The Three Abrahamic Religions

Originally posted by RJHinds
It only matters to the one believing in the Truth.

Those who believe they have the Ultimate Truth in their hand are far from it.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Even atheists profess to know the truth. Evolutionists profess to know the truth. However, there is only One that claims to be "the Truth". Now, do you understand what I mean?

There are no atheists in the analogy. There is no issue of "evolution" in the analogy. All three groups in the analogy claim to know "the Truth". There are countless threads on which you can claim to know what "the Truth" is and you can even start countless threads on which you can claim to know what "the Truth" is. This one, though, is about an attempted analogy to get at the commonality shared by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. If the topic's not one you fancy,don't feel you have to post. 🙂

Originally posted by FMF
There are no atheists in the analogy. There is no issue of "evolution" in the analogy. All three groups in the analogy claim to know "the Truth". There are countless threads on which you can claim to know what "the Truth" is and you can even start countless threads on which you can claim to know what "the Truth" is. This one, though, is about an attempted analog ...[text shortened]... udaism, Christianity and Islam. If the topic's not one you fancy,don't feel you have to post. 🙂

You always did have trouble understanding other peoples ideas.

Originally posted by RJHinds
You always did have trouble understanding other peoples ideas.

Not at all. It's you who is having trouble understanding the idea in the OP.

Do you have an alternative analogy you could offer?

Originally posted by FMF
Not at all. It's you who is having trouble understanding the idea in the OP.

Do you have an alternative analogy you could offer?

You haven't changed a bit.

Originally posted by RJHinds
You haven't changed a bit.

That's right. I start threads that invite people to discuss a particular topic. And I never start them with YouTube links!

So, do you have an alternative analogy you could offer that puts a finger on the Abrahamic commonality and does so better than the one in the OP?

Originally posted by FMF
There are no atheists in the analogy. There is no issue of "evolution" in the analogy. All three groups in the analogy claim to know "the Truth".

Come to think of it, you could actually expand your analogy to cast a wider net.

For example:

Observer 4: There is no moon! It's all a big illusion (Delusion!).
CJ: But what about the guys who walked on the moon and actually brought back rocks?
O 4: That was all smoke and mirrors! There is no proof anybody ever landed on the moon, it was done by Hollywood in the Nevada desert!

or

Observer 5: The moon is made of cream cheese!
CJ: How can you tell? Have you ever been there?
O 5: No, my nanny told me when I was small, and I believe her!

Observer 6: The moon is actually a large spy-in-the-sky put there by NIA to watch our every move. Big Brother is watching!

Etc etc 😵

Originally posted by CalJust
Come to think of it, you could actually expand your analogy to cast a wider net.

For example:

Observer 4: There is no moon! It's all a big illusion (Delusion!).

Ah yes, Observer 4's "There is no moon!" being an atheist position.

The atheist position [in a cosmogenic analogy!] would work better with black holes.

"There are no black holes; show me a black hole!"

Cue detailed calculations and formulas from Blackholists ...

Originally posted by FMF

Yes, but if you understand the analogy, you will see that there are three groups who profess to know "the Truth". Do you recognize any commonality between the three Abrahamic religions?

Yes.

Abraham was the man (Abram) to whom the God of glory appeared made promises to, including that he would be the father of many nations. And God said through him all the families of the earth would be blessed.

The coming on the scene of Abraham is at a crucial point. God created a race of human beings headed by Adam. We will call that the Adamic race. God tried and tried to work with the Adamic race. The flood represented his final judging of the race of men headed by the Adamic race. We may also call this the created race.

Finally after the flood around the time of the tower of Babel, God gave up working with the Adamic race, the created race. God commenced to secure for Himself a new race, so to speak - a CALLED race. The head of this race was Abram who became Abraham.

The created race was headed by Adam and Eve.
The CALLED race was headed by Abraham am Sarah.

Abraham is the man whom the God of glory appeared to around the time after the Tower of Babel when God began a new operation to regain the created, the created world. He worked through a new race we may call the called race. It head was Abraham.

The Old Covenant Judaism owes its roots to Abraham.
The New Covenant Christian Church owes its roots to Abraham via Judaism.

Islam owes its beginnings to Abraham mainly through Abraham's son Ishmael, the son Abraham had in his own ingenuity to "help" God keep His promise.

But the son which God promised and made was Isaac.

Through Isaac there was a law giver - Moses and thus an old covenant of justification through law keeping.

In my opinion the tension between the son given miraculously by God - Isaac and the son obtained by Abraham's natural effort to "help" God - "Ishmael" flowered out into the competition between the Jewish tribes and the Arab tribes.

The mother of Ishmael, Hagar, IMO, instilled into her little boy something like this -

"Son, don't you ever forget. Your father was the prophet Abraham. Your father Abraham the prophet had you through me, Hagar the Egyptian maid of Sarah. You are the son of the prophet Abraham."

