One God Three Faiths by F.E. Peters

ONE GOD, THREE FAITHS:
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
TAUGHT BY
F.E. PETERS
A BARNES & NOBLE AUDIO BOOK

Lecture content 2003 by Frank Peters
Course guide 2003 by Recorded Books, LLC
9 2003
by Recorded Books, LLC
This edition 2003 by Barnes & Noble Publishing
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Course Syllabus
JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM:
THE MONOTHEISTS
Introductory Remarks ..................................................................................5
Lecture 1
In the Beginning ............................................................6-9
Lecture 2
The Israelite Experience....................................................10-15
Lecture 3
From Israelite to Jew ........................................................16-20
Lecture 4
Jesus of Nazareth: Teacher,

Messiah, Redeemer ..........................................................21-23
Lecture 5
The Spread of Christianity ................................................24-28
Lecture 6
Muhammad, Prophet of Mecca ........................................29-33
Lecture 7
Muhammad, Lord of Medina ............................................34-37
Lecture 8
The People of the Book:

Monotheists and Their Revelations ..................................38-41
Lecture 9
Tradition and Law ............................................................42-45
Lecture 10 Defining the Community ....................................................46-50

Lecture 11 Governing the Community ................................................51-55
Lecture 12 Defending the Community ................................................56-59
Lecture 13 Worshiping God ................................................................60-65
Lecture 14 Reaching for God ..............................................................66-71
Course Materials ..................................................................................72-73
F.E. Peters
About Your Professor F.E. Peters

F.E. Peters is Professor of History, Religion and Middle Eastern
Studies at New York University. A native of NEW YORK CITY, he was
trained at St. Louis University in Classical Languages (AB, MA) and in
Philosophy (Ph.L.), and received his Ph.D. from Princeton in Islamic
Studies. His professional interests have since broadened into the comparative study of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and of Muslim Spain. In
addition to his regular teaching duties at NYU (where he has won a
number of teaching awards), Peters has been featured on CBS
Sunrise Semester. He has published an autobiography (Ours) and a
novel, but his energies have been mostly devoted to academics, with
works on Greek philosophy, on the history of Late Antiquity and of
Islam, on both Jerusalem and Mecca, on the Muslim pilgrimage, and
particularly on the three monotheistic religious communities, The
Children of Abraham and Judaism, Christianity and Islam: The
Classical Texts and Their Interpretation. His most recent books are
Islam, A Guide for Jews and Christians (Princeton University Press),
and a major two volume work, The Monotheists: Jews, Christians and
Muslims in Conflict and Competition (Princeton University Press).
Introduction
In everything that follows, Bible always means the Hebrew or Jewish Bible. The
Christian Scriptures will always be called New Testament or Gospels.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam should be thought of as three faith communities
rather than as three religions. They are communities of believers, each with its
own ideology, history (its ideology is often embedded in its history), its traditions,
and, of course, its members, the great number of Jews, Christians and Muslims
past and present. We cannot take much account of the members here, but they
are the ones who are responsible for a good part of the ideology, history, and traditions.
A distinction is sometimes made between history and sacred history. For all three
groups, God is always somehow in charge of what happens to humans, but when
God is thought to be more or less directly in charge, that is sacred history. The
Bible, for example, is sacred history; what happened to the Jews afterwards is just
plain history, where God appears to be (closely) observing events rather than
directing them. But not in everyones eyes: there are still any number of Jews,
Christians and Muslims who regard whatever happens, or will happen, as Gods
doing, not mans.
If the Arabic term is a little unfamiliar, Islam means submission (to God, of
course), and a Muslim is one who has submitted. The words are Arabic but not
all Muslims are Arabs by a long shot, and great many Turks and Iranians and millions and millions of Indians and Indonesians will be upset if you insist that they
are. Nor are all Arabs Muslims. Many Palestinian Arabs are Christians, for example. Christians too can be anything ethnic under the sun, and what the Jews are
will emerge throughout this course.
Finally, its easier to study these communities if the student attempts to maintain
objectivity about each of the others.
A NOTE ON CALENDARS: Jews, Christians and Muslims reckon time in different
ways, so here all years will be recorded as BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE
(Common Era). A distinction must be made between where people begin counting
time and how they count it. The Jews begin with creation, which they put at 3760
BCE, and count straight onward without a break. our year 2000 falls in year 57605761 by their reckoning. Christians too begin with creation, except their traditional
date is 4004 BCE. They count downward from there to the end of 1 BC, when they
reverse at this watershed year of Christs birth (AD, Anno Domini) which marks the
beginning of the Christian Era and start numbering upward toward the end of the
world. For Muslims, the years from Creation to the Hijra of Muhammad in 622 CE
are simply lumped together as the era of Ignorance (al-Jahiliyya). In 622 CE
begins the Muslim era proper, generally designated by H or AH, Anno Hegirae,
Year of the Hijra. On this reckoning, 2000 CE is 1421-1422 AH.
Lecture 1 - In the Beginning
Before beginning this lecture you may want to . . .

Read Genesis 1-5, (Bible, Revised Standard Version).
Introduction:
The biblical (and quranic) account of Creation and of the fundamental event of
monotheism: Gods covenant with the patriarch Abraham.
Consider this . . .
1. Do Muslims consider Abraham the father of monotheism?
2. What part does the Bible play in Judaism? In Islam? In Christianity?
3. Who wrote the book of Genesis? Exodus?
A. Before Abraham
1. Creation and the Original Sin
a. The Bible (the Old Testament portion of the Christian Bible) and the
Quran each assumes the creation as the absolute beginning of time.
Both insist on an omnipotent creation from nothing.
b. The Bible begins, in the book of Genesis, a narrative story that extends
into the second book, Exodus. This creation story features a great deal of
information about Adam and Eve, the first couple.
c. The Qurans account of creation, while similar to that of Genesis in
intent and some detail, is not laid out in the linear fashion of Genesis.
The story that unfolds in the Quran is generally presented in resume as
a moral example, to underline Gods power and goodness.
d. The Bible tells the story of the temptation, fall, and banishment of
Adam and Eve from paradise (Gen. 2:15-24), a tale which formed the
basis for the powerful Christian doctrine of Original Sin.
e. The Quran never mentions Eve by name, and although aware of the
story (Q2:35-39; Q7:19-25), makes no mention of Eves role in the fall.
Instead, the villain of the tale is a fallen angel, Iblis, later Shaytan, who
seduces both Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree.
2. Noah and Others
LECTURE ONE
a. After the Flood, God restarted the human experiment with Noah.
Then, the third major covenant of the Bible was made with Moses,
after God delivered the children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage.
THE HOLY LAND

B. Abraham and the Covenant
The history proper of the three great
monotheistic communities of Jews,
Christians and Muslims begins with
Gods Covenant with Abram (later
called Abraham)
1. The Covenant and Its Terms
a. Abraham was unique because,
unlike many of his ancestors,
Abraham worshiped only one God
(Yahweh).
b. Abraham was a nomad (<Heb.,
wanderer), that is, the head or
sheik of a group of people without
a homeland. There were two
things to which nomads aspired:
(1) ownership of land, and (2) a
large number of kin to ensure survival of their tribe.
c. There are two divine promises
made to Abraham that are
repeated throughout the Biblical
book of Genesis.
i. I will make you a great nation
... (Gen. 12:2). Abram was
past 75 years of age and had
no descendants, yet God
promised him an heir.
ii. I give this land to your descendants (Gen 12:7). This
promise to the still nomadic
Abram and his descendants
was of a land, here defined to
embrace all the territory from
the River of Egypt to the Great
River, the river Euphrates
(Gen. 15:18).
d. Abram was required to leave
Harran and have all the males of
his household (kin, foreigners and
newborns on the eighth day) circumcised. This acted as a transformation of their state. Abrams
name is changed to Abraham and
Sarais to Sarah.
The Bible does not define the

Promised Land very precisely nor
very consistently: the Israelites
apparently took what they could get
and hold. The matter of definition
became more urgent for the later
rabbis, however, when there were
Jews living both inside and outside
the Land of Israel. The former had to
observe the Mosaic Law to its fullest
extent, and notably the laws regarding agricultural tithes and the like,
while the latter need not and,
indeed, could not do so. The rabbis
attempted, then, to be rather precise
about the boundaries, not of a
Jewish state, which no longer existed, but of Eretz Israel, the Bibles
Land of Promise. With the passage
of time, such boundary marking
became increasingly moot as fewer
and fewer Jews lived within even the
most generous definition of the
Promised Land, and few, even of
that number, had any connection
with agriculture.
The issue of divinely-sanctioned
boundaries in Palestine was resurrected only in the 20th century when
the Promised Land assumed the
new and secular form of a Jewish
homeland. Was, in fact, this newly
instituted Jewish homeland, now
formally self-declared as a/the
Jewish state, the same as the
Promised Land? Was Israel the
fulfillment of the sacred promise
made to Abraham? None of the
highly secular founding fathers of
the State of Israel seem to have
thought so, but some Jews came
eventually to believe that such was
the case and that the State of
Israel had a right, a divine right, to
all the land covenanted to Abraham
and his descendants. Maps once
more began to be redrawn and the
Bibles opaque geographical template laid upon them.
2. Ishmael, The First Heir

a. Abraham and his wife Sarah were barren. In fact, Sarah was beyond normal
child-bearing years. So, when God
made the promise of additional
descendants, the couple laughed.
ABOUT THE KABA
b. Abrahams wife Sarah suggests that

he can perhaps father a son with the
Egyptian slave-girl, Hagar which
indeed he does. This leads to the
birth of Ishmael when Abraham is 86
years old.
c. Sarah insists that Hagar and Ishmael
be driven out of camp to wander in
the desert. God was with the child,
the account concludes, and he grew
up and lived in the wilderness of
Pharan (Gen. 21:20-21).
The height of the Kaba is 39

feet, 6 inches and total size
comes to 627 square feet. The
inside room is 42.64 x 29.52
feet and the walls are 3.28 feet
thick. The ceiling and roof are
two levels made out of wood.
They were later reconstructed
with teak which is capped with
stainless steel. The walls are all
made of stone. According to
Muslims, this small building has
been constructed and reconstructed by Abraham, Ishmael
and Muhammad.
e. But, this is not the end of Ishmaels

story. Islamic tradition has it that
Abraham began a search to find Hagar
and his lost son. When he found them,
he and his son erected the Kaba (the
Holy House) in Mecca.
LECTURE ONE
The small building known as

the Kaba has had a tremendous impact on history and religious tradition. The Kaba is the
building set down in the middle
of Mecca, toward which
Muslims face five times a day,
everyday, in prayer, since the
time of Prophet Muhammad
over 1,400 years ago.
d. God formed another new covenant

with Ishmael: Ishmael and his
descendants would form a second
great nation: they were the Arabs.
FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING
Consider
1. Why do Jews and Christians say God and Muslims Allah? Are they different deities?
2. Why did He choose Abraham?
3. Why did He promise what He did?
Suggested Reading
Feiler, Bruce. Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths. New
York: William Morrow, 2002.
Peters, Frank. The Monotheists: Jews, Christians and Muslims in Conflict
and Competition. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Other Books of Interest
Firestone, Reuven. Journies Into Holy Lands. Albany: Sony Press, 1990.
Hauer, Christian E., and William A. Young. An Introduction to the Bible: A
Journey Into Three Worlds. 5th ed., Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall,
2001.
Websites to Visit
1. www.bibleplaces.com/ - exceptional resource site for map, photographs
and other important information regarding the Holy Land.
2. www.bib-arch.org/ - home site of the Biblical Archeological Society. Good
resource for up-to-date archeological findings.
3. bible.gospelcom.net - on-line text of multiple editions of the Bible.
Books on Audio
Bible, American Standard Version. Available in various formats.
Lecture 2 - The Israelite Experience

Read Exodus, 1, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings (Bible, Revised Standard
Version).
Introduction:
How the descendants of Abraham grew into a tribal people, Israel; their sojourn
in Egypt and their liberation; Moses as guide across Sinai; conquest, confederation and a kingdom in Canaan.
Consider this . . .
1. What makes the Israelites attitude towards other gods ambiguous?
2. Why does the name of God change repeatedly in the text of the Bible?
3. How does the lineage of Abraham affect the climate in Jerusalem
today?
A. Isaac: The Son of Promise

1. God finally gave Abraham the heir to the Covenant when Sarah gives
birth to a son named Isaac. It is the line descending from him that inherits
the promise of the Covenant.
2. Then God called upon Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac as an offering
to Him. God then provides a ram to replace the sacrifice of the boy.
This was a test of Abrahams faith and commitment.
B. Abrahams descendants
1. The promises of the Covenant were made not only to Abraham but to his
descendants, passing down from the first born son to the younger son,
first from Ishmael to Isaac, and then, in the next generation, from Esau to
Jacob, who stole his birthright from Esau.
2. These examples exemplify the Christians views that the inheritance
has gone from the first-born (the Jews) to the second (the Christians).
3. Jacob had a dream which renews the Covenant with God. In ancient
tradition, dreams were often used by God to send messages. Sleep or incubation in a sacred place was thought to induce a revelation from God.
LECTURE TWO
4. Jacob called this sacred place Beth-El and commemorated this event
by setting up a stone pillar. There are instances of other sacred stones
in Muslim history, as well. An example is the Kaba, or the stone under
the Dome of the Rock.
10
5. Jacob, called Israel after a divine manifestation, has twelve sons whose
descendants constitute the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The history of these
descendants leads to Egypt and eventually into bondage to the Pharaoh.
C. Moses and the Exodus
1. Let My People Go
a. The book of Exodus tells the story of Moses. His life and role as a
prophet of Israel, and the expectation that there would be another like
him, shaped the stories of both Jesus and Muhammad.
b. The story of how Moses overmastered the Pharaoh is given more
detail in the Quran than even in the Bible, where it occupies a large
portion of Exodus. Through a series of negotiations, miracles and
divine revelations, Moses, under the guidance of God, managed to
secure the freedom for the nation of Israel.
c. What follows is the famous parting of the Red Sea to allow the
Israelites to escape the Pharaohs troops.
2. Across Sinai
a. Once the Israelites are freed from Egyptian slavery, they begin a
period of wandering in the Sinai for 40 years, setting into motion a
series of events which preserved the communitys integrity.
b. Moses is also the prophet the Lord knew face to face (Deut. 34:1) and
who brought down from Mount Sinai a law both moral and ceremonial,
the Torahor the first five books of the Bible.
c. From that point on, the Israelites are bound together by three things:
(1) tribal identity, (2) belief in the one true God, and (3) the Law
handed down to Moses.
F.E. Peters
d. The Israelites got what territory in Canaan they could manage to hold by
force of arms. It expanded and shrank under different political circumstances, as it still does.
Stone at the Dome of the Rock.
11
e. The Torah portion of the Bible

(the
Penteuch or Five Pieces) ends with
the death of Moses. The books following this from Joshua down to the end
of Chronicles carry through the history
of the Israelites from their occupation
of the land of Canaan to their conquest at the hands of the Babylonians
in 597 BCE.
F.E. Peters
D. A Kingdom for Israel

