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Abrahamic Religion

Abraham - 1900 BCE
- Considered to be the father of the three main western religions :Islam, Judaism, and Christianity
- He was an exile from that left Ur in Sumer for Palestine
  - Abraham and his wife, in old age, are looking to have a child, but they weren't able to. However, his wife Sarah told him to impregnate her slave girl, Hagar. The son's name is Ishmael.
  - Later, his wife Sarah gets pregnant (at 90 yrs old) and gives birth to Isaac.
  - From here, Muslims say Ishmael is where the lineage lies, while Jews and Christians think it's Isaac.
    - Depending on the religion, the favored son is taken by Abraham and is about to be sacrificed to God, but at the last minute God says to Stop.
  - Isaac gives birth to Jacob and Jacob has a favored son called Joseph
    - Joseph is sold to slavery by his jealous brothers into Egypt
    - That's how we got Jews in Egypt
- Torah - the first five books of the Bible, but a Jewish book of Gospel that consists of the "Old Testament"
Judaism
- Hebrew religion
  - Hebrew is a term that predates Judaism
    - Hebrew is the term of the peoples that turned into "Jews"
    - In the beginning, though, they were far from what we know as Jews today
      - They were polytheistic and tribal
      - They were taught to believe in God, but often strayed from that mindset and needed constant reminders
- Bodily resurrection
  - Appears in Hebrew writing around 550 BCE
    - Around the time Babylonia becomes part of the Persian empire
  - There is a Hebrew prophet named Ezekiel who has a vision where he sees a vast plain full of dry bones
    - God tells Ezekiel to announce their resurrection and they assemble
    - God tells him to order wind to breathe life into them
    - God then commands him to have them return to their homeland
    - This vast plain full of dry bones describes a Zoroastrian graveyard
  - This is a literal interpretation of resurrection, where the bodies are only there to go to Judah and rebuild the temple
- Around the time of this, Hebrews started to think that the Hebrews as a nation wasn't as important to God as individual religious people are
  - Possibly influenced by Zoroastrian teachings
  - They thought that there was a post mortem reward for a good life
- There are now two trains of thought
  - Highly political group who believed the nation as a whole is responsible
  - Group who believed in God rewarding individuals
- An idea started popping up around this time that the resurrection referred to the soul instead of the body
- The Exodus (Story of Moses) - c. 1200 BCE
  - Moses was the law giver of his people, a prophet, and one of the most famous Hebrews of all history
  - There is no evidence outside of the Bible of Moses's existence or Hebrew slaves in Egypt
  - The earliest mention of the Hebrews as a nation was not the Bible, but off of a monument called a stele (like a monolith)
    - 10 ft high, made of black granite, and a Pharoah who is boasting "Israel is laid waste, his seed is no more"
    - Egypt was the overlord of Canaan /Palestine around 1500-1200 BCE
      - Egyptian rule was harsh here and misfits in Canaan were brought into Egypt as slaves
  - Moses' biggest problem is trying to take a group of tribal people and make a nation out of them, leading them to Canaan.
    - However, Canaan was already occupied and the only way they could make room for themselves is to kill off everybody else
    - Hebrews originally weren't monotheistic. They were polytheistic, but were constantly warned there was only one Hebrew god.
  - The Hebrews left Egypt a mixed people
    - They were supposed to avoid integration with other peoples
      - This was a big rule, because their separateness is what would hold them together when they were carried off into exile
      - It also prevented them from finding other gods
    - When they reached Canaan, they were supposed to destroy all other foreigners, but they didn't kill all the other Canaanites and some were intermarried.
  - This land of Canaan was the Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates
    - The North would become the Hebrew kingdom of Israel
    - The South would become the Hebrew kingdom of Judah
- Israel - c. 1000 BCE
  - Hebrews in the land of Canaan look for a king, ready to start a nation
  - The first king is pretty much a huge, hulking guy
    - Hebrew kings were not absolute, divine rulers
      - They had several powers checked by tribes to keep them in line
      - The king had to constantly make political maneuvers around the tribes
  - King David
    - They officially became a national entity under their second king, David
      - His dynasty is the longest running dynasty ever in the west
      - David conquers a city and makes it his capital, Jerusalem
      - Conquering a city, he acquired a city without affiliating it with any specific tribe
        
        He also created a standing army, instead of calling upon separate tribal armies to help him.
      - He appointed two chief priests;
        
        One from the north (Aaron's family) and one from the south (Moses' family)
        
