People of the Book

Relief of Ninurta fighting the anzu bird

"An accident of political development has made it possible to divide the Christian world, in the first place, into two great halves, Eastern and Western. The root of this division is, roughly and broadly speaking, the division of the Roman Empire made first by Diocletian (284-305), and again by the sons of Theodosius I (Arcadius in the East, 395-408; and Honorius in the West, 395-423), then finally made permanent by the establishment of a rival empire in the West (Charlemagne, 800). The division of Eastern and Western Churches, then, in its origin corresponds to that of the empire."

The Trinity is considered to be one of the central doctrines of the Christian religion, and was accepted by the Council of Nicaea established by Constantine, yet no equivalent for the word is found in the New Testament. The Gospel of John identifies Jesus as the Word of God, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Gospel of Matthew ends with Jesus telling his disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit,” but not even in the more theologically-minded epistles is there a clear description of God being embodied in three persons. When a medieval copyist came across a verse in the First Epistle of John reading, “There are three that testify: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and the three are in agreement,” it must have seemed unthinkable that the disciple of Jesus would make no mention of the Trinitas, so the verse was changed to “For there are three that testify in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three that testify on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood….” Out of the thousands of copies of the epistle known today, only eight of them include this addition. St. Cyprian, arguing in favor of the Trinity in the mid-200s, quotes the original verse and then adds his own homily which is similar to the forgery, and may have been where the reference originated. The forgery would appear in several versions of the Vulgate, the Roman church’s official Latin version of the Bible, some time around the 800s. St. Jerome, who produced the original Vulgate in the early 400s, seems to have been unaware of the passage, considering his own apologetic writings on the Trinity.

Desiderius Erasmus, an important 15th century theologian and humanist, had kept the reference out of the first two editions of the Textus Receptus because he could not find it in any of the Greek copies he had. But the church made him agree to put it in the next edition if a Greek copy could be found with the Trinity reference intact, and so one was quickly produced. The third edition of the Textus Receptus included the addition, but with a prolonged footnote about his suspicions that the Greek copy was spurious. Ironically, today’s version of the Vulgate appends brackets around the added verse, the church having admitted the mistake, while the Protestant King James Version keeps the third edition rendition of the Textus Receptus with no attached footnote.

Erasmus was also an important translator and editor of St. Ambrose, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, Cicero, and St. Jerome. He criticized Church practices but never the Church itself. Although Luther and other Protestants pleaded for him to join the movement, he continuously rejected their offers so as to keep his scholarly integrity, yet he was often blamed for starting the Revolution. Having “laid the egg that hatched the Reformation,” his works were prohibited by the Church, and he gained the ire of Protestants for not committing to their cause. Luther’s movement started only a year after the Erasmus’ translation of the New Testament into German. In Erasmus' book, The Praise of Folly, he writes:

But I don't know why I bother to defend myself with a single example, seeing that it’s the generally accepted privilege of theologians to stretch the heavens, that is, the Scriptures, like tanners with a hide. According to St Paul, there are words which can do battle for Holy Scripture, though in their context they don't do so, if we are to trust Jerome, that 'master of five tongues'. Paul once happened to see an inscription on an altar in Athens and twisted its meaning into an argument for the Christian faith. He left out all the words which would have damaged his case and selected only the last two, ignoto deo “to the unknown god.” Even in this he made some alteration, since the complete inscription read “to the gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa, the unknown and foreign gods.” His, I believe, is the precedent our present-day ‘sons of theology’ follow when they pick out four or five words from different contexts, and if necessary even distort their meaning to suit their purpose, though those which come before and after may be either totally irrelevant or actually contradictory. This they do with such carefree impudence that theologians are often the envy of the legal experts.

Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Christian Unitarians, and other denominations reject the doctrine of the Trinity. Thomas Jefferson was himself a quasi-Unitarian, “a sect of his own,” as he put it, who rejected the divinity of Jesus but believed that Jesus had devised “the finest ethical system the world had ever seen.” He believed that “the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter” and even devised his own Bible that combined all the ethical teachings of Jesus while leaving out all the supernatural phenomenon. When ecclesiastical efforts were used to assassinate his character, Jefferson wrote in a letter, “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Contrary to the belief of many American Evangelicals, nearly all the Founding Fathers were Deists, most of whom denied the divinity of Christ, from George Washington, James Madison, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln. Many belonged to the Freemasons, a secret fraternal organization holding metaphysical beliefs that are discouraged by Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant churches.