1. David and Solomon
The Black Stone of the Ka'ba
SACRED STONES
LECTURE TWO
Believed to embody the presence

and spirit of God, the setting of
Sacred Stones has been a practice
throughout the Middle East for centuries. Even before the resurrection
of Christ, the sacred stone played
an important role in religion.
Sacred stones come in all
shapes, sizes and consistency.
From Jacobs Pillar to the Black
Stone of the Kaba, stones have
been set as pillars into the earth or
portioned as part of a building.
Abraham constructed an altar of
unhewn stone in the wilderness to
afford the locals a place to worship
for example. Standing stones were
also used to mark holy or sacred
places, or places that were believed
to hold the essence of God.
The Holy Land is dotted with such
places and are visited by thousands
of believers every year. Many claim
the power of the stones continues to
exude strength to anyone who contacts the stone.
12
a. The original loose confederation of

the Twelve Tribes yielded to a reluctantly God-granted monarchy
bestowed first upon Saul, then on
David, the anointed one (mashiah
in Hebrew), and guaranteed to his
descendants forever (2 Sam. 7:16).
b. God did not promise the Israelites
Jerusalem. That was a later idea of
Davids, according to the book of
Kings. His conquest of the Jebusite
stronghold of Jerusalem is traditionally dated to 996 BCE and may be
his most important accomplishment.
c. David then made the city the political
center of the unified Israelites. Once
David brought the portable arkthrone of the once nomadic tribes
into the city, it became the spiritual
center as well.
d. Davids son, Solomon, enshrined the
ark permanently in the grandiose
temple he built atop Mount Moriah.
Thus, the God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, and of course, of Jesus
and Muhammad, established His
presence in that city, and He was
worshiped there.
FOR
GREATER
UNDERSTANDING
FOR
GREATER
UNDERSTANDING
Consider
1. How did these wandering Hebrews become a people, with a land, and
with kings?
2. What is the role of Moses in the formation of the people called Israel? Of
David? Of Solomon?
Suggested Reading
Alter, Robert. The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2
Samuel. New York: Norton, 1999.
Kaufmann, Y. The Religion of Israel. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1960.
Firestone, Reuven. Journies into Holy Lands. Albany: Sony Press,1990.
Kirsch, Jonathan. King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel.
New York: Ballantine Books, Inc., 2000.
Kirsch, Jonathan. Moses. New York: Ballantine Books, Inc. 1999.
Websites to Visit
1. www.us-israel.org - Jewish Virtual Library. Contains maps and other historical information on Jerusalem including the temples built by Solomon.
2. www.jpost.com - excellent resource for a multitude of articles about
modern Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and the temple of
Davids period.
3. www.solomonstemple.com - great resource site for information on
Solomons Temple.
13
LECTURE TWO
ISHMAELITES AND ARABS

Though at his death, aged 137
(Gen. 25:17), Ishmael disappears
from the Bible, he remained in the
consciousness of the Jews. We
cannot follow the full gestation of
the story, but we can read its
denouement. The source of
Genesis may have thought that the
Edomites of the Negev, one of
Israels inveterate enemies, were
the nation that descended from
Ishmael, but a later generation of
Jews thought otherwise. The second century BCE Book of Jubilees,
which is largely a retelling of
Genesis from a slightly different
perspective, informs us that
Abraham before his death summoned all his sons and grandchildren, including Ishmael and his 12
offspring, and bade them to continue to observe circumcision, to avoid
ritual uncleanness and marriage
with the Canaanites. Then, at the
end of the same passage, a crucial
identification is made, though
almost certainly not for the first
time: the sons of Ishmael, and their
cousins, the offspring of Abraham
and another wife, Keturah, with
whom they intermarried, did indeed
14
become a great nation, as God had

promised. They were the Arabs.
Abraham sends Ishmael and his
offspring to settle between Pharan
and the borders of Babylon, in all
the land to the East, facing the
desert. And these mingled with
each other, and they were called
Arabs and Ishmaelites (Jubilees
20:11-13).
Both the name and the identification stuck, first among the Jews
the historian Josephus discusses it
at length in speaking of the
Nabateans, Israels Arab neighbors
east of the Jordanand then
among the Christians of the Middle
East. For these latter, the Arabs
were either Ishmaelites or
Saracens. The latter word is of
unknown origin, but the Middle
Eastern Christians of the preIslamic era parsed it in biblical
terms: Saracen came from
Sarah and the Greek kn,
empty or void, thus Sara-is-barren. When the Church historian
Sozomen wrote his Church History
in 440 CE, he pointed to the obvious similarities between Arab and
Jewish customs, like circumcision
and refraining from pork. True, the

Ishmaelite Arabs had been corrupted by their long association with the
pagans who surrounded them, but,
adds Sozomen, many still live in
the Jewish fashion.
None of this had anything to do
with Islam. The identification of the
Arabs as Ishmaelites was a strictly
ethnic oneeveryone knew the
Arabs were polytheistsand it was
an ethnic identification based on a
similarity of customs. One who was
not, apparently, aware of the identification was Muhammad. Ishmael
appears a number of times in the
Quran, first as a somewhat indistinct Hebrew prophet, and then, in
the later chapters, as Abrahams
son. Quite remarkably, he and
Abraham are said to have built the
Kaba, the sacred shrine building
that stood in Muhammads dayas
it does todayin the midst of
Mecca (Quran 2:125-127). The
Quran offers no explanation for this
extraordinary piece of information,
and so we can only assume that is
was known and accepted as true
not only by Muhammad but, even
more astonishingly, by his listeners.

Muhammad came to put strong
emphasis on the fact that the Islam
that was being promulgated in the
Quran was nothing other than the
religion of Abraham and that the
earlier activity of Abrahamand
Ishmaelin Mecca was crucial to
this enterprise. But nowhere is it
suggested or even hinted at that
Muhammad was aware that
Ishmael was widely recognized
elsewhere as the ancestor of the
Arabs. Nor is it ever asserted that
Islams claim to be the new version
of the true faith was based on the
Arabs blood descent from Abraham
through Ishmael, as the Jews was
by their descent through Isaac and
Jacob. Muslims are not, in any
event, the Children of Ishmael.
15
Lecture 3 - From Israelite to Jew

Read Isaiah, Ezra and Nehemiah (Bible, Revised Standard Version).
Introduction:
We now trace the trajectory of the Jews in the crucial era after their Exile,
and the changes in their religious sensibilities and even their world-view.
Consider this . . .
1. How did the Israelites maintain their identity in Babylon?
2. How did the Jews worship without access to the temple?
3. Was the exile Gods justice brought upon the nation of Israel?
A. A Divided Kingdom
1. Solomons fame lives on not only in Jewish legend but in Islams, as well:
he is portrayed as a prophet and wonder-worker in the Quran and later
as a magician extraordinaire.
2. At Solomons death, the legacy of David immediately began to unravel. The
northern kingdom, called Israel drew apart from the south, dominated by
Judah; paganism became rampant and the kings vile.
3. The times were as evil as the people. The eighth century BCE in the
Middle East was one dominated by two superpowers, Egypt and Assyria,
and Israel lay across the land bridge between them.
B. The Exile and After
1. The Cause and Effect of the Babylonian Exile
a. The conquest of Jerusalem and the looting of its temple in 597 CE
the invaders carried off the Ark among other thingswas followed by
exile in Babylon (Iraq) for the upper economic and social classes.
LECTURE THREE
b. This resulted in diaspora or a dispersal or scattering of the Jewish

people across the Middle East. The northerners, ten of the original
twelve tribes disappeared without a trace, and those who remained
were so assimilated that they were called Samaritans.
2. The Reconstitution of Judaism in Judea
a. The Jews that elected to return to Judah resettled and rewalled
Jerusalem, rebuilt the temple and attempted to restore Jewish
observance in the land, as the books of Ezra and Nehemiah describe.
16
b. Alexander the Great drove the Persian armies out of their conquests
and even their homeland in the 330s BCE and the Middle East became a
single cosmopolitan community. The Jews had been allowed to return to
Judah by Cypres, and now many are dispersed throughout the region.
c. Some Israelites found the culture and style of the new Hellenism alluring. This resulted in the growth of assimilation.
i. One of the main propositions of intellectual Hellenism was that man
has the unaided intellectual capacity to understand, on the basis of
empirical evidence: 1) the existence of God; 2) the position of man
in the universe; and 3) the moral imperatives from 1) and 2).
ii. This proposition challenges the very need of revelation, and the idea
that God uses revelation to make his will known to those who do not
have time, education or inclination to become philosophers.
iii. It also challenged the notion that God has a special or individual
providence.
d. Politically, the community now constituted nothing more than a
province named Judea (Jerusalem and its surrounding areas) within
the enormous Persian empire, and the people began to be called
Judeans from which our word Jew derives, although they themselves continued to use Benei Israel, descendants of Israel or
Israelites.
C. The Shape of Early Judaism
1. Sectarian and Assimilated Jews
a. For a long time, the best descriptions of the post-Exilic Jewish sectarian groups are found from the descriptions in Josephus and the
New Testament.
b. Many of the Jewish sects mentioned acted as mere political parties. The
primary example of such groups were the Zealots, a group of revolutionary priests involved in the insurrection of 66-70 CE.
c. Other groups Josephus calls philosophical schools. These included the
Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes.
i. The Pharisees appear in most sources as staunch upholders of the
Torah and lay experts in the Law. They were active in Palestine
from the second century BCE to the first CE.
ii. The Sadducees were literal interpreters of the Law who rejected all
Pharisaic appeals to the traditions of the Fathers.
iii. The Essenes were a community of priestly dissenters who rejected
the authority of the Hasmonean high priesthood in Jerusalem and
did not participate in the Temple liturgy.
d. These groups present in the Jewish community are indicative of a
community attempting to redefine itself against the stresses of loss.
17
Model of the Second Temple Todd Bolen
The first Jerusalem Temple, the grandiose structure built by Solomon on the
plans drawn up by his father David, survived from the early tenth century BCE to
its destruction by the Babylonians at the beginning of the sixth. It has disappeared with scarcely a trace and we are solely dependent on the Bible for the
look, shape, and size of it.
When the Jews returned from their Babylonian Exile in the last decades of that
same sixth century, they rebuilt their ruined place of sacrificial worship on Mount
Moriah. Their resources were limited, and even with help from the Shah of Iran,
the so-called Second Temple was a far more modest structure than its predecessors. We know even less about this building than Solomons since in 20
BCE, Herod (r. 37 BCE-4 BCE), Israels greatest builder since Solomon himself,
and one whose architectural projects were by no means limited to his own kingdom, began to build a new edifice over and around it, without interrupting the rituals there. This Herodian Third Templethe Second completely disappeared
under itis rarely acknowledged as such since the Jewish tradition is not overfond of its impious builder, but it may well have out-Solomoned Solomon.
Herods temple complex was the largest sacred space in the ancient world, and
its buildings, the temple and its
colonnades one of the wonders
of its day. It collapsed into a
smoking ruin in the debacle of
70 CE, though its platform still
stands enormous and immovably in place.
The Christians left the ruins
where they lay, but in 635 CE
the Muslims cleared the platform and built there the Aqsa
mosque on its southern side
and later, in 690 CE, the Dome
of the Rock near its center.
18
Dome of the Rock Todd Bolen
LECTURE THREE
THE SECOND TEMPLE IN JERUSALEM
2. Apocalyptic Despair and Messianic

Expectation
a. In the light of events in the world of this
time, Second Temple (after the Exile)
Judaism produced a number of literary
works about the End Times. The best
example stands as the last book in the
New Testament, the Apocalypse or
Revelation of John.
b. While not all Second Temple Jews
were waiting for a messiah, some
or perhaps many Jews were
expecting the restoration of the
Davidic kingly line and the reuniting
of the twelve tribes.
c. Daniel, the latest book in the canon
(near the end of second century BCE)
contains a vision which includes the
idea of a Son of Man, or a messiah
that is slain after a fierce battle (Dan.
9:26).
d. There were several contemporary figures that are interspersed in Josephus
accounts that could easily fit into the
mold of a messiah. Jesus of Nazareth
was one of that company (Ant. 18.3.3).
e. Jesus was born in 4 BCE, the year
Herod, the first Roman-installed king,
died.
NUMBER SYMBOLISM IN THE

BOOK OF REVELATION
The Book of Revelation is a vision
set forth in elaborate and arcane
symbols, of the events that will bring
the current world order to an end,
and introduce in its stead a new and
perfected earth, figured in the text as
the New Jerusalem. By envisioning
history in cosmic terms, using symbolic imagery, John sought to comfort and encourage the Church during the time of Roman persecution.
To interpret Revelation, one must
come to know the symbolic meaning
of the terms being used in almost the
same way as a person trying to
break a code. An understanding of
numerology is helpful. Many numbers have symbolic meaning. Thus,
seven symbolizes completeness and
perfection. God's work of creation
was complete and perfect and completed in seven days. The seven
churches (Rev. 2:3) symbolize by
their number all the churches. After
seven, the most significant number is
twelve. The tribes of Israel and the
disciples number twelve. New
Jerusalem has twelve gates. Its walls
have twelve foundations (21:12-14).
The tree of life yields twelve kinds of
fruit (22:2). Multiples of twelve are
important. The 144,000 servants of
God (7:4) are made of 12,000 from
each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Three as a symbolic number often
indicates completeness. Thus, the
Trinity is the complete God. Four is
often used as a sacred number.
Thus, one reads of the four living
creatures surrounding God (4:6-7).
God sends forth the four horsemen
of the Apocalypse (6:1-8) to bring
destruction to the earth.
19
Consider
1. How did the Israelites become Jews?
2. What is different after the Exile?
3. What was the special challenge of Hellenism to Judaism?
Suggested Reading
Peters, F.E. The Monotheists: Jews, Christians and Muslims in Conflict
and Competition. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2003,
(Chapters 1 & 2).
Gaines, Janet Howe. Music in the Old Bones: Jezebel Through the Ages.
Southern Illinois University Press, 2000.
Larson, Mogens Trolle. The Conquest of Assyria: Excavating in an Antique
Land. Routledge, 1996.
Roller, Duane W. The Building Program of Herod the Great. California:
University of California Press, 1998.
Saggs, Henry W.F. Babylonians (Peoples of the Past). California: University
of California Press, 2000.
Websites to Visit
LECTURE THREE
www.templemount.org - a site highlighting the research of Tel Aviv Architect

Tuvia Sagiv relating to the First and Second Jewish Temple sites.
20
Lecture 4 - Jesus of Nazareth: Teacher, Messiah, Redeemer

Read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (Revised Standard Version).
Introduction:
A consideration of the life, teachings and work of Jesus of Nazareth from a
Christian perspective.
Consider this . . .
1. Why were the four gospels written?
2. What is the meaning of the word Messiah?
3. Do Muslims accept the Gospels? Do Jews?
A. Jesus, What Do We Know and How Do We Know it?
1. The Historical Jesus
a. Daniel was one of many post-exilic books that indicated a growing
belief in the coming of a Messiah.
b. Josephus writings mention Jesus life, but he doesnt call him Messiah.
2. The Gospels (official and unofficial) and Paul
a. The New Testament is made up in the first place of four Gospels
(evangelion or Good News in Greek). These books are credited to
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
b. The Church eventually chose them, out of a number of such works in
circulation, as authentic testimony to the man whom they considered
the Messiah and the Son of God.
c. The Gospels are clearly biographical in intent, telling the story of
Jesus life from birth through death and beyond.
d. The other books in the New Testament are the Acts of the Apostles, a
second volume to the Gospel of Luke, a number of letters chiefly from
Paul who became one of Jesus most devoted and influential disciples,
and an apocalyptic book called The Revelation.
B. Jesus, Messiah and Redeemer
1. A Theological Take on the Life of Jesus
a. From the beginning, God had a plan to redeem humankind. His plan
was to purchase the freedom of humankind by sending his own son to
take on flesh and offer himself as a living sacrifice.
b. The critical event in Jesus life is his death and resurrection.
21
c. Proof of this is indeed the resurrection of Jesus: a number of people

saw him alive after his death.
2. Jesus, the Jewish Messiah
a. Jesus was from Nazareth and lived
from 4 BCE to 30 CE.
b. The Gospels divide his life into four
rather unequal parts:
i. His (miraculous) conception,
birth and adolescence which are
covered in Matthew and Luke.
ii. His public teaching and preaching, chiefly in Galilee. This is
where John and Mark pick up the
story of Jesus. They begin with
Jesus baptism by John, an apocalyptic preacher.
iii. A highly detailed account of his
last days in Jerusalem, his
arrest, trial and execution. This
covers extensively the last two
weeks of Jesus life and places
his death as a highly political
move by the priests who engineer his death.
iv. His resurrection. Jesus died
and was buried on Friday. The
Jews stayed in on the Sabbath
(Saturday), then on Sunday the
empty tomb was discovered.
v. Jesus continued to appear to
his disciples.
LECTURE FOUR
c. The material in the Gospels is presented to confirm that Jesus fulfilled

the scriptural prophecies and so was
indeed the Jewish Messiah.
22
WHO WAS JOSEPHUS?

