Download Five Major World Religions

Five Major World Religions
Culture and Society
Judaism
Symbol
Represents the 6 days of creation
Location
Middle East (Modern day Iraq)
Structure
Synagogue (attended on Saturday)
Figure
Abraham
Holy Book
Tanakh
Torah (1st 5 books of the Bible), Nevi’im (prophets), and Ketuvim (rabbi’s teachings)
Beliefs
One God (Yahweh)/Waiting for the Messiah
Obey the laws in the Tanakh
Believe in Heaven and Hell
“I will insist that the Hebrews have done
more to civilize men than any other nation
... fate had ordained the Jews to be the
most essential instrument for civilizing the
nations.”
(John Adams, 2nd president of the United States)
Is it really possible that our moral values do not originate in one of the great
civilizations but have been bequeathed to us by a small, otherwise insignificant
nation inhabiting a tiny piece of real estate in the Middle East?
I venture to say that the ancient Hebrews (who later came to be known as the
Israelites and still later as the Jews) would have disagreed with the statements of
Adams above. They would have insisted that they had nothing personally to do
with inventing the values which ran against the grain of the world around them,
and indeed were totally unknown to other peoples. They would have insisted that
these values came from God, and they were merely the people chosen to
disseminate them worldwide.
This was the story they told from the time they appeared on the world scene
around 1300 BCE, hundreds of years before the ascent of the Greek civilization.
Back then, they were still a newly emerging nation that functioned more like a
large extended family, all family members tracing their ancestry to a man named
Abraham who had lived somewhere around 1,800 BCE.
They were a strange people with an even stranger religion:
They believed in only one God—all-powerful, infinite, and invisible—who had
created everything known to man, a notion totally foreign to every ancient
people that preceded them.
They claimed that all of them—some 600,000 men and untold number of
women and children—had miraculously escaped from slavery in Egypt, then
the mightiest empire on earth, through the miraculous intervention of their God.
They claimed that after their great escape, they reached a mountain in the
wilderness, Mt. Sinai, where they all had an encounter with God; during that
encounter, and through the person of their leader Moses, they supposedly
received a code of behavior—compiled in a holy book known as the “Torah”—
which they scrupulously followed.
It was a story bound to raise more than a few eyebrows in the ancient world. Of
course, the ancient people believed all sorts of wild things about divine relationships
with human beings, so the Jews’ story was not in itself all that outlandish. Nor was a
society governed by laws so strange, after all, previous law codes, the Code of
Hammurabi being the most famous, set forth rules governing property rights and the
like. What the ancient world couldn’t fathom was this particular code. Indeed, it was a
code that to the ancient mind seemed irrational.
“The Jews are distinguished from the rest of mankind in practically every detail of life,” wrote Roman philosopher
Deo Cassius, expressing his disapproval. “In particular ... they do not honor any of the usual gods, but show
extreme reverence to only one God.”
Part of that “extreme” reverence translated into following that God’s law, a law which
could not be altered as was convenient. It was an absolute, God-given standard, and
by that fact alone it stood apart from any law of any other society.
But there was more about the Jews that was strange, besides their God and their law.
The Torah—or the Biblos as the Greeks would call it—was like no holy book of any
people before or since, in yet another way. It made the Jews look bad. In it, they are
shown as shirkers and complainers, often sinning against their own God and His law.
And yet they insisted that they needed to carry around with them the history of their
failures as well as their successes in order never to lose sight of their mission to
elevate humanity.
Christianity
Symbol
The cross on which Jesus died.
Largest religion in the world with approximately 2 billion followers
Location
Middle East
Structure
Church or Cathedral (attended on Sunday)
Figure
Jesus
Holy Book
Bible
Beliefs
One God (Yahweh)
Jesus, his son, died and rose again for the sins of mankind
ISLAM
Symbol
Ottoman Empire
2nd largest religion in the world with approximately 1.3 billion followers
Location
Saudi Arabia (A country in the Middle East)
Structure
Mosque (attended on Friday)
Figure
Muhammad
Holy Book
Koran (Also spelled Qur'an)
Beliefs
One God (Allah)
Good is weighed against the Bad to go to Paradise
JUDAISM
CHRISTIANITY
ISLAM
Symbol
Location
Middle East
Middle East
Saudi Arabia
Structure
Synagogue
Church or Cathedral
Mosque
Figure
Abraham
Jesus
Muhammad
Holy Book
Tanakh
Bible
Koran
(A country in the Middle East)
(Also spelled Qur'an)
Torah
Prophets
Writings
Beliefs
One God (Yahweh)
Waiting for the Messiah
Follow the Laws of the Tanakh
One God (Yahweh)
Jesus, his son, died and rose
again for the sins of man
One God (Allah)
Good is weighed
against the Bad
Hinduism
Symbol
Universal Symbol
Location
India
Structure
Hindu Temple or Home Shrine
Figure
Brahman is The Great Power
Thousands of gods that represent the characteristics of Brahman
Holy Book
Vedas, Upanishads, Sutras, Bhagavad Gita
Beliefs
Karma – One’s moral actions have effects on future
reincarnation (You can break out of the cycle and live in a spirit realm
temporarily until your Karma has been used up.)
Buddhism
8 Fold Path
Symbol
Location
India
Structure
Buddhist Temple/Stupas
Figure
Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha)
Holy Book
Pali and Sanskrit Canon
Beliefs
Reincarnation in the hopes of Nirvana (permanent paradise)
Life’s purpose is to end suffering
HINDUISM
BUDDHISM
Symbol
Location
India
Structure
Hindu Temple or Home Buddhist Temple
Shrine
Stupa
Figure
Brahman is The Great
Power
Thousands of
gods/goddesses
Siddhartha Gautama
(The Buddha)
Holy Book
Vedas
Upanishads
Four Noble Truths
Eightfold Path
Beliefs
Reincarnation
Karma
Dharma
Reincarnation
Nirvana
(This religion is very much
part of their caste system.)
India
(Spread to China through the
Silk Road)
Resources
• http://www.religionfacts.com/
• http://www.religionfacts.com/islam/comparison_cha
rts/islam_judaism_christianity.htm
• CCMS Library
– Religions of the World
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Buddhism
Christianity
Hinduism
Islam
Judaism