Some Roman Catholic priests like the Biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown have also put forward the belief that Jesus was not identified with God during Christianity’s earliest stages. Marcellus of Ancyra, who had been present during the Council of Nicaea in 325, wrote against the concept of the Trinity while still holding to the divinity of Jesus and the Holy Spirit: “Now with the heresy of the Ariomaniacs, which has corrupted the Church of God... These then teach three hypostases [essences], just as Valentinus the heresiarch [arch-heretic] first invented in the book entitled by him ‘On the Three Natures.’ For he was the first to invent three hypostases and three persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he is discovered to have stolen this from Hermes and Plato.”

Protestants in the forefront of the Reformation like Luther and Calvin accepted Jesus as God and saw no problem with bowing before crosses or calling Mary the Mother of God, but later Protestants of the 1600s began to see the veneration of the Virgin Mary by Roman Catholics as idolatry. The Nestorian Church in Iraq, Iran, and Malabar, India, still hold today that the Virgin Mary should not be referred to as Theotokos, or “God-bearer.” As we’ve seen, these Christian communities were declared heretical by the Council of Ephesus in 449 and today number around 175,000 members. The Roman Catholic Church has relations with some Jacobites and Anglicans, and in 1994 the Nestorian and Roman Catholic Church signed a declaration recognizing the legitimacy of each other's theological positions.

Other monotheists, Jews and Muslims, believe Jesus would not have wanted to be worshipped as God or Son of God. They see bowing down before his image or the image of Mary as a form of idolatry. Many Muslims have taken offense to the word “Mohammedan,” an English colloquialism from the 1950s, because to them it insinuates that Muslims worship Muhammed the same way Christians worship Christ. Today, Jews and Muslims who hold their scripture to be divinely inspired make it a point to denote that while a prophet’s words come from God, the prophet is only a messenger. One of the commandments from the Old Testament reads, “You shall not make yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the waters below,” it’s prolonged narration leaving no room for exceptions. The 11th century Roman Catholic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas tried to separate veneration of the cross from idolatry by saying, “Religious worship is not directed to images in themselves, considered as mere things, but under their distinctive aspect as images leading us on to God incarnate. The movement toward the image does not terminate in it as image, but tends toward that whose image it is.” The Hebrews who originally enforced the laws of Moses drew no such distinction and destroyed all forms of venerated objects.

Contentions against the worship of both Jesus and his mother are written about in the Qur'an as well: “After reminding him of these favors, Allah will say, ‘Oh, Isa [Jesus], son of Maryam, Did you ever say to the people, ‘Worship me and my mother as gods beside Allah?’ [Jesus] will answer: ‘Glory to you! How could I say what I had no right to say? If I had ever said so, you would have certainly known it. You know what is in my heart, but I know what is in yours; for you have full knowledge of all the unseen.” (5:116). The Qur'an does accept that Jesus was the Messiah, was sent by God, was born of the Virgin Mary, and lived a perfect and sinless life, but it also teaches that the true message of Jesus was the same as all the other prophets since Abraham. The traditions of Jews and Christians are believed to have become corrupted by their religious leaders, and that the true message was revealed for the last time with the prophet Muhammed. Because of this viewpoint, Muslims tend to anachronistically refer to Abraham, Moses, and Jesus as Muslims. The Islamic mode of prayer, kneeling with the face set before the ground, is held to be an extremely important factor in their religion, and references to prophets praying in this fashion in the Bible are often held up as proof that the corrupted texts show signs of an earlier Muslim practice.

Jewish rabbis, in contrast, believe that Jesus, if he ever really existed, was nothing more than a false messiah, one of many who promised a divine victory over the Romans that never materialized. Jesus’ teaching of “turning the other cheek” is often described by Jews as countermanding God’s message from the Old Testament to fight evil. To them, the real Messiah is to be born as a normal human being, not the Son of God, though his appearance will bring about a prolonged era of peace. The Messiah will set his kingdom up on earth and he will have no need to die and return again. As the Book of Isaiah says, swords will be beat into plow shears, and the lion will lay down with the lamb.