Flavius Josephus was a first
century CE historian of Jewish
life and an important source for
the history of the Jews in the
Greco-Roman period. He was
a member of Jerusalems
priestly aristocracy. He regarded the great Jewish revolt
against Rome (66-70 AD) as
political folly and spent the rest
of his life in Roman circles as a
proteg of emperors
Vespasian, Titus and Domitian.
He recorded major events,
such as the emergence of religious schools of thought
(Pharisees, Sadducees and
Essenes), the rebellion against
Rome and destruction of the
Jerusalem Temple, and he provided a small note on the life
and ministry of Jesus of
Nazareth. He also recorded
Jewish history from its beginnings. He wrote voluminous
works of history, four of which
survived. His writings have
given scholars valuable
insights into Judea in the
first century.
Consider
1. Why were the Gospels written?
2. How did the Christians decide which gospels were true and which
were not?
3. How did Jesus death and resurrection affect Muslims? Or did they?
Suggested Reading
Sanders, E.P. The Historical Figure of Jesus. New York: Penguin, 1985.
Wilkinson, John. Jerusalem as Jesus Knew It. London: Thames & Hudson,
1978.
Brown, Raymond. The Death of the Messiah. New York: Doubleday &
Company, 1994.
Cahill, Thomas. Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After
Jesus. New York: Random House Publishers, 2001.
Crossan, John Dominic, and Jonathan L. Reed. Excavating Jesus: Beneath
the Stones, Behind the Texts. New York: HarperCollins Publishers,
2002.
Pentecost, J. Dwight, and John Danilson. Words and Works of Jesus Christ.
Michigan: Zondervan, 2000.
Websites to Visit
1. www.theologywebsite.com - Site connecting the on-line theological community. Includes a chatroom. (Christian perspective).
2. www.jesus-institute.org/ - A site dedicated to presenting historical information about the person Jesus without religious affiliation.
3. www.jpost.com - Excellent resource for a multitude of articles about present day Jerusalem, including the temple mount and Herods temple.
23
Lecture 5 - The Spread of Christianity

Read Pauls Letter to the Galatians, and Acts of the Apostles (Bible, RSV).
Introduction:
A look at the first crucial centuries in the life of Christianity and how it grew from
marginal, to persecuted, to tolerated, to official status within the Roman Empire.
Consider this . . .
1. What would have happened to the Jesus movement if Saul had not
been converted?
2. How did the influx of Gentiles affect the Jewish community?
3. How did the Christians become objects for persecution?
A. The Parting of the Ways

1. The Ingathering of the Gentiles
a. Though the letters of Paul are the closest to the times of Jesus, the
Acts of the Apostles (New Testament) tells the story of the growth of
Christianity. It begins with Jesus bodily ascension into heaven.
b. Jesus 12 chosen collect in Jerusalem for Shavuoth (Pentecost in
Greek) where the Holy Spirit (of God) comes upon them and stirs them
to preach the cause of the Jesus movement (later called Christianity).
c. Among the Jewish/Christian community in Jerusalem, dissension arises between Hebrew-speakers and the Greek-speakers.
d. This dissension leads to the stoning of a Christian disciple named
Stephen, who is a Greek-speaking Jew. This is the first instance of
having a witness (Greek: martyros) to the new faith.
e. At this stoning is a Jew from the Diaspora named Saul who is thoroughly Hellenized. He is living in Jerusalem and is appalled by the
preaching of Stephen. He begins a priestly sanctioned campaign of
persecuting the followers of Jesus.
LECTURE FIVE
f. Then Saul is converted after a personal experience of Jesus and

changes his name to Paul. He begins evangelizing Syria, accepting
Gentiles into the Jesus community, without benefit of prior conversion
(or circumcision) to Judaism.
24
CHRISTMAS AND
EASTER
2. How the Followers of Jesus became
Christians
a. Pauls understanding of the meaning
of Jesus, that his crucifixion fulfilled
Gods long-standing plan for
mankinds salvationredemption
and justification are two other of
Pauls terms for what happened
became a central dogma of the
community of Jesus followers, the
Christian Church.
b. The increasingly massive influx of
Gentiles into new Christian communities on an equal footing with the
Jewish Christians was the major factor in the separation of Jesus followers, now increasingly called
Christians, from the main body of
the Jewish Community.
B. The Spread of Christianity
1. The Persecution and Growth of
Christianity
a. Throughout Roman history, the
Jews were thought of as both a
nation and a religion. When
Christianity was identified as a new
religion, its members lost the
exemptions and protections long
extended to the Jews.
b. Romans became increasingly suspicious (and intolerant) of Christians
when the latter refused to worship
the deified emperor and looked to a
kingdom not of this world.
c. Additionally Rome was in a financial
crisis and needed a scapegoat to
unite the empire. The persecution of
Christians (feeding to the lions,
games, etc.) enabled the government to distract an otherwise unhappy people.
d. A century of persecutions followed
until Constantine ended them in the
early fourth century.
No one was sure of the date

when Jesus was born (nor Moses
nor Muhammad, for that matter):
birthdays were rarely noted in the
ancient world, and Jesus birthday
was celebrated more by imperial
proclamation than from historical
memory. The newly converted
Roman emperor, Constantine,
chose the 25th of December to
supplant the popular feast of the
birthday of the Invincible Sun
the tutelary deity of the Roman
Empire before it became
Christianwhich was celebrated
at the winter solstice.
Of far greater importance to
Christians liturgically and theologically is Easter, a curious AngloSaxon name for what the early
Christians called, more accurately,
Pascha, that is, Passover. As the
Gospels testify, Jesus had indeed
died and was buried on the Jewish
Passover, probably in the year 30
CE, and, as Christians came
increasingly to believe, in the same
manner as the lambs who were
sacrificed. Passover recalled for
Jews their salvation from slavery in
Egypt; for Christians, it now meant
humankinds redemption from sin.
Passover is marked, like all Jewish
holy days, according to the lunar calendar and not, like the Christians, by
the solar one. As Christians distanced
themselves from their Jewish heritage, the calendar links between
Passover and Jesus death and resurrection began to be questioned, often
contentiously, and eventually weakened, though they never quite disappeared. Unlike the rest of the
Christians calendar, Easter and
Pentecost (the Jews Shabuoth, the
birthday of the Church for Christians)
remain lunar holy days, though now
deliberately calculated in a manner
different from the Jewish reckoning of
the dates of those feasts.
25
THE VIRGIN MARY
LECTURE FIVE
Though Mary figures rather prominently in the stories of Jesus birth recorded by
Matthew and Luke, she does not play an important role in his public life as depicted in
the Gospels, nor indeed, in the New Testament as a whole. Her virginity (also affirmed
in the Quran; so 9:21) was an element in Jesus messianic claim since it fulfilled the
prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, as Matthew points out (1:22-23). In the apocryphal Gospel of
James, Marys virginity is extended to include the periods during and after the birth of
Jesus. This would necessarily mean the demotion of what the Gospels call Jesus
brother and sisters (Mk. 6:3), like James, the brother of the Lord, to the status of
cousins.
This was precisely the issue between Jerome (d. 420) and his contemporary
Helvetius. In arguing against it, the latter may have been concerned that Marys lifelong
celibacy not only undermined the reality of her marriage to Joseph but downgraded
Christian marriage generally. It was Jeromes view, however, upholding Marys perpetual virginity that prevailed in the church.
There was a theological explosion early in the fifth century around the use of the
word God-bearer (theotokos) in reference to Mary, but the usage was confirmed at
the Council of Ephesus in 431, though the issue of Jesus divinity and humanity, which
lay behind the argument about Mary as theotokos, was not resolved until the Council of
Chalcedon.
Though there was no celebration of Marian holy days in the early Church, by the
sixth century there is evidence that her Assumption, that is her being taken up alive
into Heaven, was being celebrated, without controversy, among both Latin and Eastern
Christians, though it was not finally defined as dogma by the Roman Catholic Church
until 1950. Not so the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, the view that Mary was
conceived, alone among humankind, without Original Sin. It makes its first appearance
in the ninth century, but it was strongly resisted by many theologians who thought that
it undermined the redemptive mission of Jesus, who had after all died for all.
These were the theologians; behind them was an extraordinary growth in the popular
devotion to Mary, in ritual celebration of her life, prayers addressed directly to her, celebration of her life and virtues in legend, art and literature. To the Reformers, this outpouring of veneration, with little or no basis in Scripture, seemed like superstition run
riot, and the cult of Mary, together with that of the Churchs saints of the post-Patristic
age, was disparaged, discouraged and eventually all but disappeared. However, this is
not so in Roman Catholicism. Counter-Reformation Marian piety lost none of the
medieval fervor, and the Church encouraged its spread. The climax of this growth was
the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception as Church dogma by Pius IX in 1854,
by our own authority, as his decree read.
26
a. At one point in his life, Constantine

prayed to the Christian God for help.
He won the battle. This lead to
Constantine himself becoming a
Christian, providing government support and even a degree of leadership.
b. Even before Constantine,
Christianity had actually spread
through the upper houses, especially
among the women. Christians may
have numbered about ten percent of
the empire.
c. It was Constantine who summoned
the Council of Nicea in 325 CE and
shortly thereafter began the process
of converting Palestine into a
Christian Holy Land.
d. He advised the bishop of Jerusalem
to identify and enshrine the sites
connected with the life and death of
Jesus. Soon, monumental basilicashrines were erected, at imperial
expense, at the site of Jesus death
and entombment in Jerusalem
(Church of the Holy Sepulcher), and
over the (supposed) site of his birth
(Church of the Nativity) in
Bethlehem. Eventually there were
similar shrines all over Palestine.
www.clipart.com
2. Constantine: the Emperor Becomes

a Christian
CONSTANTINE:
A Christian Emperor
Flavius Valerius Constantinus
was the son of Roman officer
and future emperor Constantius
and Helena, a common woman
of humble background who was
later sainted. Born February 27,
271, 272 or 273 (date is unclear)
he rose to power upon the death
of his father on July 25, 306.
With his rise to power politically, religious change was on the
horizon. Constantine became a
Christian and immediately ended
all religious persecution and even
provided restitution to some sufferers. After defeating the eastern
rulers and becoming sole emperor of the Byzantine Empire,
Constantine moved the capital of
the empire away from the pagansoaked city of Rome and created
Constantinople, a new city of
devout Christianity.
Constantine died on the day
of Pentecost, May 22, 337. His
sarcophagus was placed in the
Church of the Holy Apostles
surrounded by the memorial
steles of the Twelve Apostles,
symbolically making him the
Thirteenth Apostle.
27
Consider
Christianity started out as a local Jewish sect and ended as a distinct (and
worldwide) religion. How and why did that happen?
Suggested Reading
Eusebius, Pamphili, Andrew Louth (ed). The History of the Church from
Christ to Constantine. Penguin Classics. New York: Penguin USA, 1990.
Wilcken, Robert L. The Land Called Holy. New Haven: Yale, 1992.
Barnes, Timothy David. Constantine and Euseblus. Boston: Harvard
University Press, 1990.
Durant, Will. Caesar and Christ: A History of Roman Civilization and of
Christianity from Their Beginning A.D. 325, Vol. 3. Fine Communications,
1993.
Elliott, T.G. The Christianity of Constantine the Great. California:
University of Scranton Press, 1997.
Jones, D. H. Constantine and the Conversion of Europe. Canada:
University of Toronto, 1978.
Pohlsander, Hans A. The Emperor Constantine. England: Routledge, 1996.
Wilkinson, John. Jerusalem Pilgrims Before the Crusades. Jerusalem: Ariel,
1977.
Websites to Visit
1. www.roman-emperors.org/conniei.htm - Expansive information on Roman
emperors. Includes an extensive bibliography on Constantine.
2. www.roman-empire.net/decline/constantine-index.html - A page on
Constantine located in the on-line history of the roman empire. Includes a
marble bust of the emperor.
LECTURE FIVE
3. www.time.com/time/2001/jerusalem/juda.html - Time Magazine articles on

Jerusalem.
4. www.gospelcom.net/chi/GLIMPSEF/Glimpses/glmps073.shtml - article on
Helena, the First Christian Archeologist.
28
Lecture 6 - Muhammad, Prophet of Mecca

Read Michael Sells Approaching the Quran: The Early Revelation.
Introduction:
We look at the sources for the life and work of Muhammad, the Prophet (not
the founder!) of Islam, and the beginning of his mission in his native Mecca.
Consider this . . .
1. Do Christians recognize Muhammad as a prophet?
2. How do Jews view Muhammad in 632 CE? And now?
3. Why Medina? Why Mecca?
A. What Do We Have on Muhammad?

