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| Map showing the prevalence of Abrahamic (pink) and Dharmic religions (yellow) in each country. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| English: Symbol of the three Abrahamic religions. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are sometimes called "Abrahamic religions"
because they all accept the tradition that God revealed himself to the
patriarch Abraham. The
theological traditions of all Abrahamic religions are thus to some extent
influenced by the depiction of the God of Israel
in the Hebrew Bible,
and the historical development of monotheism in the history of Judaism.
The Abrahamic God in
this sense is the conception
of God that remains a common attribute of all three traditions. God is
conceived of as eternal,
omnipotent, omniscient and as the creator of the universe.
God is further held to have the properties of holiness, justice, omni-benevolence and omnipresence. Proponents
of Abrahamic faiths believe that God is also transcendent,
meaning that he is outside space and outside time and therefore not subject to
anything within his creation, but at the same time personal and involved,
listening to prayer and
reacting to the actions of his creatures.
The development of monotheism during Classical Antiquity
was a process of complex interaction between philosophical and religious
traditions, specifically between the philosophical monotheism of The One in Platonism and the strict monolatrism of Second Temple Judaism,
giving rise to syncretized traditions such as Hellenistic Judaism.
The split between Pharisaic/Rabbinic Judaism and Early/Proto-orthodox
Christianity was a slowly growing chasm between Christians and Jews in the
first centuries of the Christian
Era. Even though it is commonly thought that Paul established
a Gentile church, it took centuries for a complete break to manifest.
However, certain events are perceived as pivotal in the growing rift between Christianity and
Judaism. Some scholars propose a model which envisions a twin birth of
Proto-Orthodox Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism rather than a separation of
the former from the latter. For example, Robert Goldenberg asserts that it is
increasingly accepted among scholars that "at the end of the 1st century
CE there were not yet two separate religions called "Judaism" and
"Christianity".[1]
Daniel Boyarin proposes
that nascent Christianity and Judaism in late antiquity were intensely and
complexly intertwined. The theological split of Judaism and Christianity was
complete with the development of the Athanasian Creed
during the 4th century and its widespread adoption as Christian orthodoxy by
the 6th century. The radical monotheism of Islam (tawhid)
as formulated in the 7th century is a reaction to the preceding centuries of Christological debate. The
Qur'an makes this explicit by commenting on Christian doctrine, as in sura 2:116,
"And
they (Christians) say: Allāh has begotten a son (children or offspring). Glory
be to Him (Exalted be He above all that they associate with Him). Nay, to Him
belongs all that is in the heavens and on earth, and all surrender with
obedience (in worship) to Him."
For this reason,
early Islam was long considered one of many Christological heresies in medieval
Christianity, for example by John of Damascus (born
c. 676) in his Fount of Wisdom.[2] It was only with the Crusades of the High Middle Ages that
Islam came to be considered a separate religion.
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