Despite all of this, there is proof from the apocryphal Book of Enoch that many Jews did accept God as a kind of triad before Christianity. The most reverent title for God used in Enoch is the Ancient of Days, or Atik Yomin, an Aramaic term repeated in the Book of Daniel. Enoch himself becomes divine in the text and becomes identified with the Son of Man, a title also used for a mysterious figure in Daniel and which becomes a title for Jesus in the Synoptic gospels. Also a part of the divine council is the Lord of Spirits, a figure that can be identified with the Holy Spirit, or with the Sumerian Enlil, whose name can be read “Lord-Spirit.”


The Golden Rule

When Jesus is asked which commandment is the most important in the Gospel of Mark, he replies, “‘Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (12:29). The first of these Old Testament verses comes from the Book of Deuteronomy (6:3) and the second is actually broken off from the second part of a law from the Book of Leviticus that says, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am Yahweh.” (19:18). The two laws are never found together in the Old Testament, and neither, in their original context, give the indication that they are any more important than the dozens of other laws that come before and after them. Yet the famous Rabbi Akiva, one of the founders of rabbinic Judaism, who lived around the early 100s A.D., also singled these two particular parts of the Law out as the foundation on which the Torah rests.

It’s said that Akiva (or Akiba) recognized Simon bar Koziba, who led the failed Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans in 135 A.D., as the Messiah. But Akiva abandoned Jerusalem and the revolt when Bar Kochba decided to join forces with the Samaritans. After the revolt failed, the Romans prohibited Jews from entering Jerusalem or reading the Old Testament Torah. It’s said that when Akiva refused to obey this prohibition against the Torah, he was tortured to death at the age of 120, the same age Moses is said to have died. When the Roman torturers began tearing the flesh from his body with red hot pincers, he made no sound, similar to how the gospels relate the silence of Jesus while he was accused and crucified. Like Jesus, he is also said to have tried to comfort those who were mourning for him, saying, “My children, be not sad because of me. I have reached the goal of my desires. I was worried about this verse, ‘…[Love God] with all your soul,’ even if He [God] takes away your soul. This endless love, how can we prove it better than by giving up one's life, one's soul for the sanctification of God's Name!” As the sun rose, he cried out, “Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Blessed be His Name for ever and ever. And thou shall love the Lord your God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might.” This is almost identical to the verse found in the Gospel of Mark.

The Gospel of Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them to do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” (7:12). The epistle of James also gives special consideration to the Golden Rule, saying, “If you really keep the royal law found in scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.” (2:8). The epistle of Paul to the Galatians reads, “The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (5:14), which is very similar to the quote from Matthew. And they are both very similar to a quote from the rabbi Hillel the Elder, who is also one of the most important religious figures in Judaism. In the Babylonian Talmud, it is said that a Gentile who wanted to become a Jew asked him for a summary of the Jewish religion, to which Hillel responded, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Law; the rest is only commentary.”

Interestingly enough, the Acts of the Apostles says that Hillel’s famous grandson, Gamaliel, was a teacher of Paul. Acts also has Gamaliel convincing his fellow rabbis as head of the Sanhedrin not to execute Peter and the other apostles, saying, “Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their present case or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.” (5:28). It’s been suggested that Paul was the student who showed “impudence in learning” towards Gamaliel as mentioned in a collection of important Jewish writings known as the Talmud (Shabbath 30b). However, most New Testament scholars think that Paul being a student of Gamaliel is an invention by the author of Acts since there is no mention of Gamaliel in any of the epistles credited to Paul. There are autobiographical parts in the epistles about Paul’s credentials as a former Pharisee, and to not mention Gamaliel would be like bragging about being a former philosopher without mentioning you studied under Plato.