1. The Quran as Revelation and History
a. The Quran is a collection in 114 Sras or chapters of the revelations
given to Muhammad between 610 CE and his death in 632 CE.
b. The revelations were given orally and came through the medium of the
angel Gabriel. They were repeated by Muhammad verbatim: the Quran
is literally the Words of God, not a document.
c. The Sras are arranged in order of descending length rather than
chronologically. However, our study will discuss them in the order they
were believed to be written.
d. In the first books written at Mecca, Muhammad was chiefly engaged in
converting pagans, persuading their submission to the One True
God. At that early stage, submission meant primarily daily prayer,
alms giving, and a daily commitment to worship only Allah, not the
other gods recognized by the Meccan Arabs.
e. The Medina sras show him addressing a Muslim rather than pagan
audience. The background of his revelations and what is implied by
submission are given in greater detail.
f. According to the Quran, Muhammad is one of three prophets who
were entrusted with a public revelation in the form of Sacred Book
Moses the Tawrt, Jesus the Injl and himself, the Quran.
g. By this last revelation, the religion of Abraham is revived at Mecca.
That is why Islam will still venerate the Kaba built by Abraham and
Ishmaeland toward which Muslims will now prayand must continue to
practice the ritual of the hajj (pilgrimage) begun in Abrahams day.
29
MUHAMMAD AND
A LAND WITHOUT A PAST
All we have on the subject of Muhammad, his life and his times, is what we
can extract from the Quran, which is very little indeed, and what later Muslims
thought they remembered. The Quran is interested in history, but it is the history
of Gods prophets, their message and their fate, and not of Arabia, or Mecca, or
Muhammad, names that only very, very rarely enter its pages. The Muslim tradition, on the other hand, thought it knew, or remembered, a great deal about
Muhammad and Mecca. But their recollections are from long after the fact, at a
time, the eighth century, and a place, chiefly Baghdad, when and where he and
his life and his enterprise had passed into the stuff of legend.
Historians are still trying to disentangle the facts from the legend but with
only very partial success since there is no independent background material
like that which Josephus provides for the lifetime of Jesus and no archeology
of either Mecca or Medina of the type that has taken the measure of most of
Palestine. Western Arabia of the seventh century is a land without a past.
At best we can imagine, or guess, Mecca began as a settlement because of
the presence of a spring (now called Zamzam). This may have had some sort
of religious significance because soon there was a shrine next to it and a
sacred area around it. The sacred enclosure is called the Haram, which
means taboo in Arabic, and the shrine building the Kaba, which in Arabic
means cube from the shape of this stone building. The Kaba was already
known to Muhammads contemporaries as the Bayt Allah, the House of
God, and Muhammad and Muslims continue to regard it as such, particularly
since the Quran informs them that the original was built by Abraham and his
son Ishmael.
Traditional site near

Mecca of
Muhammads first
revelation.
30
www.clipart.com
LECTURE SIX
Today, Haram has been much extended and surrounded by an enormous,

multi-storied portico to accommodate the large number of annual pilgrims.
The Kaba is closer to its original form, though it too has been rebuilt. And
today, as in
Muhammad's day,
the interior is as
empty as the Holy
of Holies in the
Jerusalem temple.
Muslims, like the
Jews, are aniconic, that is, they do
not believe God
can be represented by images.
2. Traditions About the Prophet

a. Unlike Jesus, Muhammad was not the redeemer of humankind. He was a
mortal man, but also the perfect paradigm of what a Muslim should be.
b. Many of the traditions concerning the Prophet were gathered together
sometime after 750 CE into a Life written by Muhammad ibn Ishaq and
has become a standard.
c. Tradition has it that Muhammad was born in Mecca, late in the sixth century, and orphaned young.
d. He married Kadijah, a woman who was apparently important in the modest trading life of the town.
e. Kadijah was the mother of all of his children except for a son born of a
concubine after her death. None of his male children survived infancy.
f. The leading tribe in Mecca, the Quraysh, had combined commerce and
shrine-pilgrimage in the town.
g. The Meccan shrine was the Kaba, a stone House of Allah with a surrounding taboo zone (haram) in the middle of the settlement. Many gods
were worshiped here.
B. The Call, the Response
1. The Message at Mecca
a. In 610, already well into adulthood,
Muhammad had a revelation from the
Angel Gabriel and began to recite or
chant the message God was sending
through him to the Meccans.
b. The message given to Muhammad
was that there is no god but the God.
c. He also stressed the idea of the
Last Judgement with its punishments for the wicked and rewards
for the just.
d. Muhammad refused to performor
have God performmiracles on his
own behalf as testimony to his devotion to the Quran. The Quran itself
was Gods miracle.
e. From 610 CE and for the next 22
years of his life God continued to
give revelations to his prophet, all
attesting to the same message of
submission to God, in Arabic Allah.
HISTORY OF MECCA
Situated 45 miles from the Red
Sea Coast, Mecca is considered
the holiest city of all Islam.
During the time of Muhammad,
Mecca a shrine city of little distinction and little property, was
known as a local pilgrimage and
trading center.
The Kaba, built by Ibrahim and
his son Ismail, lies in the center
of the town. Around the Kaba lies
a great taboo zone, al-Haram and
around this, between mountains
the mud brick buildings of Mecca
arose. From ancient times,
Muslims determined to live closest to the holiest place on earth,
and built their houses near the
grounds of the mosque.
Mecca today is important for the
compulsory hajj made by
Muslims. Each year many hundreds of thousands of Muslims
make the trek to Mecca to perform the rituals there.
31
2. The Opposition of the Quraysh

a. The Quraysh opposed Muhammads message of monotheism and the
Last Judgement. Acceptance would have forced them to abandon their
commercially profitable shrines.
b. Finally, after the deaths of his uncle and wife, the Prophet was driven
from Mecca for fear of his life.
LECTURE SIX
c. In 622 CE, he made a migration (hijra) to Medinathe trigger date for

the beginning of the Muslim erawhere he was taken up as a holyman
and leader for the strife-torn oasis.
32
Consider
1. Is this Allah the same as the God of Abraham?
2. Are the Quran and Bible both revealed histories?
3. How does Muhammad continue to affect the lives of people today?
Suggested Reading
Peters, F.E. Muhammad and the Origins of Islam. New York: State
University of New York, 1994.
Sells, Michael. Approaching the Quran: The Early Revelations. Ashland:
White Cloud Press, 1999.
Cook, Michael. Muhammad. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Dabashi, Hamid. From the Rise of Muhammad to the Establishment of the
Umayyads. England: Transaction Publishers, 1992.
Grabar, Oleg, et. al. The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Hawting, Gerald R. The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate AD
661-750. England: Routledge, 2000.
Makiya, Kanan. The Rock: A Tale of Seventh Century Jerusalem. New York:
Vintage Books, 2001.
Sardar, Ziauddi, and Malik, Zafar. Introducing Muhammad. New York:
Totem Books, 1997.
Schimmel, Annemarie. And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration
of the Prophet in Islamic Piety. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1985.
Websites to Visit
1. www.islamonline.net/english - site contains information on current events,
religious discussions and services.
2. www. iad.org/ - Religion of Islam page from the Islamic Affairs Department
of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia. Includes a searchable copy of the Quran.
33
Lecture 7 - Muhammad, Lord of Medina

Read some of the Medina sras of the Quran.
Introduction:
A new environment and a new challenge for Muhammad and Islam, a challenge met and overcome in extraordinary fashion.
Consider this . . .
1. Muhammad was his own Constantine. Why?
2. Why was Muhammad a failure at Mecca and a success at Medina?
3. What happened to the Jews of Medina?
A. Muhammad as Prophet (Nabi): The Message of Islam
1. Muhammad at Medina
a. Medina was an oasis in the grip of civil strife. Muhammad had been
invited to help act as an arbitrator.
b. The oasis was once owned by the Jews but the control had passed to
the Arabs, who were now fighting among themselves.
c. Agreement was made to have Muhammad come to Medina as a mediator. All sides signed the Medina Accords which are an agreement that
made the Muslims, pagans and Jews one umma or community.
2. Muhammad and the Jews
a. Muhammads message was filled with biblical stories and it appears he
was originally acceptable to the Jews as a mediator, and perhaps, he
thought, as a prophet.
b. But the Jews rejected his claims to prophethood and he brought down
his wrath upon them, whether for their lack of support or their collusion
with his enemies at Mecca, we dont know.
c. This rejection eventually led to their violent removal from the town.
Muhammad exiled one tribe, enslaved another and had executed a
number of the third.
3. Muhammad as Statesman: An Arabian Empire
LECTURE SEVEN
a. Muhammad struck out militarily against the Meccans in the battle of

Badr Wells in 624 CE. This is the first use of force to resist persecution, linking force and violence to religion, as it often was in Judaism
and Christianity.
34
b. The prophet and his forces withstood

a Quraysh counterattack, but eventually (630) the Meccans capitulated.
c. The Muslims embarked on a series of
raids in all directions across Arabia
the targets, if they were pagans, were
invited to embrace Islam or suffer the
consequences. If they were Jews or
Christians, they had to pay taxes and
were given a covenant which even
today covers Christians and Jews living under Muslim sovereignty.
d. By the time Muhammad died in 632
CE, he and his community controlled
most of Arabia.
B. Pillars of Islam
1. There are five pillars of the Islamic faith.
a. The creed. There is no god but
the God, and Muhammad is his
messenger.
b. Public prayer. All Muslims must
pray five times a day toward
Mecca, together on Fridays, first
in Muhammads house then in a
mosque.
c. Tithe. Every Muslim must give a
percentage of annual income to
charitable work in the Muslim
community.
MUSLIM HAJJ
The Five Pillars are fundamental to Islamic doctrine and
practice. Muslims are taught to
practice their religion through
these pillars. The fifth pillar is
the pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca
in what is now known as Saudi
Arabia. Mecca was the major
site where founder Muhammad
received revelations and
visions, as well as preached. In
fact, he received his first revelation in Mecca. Every adult
Muslim who is financially and
physically able is expected to
travel to Mecca once in his or
her life in the month of DhulHijah approximately two
months after Ramadan (the
ninth month of the Muslim
year). Various rituals and rites
are performed during the time
in Mecca and its neighborhood.
PhotoDisc
d. Fast. During the 28 days of the

lunar month of Ramadan. All
food, drink, uncharitable words,
and sexual activity must cease
until after sunset.
Women praying on hajj.
35
e. Hajj. Once in a lifetime pilgrimage to

Mecca. This ritual is performed at a
specific time, at specific places in the
vicinity of Mecca.
THE PACT OF UMAR
AND DHIMMA
In 628, Muhammad and his
supporters led a raid on
Khaybar, an oasis with a Jewish
population. When the Jews surrendered, Muhammad offered
them a treaty (dhimma). It was a
contract of sorts that offered the
Jews freedom to live as Jews if
they adhered to a few of his
demands including 1/2 their annual harvest as a tax.
The Khaybar arrangement
became institutionalized as the
Dhimma, sometimes called the
Pact of Umar after the second
Caliph of Islam.
LECTURE SEVEN
Dhimma is a contract between

conqueror and conquered. It
stipulates that the Christians
and Jews, the People of the
Book, will be allowed to live a
peaceful existence under the
Ummas protection providing
they also adhere to strict guidelines. It maintains that no
Christian or Jew would build a
new church or synagogue; they
would not make public display
of their religion or proselytize
among Muslims; they would
dress dissimilarly to Muslims;
they would shave the front of
their heads and that they would
never strike a Muslim.
Since it is divine law, the concept of Dhimma still remains in
force today.
36
C. The Role of Women in Islam relating to

the pillars of faith.
1. Women are bound by the same obligations as men, but they must observe
modesty. Hence women can make the
pilgrimage but must do so in the company of men.
2. Women are not to circulate freely. In
mosques: they must not pray next to men,
only with women, children or in private.
3. Women are exempt from certain other
obligations since they are responsible for
the home and raising the children until
ages 6 or 7 when the father takes over
the raising of the male children. Tithing is
part of the male tradition.
4. Womens obligations are limited, as they
are in Judaism, by ritual impurity.
D. Separation of Church and State
1. Though the notion of separation of
church and state is a modern one,
Jesus did not involve himself in politics, while Muhammad freely mixed
religion and politics.
2. The use of force for religious ends is
commonplace in the monotheistic tradition, at least until the separation of
church and state. Its sanction by
Muhammad persists in Islam to this day.
Consider
1. How did the apparently failing project in Mecca become a remarkable success in Medina?
2. How to explain Muhammads engagement with politics?
Suggested Reading
Pickhall, Marmaduke William. The Meaning of the Glorious Koran: An
Explanatory Translation. (Everymans Library Edition). New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1992.
Armstrong, Karen. Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. 1993.
Janin, Hunt. Four Paths to Jerusalem: Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Secular
Pilgrimages 1000 BCE to 2001 CE. McFarland & Company
Incorporated Publishers, 2002.
Peters, F.E. The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy
Places. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Peters, F.E. Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians. Princeton: Princeton
Wadud, Amina. Quran and Woman: Re-Reading the Sacred Text from a
Womans Perspective. Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Books on Audio
Armstrong, Karen. A History of God: The 4000 Year Quest for Judaism,
Christianity and Islam. Abridged: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.
Armstrong, Karen. Islam: A Short History. Unabridged: Barnes & Noble Audio,
2001.
Feiler, Bruce S. Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths.
Unabridged: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002.
37
Lecture 8 - The People of the Book:

Monotheists and Their Revelations
Read F.E. Peters Judaism, Christianity and Islam: The World and the Law
and the People of God., Volume II, Chapter 1.
Introduction:
Jews, Christians and Muslims are all characterized as People of the Book by
the Muslims. This session investigates why that seems to be true and why it
seems not.
Consider this . . .
1. Do the Muslims also consider Abraham the father of monotheism?
2. What part does the Bible play in Judaism? In Islam? In Christianity?
3. Who wrote the book of Genesis? Exodus? The Quran?
A. Shaping the Book: the Canon
1. Whats in Scripture
a. The Bible (from Greek biblia, books) is a collection of 24 separate
books recognized by the Jews. It is often called TaNaK, an acronym
for its three major divisions; Torah, the Nebiim and the Ketubim.
b. When the early Christians began to add their own writings about
Jesus, they assembled their own authoritative collection of what they
called the New Covenant (covenant is rendered in Latin as testamentum, which gives us New Testament). While the Christians recognize the Jewish Bible, their Old Testament, as the word of God, they
deny any authenticity to either Muhammad or the Quran.
c. While Muslims acknowledge the original authenticity of the Bible and
the Gospel, they regard the Quran as superceding both, which have,
moreover, been tampered with by the Jews and Christians.
2. Scripture as the Word of God: Inspiration
a. The Bible is a composite work, which is the product of many human
hands, from Moses to those of Ezra and Nehemiah. Although there is
some degree of human authorship, it was God who inspired and guided it, particularly the five Mosaic books called the Torah.
LECTURE EIGHT
b. Hebrew is the sacred language of this text, although it has been translated into a variety of languages so it might be read by all, first into
Aramaic (Targums) then into Mediterranean-wide Greek. This latter
translation is called the Septuagint and became the version that
Christians read and used as their Old Testament.
38
d. The Quran contains the very words

of God dictated and pronounced verbatim by Muhammad without the
slightest human conditioning.
Resistance to translating the Quran
exists even now. Some translations
prefer to call themselves not The
Quran but something like The
Meaning of the Glorious Quran.
B. Unpacking the Riches: Scriptural
Exegesis
1. Departing from the Literal
a. Jews have insisted that the legal
precepts of the Bible, though they
may have a deeper, more spiritual
or mystical sense, must be understood literally.
b. Christians differ from Jews: the former read the same Bible figuratively, they see it primarily as a document foreshadowing the events of
Jesus life. Christians allegorize
away much of the ritual and behavioral aspects of the Old
Testament.
c. The Quran itself
admits that it is
ambiguous in
places, and so
Muslims too have
developed a body
of exegesis of the
Quran which has
become traditional
and authoritative.
TRANSLATIONS OF
THE QURAN
The translation of the Quran
from its original Arabic to any
other language presents
understandable concerns for
Muslims, who believe that the
Quran is the literal word of
God as passed in Arabic
from God to the angel Gabriel
to Muhammad.
As the letter for letter word of
God, the Quran is different from
religious texts that are divinely
inspired but not direct transcripts of a divinitys words. For
Muslims, reading and reciting
the words of God is itself a
blessed occurrence, one that is
not possible in any language
but Arabic.
The first known translation
of the Quran into any language
was done in Latin in Toledo
in 1142 by Robert of Chester.
It was paid for by Peter of
Cluny as part of a Christian
conversion project directed at
Spanish Muslims.
Owen Franken/CORBIS
c. The Gospels began life as a translation since Jesus preached and conversed in Aramaic, while the
Gospels, which date from 40 to 60
years after his death, are already in
Greek. The translation of the Greek
into other vernaculars of Late
Antiquitythe Latin version by
Jerome (d. 420 CE) is called the
Vulgateoccurred without remark.
39
TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE

