) the Traditions (hadith) of the Prophet Muhammad, which served as an authoritative example; (3) Analogy from a known to an unknown example, and (4) the Consensus of Legal Scholars. (Click here for a more detailed description of this process).
With the completion of the Shari'a (ca. 10th c. CE), the "gates of interpretation" were declared closed, and remained so until the modern era. Once this way of life had been laid out, the task of good Muslims was not to question it, but to follow it. Yet those centuries in which the scholars were drawing out and codifying the Shari'ah also saw the birth and development of the mystical tradition known as Sufism--and in many cases the same people were taking part in both of these. Sufis sought primarily to love Allah, and not just obey Allah, and this path of Love led to the development of various Sufi "orders" (Tariqas), each with their own distinctive spiritual methods.
The basis of everyday Islamic practice is the 5 Pillars, which are all duties to Allah, and thus a way to demonstrate submission to Allah. These are: (1) The Profession of Faith ("There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his Prophet"), (2) Required Prayers five times daily, (3) Almsgiving to support the poorer members of the community (reflecting Muhammad's initial call for social justice), (4) Fasting during the day in the month of Ramadan (the month in which the first revelation came to Muhammad), and if possible, (5) the Pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in one's life. Note that only the first of these can be described as a "belief." The other four are all actions, reflecting the Islamic stress on deeds as visible evidence of submission to Allah. This stress on correct action has made scholars--particularly legal scholars--Islam's most important religious figures. Even though their fatwas ("legal judgments") do not strictly carry the force of law--except in Iran, where a group of legal scholars functions as the highest governing body--the respect that people have for them makes them extremely influential as modern-day Shari'a scholars.
Islam has taken root in many parts of the world, and in each has been greatly affected by local culture. This has generated enormous variations, and the Islam in one part of the world often has a substantially different tone than the Islam in another. Much has been made of the Islamic revival (so-called fundamentalism) in the period following WWII, and even more pointedly following the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent "War on Terror." Even though in some cases this revival has had considerable influence--especially in the case of Iran, where Islamic jurists function as the country's Supreme Court--portraying renascent Islam as the new Cold War is a gross oversimplification. Although certain groups are deeply opposed to "Western" society, such as the 19 men responsible for the Sept. 11 mass murder, a more nuanced look at "Islamic" countries reveals considerable diversity in the way that they understand and practice Islam, as well historical tensions and hostilities between them. It is also important to remember that the underlying reasons for Islamic revival is often the desire to construct a modern (post-colonial) identity that accurately reflects their own culture, rather than one based on western and/or Christian models. This is a question not so much about the growth of fanaticism as the quest for their own cultural heritage.