The Golden Rule, also called the Ethic of Reciprocity, is a tenant found in nearly all modern religions. The 13th Saying of Muhammed in Al-Nawawi's Forty [-Three] Hadiths is “No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.” The Mahabharata, one of the two major Sanskrit epics of Hinduism reads, “One should not behave towards others in a way which is disagreeable to oneself. This is the essence of morality. All other activities are due to selfish desire.” The Buddhist Udanavarga says “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” The Analects of Confucius includes the saying, “Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.” The Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, from the Baha’i World Faith says, “And if your eyes be turned towards justice, choose you for your neighbor that which you have chosen for yourself.” The Sutrakritanga of Jainism reads, “A man should wander about treating all creatures as he himself would be treated.” The T'ai Shang Kan Ying P'ien of Taoism says, “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your loss.” The Zoroastrian sacred texts, called the Shayast-na-Shayast, includes, “What is disagreeable to yourself, do not do to others.” Even LaVeyan Satanism, an occult philosophy started in San Francisco in the 60s, which does not actually ascribe belief in the devil, uses a derivative of the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as they do unto you.”


Salvation and the Ten Commandments

The most often-quoted words from the New Testament comes in John’s third chapter, saying, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (3:16) For most of the church’s history, it has been taken for granted that only ritually observant Christians would be saved from the fires of hell. Even babies who went un-baptized by their parents would not enjoy the fruits of heaven according to St. Augustine, but by the time of the St. Aquinas were regulated to the neutral plane of existence named Limbo.

Protestant theologians like Martin Luther and John Calvin would later use verses from the epistles of Paul to argue that Christians are saved by faith in Jesus alone, and that no amount of good works would have any effect on the matter. The epistle to the Ephesians reads, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works, so that no one can boast.” (2:8). But the epistle of James counters that “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (3:17), and that even the demons believe in the one true God. Luther’s response to this was to call James “an epistle of straw.” Protestant theologians have historically put a great deal of emphasis on the Pauline epistles in their interpretation of the New Testament, and Protestant Fundamentalism has gone even further in that direction. “Protestantism was the triumph of Paul over Peter, fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ.”, wrote the American philosopher and historian Will Durant in his book, Caesar and Christ.

Luther and Calvin apparently took the idea of good works being meaningless to heart. Martin Luther also wrote a book called, On the Jews and Their Lies, which incited German Christians to burn down Jewish synagogues, steal their property, and exile them long before Hitler was born. John Calvin is known to have arrested the greatest medical genius of his time, Michael Servetus, and burned him alive. Servetus was a scientist and theologian, and discovered the system of pulmonary circulation, but he was sentenced to death in Geneva for disagreeing with Calvin’s doctrine of the Trinity, and this was after Severetus just escaped from being imprisoned by the Pope! Luther and Calvin went on the be considered the greatest theologians behind the Protestant Reformation and Severetus is often called the first Unitarian martyr.

In his anti-semitic book, Luther writes seven suggestions that Germany implement towards the Jews:

“First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly - and I myself was unaware of it - will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.

Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.

Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them…….

Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb….

Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews….

Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping…. Whenever a Jew is sincerely converted, he should be handed one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred florins, as personal circumstances may suggest. With this he could set himself up in some occupation for the support of his poor wife and children, and the maintenance of the old or feeble. For such evil gains are cursed if they are not put to use with God's blessing in a good and worthy cause.

Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen 3[:19]}. For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants.

The salvation by grace model formed by Luther and Calvin is built off of the theology of Paul’s epistles and the Gospel of John, but the concept seems completely foreign in the Synoptic gospels. When Jesus is asked how to get into heaven in the Gospel of Mark, he not only fails to speak of faith in the Son of God as the central key, but actually denigrates his own status of divinity by reproaching the man for calling him ‘good.’:

“As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. ‘Good teacher,’ he asked, ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ ‘Why do you call me good?’, Jesus answered, ‘No one is good- except Theos [God] alone. You know the commandments: [5] Do not murder, [6] do not commit adultery, [7] do not steal, [8] do not give false testimony, [?] do not defraud, [4] honor your father and mother.’ ‘Teacher,’ he declared, ‘all these I have kept since I was a boy.’ Jesus looked at him and loved him. ‘One thing you lack,’ he said. ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!’ The disciples were amazed at his words.

But Jesus said again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God’ The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, ‘Who then can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.’ Peter said to him, ‘We have left everything to follow you!’ ‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus replied, ‘no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” -Mark 10:17-29

When Jesus tells the disciples that those who have left their homes and families will receive a hundreds times as in the present age, as opposed to the age to come, it refers to the hundreds of homes and fields that missionaries traversed along and the hundreds of spiritual brothers and sisters.