Reprinted courtesy of Professor Adam Potkay, College of William and Mary
Translations of the Bible have been based mainly on the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, and on two early translations:
SEPTUAGINT: A translation of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) into Greek; it
was made for the Jews of Alexandria in the 3rd century BC. This Greek version was,
according to tradition, based on the work of seventy scholars, and is therefore known as
the Septuagint, from a Latin word meaning seventy.
VULGATE: St. Jeromes translation of the Bible into Latin for the common people (in
Latin, the Vulgus) of the Roman world, @ AD 400.
Major English Translations:
WYCLIFFITE BIBLE: Manuscript translation done by the followers of John Wycliffe in the
1380s; he saw the Bible as the sole rule of faith and practice for all, and was therefore
opposed by the English church, which emphasized both scripture and tradition.
about 1450: Invention of printing from movable type
TYNDALE BIBLE: William Tyndale, living in Germany, translated the New Testament
into English in 1526; in 1536 the Inquisition burned him at the stake as a heretic.
1522-1534: Martin Luther produces, in German, the first western European Bible
based on the original Hebrew and Greek, rather than on the Latin Vulgate.
1534: Parliament under Henry VIII separates English Church from the Church of Rome.
COVERDALE BIBLE: First printed English Bible, 1535. Miles Coverdale used Tyndales
translation of the New Testament and the portions of the Old Testament that Tyndale had
translated; Coverdale himself translated the rest of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha.
1552-1558: Reign of Henrys daughter Mary (Bloody Mary), who attempted to revive
Roman Catholicism in England.
GENEVA BIBLE: Done in 1560 by English Protestant scholars (including Coverdale)
who had gone to the continent to escape Queen Marys persecutions. This is the
Bible Shakespeare knew. Its margins are filled with Calvinist theology (and damnations of other sects). Known also as the BREECHES BIBLE, from Gen. 3:7: They
sewed fig leaves together and made themselves breeches.
BISHOPs BIBLE: Published in 1568, during Queen Elizabeths reign; indebted to
Tyndale/Coverdale.
LECTURE EIGHT
DOUAI-RHEIMS: Translation of the Vulgate done by English Catholics in France; they

completed the New Testament in 1582 and the Old Testament in 1609. This translation
is marked by its Latinate style and diction.
KING JAMES VERSION: Published in 1611. King James (r. 1603-1625) assembled 47
scholars; they worked with Biblical texts in the original languages, as well as with the
Tyndale and Coverdale versions. Their translation included the Apocrypha, which was omitted in England beginning in 1826.
40
Consider
Whence comes the right (or is it the necessity?) to interpret the words of the
All-Knowing God?
Suggested Reading
de Hamel, Christopher. The Book: A History of the Bible. Harrisburg:
Phaidon Press, Incorporated, 2001.
Gaetje, Helmut. The Quran and Its Exegesis. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1976.
McDonald, Martin and James A. Sanders. The Canon Debate. Peabody,
MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995.
Nicolson, Adam. Gods Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible.
New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.
Websites to Visit
1. www. iad.org/ - Religion of Islam page from the Islamic Affairs Department
of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia. Includes a searchable copy of the Quran.
2. http://bible.gospelcom.net/ - Many different translations of the Bible
on-line.
41
Lecture 9 - Tradition and Law

and the People of God, Volume II, Chapters 3 and 4.
Introduction:
From the beginning, revelation was thought to provide not merely story but prescription, that is, behavioral standards, which the believers soon expanded and
even attempted to organize into a law code.
Consider this . . .
1. In religious communities, can humans make laws?
2. How is law related to scripture?
3. What is more important, scripture or tradition?
A. The Law in the Scripture
1. Written Torah and Oral Torah
a. According to Jewish tradition, Moses was given two Torahs on Sinai,
one written to pass on as what is now our Bible and the other to pass
on in oral form, the so-called Oral Torah.
b. Moses transmitted the Oral Torah to Joshua then it passed down
through reliable sources through the Pharisee. The Oral Torah
explained and expanded on the written Torah.
c. Around 200 CE the discussions concerning the Oral Torah were committed to writing as the Mishna. This was commented upon in detail by
the rabbis of both Palestine and of Babylonia. The Mishna plus the
completion (gemara) of the first group constitutes the Jerusalem or
Palestinian Talmud. The same Mishna with the gemara of the second
makes up the Babylonian Talmud. Each Talmud, but particularly the
Babylonian, became for Jews the authoritative understanding of Gods
revealed Law.
2. Quran and Tradition= Sharia
LECTURE NINE
a. There are specific laws in the Quran as well as in the Bibleprohibitions against gaming, swearing, drinking intoxicating spirits, dietary
restrictions, and some, like those for theft, are even accompanied by
explicit sanctions.
b. In Islam, the behavioral flesh is put in the Scriptural bones by resort to
the custom of the Prophet. Muhammad was the paradigm of the
Muslim life and so his advice and conduct, sometimes down to the
smallest details, provides a template for Muslim behavior.
42
c. There is much more besides in Islamic

religious society which, like the Jewish
one, lacks an authority capable of
mandating religious conduct. Islamic
lawyers are very reluctant to issue
decrees or enactments.
d. Islam is more a community based
upon consensus, and what is correct Muslim behavior is often what
the society as a whole has agreed
is such.
B. The Law Out of Scripture
1. Apostolic Tradition and Apostolic
Succession
a. The Gospels indicate that Jesus
offered private and more detailed
explanations of his message to his
inner circle of apostles. These traditions and instructions were regarded
as the Apostolic Tradition.
b. By the second century, various
churches were claiming to be founded by one of the apostles or, that
their overseer (episkopos) was one
in a line of spiritual succession from
the apostles, the so-called Apostolic
Succession.
c. The combination of these two
notions gave the Christian bishop a
kind of absolute teaching authority in
his church, and when the bishops
assembled in council, an even
broader authority. Thus, the bishops
constituted a living tradition.
d. The great reform movements that
swept over Christianity in the 16th century and Judaism in the 19th can be
read in large part as an attempt to
separate scripture from tradition.
Protestant groups rejected all Church
practices and beliefs that had no warrant in scripture. Reform Jews reject
the Mishna and Talmud as manmade, not God-given.
MOSES AND THE

STONE TABLETS
After parting the Red Sea
and leading his people out of
slavery in Egypt, Moses went
alone to Mount Sinai.
Accompanied by smoke, thunder, lightning, and a great
trumpet blast, Moses received
the Ten Commandments
directly from God.
The finger of God created two
sets of commandments on
stone tablets. Moses destroyed
the first set upon witnessing the
people of Israel worshipping
the famed golden calf. God
made another set which was
kept in the Ark of the Covenant.
The commandments were
included in the Book of Moses,
which eventually became the
first five books (Pentateuch) of
the Bible.
The first four commandments
are strictly religious in nature
(thou shalt have but one
God), while the remaining are
based on principles of law that
live on to this day.
Commandments such as thou
shalt not kill, thou shalt not
commit adultery, and thou
shalt not steal are clearly
reflected in modern society.
The Ten Commandments
represented much more than a
simple set of laws to the
Israelites, however. The commandments were a sign of
Gods covenant with the people
of Israel, a sign whose words
were inscribed in stone.
43
2. Canon Law and the Magisterium

a. Jesus announced that he had come
not to abolish the Torah but to fulfill it,
and the Gospels portray him as a typically observant Jew of his day.
DOCTRINE AND DOGMA
LECTURE NINE
In the present context, doctrine is

the teaching of the religious community. The implication is that it is
standard teaching, but who sets the
standard? Doctrine becomes standard or normative in either of two
ways, when the community agrees
on it, in short, by consensus, or if it
is defined or promulgated by a
competent authority. Jewish and
Sunni Muslim doctrines are generally of the first type and, like all
products of consensus, grow
extremely fuzzy around the edges.
Both the Jewish and the Sunni
communities lack the authorities
competent simply to pronounce
what constitutes the true teaching
(orthodoxy). Christians and Shiite
Muslims do, however, possess
such authorities, the first in person
of its bishops, either singly or
assembled in synods and ecumenical or general councils, whose pronouncements become dogma; in
the Western Church, the bishop of
Rome or pope claimed this prerogative uniquely for himself. This
authority is paralleled among Shiite
Muslims in the Imams, who can
also pronounce dogmatically (and
infallibly), whether in person
or through his latter-day surrogates.
44
b. But Paul was soon arguing that in this

new Messianic Age the redemption of
humankind through Jesus had rendered the Torah unnecessary.
c. As the expected End Time began to
recede into the indefinite future, there
came the need for some guidelines to
behavior.
d. Councils of churches began to produce
not only statements of belief, creeds,
whereby doctrine or teaching was
defined as dogma, but also behavioral
norms and canons regulating the life of
clergy and laity alike.
Consider
What is the complex relationship of Scripture and Tradition in the shaping of
Judaism, Christianity and Islam?
Suggested Reading
Hirsch, Ammiel and Yaakov Yosef Reinman. One People, Two Worlds: A
Reform Rabbi and an Orthodox Rabbi Explore the Issues That Divide
Them. New York: Knopf Publishing Group, 2002.
Abou El Fadl, Khaled. Speaking in Gods Name: Islamic Law, Authority and
Women. Oxford: One World Publications, 2001.
Friedman, Richard Elliott. Commentary on the Torah. San Francisco:
HarperCollins San Francisco, 2000.
Hall, Stuart G. Doctrine and the Practice of the Early Church. Grand Rapids,
Eerdmans, 1991.
Lewittes, Mendell. Jewish Law: An Introduction. York: Jason Aronson
Publishers, 1994.
Strack, Hermann L. and Gunter Stemberger. Introduction to the Talmud and
Midrash. Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1992.
Websites to Visit
1. http://bible.ort.org/books/torahd5.asp - Torah in both Hebrew and English.
2. http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/ - another collection of sacred texts
on-line.
3. http://www.catholic.com/library/Apostolic_Tradition.asp - interesting collection of quotations on Catholic perspective of Apostolic Tradition.
45
Lecture 10 - Defining the Community

and the People of God, Volume II, Chapter 6.
Introduction:
The believers in the One True God have organized themselves into faith communities, whose boundaries had to be wardened and defined.
Consider this . . .
1. One may be born a Jew; one must become a Christian or a Muslim.
2. Are the Christians a Jewish sect? Are the Muslims a monotheistic sect?
3. Are the Shiites orthodox Muslims?
A. Definitions of a Community
1. Jewish Community - A Nation of Kinsmen
a. The earliest Jewish Community, the Beni Israil, shared an actual kinship. This particular tribal group also shared a God. The rabbinic definition
of a Jew is someone born of a Jewish mother. This is also accepted by
the state of Israel in the case of a claim to the right to return.
b. Jews were not content to rest on this particular definition. Much attention has also been paid to what is a Jew.
c. One of the answers, and the one that prevailed, is the Pharasaic answer.
To be a Jew, one must imitate or approximate the holiness of God. This
includes separating oneself from impurity, whether from the Gentiles or
non-observant Jews.
i. The priority regulations are laid out in the Torah, most of which
include the avoidance of unholy things and the observance of certain dietary laws.
d. Romans regarded Jews as a religio and a natio, both a religious
and ethnic community.
2. Christians, A Serious Identification Problem
a. How Jewish were they? Most were converted Jews, but there were
increasing numbers of Gentiles.
b. Soon Christians began to define themselves not merely as followers
of Jesus but as followers of Jesus, the Messiah of the world, and
the son of God.
LECTURE TEN
c. One of the crucial elements of the survival of the Christians was

whether or not they would stay with the Bible (the Old Testament),
which they did.
d. Christians rejected the idea of cutting themselves off completely from
Judaism, its scripture, its beliefs and some of its practices. That has
extended through modern times and is evident in church services today.
46
THE NEED OF BAPTISM,

