Religions of the World Jesus/Mohammed

Two thousand years produce lie with and gone, but still they remain the unfinished story that ref exercises to go away. deliveryman of Nazareth, a Jew from rural first-century Galilee, and Mohammed from Mecca are with bulge out doubt the close famous and most influential human existences who ever walked the face of the earth. Their influence may at present be declining in a few guessries of Western europium and parts of North America, as has from time to time transpired elsewhere.But the global fact is that the adherents of messiah and Mohammed are much widespread and more numerous, and make up a greater part of the worlds population, than at any time in history. Two billion lot identify themselves as Christians well all over a billion Muslims revere saviour as a visionary of God (Freedman 2001). Unnumbered other(a)s identify themselves as know and respect his reminiscence as a wise and holy man. This tend begins with tracing the lives of savior and Mohammed his toricalally. Then it deals with different aspects of the practice and the teaching of the Nazarene and Mohammed. How their messold periods are being carried out in the world to daylight will be considered in the conclusion.The personality of Mohammed clay obscure in spite of his sayings and the many legends around him. There have been almost as many theories about the illusionist as there are biographers. According to tradition, he was born in A.D. 570, about five years after the death of Justinian, into a cadet branch of one of the leading families of Mecca. His father died before Mohammed was born, and his mother died when he was still a small child. First his grandfather, then an uncle, who was in the gear trade, reared him.As a youth in the busy center of Mecca he likely learned to read and write enough to keep commercial accounts he also heard Judaic and Christian teachers and early became interested in their religious ideas. Mohammed must have suffered, in these early years, from hardships, and he ostensibly became aware of the misery of many of his fellowwork force. These early experiences were later to be the floor of his fervent denunciations of social injustice. At the age of twenty-five, he married a wealthy widow and probably went on some long power train trips, at least to Syria.This gave him further contacts with Jewish, Christian, and Persian religious teachers. At the age of forty, after spending much time in fasting and sole(a) meditation, he heard a voice calling him to pro say the uniqueness and power of Allah. Mohammed seemingly did non, at first, conceive of himself as the conscious sermonizer of a late religion. It was only the opposition from those about him at Mecca that cloud him on to set up a new religious supplyeration with distinctive doctrines and institutions. In 632 Mohammed died, the last of all the founders of great world religions.Little is cognise of the early life of deliverer Christ. Born a few years b efore the year 1 A. D. in Bethlehem of Judaea, he lived in Nazareth, a city of Galilee, until he was about thirty years of age. We have no reason to doubt the tradition that after the death of Joseph, the head of the family, savior became the main support of Mary and the younger children. He worked at his trade, that of a carpenter, and lived the life which would be expected of a religiously-minded young Hebrew.At about the age of thirty the Nazarene suddenly appeared at the Jordan, where John, a cousin of his, was do the rite of baptism on those who came professing a desire to amend their ship canal and live better lives. Jesus also came and, against the scruples of John, who saw that Jesus was in different case from the others, was baptized. It marked a turning-point, for with the outward ritual act came an inner spiritual experience of indistinct significance for Jesus. A voice assured him that he was in a unique instinct his Fathers beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased (Borg 1997). It seems to have been the proceeding of his thought and prayer and eager yearning for many years.He had received his divine revelation he would proclaim God as a Father and men as his sons. He was filled with a sense of mission, of having a work to do and a message to deliver, which to the end of his life did non parting him for a moment. He went from place to place in Palestine lecture in the synagogues and out-of-door places wherever the people congregated, and talking to individuals and to groups as they came to him with their questions and problems. He began to gather about him a fine company of disciples, which soon grew to 12 and which accompanied him on all his journeys.He spent much time in giving them instruction and on several occasions sent them out to heal and to preach. Jesus came to establish a kingdom, and this was the burden of his message. But he never forgot that the form of the Kingdom and many things connected with its coming were of lesser sig nificance than the inner meaning and the principles on which it was based. The first of these was mans relationship with God.Jesus was not only a teacher he was a worker of miracles. The gospel truth tell us that he cured the sick, opened the eyes of the blind, fed the hungry, stilled the storm, and unconstipated raised the dead. Much was made of these wonders by former generations of Christians, who employ them as proofs of the divine character of the One who performed them. Such use of these incidents does not produce the effect it once did and is being discarded.A closer study of the strength of Jesus toward his declare miraculous power clearly indicates that he minimize its significance. He would have men secure a better persuasion and realize that moral power was on a higher direct than the ability to work marvels. With this in view it scarcely seems congruous to use the miracles in a way which could scarcely be acceptable to Jesus himself. But of all the impressions Jesu s made the strongest was that he was in spook with God his Father and that this was the explanation of all the wonderful things about him.Jesus, however, was not only winning followers and bringing them close to God he had come into collision with the religious authorities of his people, and in the end disconnected his life at their hands. They were formalists and as such had not averted the danger of losing persuasion of the vital principles of their religion. Jesus was an innovator, and felt free to act in accord with the inner spirit of the old precepts even when by doing so he ran counter to the letter of the law.When Jesus appeared in Jerusalem at the gap of the