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The Jewish culture has much in common with the other major religions. All
forms of Judaism have been rooted in the Hebrew Bible. The various historical
forms of Judaism have shared certain characteristic features. The most essential
of these is a belief that a single, transcendent God created the universe and
continues to govern it. The same God who created the world revealed himself to
the Israelites at Mount Sinai. The content of that revelation is the Torah. A
second major concept in Judaism is that of the covenant between God and the
Jewish people. They would acknowledge God, agreeing to obey his laws; God, in
turn, would acknowledge Israel as his particular people. Both natural and
historical events that befall Israel are interpreted as emanating from God and
as influenced by Israel's religious behavior.
In time, the problem was mitigated by the belief that virtue and obedience
ultimately would be rewarded and sin punished by divine judgment after death,
and that at the end of time God would send his Messiah to redeem the Jews and
restore them to sovereignty in their land. Struggle The Catholic Church
experienced a split between the eastern and western parts of Europe. A major
crisis emerged in the 700s over the use of images, or icons, in Christian
churches. But eventually the icons were restored. During the 600s and 700s
eastern centers were captured by the dynamic new faith of Islam, with only
Constantinople remaining unconquered. Distinctive features of the Christian East
contributed to its increasing alienation from the West, which finally produced
the Great Schism, traditionally dated from 1054, when Rome and Constantinople
exchanged excommunication's.
The separation of east and West has continued into modern times, despite
repeated attempts at reconciliation. Some of the most dynamic developments took
place in the western part of the Roman Empire, which witnessed the growth of the
papacy and the migration of the Germanic peoples. The most powerful force
remaining in Rome was its bishop, who became the leader of the Western church as
waves of invading tribes swept into Europe and as the political power of
Constantinople in the west declined. Finally in 800 an independent Western
Empire was born when Pope Leo III crowned Frankish king Charlemagne emperor.
Medieval Christianity in the West, unlike its eastern counterpart, developed
into a single entity.
Church and state clashed repeatedly over the delineation of their respective
spheres of authority. Church and state did cooperate by closing ranks in
organizing Crusades against the Muslim conquerors of Jerusalem. However, the
Crusades did not permanently restore Christian rule to the Holy Land, and they
did not unify the West either ecclesiastically or politically. Islam's major
struggle was with their expansion to other cultures and geographic areas, which
were already occupied by Christianity and Judaism. During the first centuries of
Islam its law and theology, the basic orthodox Islamic disciplines, were
developed. The 700s and 800s saw the emergence of the first major Islamic
theological school, called the Mutazilites, who stressed reason and rigorous
logical rationalists, they maintained that human reason is competent to
distinguish between good and evil. By the 900s a reaction had set in, led by
philosophers who maintained that moral truths are established by God and can be
known only through revelation.
In the 11th century, attacks on philosophy by orthodox Islamic thinkers,
notably the theologian al Ghazali, had much to do with the eventual decline of
rationalist philosophical speculation in the Islamic community. The Shiites are
the only surviving major sectarian movement in Islam. They emerged out of a
dispute over political succession to Muhammad. The Shiites believe in a series
of 12 Imams, beginning with Ali. The 12th and last imam disappeared in 880, and
the Shiites await his return, at which time they believe the world will be
filled with justice. Judaism also experienced some major struggles of it's own
too indifferent than that of Islam and Christianity. The Maccabean revolt of 165
to 142 BC brought about Jewish political independence from Syria.
The earliest apocalyptic writings were composed during this period. This
genre of cryptic revelations interpreted the wars of the time as part of a
cosmic conflict between the forces of good and evil that would end with the
ultimate victory of God's legions. Messianic-apocalyptic fervor increased when
Jewish political independence was brought to an end by Roman legions in the
middle of the 1st century BC and climaxed in the outbreak of an unsuccessful
revolt in AD 66 to 70. The Romans' destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70 and
their suppression of a second revolt in 132 to 135 discredited the priestly
leadership.
In this context the rabbinic movement emerged, emphasizing communal and
spiritual life. The rabbis taught that through study, prayer, and observance the
individual Jew could achieve salvation while waiting for the Messiah. Closing
Despite all there differences expressed in the predeceasing sections of this
essay Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are similar in many respects, such as
they all believe in monotheism, they all believe in prophets and base their
religion on the word these prophets brought from God himself, they all preach
donation. They've experienced conflicts between each other, which still exist
today. Jerusalem is a major religious city to all these religions.
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