AND OF THE CHURCH
Baptism was central to membership in the Christian community, in the contrast, for instance, carefully made between the baptism of John and that of
Jesus (Mk. 1:8, Bible). The exact nature of the act came into sharp relief in
the increasingly fierce persecutions directed against Christians in the third
century. It is not certain what Jesus typically aphoristic remark in Mt.
12:30, He who is not with me is against me, meant to signify in its original context, but to a bishop of Carthage named Cyprian (d. 256), those
words were a clear statement that heretics and schismatics, those who
had once been members of the Church but who had wandered from its
teaching or its authority, could not expect to be saved. The immediate
issue in the North Africa of Cyprians day was the recurrent one that
issued form wholesale defections from the Church in times of persecution
Cyprian lived through a major Roman persecution in the mid-third century. The question for bishops like Cyprian was whether Christians who
had received baptism from the defectors had been truly baptized. No,
announced Cyprian, there is no (valid) baptism outside the Churchs baptism and indeed, there is no salvation outside the Church.
Though his views on baptism had soon to be rethought, Cyprians
teaching on the necessity of membership in the one Catholic (that is,
universal) ChurchYou cant have God as your Father unless you
have the Church as your mother was another of his pronouncements.
This was often reaffirmed in the centuries that followed, notably in the
influential Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. In their decree concerning
the Albigensian heresy, the assembled bishops proclaimed that [t]here
is one Catholic Church of the faithful and outside it no one is saved.
The most notorious echo of Cyprian, however, occurred about a century
after Lateran IV. In 1302, in an effort to assert the Churchs and the
Papacysauthority in the face of the king of France, Boniface VIII
issued his bill entitled Unam Sanctam, which in its opening words
unequivocally declared: There is one, holy, Catholic Church, outside of
which there is no salvation. None. For Anyone.
47
THE INQUISITION
LECTURE TEN
Burning of the Heretics by Beruguete (Auto-da-f), c.01490
The inquisitio is a judicial procedure borrowed from Roman Law by the Christian
Church for the prosecution of heresy, that is,
deviant beliefs or practices. The practice
combined police prosecutorial and judicial
functions in that it empowered a magistrate to
investigate, prosecute and try an alleged
offender. The papally sanctioned use of the
procedure by bishops came to the fore in the
struggle against the Cathars in the south of
France in the 12th century, whence it spread
to Spain, where the Church had its own
peculiar problems.
The Christian reconquest of Spain from the
An auto-de-fe, St. Dominic himself presiding Muslims, which took on a new speed and vigor
in the 12th century, brought under Christian
sovereignty increasing numbers of Muslims. If at first the rulers of Castile-Leon and
Aragon were content to let their new Muslim subjects be, the Church was committed to
their conversion, as it was to that of the Jews. The Churchs missionary efforts were
not terribly successful, and increasingly the Franciscan and Dominican agents of conversion resorted to threats and intimidations. With the fall of the last Muslim stronghold,
Granada, in 1492, the monarchy finally acceded to the Churchs wishes, and in the
end, Muslims and Jews were faced with the choice of conversion or expulsion.
Many left Spain, but many others chose conversion, which now gave Catholic Spain
a large group of conversos, Marranos as the converted Jews were called, and
Moriscos, as their Muslim counterparts were known. The others were never quite
sure of the sincerity of these New Christiansjustifiably so in many caseswhose
conversion they themselves had effectively coerced, and this suspicion, and the related fear of religious subversion, put the Spanish Inquisition into high gear. The papacy
put the project in the hands of the Dominicans who held tribunals throughout Spain,
and its suspects were chiefly New Christians who were thought to be crypto-Jews or
Muslims, though fear of the spread of the new Protestant Reformation also roused
anxiety and suspicion.
The inquisitors, who have left behind abundant records of their proceedings, apprehended suspects chiefly on report. They then summoned witnesses, took testimony,
cross-examined and finally acquitted or convicted. If convicted, the heretic was given a
chance to recant, suffer a penance and be released; if he or she persisted, the convicted was handed over to the civil armheresy was a crime against the state as well as
a sin against Godfor public execution. This latter spectacle was called in Spanish an
auto-de-fe or Act of Faith.
48
e .Christianity places a high value on orthodoxy or correct beliefthe

creed is a common measure of community adherence among
Christians. Both Judaism and Islam stress the need and virtue of orthopraxy, correct behavior or observance.
3. Islam - Definition through observance
a. Orthopraxy is the standard by which a Muslim can be defined.
Orthodoxy is the way Christians are defined, by what they believe.
B. How do people get into a community?
1. Jews are born into the community and remain such despite the fact that
they may never associate with or follow any of the teachings of Judaism.
2. Both Muslims and Christians are made. The individual must state he or
she wants to be a Muslim or Christian. Both faiths have accepted
infant initiation, but someone must speak on behalf of the infant and
affirm its belief.
3. All must follow a ritual to be initiated.
a. Circumcision, or the cutting of the foreskin of the male at eight days
after birth is the symbol of the covenant for the Jews.
b. The same is true in Islam. Circumcision was a part of Abrahams traditions and was passed down through the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims
disagree about exactly when this should take place; Turks tend to circumcise the males around 9, 10 or 11-years-old.
c. Christianity utilizes baptism, the pouring over or immersing in water.
Baptism is understood to be a spiritual sign.
4. Christianity is far more institutionalized than the other two religions when it
comes to the requirements for incorporation into the faith. Formal instruction
and the pronouncement of a creed is required to join.
This instruction is often in the form of catechism. This is taught usually by
the bishop and is typically conducted during Lent. The converts are baptized
into the church the day before Easter.
C. How do you get out of the community?
1. Apostasy - you formally deny or disavow the faith. In Islam, this is a capital crime. On occasion in Christianity it was viewed the same way.
Conversion to Christianity or Islam is regarded as apostasy in Judaism.
2. Getting thrown out is a different matter.
a. According to the strict traditionists in Judaism and Islam, if you dont
observe the Law you, in effect, cease to be a member of the community.
b. There is banning in Judaism. The rabbi can declare someone taboo. This
was a serious sentence in past times.
c. With both Islam and Judaism there is no authority structure to allow these
bans to be used effectively.
d. Christianity has a highly institutionalized authority structure which allows
heresy to be dealt with. Excommunication (or a ban) can be put in effect
by the bishop and effectively cuts a member off from the sacraments.
49

Consider
1. Why is maintaining the community so important to the monotheists?

2. What were the charges of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie?
3. How is discipline maintained in other religions?
Suggested Reading
Christie-Murphy, David. A History of Heresy. Oxford: Oxford Unversity Press,
1976.
Peters, F.E. Judaism, Christainity and Islam: The World and the Law and the
People of God. Volume II. New York: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Abou El Fadl, Khaled. Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Bromley, David G. The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates
in the Transformation of Religious Movements. Greenwood Publishing
Group, Inc., 1998.
Hogan, Richard M. Dissent from the Creed: Heresies Past and Present.
Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, Publishing Division, 2001.
Kamen, Henry. The Spanish Inquisition. London: Yale University Press, 1999.
Websites to Visit
1. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/inquisition1.html - an introduction to
the inquisition from the Medieval Sourcebook.
2. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08026a.htm - The Catholic
Encyclopedias article on Inquisition.
LECTURE TEN
3. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05678a.htm - The Catholic

Encyclopedias article on Excommunication.
50
Lecture 11 - Governing the Community

Read F.E. Peters Judaism, Christianity and Islam: From Covenant to
Community, Volume I, Chapter 6-7.
Introduction:
Leadership within the faith communities has passed from one group to another,
now emphasizing divine choice, now virtuoso skill, now charismatic gifts.
Consider this . . .
1. What are the differences between the Muslim learned elites and the
Jewish rabbis and Christianitys priests?
2. What is Waqf?
3. Could Shiite Imans be considered popes in turbans?
A. Learned Elites
1. From Priests to Rabbis
a. Kings first ruled the Jews beginning with David down through the
Hasmoneans. The later kings had legitimacy problems.
b. Kings were often at odds with the religious authorities on the Temple
Mount. These priests controlled the religious ritual and, in the state, the
Temple.
c. The Romans put an end to both kingship and the Temple; politically,
Jews became the subjects of others.
d. With the destruction of the Temple, the Jewish priesthood lost its function and power, so in its place arose the rabbis.
e. Rabbis were scholars of the Law in a community where Torah
assumed the role of Temple as the center and focus of Jewish life. The
rabbis became judges and arbiters, community leaders and social
guides in the scattered Jewish communities where they lived.
2. The Islamic Rabbinate: The Ulama
a. The Islamic lawyer elite consists of the Ulama who have been trained
in madrasas (law schools) by the Muslims. These madrasas have been
well financed over the years because of Muslim political dominance
and principally through the institution of waqf.
b. Waqf is a pious foundation whereby a Muslim deeds his property to
Godwhich renders it inalienable and untaxableand stipulates that
its income go to a specified pious purpose, and chief among them has
been the construction and staffing of mosques and madrasas.
51
LECTURE ELEVEN
THE RISE OF THE PAPACY

The Jesus movement, what was soon called Christianity, had spread
from Jerusalem through large metropolitan centers such as Alexandria,
Antioch, and Rome, where the Christian congregations were headed by
powerful bishops. In theory, all bishops were equal in the light of the
Apostolic succession, but some were clearly more equal than others, and
Rome was the most equal of all. It had a true claim to the Apostolic succession in both Peter and Paul, who early carried the Gospel there; it was,
moreover, no mere provincial capital but the head of the empire. As the
churches emerged from the catacombs into their privileged position as the
Great Church under the Christian emperor Constantine, the episcopate
began to conform ever more closely to the Roman administrative system.
Bishops of provincial capitals became metropolitan archbishops with jurisdiction over their episcopal peers in lesser cities and towns, so that the
eventual organizational chart of the Christian Church resembled that of the
Roman Empire that housed it.
Though the evidence is unmistakable that the bishop of Rome was indeed
accorded a kind of primacy of honor among his episcopal and archepiscopal
peers, the questions of absolute primacy never arose in the early Church. The
presence of many venerable and flourishing centers of Christianity, each ruled
by a bishop who stood in a direct and equal line of descent from the apostolic
tradition would have rendered such claims nonsense. Absolute primacy arose
only when multiplicity had been reduced to polarity. When Rome and
Constantinople, where Constantine had transferred the imperial capital in 330
CE, each stood alone at the head of a separate spiritual, cultural, and political
tradition. Rome did intervene in the affairs of other churches from the beginning; no one protested, and there are even examples of the Roman church
being appealed to in certain cases. It is only in the fourth century that the bishops of Rome, who bore the unofficial title of pope, began to insist on the right
of final jurisdiction based on Peter's position vis--vis the other Apostles.
The so-called Petrine argument, that Peter was the head of the Apostles and
that the bishop of Rome, as his episcopal successor there was the head of the
Church, was deeply resisted in the Eastern Church from beginning to end.
There was no argument over the Gospel testimony that Peter was indeed the
head of the Twelve and that Jesus had vested a special authority in him. But
such an enactment made Peter the first Christian bishop and not merely the
bishop of Rome. What Jesus had done was to endow Peter with the episcopal
authority, which he shared with the other Apostles: every church had a Peter
sitting upon its episcopal throne. Peter is the teacher of the universe, is the
way one Eastern bishop put it, the pope is only the bishop of Rome.
52
B. Charismatic Leadership
1. The Christian Episcopate
a. Jesus appointed an inner circle of
Twelve, the Apostles, who seem to
have enjoyed a recognized authority
among his followers after his death.
b. There were other officials as well,
none very certainly defined, but what
emerges is a church official called an
overseer (epikopos) and it is this
bishop who is soon found standing at
the head of every Christian congregation, and generally regarded as the
spiritual successor of the Apostles.
c. As the Roman Empire gradually
turned Christian in the fourth and fifth
centuries, the organization of these
bishops began to follow that of the
empire, with the bishops of provincial
capitals acknowledged as archbishops with jurisdiction over the other
bishops of that province.
d. The bishops of the provinces reported to another in a larger more cosmopolitan community. The final
authority rested with councils of
bishops, or as the Western Church
claimed, with the bishop of Rome
(also, and more often, known by the
sobriquet of pope).
e. There was opposition in the Eastern
Churches to the bishop of Rome's
claim of primacy, which resulted in
the schism that separated the
Western or Latin Church from the
Greek Churches of the East. At the
Reformation, the Western Church
was rent into a variety of confessional churches that refused to accept
the authority of Rome. Eastern
churches also split into a number of
different ethnic or national churches
with varying degrees of autonomy
from Constantinople.
THEOCRACY
The first-century CE Jewish
historian Josephus is the first
we know of to use the term
theocracy to describe a polity
ruled by God. He was referring
to the Kingdom of Israel, though
it was a somewhat imperfect
example since its kings neither
spoke for God nor ruled on his
behalf. The Jewish kingdom
was rather a diarchy, where the
kings shared sovereignty with a
priesthood who both spoke and
ministered on Gods behalf.
Can a state truly be run by
Gods divinely revealed laws
rather than by humans more
pragmatic statutes? There have
been a number of attempts
among the monotheists, and
two of the more interesting are
the Christian commonwealth
instituted at Geneva by the
French Reformer John Calvin
(1509-1564) and the ongoing
Islamic Republic of Iran,
fathered in large part by the
Ayatollah Khomeini (19001989). In both instances, there
was an attempt to combine a
republican form of governmentelected assemblies,
councils, magistrateswith
(higher) clerical supervision in
the form of religious overseers
who monitored and vetted executive, legislative and judicial
decisions in terms of their congruence with Divine Law. The
Christian Republic of Geneva
quickly disappeared under the
post-Reform European preference for the separation of
Church and State; the Iranian
experiment is still a work in
progress. And, some surmise, a
second Jewish experiment in
theocracy is waiting to begin.
53
2. Caliphs and Imams

a. Muhammad had made no provision for his successor, so after his
death in 632 CE, the Meccan and Medinan factions of Muslims conferred and chose Abu Bakr to be the first successor
(khalifa>caliph). That meant he was the executive head of the community but assuredly not a prophet.
b. Abu Bakr was succeeded by three other early pillars of Islam: Umar,
Uthman and Ali, who are all remembered as the Right Directed Caliphs.
c. There were Muslims who disagreed with this appointment. They thought
that the office, which they preferred to call the Imamate, belonged by
divine appointment to Ali, the Prophets cousin and son-in-law, and then
to members of his family descending in the male line from Alis union with
Muhammads daughter Fatima.
d. This group also believed that the office was not merely a political
one, as the majority of the Muslims, the Sunnis, were willing to settle for in regard to the Caliph.
LECTURE ELEVEN
e. The Imam, they believed, was a spiritual as well as political guide.