“Do not defraud” is listed as if it is another commandment, but it does not appear in the commandments in the Old Testament and may be intended as an extension of “Do not give false testimony.” The third commandment to keep holy the Sabbath is not given mention in this list. An earlier portion of the gospel shows Jesus to be more lax regarding the Sabbath law than the Pharisees who criticized him for picking wheat on Saturday, the day of rest. Jesus responded to their criticism by saying, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”(2:27). This is certainly an interpretation that takes a radical departure from the intent of the Torah as we have it: the consequence for breaking the Sabbath is death and there is an example of it made in the Book of Numbers (15:32).

Although the Ten Commandments are generally believed to be meant for everyone, the traditional belief in Rabbinic Judaism is that these laws were given by Moses to the Israelites and that Gentiles are no more obligated to follow them than the other laws of the Torah. Talmud and post-Talmudic writings instead transpose seven laws from the time of Noah, called the Noahide Laws, extrapolated very loosely from verses in Genesis, as universal laws that all races are required to obey. This is because Noah’s family is the only one who is said to have survived the flood, and their three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, are believed the be the ancestors of the three main racial divisions of the entire world: Semitic, African, and European. The first six Noahide laws prohibit idolatry, cursing the name of God, murder, theft, sexual immorality, eating a limb from a live animal, and the seventh law requires the establishment of a justice system. The exact nature of each law is somewhat variant amongst sources. The part about eating a limb from a live animal is traditionally interpreted to encompass all animal cruelty. The Noahide Laws mostly encompass the core commandments, with a few exceptions, most notably keeping the Sabbath.

Acts of the Apostles reports that “Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers, ‘Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.’” (15:1) Paul and Barnabbas came into dispute with this and so a council was established in Jerusalem, with James as the judge. After hearing Peter, Paul and Barnabas speak against the requirement of circumcision, James quotes a verse from the Old Testament Book of Amos about the rebuilding of King David’s tent including Gentiles who bear his name, and then makes his ruling: “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.” (15:9). The laws meant for Gentiles as quoted from James in Acts appear to be three out of the seven Noahide Laws.

The exact numbering of the Ten Commandments is disputed between different religious groups. Jews, Roman Catholics and Lutherans interpret “You shall have no other gods before me” and “You shall not make for yourself an idol.” as being the same commandment while Greek Orthodox and the majority of Protestant denominations view them as being two different commandments. Roman Catholics and Lutherans in turn separate “Do not covet your neighbor’s house.” and “Do not covet your neighbor’s wife.” to make the number equal. Jews recognize these two as a single commandment but instead consider “I am Yahweh your Elohim, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” important enough to consider it a commandment unto itself.

Adding to this complexity is a listing in the book of Exodus of a set of Ten Commandments that come after the popularly known version. Although in the context of the story of Exodus, they are replacements for the old commandments which Moses broke, they are listed as a completely different set of rules (34:1). These commandments are listed as: do not worship any other god, do not make a treaty with foreigners who live in Israel, do not make cast idols, celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, sacrifice every firstborn from the flock, work the first six days but rest on the seventh, celebrate the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Ingathering, do not sacrifice anything with yeast, and do not cook a goat in it’s mother’s milk. Old Testament scholars believe that this is the earliest version of the Ten Commandments and was later redacted into a different context by later editors so that the more commonly known commandments could take their place. The Qur’an includes laws in various places that are equivalent to the Ten Commandments, except for the Sabbath rest, which is stated to be only required by Jews. Congressional prayer for Muslims was to be held on Friday evenings instead.

