Hey guys, welcome back to FTD Facts. My name is Leroy Kenton and in this episode I'm looking at 10 ways in which Christianity, Islam and Judaism are connected. Now it's a common question that people have and before I get into everything, the varying views may not necessarily fit every branch of each religion.
That would take years to do a video on that. So I'm just gonna be sharing generally speaking based on the most popular beliefs of each religion. So let's get right into it.
The first similarity I want to share is Abraham. Abraham is an important figure in all three religions. That's why you may often hear Christianity, Judaism, and Islam referred to as the Abrahamic religions.
According to the Bible, Abraham and his son Ishmael are said to be the founding fathers of the Arabic people, in which Islam stemmed out of. Abraham and his other son Isaac, who he had with his wife Sarah, are said to be the founding fathers of the Jewish nation. Jesus who Christians claim to be God in human form was born out of the Jewish nation So that's where that similarity comes from the next thing is Judaism Christianity and Islam are also Monotheistic religions all of them claim to worship the true God of creation who is all-powerful and controls the universe They share the common belief of the oneness of God, which is what the term monotheism means Now the view of God does vary in the sense that Muslims and Jews believe that God is one singular.
Christians on the other hand believe God is one but in the compounding sense of the term. What I mean by that is one made up of multiple entities like in the case of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, each of them having different roles but still pointing to one God. Another similarity is the belief in the supernatural guidance of history as well as God being very active throughout human history in his interactions with human beings.
An example of this would be God inspiring new prophets, to share messages with people, God giving people visions, God sending angels, etc. All to reveal things to humans that impact the course of humanity. Now the next similarity ties into the previous one.
All these three religions stress moral responsibility and accountability of human beings and that there will actually be a judgment day where everyone will either be given an eternal reward or a punishment they all emphasize their special covenant or promise with God for Judaism the Covenant was made through Moses in Christianity it was made through Jesus and in Islam it was through the Prophet Muhammad Christianity accepts God's covenant made to the Jews but generally believe it was superseded with the coming of Jesus that's why you'll hear Christian speak of the New Covenant or the New Testament. Similarly, in Islam, Muslims recognize Judaism and Christianity. However, Islam is believed to supersede all those others and invite Jews and Christians to believe as they do. They share a common belief also in all, if not most, of the biblical prophets from Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, you name it, as well as King David, King Solomon, and others who are not necessarily prophets like Mary, the mother of Jesus.
The scriptures of the three Abrahamic religions also have similarities too. The Jewish holy book consists of the Tanakh and the Talmud. Christians adopted the Tanakh for their Bible, but it's called the Old Testament.
Now the Quran also tells similar stories like the crucifixion of Jesus, however it's told differently, and Muslims believe that the scriptures of the Jews and Christians were corrupted and the Quran has the most accurate narrative of similar stories like the crucifixion of Jesus that's found in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Pilgrimages are another similarity. So Mecca, of course, in Islam, that's the famous destination for Muslims, and doing a pilgrimage to Mecca is called Hajj, which is one of the pillars of Islam.
Jews journey to Jerusalem, the holiest city for them, and Roman Catholics journey to Santiago de Compostela. Peace is also a central concept of all three religions. This is reflected historically in their use of similar greetings, all meaning peace be upon you.
There's Shalom Aleichem in Judaism, there's Pax Vobiscum in Christianity, and Salaam Aleichem in Islam. Oftentimes though, the greetings of peace are used mainly just to refer to the members of one's own faith community. You wouldn't be going around and saying that to every single person that you meet. They also share belief in common specific names for God. So Muslim use the Arabic term Allah that refers generally to God.
There's also a list of 99 other names and each of them describe a characteristic of God. The 100th name though is said to be unspeakable. Similarly, Christians and Jews also have specific names for their God like Elohim or Yahweh. However, those names are often seen as too holy to speak. So many versions of the Bible will replace those names with just general words like Lord or God.
So there you have it. So those are 10 ways in which Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all similar. Hope you guys all learned something.
And I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments down below in the comments section. Now, I do have a similar video to this. If you want to check that out, it's going to be right here for you. You can click on it right here. I'll also have the link to it below in the video description section.
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