Indeed, he was infallible. Such partisans are called Shiites. They
never managed to get one of the revered line of Imams into power. In
the ninth century it began to be understood among Shiites that the
Imam had gone into hiding and would not return until the End Time.
Today he rules through his surrogates, like the Ayatollah Khomeini
(1900-1989), the Father of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
54
FOR
FORGREATER
GREATERUNDERSTANDING
UNDERSTANDING
Consider
Everyone agrees that God will not desert His community; the issue always
is, who are His chosen agents for this guidance?
Suggested Reading
Duffy, Eamon. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes. New Haven: Yale
Peters, F.E. Judaism, Christianity and Islam: From Covenant to
Community. Volume I. New York: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Dabashi, Hamid. Authority in Islam: From the Rise of Muhammad to the
Establishment of the Umayyads. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers,
1989.
Hillerbrand, Hans J. The Protestant Reformation. New York: HarperCollins
Publishers, 1990.
Lindberg, Carter H. The European Reformations. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell,
1996.
Mottahedeh, Roy. Mantle of the Prophet. New York: Pantheon, 1986.
Websites to Visit
1. http://www.vatican.va/phome_en.htm - The official Vatican website.
2. http://www.islam.org/ - a website dedicated to sharing and uniting Muslims.
3. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ - Site dedicated to promoting and informing Christians all over the world.
55
Lecture 12 - Defending the Community

Read F.E. Peters Judaism, Christianity and Islam: From Covenant to
Community Volume I, Chapter 7.
Introduction:
The faith community had sometimes to deal with another, civil society, or, in
the case of Islam, to assume the role of a polity as well as a church.
Consider this . . .
1. What is the difference between a Muslim country and an Islamic
community?
2. What are the differences between a Crusade and a Jihad?
3. Are there modern Crusades? Jihads?
A. Church and State
1. Church and Empire
a. Church and State are terms based in the Christian communitys
experience with the Roman Empire and its various successors.
b. Christianitys entanglement with the Roman Empire began when
Christians were identified as a new religion and so lost the exemptions
and protections long extended to the Jews.
c. The conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine led to a closer,
more complex relationship between the Catholic (universal) Church
and the universal empire. Both attempted to maintain their rights and
prerogatives in the face of the other.
2. The Muslim Umma: The Church as the State
a. Muhammads original community at Medina included not only his fellow migrants from Mecca and the newly converted helpers at Medina,
but Jews and pagans as well.
LECTURE TWELVE
b. Jews were soon purged from both the umma and the town, and the
pagan Arabs there rapidly adopted Islam. Thus was constituted an
exclusively Muslim umma.
c. Thence forward Muslims have imagined the Church and the State
as a single entity, the union or community of Muslims.
B. Defending Faiths Abode
1. Crusade
a. The Christian Church is not a state and so cannot formally declare or
conduct a war, but it has on occasion sanctioned the use of force for
religious ends.
56
c. When Innocent IV was elevated to

the papacy in 1243, he defined the
Churchs position on attempts to
force the Muslims to convert
though non-believers may not be
coerced into conversion, the Pope,
as Vicar of Christ on earth, had the
authority to order even non-Christian
powers to admit preachers of the
Gospels into their lands, and if they
refused, to authorize Christian states
to use force to effect their entry.
d. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa
Theologina (1265-1271), echoes
Innocents reasoning and adds three
other reasons that justify a states use
of force against the infidel.
THE CRUSADES
In 1095, Pope Urban II called
on Christian princes in Europe
to go on a crusade to rescue
Jerusalem from the Turks, thus
launching the First Crusade.
The results of the First
Crusade included the establishment of an independent Latin
kingdom in Syria-Palestine and
three military orders for protecting pilgrims and the holy sites.
The Muslims under Salah al-Din
retook Jerusalem in 1187. A
total of seven crusades were
eventually launched, the last
ending in 1291.
The most visible mark of crusaders was the red cross,
which the volunteers wore
either as a single cross or as a
larger cross with four smaller
ones around it, representing the
five wounds of Christ.
clipart.com
b. Pope Urban II at Clermont in 1095

first called for Crusade. Its formal
title was peregrinatio in armis,
armed pilgrimageand had as its
objective the freeing of the Christian
holy places in Jerusalem from the
Muslims. This war was garlanded
with the Churchs spiritual reward
and indulgences for those who voluntarily participated in this and later
attacks against Muslim lands.
57
HOLY WAR
2. Jihad
LECTURE TWELVE
While the Bible is filled with

accounts of what are unmistakably holy wars, many of them
fought by Gods direct command, many with Gods own
assistance, the Jews forfeited
all sovereignty after the insurrections of 66-70 and 132-135
CE, which were likewise, for
some, holy wars. Absent a
Jewish state, subsequent rabbis did not much theorize
about war, sacred or profane,
just or unjust. Christian theologians, on the other hand, who
from the fourth century on lived
under the aegis (or the shadow) of the Christian Roman or
Holy Roman Empire, did so
speculate. In their eyes, the
defense of Gods rights certainly justified the use of force
on the part of the stateit was
never a question of the
Churchs use of suchas did
the more secular concern of
the defense of sovereignty.
The Quran is clear on the subject: all killing is forbidden except
in the name of religion, and so
holy war (jihd) was in effect the
only just war that the community
of believers (umma), which is at
the same time the state, may
wage. In the West, Church and
State had been, if not separate,
then different from the beginning,
and from the 16th and 17th centuries onward, with the growth of
a natural law tradition and
increasing revulsion at Europes
long and terrible religious wars,
religion was no longer regarded
as a legitimate cause of war.
Crusade no longer falls easily
from Western lips.
58
a. Although the Arabic term jihad

means struggling, or more
specifically, Struggling in the
path of God, it is normally translated in English as holy war.
b. The translation is not entirely
inaccurate. While the Quranic
term is broad enough to cover a
variety of efforts on Gods behalf,
it certainly includes the use of
force against Gods enemies.
c. The Quran is circumspect on the
subject of violence and generally
appears to counsel its avoidance,
then permits it in a defensive environment (Q: 2:190, 22:39-40). But
under the threat of annihilation,
Muhammads followers were finally permitted to resort to force (Q
2:191, 217).
d. Muslim jurists used these texts to
divide the world into the Abode
of Islam (Dar al-Islam), where
Islamic law and sovereignty prevailed, and the Abode of War
(Dar al-Harb), lands that were not
yet subjected to the moral and
political authority of Islam.
e. In theory, the Abode of Islam is
always in a state of war with the
Abode of War until the latter
submits. Jihad is the instrument
by which subjection will occur.
Consider
1. What are the elements that have contributed to the apparent militancy
of Islam?
2. How is Judaism or Christianity different? Or are they?
Suggested Reading
Armstrong, Karen. The Crusades and Their Impact on Todays World. New
York: Random House, Inc., 2001.
Peters, Edward M. The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres
and Other Source Materials. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1998.
Bosworth, Clifford Edmund. History of Al-Tabari: The Abbasid Caliphate in
Equilibrium: The Caliphates of Musa Al-Hadi and Harun Al-Rashid, A.D.
785-809 - A.H. 169-103, Vol 30. New York: State University of New
York Press, 1988.
de Joinville, Jean, and Geoffroi de Villehardouin. Chronicles of the
Crusades. New York: Penguin Classics, 1972.
Firestone, Reuven. Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997.
Goss, Vladimir (ed.) The Meeting of Two Worlds. Kalamazoo: Medieval
Institute, 1986.
Hillenbrand, Carole. The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives. London:
Routledge, 2000.
Maalouf, Amin, and Jon Rothschild. The Crusades Through Arab Eyes. New
York: Knopf Publishing Group, 1989.
Peters, Rudolph. Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam. Princeton: Markus
Wiener, 1996.
59
Lecture 13 - Worshipping God

Read F.E. Peters Judaism, Christianity and Islam: The Works of the Spirit
Volume III, Chapter 1.
Introduction:
God requires public and formal worshipthats what liturgy meansand
despite some direct hints in Scripture, each community has interpreted that
requirement in sometimes similar, and sometimes very different ways.
Consider this . . .
1. What are the fundamental similarities in worship among the Monotheists?
2. What are the differences?
3. Why have the differences evolved?
The Protestant Reformation changed the forms of worship of God away
from a public institutionalized process into a private and individual
addressing of God. This private worship, while it exists in all three religions, has not been the fundamental type. Since these are religious communities, their formal worship has been public and often social.
A. Jewish Worship
1. Sacrifice as Worship
a. In the Torah, God specifically says how He wants to be worshiped.
This includes the time, place and most importantly the sacrifice. This is
the basic form of worship defined in the Bible.
b. The rohens or priests are appointed to handle this important aspect.
They had the important responsibility of going into the holy place and
dealing with holy things. God is high voltage, and these priests have
the perilous task of drawing close to the presence of God.
c. The priesthood is governed by very strict guidelines and prescribed
purity. Women are excluded because of their vulnerability to ritual
impurity like menstruation, which is an inevitable period of impurity.
LECTURE THIRTEEN
d. After David and Solomon built the temple a decree was issued in 621
that only at the temple in Jerusalem could a Jew offer a ritual sacrifice.
2. Prayer as Worship: Synagogue
a. After 70 CE, temple sacrifice is replaced with prayer as the chief
form of worship among Jews. Prayer is conducted in another building known as a synagogue. This institution may have been devised
during the Babylonian Exile. It existed side by side with the temple
from 520 BCE through the destruction of the temple in 70 CE.
60
CATHOLIC AND
PROTESTANT WORSHIP
The Protestant Reformation was an assault not only on the overwhelming authority of the papacy, but on the great mass of traditions that, the Reformers felt, were
nothing more than human accretions that had grown up around the simple witness
of Scripture. Among these latter were the Churchs seven sacraments, acts whose
performance won Gods saving grace. The Reformers thought that there was a
scriptural basis for only two of them, Baptism and the Eucharist, the latter of which
they preferred to call the Lords Supper.
Medieval Christian theology called the transformation of the bread and wine upon
the altar into the body and blood of Christ transubstantiation, whereby the two substances were changed even though their appearancestexture, taste, smell
remained that of bread and wine. The Reformers, who were suspicious of this kind of
theological reasoning and explanation, whose methods and terms were so remote
from Scripture, were not so sure. Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, the principal Reformers,
all had different views of what occurred in the Eucharistic liturgy, and their followers
still do. Catholics (Roman and Anglican) continue to adhere to some version of the
classical Eucharistic theology, but the Protestant Churches more or less regard the
Eucharist as commemoration rather than a reenactment, an act of personal faith
rather than an actual, though miraculous, transformation.
The ritual too was diminished by the Reform. From the beginning, the
Reformers objected to many of the ritualsand ritual trappings like statues,
music, incensewhich surrounded the Eucharist and other Christian rites. While
this opposition seemed to urge post-Reform Catholics to embrace ever more dramatic church rituals and styles, Protestant services became notable for their simplicity and sobriety.
61
After that time, there is no evidence of sacrifice; all worship takes

place in synagogues.
b. From that day to this, there has been and there will be one until the
temple is rebuilt, which most Jews associate with the coming of the
Messiah and the End Time.
c. Meanwhile, every Jew is required to pray three times a day and also
participate in community prayer on certain holy days.
B. Christian Worship
1. The Eucharist as Worship
a. The Eucharist was instituted by Jesus during what Christians call the
Last Supper. Jesus had called his disciples together the night he was
arrested to celebrate what is possibly a Passover seder.
b. Jesus takes bread and wine, blesses it and gives it to his disciples. He
says that the bread is his body and the wine is his blood and gives them to
his apostles to eat and drink. He says to do this in remembrance of him.
c. Christians continued to celebrate and reenact this event after his death
into modern times. The Eucharist is a basic form of Christian worship.
d. Christians also introduced the concept of Jesus as the High Priest
participating in the sacrificial meal of the Eucharist. The one standing
in for Jesus is the Christian priest (one who is presiding over this
sacrificial meal).
e. Christian priesthood is based on the Jewish priesthood and so also
excludes women.
2. The Mass as Worship
a. The Eucharist, which in the West is called the Mass, is very similar to
the Jewish synagogue service. It begins with a series of prayers. Then
there is the reading of scripture.
b. After this portion of the service, the Eucharist begins with the priest
transforming the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.
Then the participants partake of communion, sharing the body and
blood of Christ.
c. There are priests, bishops and deacons in the Christian community. A
bishop is the head of a Christian community, and now every bishop is a
priest. The priests central task is celebrating the Eucharist.
C. Islamic Worship
1. Prayer as Worship
LECTURE THIRTEEN
a. Islam represents a revolution in pagan Arab custom, substituting

prayer for sacrifice. Muslims are required to pray five times a day at
very specific times, though not in specific places.
b. A muezzin announces the time for prayer by giving a call to prayer
from a tower (minaret) attached to a mosque. Muslims must pray
toward Mecca.
c. The prayer takes about 20 minutes and includes passages from the
Quran and proscribed gestures and postures.
62
CHURCH, SYNAGOGUE, MOSQUE

The Jerusalem temple, while it stood, and the Christian church are functionally parallel structures. Both are sacred precincts within which God was worshiped, primarily through sacrifice; their principal furnishing is an altar and
their chief officer is a priest, a dedicated male whose function it is to offer the
sacrifice on behalf of the community of believers: animal sacrifice in the case
of the temple, the Eucharistic sacrifice in the church.
The synagogue and the mosque are even closer analogues and quite different from the temple-church complex, though there have been functional
exchanges between them since the early church services owed their form to
both synagogue and Temple. Both synagogue and mosque are essentially
assembly halls for prayer, places where the community can gather on occasion to worship together for prayer. A prominent piece of furniture is the pulpit
from which a homily/instruction is givenalso taken over by the churchand
their chief officer is a prayer-leader who can be, and often is, a layman. Often
there is also some provision for a purificatory ablution before prayer. And if the
church took over the ancestor of the pulpit from the synagogue, the mosque
borrowed the churchs belltower for its minaret.
The Protestant view of the Eucharist as a commemoration and not an actual
sacrifice has moved the Protestant church away from its temple prototype and
closer in function to the synagogue and mosque. Pre-Reform synagogues and
mosques, like the Jerusalem Temple and the early Christian churches, separate
men and women, and for the same traditional reasons: modesty and the problem
of ritual impurity. Reform synagogues and Christian churches have abandoned
the practice of segregation.
63
d. The noon prayer on Friday should be prayed in community in a mosque.

There is also a sermon on Fridays.
e. Women tend not to attend the mosque or, like their Jewish counterparts, pray in a special area reserved for them.
D. Other Forms of Worship
1. Holy Places and People
a. Some places are holy because Gods presence can be felt in them
or certain holy events have taken place in them. Jerusalem is such a
placeit is sanctified in Judaism as the focus on Gods presence
(shekina); in Christianity as the site of Jesus redemptive death and
resurrection; in Islam, as the place of Muhammeds night journey
and ascension.
b. Jesus death sanctified Jerusalem for the Christians. Constantine
enshrined the Holy places in Jerusalem. People begin to arrive in
Jerusalem to worship at these places, tracing the stations of the cross.
c. Islam accepts Jerusalem as a holy place because of the temple and
Muhammads night journey to the Temple Mount. But the primary holy
place of Islam is Mecca, not just because of Muhammad, but because
Abraham built the Kaba there and instituted the hijj. Muhammad came
to reinstitute the hijad in Mecca.
d. Every Muslim must make the Hijad at one time in their lives. It requires
a series of events done in certain places in and around Mecca and
includes a ritual sacrifice.
Royalty-Free/CORBIS
LECTURE THIRTEEN
Rainbow over Jerusalem
64
Consider
1. How did the idea of private, unstructured prayers begin?