Passover, He was seized and, after having had a preliminary hearing before the Jewish high priest and Sanhedrin, was taken before Pontius Pilate, the papistical procurator, and was condemned to death. He was crucified, together with two criminals, and died at the end of six hours agony on the cross. His carcass was taken down by friends in the early evening and fit(p) in a rock-hewn tomb. The hopes of his disciples were dashed to the ground, and undoubtedly the Jewish leaders and the Roman authorities thought they had rid themselves of an exceedingly troublesome creature (Allen 1998).But such was not to be, for a very remarkable thing happened the triplet day after. To the utter amazement of his disciples, who had not recovered from the paralyzing effect of their grief and disappointment, Jesus appeared to them so unmistakably that they were convinced that death had not been able to ready its victim and that Jesus was alive.Their new enthusiasm, the founding of the Christian Church on the assurance of the presence of the living Christ, the adoption of the first day of the workweek as a memorial of the day when Jesus reappeared alive -all these historic facts bear witness to the genuineness of the disciples testimony that the similar Jesus who had journeyed with them, who had died and had been situated away in the tomb, was raised from the dead, their living Master forevermore. They immediately went out to preach the gospel of the resurrection, and with that the history of the Christian Church was begun.Mohammeds teaching, from the beginning, shows strong Jewish and Christian influence. Mohammed learned the great stories of the Old Testament especially was he impressed with the life of Abraham whom he later considered one of his own predecessors and who he claimed had founded the Ka bah at Mecca. He, likewise, learned of the Christian Trinity whom he understood to be God the Father, Mary the Mother, and Jesus the Son.He was looking for common ground on which to found a faith for all monotheists. He had a profound respect for Jews and Christians, especially for the Jews, though when they refused to join him and when later they thwarted him, he attacked them fiercely. Mohammed took from Jewish, Christian, and also Persian teaching only what he wanted, and he com bine all he borrowed in a set of ideas that always aegir his own mark. In the Koran, for example, he uses the characters of the Bible as successful advocates in the past of the doctrines of Mohammed in the present. Mohammed called the Jews and the Christians the People of the Book, and he came to believe himself called to give his own people, the Arabs, a book.Soon after Mohammeds death in 632, a wave of advantage gathered in all of Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and part of Persia. In less than a century all of North Africa, Spain, Asia Minor, and Central Asia to the Indus River were swept by the contain armies of Islam. These conquests were as orderly as they were speedy little damage seems to have been done, and immediately after the Arab armies entered an area they organized it. The Arab annexation, at first, meant little more than a change of rulers.Life and social institutions went on as before with little interference and no forced conversions the conquered peoples could even keep their own religion by paying a tax. The Arab colonies planted in each new territory became the centers from which Islamic religious ideas spread and in which, at the same time, a new culture developed. Not until the new peoples, like the Seljuks, who were after-school(prenominal) the Graeco-Roman tradition, were converted to Mohammedanism did Islam become fanatical. Indeed, no such militant bigotry as characterized the Christian attack on paganism was normally shown by the Mohammedans until into the eleventh century.The reasons for these fantastic conquests were various. To his own people, especially to the desert tribes, Mohammed offered war and booty, and to those who lived in the Arab towns he offered the extension of commerce. Caravans travelled in the midst of the Muslim armies. For those who died, Islam promised a glowing paradise. One drop of blood shed in battle, even a single night spent under arms would count for more than two months of prayer or fasting.Chris tianity and Islam have, like every other religion, developed their own mythology. These mythologies are at its height in the picturesque imagery that centers around the festivals of Christmas, Easter and Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Adha (Eid or Id means festival). Indeed, there is right away a rediscovery of the value of myth in human life. Today Christianity and Islam endure a good framework for the religious life. Some people, possibly separate of people, would claim that if Jesus and Mohammed were wrong, they can no longer be relevant. That claim can probably be disputed on theological grounds (Freedman 2001).The remarkable footprint of Jesus and Mohammed in history has strangely contradictory implications for an bring with them today. On the one hand, it means that a true and adequate grounds of the men remains a vital task, even as third millennium has dawned. Just as in the first century Jesus was embraced as Saviour of the world by Jews and Gentiles excluded from religious and political power, so today he is welcomed above all by ordinary, poor and marginalised people in the west and the east, and especially in the South. Like Paul, they see him, Gods gospel, as having the power to liberate them from sin, their personal sins, the socio-political, cultural and structural sins of their nations, cultures and churches and the unjust sparing and technological structures of the so-called global village.At least in the western world, it remains true that we can understand neither Christian faith nor much of the world around us if we do not come to toll with Jesus of Nazareth and the two millennia of engagement with his heritage. The followers of Jesus and Mohammed live in every country of the globe. They read and speak of these people in a thousand tongues. For them, the worlds creation and destiny hold together in their gods, the exclusively human and visible icon of the wholly transcendent and invisible God. Jesus and Mohammed animate their cultures, c reeds and aspirations.ReferencesAllen, Charlotte. (1998).The human Christ the search for the historical Jesus. Oxford Lion.Borg, Marcus J., ed. (1997). Jesus at 2000. Boulder Westview Press.Freedman, David Noel. (2001). The Rivers of Paradise Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad as Religious Founders. Eerdmans Grand Rapids, MI.