How are all the Abrahamic Religions related to each other?
In: 2
Firstly, Christianity is basically Judaism plus. It is built on Judaism with Jesus fulfilling the messianic prophecy, so that is how those 2 are related.
Abraham’s wife was up in age and didn’t have any children yet, so Abraham had a son (Ishmael) with a servant but then Abraham’s wife had a child (Isaac).
Ishmael is promised to found a great nation, (Muslims), while Isaac inherits God’s promises to Abraham, the promised land (Israel),
the promise of the descendants, and
the promise of blessing and redemption.
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First, they all follow Yahweh.
There are many theories as to where Yahweh originated but it is definitively known that he had more believers than just Hebrews since he was one among a pantheon. Many of the old testament stories have cognates with Egyptian mythos, other middle eastern mythos, as well as some Proto-Indo-European mythos. At some point in their history, Jews chose to focus solely on Yahweh and began to claim that no other god was real but their chosen one.
Christianity came about as a branch of Judaism in that it ‘fulfilled’ a Jewish prophecy, as many claim, though much of the Christian mythos was derived more through the Council of Nicaea as they hand picked which stories would be accepted and which would be ignored. While most scholars tend to accept the reality of Jesus’ existence, much of the new testament as we know it is inconsistent and contradictory. Wit the additions made by the church since the first council meeting, and the countless dissenters creating their own version of Christianity after the fact, it’s hard to say they bear much more than a tangential relationship at this point.
As Jews and Christians began to outnumber Arabs in their own city, Muhammad saw that the individual desert clans fought with each other too much to ever remove these outsiders from their cities. Despite not following their beliefs, many of these nomads had already come to accept a reality in the beliefs of their trade partners so as a way to unite the separate clans, he claimed that their god had chosen to enlighten the Arab peoples, through him, with the real truth and thus Islam was born.
(Full disclosure: Not a historian and phone posting. Corrective comments welcome)
Christianity and modern Judaism are both offshoots of Second Temple Judaism if the first century which wasn’t what either of them are today. Some scholars have even made the argument that Christianity is descended from remnants of *First* Temple Judaism that survived out in the sticks (like Galilee) after the second temple reforms. All these trace themselves back to the Abraham in the Torah
Mohammed in his pre-prophet days was a merchant and would have come into contact with both Christians and Jews in his travels. When he had his visions, he initially took it took mean he should bring Judaism to the Arabs. Initially, the Muslim holy day was Saturday and they prayed towards Jerusalem. It changed to Friday and Mecca after Jewish communities rejected him. It has shades of the Jews rejecting Jesus, but even if it’s fictional it’s why Islam claims descent from Abraham.
Polytheistic desert tribe goes monotheistic based on a guy named Abraham and were called Jews. Many years later a Jew wanted to reform the religion with a lot of new ideas, creating a new branch which formed the religion of Christianity. Years later another guy out in the desert cribbed from both to create a localized version called Islam.
You might find this interesting!
r/coolguides/comments/qq7egk/the_evolutionary_tree_of_religion/
First there was a god, god created Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve had many descendants eventually leading to Abraham. this is the religion of the “believers”. Abraham had two children: Isaac (from his wife Sara) and Ishmael (from his slave agar). Isaac had a child called Jacob (later renamed Israel) from whom came the Israelites aka Jews, who believe Isaac is Abrahams true heir because he’s the promised son of Sara. From Ishmael came the Ishmaelites aka Islamists who believe Ishmael is the true heir because he’s the first son of Abraham. From Israels family tree eventually came Jesus. Some believe he was the Christ (Christians) and some don’t (Jews).
The story starts with Judaism, which was one religion among many that existed amongst different tribes/ethnic groups in the ancient middle east. The Israelites (tribe) were fairly successful and conquered a decent amount of land and other tribes, making their religion fairly widespread, at least by the standard of the time.
That takes us up to Roman times, when the Romans conquered the middle east including the area inhabited by the Israelites. Being conquered by the Romans didn’t make the Israelites happy, so there was a lot of discontent, part of which manifested as the idea that there was going to be a savior who would lead the Israelites to freedom from the Romans. There were a number of potential prophets and uprisings. One potential prophet was a guy named Jesus. Some people believed he was the savior, while others didn’t. Those that believed he was the savior went and founded their own sect, which combined Hebrew religion with some new teachings. This became Christianity. Christianity spread through the Roman Empire, especially in Europe, and into parts of Africa and the middle east. Christianity ended up spreading far farther than Judiasm did.
That takes us up to around the year 610 AD. When a new religious leader pops up in the Arabian Peninsula named Muhammed. Like Jesus before him, he takes a lot of the ideas of the existing popular religion, and incorporates some new ideas. He and his followers end up spreading their new religion Islam over a wide region of the middle east, the far east, and northern Africa.
So you can think of it like a branching tree. What started with Judiasm split off around 100 AD into Christianity, and a branch that remained Jewish. Then there was another split 500 years later, where Islam split off from Christianity. All of these religions share some portion of their holy scriptures and basic ideas.
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