2. Can Muslims, Jews, Protestants, and Catholics sit down to pray together?
3. What are the differences between God, Allah and Yahweh?
Suggested Reading
Peters, F.E. Judaism, Christianity and Islam: The Works of the Spirit. Volume
III. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Peters, F.E. The Monotheists, Volume II, Chapter 6. Princeton: Princeton
Dix, Dom Gregory. The Shape of the Liturgy. New York: The Seabury Press,
1981.
Idelsohn, A.Z. Jewish Liturgy and Its Development. New York: Dover
Publications, 1995.
Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley. Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York:
Random House, Inc., 1975.
Padwick, Constance. Muslim Devotions. London: One World Publications,
1996.
VonGrunebaum, G.E. Muhammed Festivals. London: Curton Press, 1981.
65
Lecture 14 - Reaching for God

Read F.E. Peters Judaism, Christianity and Islam: The Works of the Spirit,
Volume III, Chapters 3-6.
Introduction:
The believers will behold God in the Afterlifeor not: its called Hellbut some
among them thought they could begin the process here and now.
Consider this . . .
1. What are your own views on the Afterlife and how were they formed?
2. How do individuals see God in each of the three religions discussed?
3. How do modern Jews, Muslims and Christians see God?
Revelation is God reaching down to His creation. Whoever heeds Him
becomes part of His community. If God reaches down, what is their reaction?
Traditionally this is to try and live the way God wants. What God wants has
been interpreted through a series of lawyers, translators, etc. Observance and
Law has loomed large in this.
Others, however, have tried to reach God in other ways, intellectually through
study (theology) or intuitively through experience (mysticism).
There is an enormous problem in Gods transcendence, that is His existence
(outside the human dimension). All three religions have committed themselves
to the belief in Gods transcendence. How do you communicate with something
so totally other? There are two general approaches to reaching out to God.
A. Striving for God
1. The Ascent of the Mind: Theology
a. The Hellenes felt that human understanding could grasp God unaided.
Many Muslims, Christians and Jews feel that with study, Gods nature
can be understood.
b. Hellenism led to the creation of a sacred theology, which is an attempt
to illumine God through illuminating of the faith by rational means.
LECTURE FOURTEEN
c. Christianity is the only religion who has fully embraced theology as an

active pursuit. There have been Muslim and Jewish theologians, but
they have had no major impact on the faith of their communities.
d. Moses Maimonides, for example, was a Jewish theologian who wrote
several books on Judaism, attempting to reconcile religion and philosophy. Ghazal has done the same in Islam, but neither has had the influence as Thomas Aquinas had on Christianity.
2. The Ascent of the Spirit: Asceticism and Mysticism
66
ASCETICISM INSTITUTIONALIZED
Asceticism, the voluntary self-denial of legitimate pleasures for religious
ends, though it had its most profound appeal in Christianity. It has, however,
left its mark on Islam and, to a somewhat lesser extent on Judaism. From the
outset, Judaism had its own highly detailed legal and social mechanisms to
shield and separate the faithful from the surrounding paganism, while
Christianity, which was more exposed, had to construct its own psychological
carapace, which it did in the ascetic ideal: the holy man as world-denier. In
Islam, asceticism was likewise a prophylactic, in this instance against the
worldly success which it itself had created.
In all three communities like-minded adepts of self-denial band together not
merely from holy mimesis but for mutual support in what is a daunting exercise.
This drawing together had ended in a degree of institutionalization, particularly in
Christianity, the most structured and hierarchical of the three communities. In
Christianity, institutional asceticism is known as monasticism, associations of
men or women living in common under vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience
to the community superior and whose observance was governed, often down to
the slightest detail, by a formal and, in the West, a papally-approved rule. Islam
too had its ascetics, called Sufis, and despite a well-attested Prophetic report that
there is monasticism in Islam, Sufis soon enough lived in communities and
came together in larger associations called tariqas or brotherhoods.
The tariqas too shared a common life based on a rule which often went back to
the personal practice of a sainted founder, though without either the stringency,
the perpetual vows, or the control of the Christian monastic orders. A similar phenomenon is visible in the Hasidic associations of 18th and 19th century Eastern
Europe. These brotherhoods like the Lubovitchers and Satmars were given not
so much to asceticism as to a shared and personal vision of the Jewish life, and,
like their Christian and Muslim counterparts, they followed a kind of common regimen based on the lifestyle and practices of the founding tzaddiq or holy man,
and like monks and Sufis, wore distinctive clothes and had their own rituals.
67
a. Asceticism is the adoption of a lifestyle of self-denial and discipline for

religious ends. The end is often mysticism, that is, a direct experience
of God.
b. The problem is how to explain this face-to-face with God. Mystics, in
particular Christians and Muslims, have claimed to see God and been
misunderstood by others.
c. When a Christian mystic sees God he can see the man-God Jesus faceto-face. Muslims experience God as pure spirit which raises serious questions among other believers, often resulting in a loss of life for the mystic.
d. There are good paradigms for seeing God in all three religions.
i. Moses experiences God directly on Mount Sinai. He is in the presence of God but doesnt see his face. After these experiences,
Moses was said to glow.
ii. In Christianity, James, John and Peter get the chance to see Jesus
in his divine form in the event known as the transfiguration.
iii. In Islam, Muhammeds famous night journey takes him up through
seven heavens directly to the presence of God.
e. In order to see God, one normally follows a set procedure.
i. There is first a process of fasting or preparing through asceticism.
ii. The next step is bending the will, emptying the Ego.
f. Often the mystic experience in Christianity and Islam is described in
sexual or inebriation terms.
g. Jewish mysticism is defined more in terms of a journey. God is portrayed as the Absolute.
B. Reposing with God
1. The Afterlife
a. In the Bible when people die they go to Sheol, a place and time of
indeterminate existence. Ones existence was justified during life.
Gods justice was visited on the eighth and ninth generations. But
around the fifth to sixth centuries, the notion of the immortality of the
soul appears in Jewish writings.
b. By Jesus time, the Jews believe in the afterlife. Gods punishment will
now occur after life, in Hell or in Heaven, or in the Garden of Eden.
Islam also follows this same belief, saying that God lives in the seventh
heaven and that is where true believers will dwell with Him.
LECTURE FOURTEEN
c. All three religions believe that true believers will eventually see God
or else be removed from the presence of God and placed in Hell,
with pain for the body and soul.
d. Heaven has a variety of theological problems, how can one see the
face of God. What will the body be like, etc. Jews have some difficulty
with the fact that the afterlife is not mentioned in the Bible.
68
PRACTICAL SUFISM
The Sufis transport was, like the mystical experience of the Christian and the Jew,
a transient state, a brief exaltation into the presence of God. For some, it was a
unique and almost random event, but it is clear that in Islam many pious souls
aspired to this state, and they took well-defined and even scholastic steps to attain it.
The convert to Sufism was regarded as a mere novice and was placed under the
direction of a shaykh already accomplished in the spiritual life. At first that elder may
have simply been a skilled and experienced director of souls, but eventually that
ideal was replaced, as it was in Eastern Christianity, by the notion of a charismatic
guide, a spiritual father who possessed the gift of divine grace (baraka). For the
Muslim, no less than the Christian, progress through the stations began as a jihd,
a struggle against ones worldly inclinations that reflected the ascetic tradition of the
earliest Sufism. The shaykh led him through the stations by means of exercises like
the examination of conscience, meditation, and the constant repetition of the name of
God. Obedience was expected to be prompt and total.
The spiritual terrain that led from asceticism to the very presence of God was as
carefully mapped by Sufi theoreticians as it was by Christian mystical theologians. As
already noted, the Muslim masters formalized the Sufi path to the Absolute into a
series of stations, or stages of ascetical practice and self-control that were followed
in the more experienced and advanced Sufi by the states through which Gods
grace rather than the Sufis exertions guided the now purified soul upward toward
union with Himself. This well-charted landscape seems brightly lit and schematic, and
it is far more suggestive of theory rather than practice. The preserved Sufi biographies spiritual paths are far more erratic, however, the Muslim attestations of actual
mystical experiences are of a darker, more painful, and at the same time, more
ecstatic quality than the handbooks would lead us to expect.
The closest we come to the sense of actual experience of God is in the great body
of Sufi poetry, much of it in Persian, which has charmed, edified and inspired many
Muslims and perhaps has startled and even shocked almost as many more. To
experience God is to experience the ultimate Other. In Christianity, the person of
Jesus builds a human bridge between the finite and the Absolute, but there is no
such inviting passage in either Judaism or Islam. Jewish mystics by and large
turned prudently aside at that final moment, but Muslim mystics have been far more
daring in facing the experience and attempting to describe, if not explain, the ineffable.
69
2. The End Time

a. All three religions agree on the Final Judgement.
b. This is supposed to take place in the Valley of Kedron, between
Jerusalem and Mount Olivet. This also happens to be a place where
many dead of all religions are buried.
c. Several things will happen here:
i. On the last day, Muslims believe that the Kaba will be miraculously
transported to this place.
ii. The dead will rise here.
iii. All will be judged.
LECTURE FOURTEEN
THE ATTRACTIONS AND FEARS OF THE MILLENNIALISM

Johns Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, was crucial
in shaping Christian ideas and images of the coming Messianic Era. All
notions of an earthly return of Jesus or of the historical restoration of Israel,
which are still visible in the Gospels, were by now discarded. [The setting of
Jesus Second Coming is now cosmic in the style of the Jewish apocalypses,
with liberal borrowings from the visions of Daniel and Ezekiel.] According to
John, the Second Coming of Jesus the Messiah will mark the beginning of
the thousand-year (Lt. millennium) reign of Gods justice (Rev. 20:4), when,
as Daniel had said, his saints possess the kingdom (Dan. 7:22), and at
whose completion the world itself would come to an end. From the third century, the view began to prevail that Christs Incarnation might be the beginning of the Messianic Millennium, which meant that the clock for the End of
the World was indeed running.
The Church early on took note of such a speculative theological calculus,
dubbed chilianism (Gk. chilias, one thousand = Lt. millennium), and it was
forcefully condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431 CE. It did not put an
end, however, to the fascinatingly attractive notion of being able to figure out
Gods plan. By a very simple calculation, the year 1000 CE might very well
mark the end of the world. Many Christians believed that such would indeed
be the case, and the end of the first millennium of the Christian era was
marked by extraordinary manifestations of both piety and panic, from pious
depression to outright hysteria, from passive resignation to frantic means to
secure salvation at what was thought to be, quite literally, the eleventh hour
of the world.
The passage of that milestone year has not ended interest in the subject.
There have been new (revised) calculations and new predictions of the day
and the hour which no man knows, most recently, of course, the highly
provocative 2000 CE. So far, so good.
70
Consider
How can any monotheist attain God since God is so totally other?
Suggested Reading
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, Purgatorio,and
Paradiso. Allen Mandelbaum (trans.) New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium. New York: Oxford
Maimonides, Moses. The Guide for the Perplexed. M. Friedlander (trans.)
New York: Dover Publications, 1972.
Raphael, Simcha Paull, Jewish Views of the Afterlife. Northvale: Jason
Aronson, Inc., 1996.
Schimell, Annemarie. The Mystical Dimension of Islam. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1975.
Smith, Jane Idleman and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad. Islamic
Understanding of Death and Resurrection. Cambridge: Oxford
71
COURSE MATERIALS
Course Texts:
Bible, King James Version
Peters, F.E. Judaism, Christianity and Islam: From Covenant to
Community. Volume I. New York: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Peters, F.E. Judaism, Christainity and Islam: The World and the Law and the
People of God. Volume II. New York: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Peters, F.E. Judaism, Christianity and Islam: The Works of the Spirit.
Volume III. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Peters, F.E. The Monotheists: Jews, Christians and Muslims in Conflict
and Competition. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Other Books of Interest:

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, Purgatorio,and
Paradiso. Allen Mandelbaum (trans.) New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
Alter, Robert. The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2
Samuel. New York: Norton, 1999.
Armstrong, Karen. The Crusades and Their Impact on Todays World. New
York: Random House, Inc., 2001.
Christie-Murphy, David. A History of Heresy. Oxford: Oxford Unversity Press,
1976.
de Hamel, Christopher. The Book: A History of the Bible. Harrisburg:
Phaidon Press, Incorporated, 2001.
Duffy, Eamon. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes. New Haven: Yale
Eusebius, Pamphili, Andrew Louth (ed). The History of the Church from
Christ to Constantine. Penguin Classics. New York: Penguin USA, 1990.
COURSE MATERIALS
Feiler, Bruce. Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths. New

York: William Morrow, 2002.
Hirsch, Ammiel and Yaakov Yosef Reinman. One People, Two Worlds: A
Reform Rabbi and an Orthodox Rabbi Explore the Issues That Divide
Them. New York: Knopf Publishing Group, 2002.
Kaufmann, Y. The Religion of Israel. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1960.
Maimonides, Moses. The Guide for the Perplexed. M. Friedlander (trans.)
New York: Dover Publications, 1972.
Peters, Edward M. The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres
and Other Source Materials. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1998.
72
Other Books of Interest (contd):

Peters, F.E. Muhammad and the Origins of Islam. New York: State
University of New York, 1994.
Pickhall, Marmaduke William. The Meaning of the Glorious Koran: An
Explanatory Translation. (Everymans Library Edition). New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1992.
Sanders, E.P. The Historical Figure of Jesus. New York: Penguin, 1985.
Sells, Michael. Approaching the Quran: The Early Revelations. Ashland:
White Cloud Press, 1999.
Wilcken, Robert L. The Land Called Holy. New Haven: Yale, 1992.
Wilkinson, John. Jerusalem as Jesus Knew It. London: Thames & Hudson,
1978.
Call 1-(800)-636-3399 or visit www.modernscholar.com to order.
Audiobooks available for purchase or rental by mail.
Books on Audio:
Armstrong, Karen. A History of God: The 4000 Year Quest for Judaism,
Christianity and Islam. Abridged: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.
Armstrong, Karen. Islam: A Short History. Unabridged: Barnes & Noble Audio,
2001.
Feiler, Bruce S. Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths.
Unabridged: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002.
73

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ONE GOD, THREE FAITHS:

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

A BARNES & NOBLE AUDIO BOOK

by Recorded Books, LLC

This edition 2003 by Barnes & Noble Publishing

In the Beginning ............................................................6-9

The Israelite Experience....................................................10-15

From Israelite to Jew ........................................................16-20

Jesus of Nazareth: Teacher,

The Spread of Christianity ................................................24-28

Muhammad, Prophet of Mecca ........................................29-33

Muhammad, Lord of Medina ............................................34-37

The People of the Book:

Tradition and Law ............................................................42-45

Lecture 10 Defining the Community ....................................................46-50

About Your Professor F.E. Peters

Lecture 1 - In the Beginning

Before beginning this lecture you may want to . . .

THE HOLY LAND

The Bible does not define the

2. Ishmael, The First Heir

ABOUT THE KABA

b. Abrahams wife Sarah suggests that

The height of the Kaba is 39

e. But, this is not the end of Ishmaels

The small building known as

d. God formed another new covenant

FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING

Lecture 2 - The Israelite Experience

A. Isaac: The Son of Promise

Stone at the Dome of the Rock.

e. The Torah portion of the Bible

D. A Kingdom for Israel

Believed to embody the presence

a. The original loose confederation of

ISHMAELITES AND ARABS

become a great nation, as God had

and refraining from pork. True, the

more astonishingly, by his listeners.

Lecture 3 - From Israelite to Jew

Before beginning this lecture you may want to . . .

b. This resulted in diaspora or a dispersal or scattering of the Jewish

Model of the Second Temple Todd Bolen

Dome of the Rock Todd Bolen

THE SECOND TEMPLE IN JERUSALEM

2. Apocalyptic Despair and Messianic

NUMBER SYMBOLISM IN THE

FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING

www.templemount.org - a site highlighting the research of Tel Aviv Architect

Lecture 4 - Jesus of Nazareth: Teacher, Messiah, Redeemer

Before beginning this lecture you may want to . . .

c. Proof of this is indeed the resurrection of Jesus: a number of people

c. The material in the Gospels is presented to confirm that Jesus fulfilled

WHO WAS JOSEPHUS?

FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING

Lecture 5 - The Spread of Christianity

Before beginning this lecture you may want to . . .

A. The Parting of the Ways

f. Then Saul is converted after a personal experience of Jesus and

No one was sure of the date

THE VIRGIN MARY

a. At one point in his life, Constantine

2. Constantine: the Emperor Becomes