Today, the majority of Muslim scholars believe that those who receive a complete understanding of Islam and reject it will go to hell, similar to what many Christians believe about their own religion. Jews, however, do not believe that one has to follow Judaism in order to get into heaven. This would seem to be a more natural presumption since they are such a small minority in the population of every country except Israel. But not only do Jews not attempt to proselytize others into Judaism, in most cases rabbis try to dissuade non-Jews from converting. Some traditional rabbis hold that a potential convert should be turned away three times to ensure their seriousness. This changes the dynamic of their faith greatly, as practitioners of Judaism do not view other religions as competition. Belief in the afterlife is partly what distinguished the Pharisees of rabbinic Judaism from the Sadducees, the Temple priests of Jesus‘ time. But most rabbis today tend to point out that unlike Christianity and Islam, Judaism is not focused on the question of how to get into heaven, but rather how people should act in this life. A book in the Jewish Mishnah, the Pirkei Avot, reads, “Be not like servants who serve their master for the sake of receiving a reward; instead, be like servants who serve their master not for the sake of receiving a reward, and let the awe of Heaven [God] be upon you.” The Talmud speaks of Olam Ha-Ba, or “the world to come,” as a time of great peace, which could either be interpreted as the afterlife or the physical world after the true Messiah takes his place. The Talmud says that all of Israel has a share in the Olam Ha-Ba, but that the righteous will have greater shares. Rabbinic Jews believe that the righteous from all nations will also have a share as well. There are a few statements in the Talmud that go against this assumption, but most rabbis consider them to be a sentiment of the times, in which neighboring nations in contact with the Jews were not seen as righteous people.

Very little of the Old Testament touches on the afterlife, and what little there is describes a netherworld underneath the earth called She’ol, no different from what surrounding polytheistic cultures believed in. The pagan Greeks called this place Hades, and the New Testament uses the same word to describe the place of “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Another name Jews used for hell was Gehinnom (Gehenna in Yiddish), referring to the Valley of Hinnom. In the Old Testament, it was a place where Canaanites would sacrifice their children to Molech, and in Jesus’ time was a garbage dump that was kept burning to keep the stench down, so it served as a good metaphor for the kind of place evil spirits would go to after they die.

In the Babylonian Talmud, Rabbi Akiva said that the souls in Gehenna could be punished for up to 12 months. “After 12 months, their body is consumed and their soul is burned and the wind scatters them under the soles of the feet of the righteous.” (Rosh Hashanah 17a). This led to the Jewish practice of praying for the souls of the dead for up to 11 months after their death. To pray for a twelfth month would imply their soul would be destroyed. Roman Catholics similarly pray for the souls that are in Purgatory, a place of temporary punishment, who must pay for their transgressions before entering Heaven. But many Protestants believe that it’s a sin to pray for the dead because the destination of the soul is only determined by what the person did in life. The First Epistle to the Corinthians insinuates that a sinful man from Paul’s congregation who took his father’s wife was to go through some kind of punishment before being ultimately redeemed: “When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.” (5:4). The Jewish idea that all the souls of the righteous must go through a temporary punishment in hell while the unjust are left behind is also found in the Gospel of Mark, which says, “Everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again?” (9:49). The concept of non- infinite punishment was also inherited in Islam. The Qur’an refers to this saying, “There is not one among you who shall not pass through hell; such is the absolute decree of your Lord. We will deliver those who fear Us, and leave the wrongdoers there, on their knees.” (19:71).


Inclusiveness, Exclusiveness, and Cultural Pluralism

Although it is the Roman Catholic Church which is best known for combating the heliocentric model of the solar system popularized by Copernicus, most notably the trial and house arrest of Galileo Galilei in 1633, Protestants of the time found the Copernican model to be just as heretical. Martin Luther in his writings makes reference to Copernicus, saying:

“There is talk of a new astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved. But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must needs invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth.”

The verse in Joshua that Luther refers to describes the prophet calling for the sun and moon to stand still so that his army could chase down and defeat the retreating Amorite confederacy he was fighting against (10:12). Psalms 93 and 104 also dictate that the earth can not be moved, and a verse in Ecclesiastes speaks of the sun revolving around the earth (1:5). The Qur’an likewise describes the sun and moon as orbiting the earth (36). Luther’s reaction can be compared to that of Theophilus, the Patriarch of Antioch from around 180 A.D., writing about Noah’s flood and the dispersion of the three races to the far corners of the earth: “And the writers, not knowing these things, are forward to maintain that the world is shaped like a sphere, and to compare it to a cube. But how can they say what is true regarding these things, when they do not know about the creation of the world and its population?”