Something like this, I think, that woman put into her son and it transmitted down and down and down through the descendents of Ishmael. And to this day there is a intense tension between the descendents of Abraham through Isaac and the descendents of Abraham through Ishamael.

In my opinion eventually the descendents of Ishmael obtained for themselves their own kind of law giver from God - the false prophet Mohammed. In my opinion - Mohammed is the Arabic pseudo Moses.

I may not have all of this exactly right. But I think I have a piece of it right. We have to remember that God did promise also to bless Ishmael, perhaps because he was the son of the prophet Abraham and it was really not the fault of Hagar that Abraham concocted the wrong headed plot to "help" God keep his promise by going into his slave woman Hagar.

For sure Hagar never forgot it and probably instilled into her little boy Ishmael that he was the son of the prophet Abraham. Perhaps she instilled into him that he was the REAL fulfillment of the promise of God to Abraham for a seed and a land.

It is assumed that some readers are aware of God's promises to bless Isaac. Here is the lesser known passage where God says He will not completely leave Ishmael out of the blessing benefit:

"And God heard the voice of the boy [Ishmael]. And the Angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven and said to her, What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.

Rise up; lift up the boy, and hold him with your hand, for I will make him a great nation. .. And God was with the boy [Ishmael], and he grew. And he dwelt in the wilderness and became an archer." (Gen. 21:17,18,20 (See chapter 21 of Genesis).

His mother took a wife for him out of Egypt. She put something into that boy which I think went through all his family after him as a sense of divine mission or competition with the descendents of his brother Isaac.

Originally posted by sonship

[b]Yes, but if you understand the analogy, you will see that there are three groups who profess to know "the Truth". Do you recognize any commonality between the three Abrahamic religions?

Yes.

Abraham was the man (Abram) to whom the God of glory appeared made promises to, including that he would be the father of many nations. A ...[text shortened]... after him as a sense of divine mission or competition with the descendents of his brother Isaac.[/b]

After Sarah died, Abraham took another wife and had 6 more children.

Originally posted by RJHinds
After Sarah died, Abraham took another wife and had 6 more children.

That is right. Keturah, his wife of his oldest age, after the death of Sarah. Not much of anything is said about her.

Sarah, was the main wife of God's promise and Isaac was the son of God's promise.

I think perhaps Abraham still had some spiritual immaturity when he died.

Originally posted by sonship
That is right. Keturah, his wife of his oldest age, after the death of Sarah. Not much of anything is said about her.

Sarah, was the main wife of God's promise and Isaac was the son of God's promise.

I think perhaps Abraham still had some spiritual immaturity when he died.

Jews and Arabs Share Recent Ancestry

http://news.sciencemag.org/2000/10/jews-and-arabs-share-recent-ancestry

Abraham's sons Isaac and Ishmael had different mothers. Whereas, the sons of Isaac, Jacob and Esau were twins. In each case the mother of the younger son was instrumental in displacing the elder as the the bearer of Israelite-Jewish tradition.

In post-biblical Jewish tradition, Ishmael is the ancestor of the Arabs. However, the relationship of the Jews with the Ishmaelites were rather distant and usually not hostile, hostility was the norm between Judeans and Edomites from the time of the Exodus until the forced conversion of the Edomites, by then called Idumeans, to Judaism in 125 BC.

Genesis 36 verse 8 states that Esau is the ancestor of Edom. During the Exodus, the Edomites, who occupied what is now western Jordan south of the Dead Sea and the Negev south of Arad and Beer Sheba, refused the Israelites passage through their territory in spite of Israelite promises of good behaviour. With the establishment of the Davidic Judean monarchy, whenever possible, the Judean kings held Edom, or when necessary reconquered it.

http://focusonjerusalem.com/TheRootsoftheIsraeli-ArabConflict.htm

Perhaps, those living in Palestine now are actually more related to Esau than to Ishmael because after Jacob stole Esau's blessing from their father Isaac, Esau pleaded for his father to also give him a blessing and the following is that blessing:

Then Isaac his father answered and said to him:

“Behold, your dwelling shall be of the fatness of the earth,
And of the dew of heaven from above.
By your sword you shall live,
And you shall serve your brother;
And it shall come to pass, when you become restless,
That you shall break his yoke from your neck.”

So Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him, and Esau said in his heart, “The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then I will kill my brother Jacob.”

(Genesis 27:39-41 NKJV)

Originally posted by FMF
Ah yes, Observer 4's "There is no moon!" being an atheist position.

The atheist position [in a cosmogenic analogy!] would work better with black holes.

Well, no, I submit your moon analogy works just fine.

There ARE some people who have walked on the moon, whereas nobody has touched or walked on a black hole.

Yet there are still some people who say: There is no moon!

Originally posted by CalJust
Yet there are still some people who say: There is no moon!

I think atheists in the real world have a stronger case than people in my OP world who say there is no moon! But of course, religionists would probably beg to differ! 😀

Originally posted by CalJust
Yet there are still some people who say: There is no moon out tonight!

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