Knowledge of the heliocentric solar system was not first discovered by Copernicus, but only popularized by him in Europe. The ancient Vedic Sanskrit text, Shatapatha Brahmana, written around 800 B.C., not only outlined a system in which the earth revolved around the sun, it also accurately measured the distance from the sun and moon from the earth as being 108 times the size of their respective diameters. Subsequent scientific measurements have shown the sun to be 107.6 times and the moon to be 110.6 times in distance. The astronomical system used by Europe was largely that of geocentric model of Plato’s student, Aristotle (330 B.C.), which had been improved on by the Hellenized Egyptian Ptolemy (100s A.D.), and the Persian Muslim scientist Nasir al-Din Tusi (1200s).

The reluctance for older Bible Literalists to accept that the world is not the center of the universe is easily compared to that of modern Bible Literalists who fail to accept that modern humans are not at the center of world history. Following the same logic as Theophilus and Luther, and for the most part harboring a personal disdain against the concept of Darwinian evolution, Bible Literalists replace the four and a half billion year timeline of Geology with a 6,000 year one based on the Bible. They generally believe dinosaurs to be contemporary with humans, and dismiss such things as carbon dating science, hominid fossils of proto-humans like that of the 4 million-year-old “Lucy,” and the overabundance of fossil fuels resulting from a 360-million-year Carboniferous Period.

Today, the Roman Catholic Church renounces Biblical Fundamentalism and recognizes that the early chapters of Genesis can be read symbolically. Since the 1950s, the Roman Catholic Church has allowed for the idea that the human body may have been generated from past organisms as long as it is recognized that the human soul was created by God alone. In 1996, John Paul II apologized for the church’s repression of Galileo and addressed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences saying, “Today, almost half a century after publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.”

In October of 2005, the Roman Catholic Church released a document as part of the 40th anniversary celebration of the Second Vatican Council finding, Dei Verbum, “On Divine Revelation.” The 2005 document read that, “We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision.” The bishops also acknowledged their debt to biblical scholars, criticized the “intransigent intolerance” of Christian Fundamentalism, and discredited the expectation for the Book of Revelation to describe details about the end of the world.

The Second Vatican Council had been called by Pope John XXIII as soon as he was elected in 1959. In a way a continuation of the First Vatican Council that had been cut short by the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. After 3 years of preparation, the council was convened in 4 sessions, which lasted from 1962 to 1965. Pope John also invited many non-Catholics to observe, reportedly saying, “I want to throw open the windows of the Church so that we can see out and the people can see in.” But after the first session, Pope John died and was replaced by Pope Paul VI. Unlike previous councils that dealt with heresies, this council looked into the church’s role in the modern world. Among other things, it led to the church changing it’s Latin mass to that of vernacular languages. In one of the 3 declarations, Nostra Aetate, or “In Our Time,” the church put out a controversial stance on it’s relation to other religions. Here are some excerpts from this declaration:

“Religions, however, that are bound up with an advanced culture have struggled to answer the same questions by means of more refined concepts and a more developed language. Thus in Hinduism, men contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an inexhaustible abundance of myths and through searching philosophical inquiry. They seek freedom from the anguish of our human condition either through ascetical practices or profound meditation or a flight to God with love and trust. Again, Buddhism, in its various forms, realizes the radical insufficiency of this changeable world; it teaches a way by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, may be able either to acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination. Likewise, other religions found everywhere try to counter the restlessness of the human heart, each in its own manner, by proposing “ways,” comprising teachings, rules of life, and sacred rites. The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.”

“The Church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth (Cf. St. Gregory VII, Letter III, 21 to Anazir [Al-Nasir], King of Mauretania PL, 148.451A.), who has spoken to men. They strive to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God’s plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own. Although not acknowledging him as God, they venerate Jesus as a prophet, his Virgin Mother they also honor, and even at times devoutly invoke. Further, they await the day of judgment and the reward of God following the resurrection of the dead. For this reason they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting.”

“Over the centuries many quarrels and dissensions have arisen between Christians and Muslims. The sacred Council now pleads with all to forget the past, and urges that a sincere effort be made to achieve mutual understanding; for the benefit of all men, let them together preserve and promote peace, liberty, social justice and moral values.”

“True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ. Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”

“Therefore, the Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against people or any harassment of them on the basis of their race, color, condition in life or religion. Accordingly, following the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, the sacred Council earnestly begs the Christian faithful to ‘conduct themselves well among the Gentiles’ (1 Peter 2:12) and if possible, as far as depends on them, to be at peace with all men (cf. Romans 12:18), and in that way to be true sons of the Father who is in heaven (cf. Matthew 5:45).”

One of the 4 constitutions, Lumen Gentium, or “Light of the Nations,” says this:

“This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him. Nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside its visible confines.”

A major event of the final days of the council was the act of Pope Paul and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras making a joint expression of regret for many of the past actions that had led up to the Great Schism between the eastern and western churches. This did not bring about a reunification of the two churches, but was rather a show of desire for greater reconciliation. Today, Roman Catholics will share the bread and wine of Communion with Greek Orthodox Christians, but not Protestants. Although there is no official stance of the Greek Orthodox Church regarding the nature of salvation outside the church, the vast majority of Orthodox scholars believe that non-Christians can still be saved through, or in spite of, practicing other religions.

The different approaches as to how people view different religions is usually separated into three classifications: exclusivism, inclusivism, and cultural pluralism. Exclusivists view their faith tradition as the only true religion and that all other religions are rivals, usually led by Satan or demonic forces. Inclusivists view their own religious tradition as the only complete truth, with other religions having partially developed approaches to the truth. Cultural pluralism, or religious pluralism, is the belief that no single religion can claim absolute authority to teach the complete truth and that human fallibility limits all religious knowledge. In general, Deists, Unitarians and rabbinic Jews are cultural pluralists, Roman Catholic bishops and Greek Orthodox scholars have slowly moved to inclusivist, and Muslim scholars and Christian Fundamentalists are exclusivist. Many Christian exclusivists considered Pope John Paul II a heretic or anti-pope in 1999 after he kissed a Qur’an inside a Syrian mosque.

To some extent, today’s three most prominent monotheistic religions each contain a mixture of cultural history, hero worship, and social law, each of these traits best emphasized by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam respectively. All three religions pay homage to the same god of Abraham, completely centered on the history of ancient Israel. Pagan religions in Europe and the Middle East focused more on the supernatural “proto-science” of describing nature by allegorical acts by the gods. Ancient monotheistic authors instead focused primarily on the “proto-history” of the earth below, writing it in the typical ancient fashion, by combining fact with symbol, and substituting data with allegory. The proclamation of moral superiority compared to that of polytheists, and to each other, is a marked trait within the writings of the Tanakh, the Bible, and the Qur’an. Unlike their pagan predecessors, whose prayers were largely meant to benefit the present life alone, Monotheists are distinct in their beliefs about the afterlife. Each established a different set of laws, each believed to have been given directly from the primary representative of their faith, with each set of laws believed to be immutable until the end of time. The need for doctrinal purity has led the sanctification of Hebrew, Latin, and Arabic as all being considered the language of God, while many Protestants similarly consider the English translation of the King James Version to be the only version “unchanged” from the word of God. The great mathematician, philosopher, and mystic, Pythagoras of Samos, and the German philosopher and co-discoverer of Calculus, Gottfried Leibniz, both said that numbers was the “language of God.” While Jews find themselves in need to reconcile ancient laws with modern living, Christians are stuck with the question as to how the Old Testament law (like the Ten Commandments) fit in with the admittedly new teachings of Jesus. Muslims in turn must reconcile their faith’s Arab foundation with that of the Jewish cultural history that Muhammed so heavily drew upon. With the establishment of canon law, each monotheistic religious community seeks to bring themselves to become an idealization of what their founder- the strongest link to God- would have wanted. Marked changes like that of the Protestant Reformation are normally seen by their participants not as an advancement, but a return to a purer, more original form of religious practice. Julius Wellhausen, the first Biblical scholar and Orientalist to hypothesize that most of the Old Testament was made up of four sources, also made the observation that writers of the New Babylonian period associated monotheism in the closest way with unity of worship. Although our modern monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have continuously branched off into different sects since their inception, little has changed in intent. The greatest hindrance to that goal has been differences of language, that which is said to have started at the Tower of Babel, and epitomized by the cultic reverence given to specific holy texts in the languages of Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, Latin, and to some extent, English.