        This creates the two different types of Jews: Sephardic (Jews from Spain) and Ashkenazi (Jews from Germany)
    - We know about David and his personal life from:
      - The Bible
      - Court histories
        
        What's unique about David's court histories is that his criticize him
- King Solomon
  - One of David's sons
  - He was the one who brought down David's empire
  - He was famous for his wisdom and the creation of the First Temple of the Israelites in Jerusalem, but he was responsible for bringing down David's empire with his bad financial management
    - Favored the south over the northern territories, even though the north was equal population-wise
      - He favored the south because that's where he lived and where his tribe came from
    - When he died, his son Rehoboam took over
      - The north traveled to Rehoboam in the southern part of the empire and asked if he would continue his father's policies.
      - When he said yes, the north seceded. This is how we got two different nations
    - The north was the kingdom of Israel, the south is the kingdom of Judah
- Solomon's Temple and Ark of the Covenant
  - The Ark is a sacred container in which the Ten Commandments are held
    - Created by Moses upon Mt. Sinai
    - There is a seat on top of the Ark, called the Mercy Seat
      - Throne for the Hebrew God
    - Represented the cohesiveness and power of the Hebrews
  - Housed in the temple of Solomon
  - Wiki it
- Assyria - 722 BCE
  - As the Hebrew empire was being split into two kingdoms, the Assyrians moved in
    - They were a major military nation known for their chariots
  - Destroyed the kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE
  - The kingdom of Judah holds out by paying bribes and thus keeps their independence
  - Assyrians are conquered by the Neo Babylonians
- Neo Babylonians - 586 BCE
  - Destroyed the kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE, as well as conquered the Assyrians years earlier
  - Their king is known as Nebuchadnezzarel
    - He is seen as an evil character to the Hebrews because he totally levels Judah, including Solomon's 300 year old temple (read the Exodus and the lineage of kings involved with the temple) and raiding the vaults.
    - After they defeat the Hebrews, they chain up the Hebrews' exiles/best and take them into captivity
      - This is known as "Babylonian Captivity"
      - This is also called the Diaspora (The Dispersal of the Jews)
      - This is where they start saying Jews instead of Hebrews (because they come from Judah)
      - The Jews who had been carted to Babylon stayed there for generations
  - The Jews are allowed to go back in 536 BCE, but most do not return because they like it where they're at
    - The Babylonians did not allow this…they had already been conquered by the Persians.
- Persia
  - Ruled by Cyrus
    - Claimed that any Jew that wanted to return to Jerusalem was allowed to do so, after he conquered Neo Babylon
    - He didn't do it because he was a good guy, he did it because he wanted somebody to occupy the borderlands of his empire
    - Most of the Jews that returned to Jerusalem went there to rebuild their temple funded partly by the Persians, around 520 BCE
- Different Hebrew sects
  - Sadducees didn't believe in an afterlife
    - Were friendly with other empires because they didn't want their Judea torn apart
  - Pharisees believed in a resurrection
    - Hoped for a reestablishment of the Judean state
    - Mainly scholars who interpreted Jewish law
    - Believed the reestablishment would only happen if everybody followed the law to the letter
  - Essenes believed in an immortal soul and an Earthly kingdom w/ a Jewish messiah
    - Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls
    - Withdrew from the rest of the Hebrews because they believed the others had disgrace the temple
- The Torah
  - The first five books of the Old Testament
    - Took 600 years to put the Torah together: 1000-400 BCE
  - Torah means instruction/teaching
  - Early Christian tradition says that Moses wrote the Torah, but it was written way after he was dead
  - There are five different traditions/authors
    - The most prominent theory on the origin of the Torah says there were multiple authors, known as the JEPD theory
      - Each letter stands for a different author or group of authors
      - J - Oldest source
        
        J stands for Jahweh, the Jewish word for God
        
        900-722 BCE before the destruction of Israel
      - E
        
        E stands for El, the Canaanite word for God
        
        Also around the time of J, but not as old
      - P
        
        P stands for priest
        
        Written around 540 BCE, around the time of Babylon
      - D
        
        D stands for Deuteronomy
        
        Written around 622 BCE
    - Josiah, makes all the people come and read the scrolls after everybody agrees to obey them
      - Sometime after the Jews return to Jerusalem, the books of the Bible were arranged in the way we know them today
    - We know which texts came from what time due to philology (the study of words)
      - This is how we know which texts came from what times
      - Some words were only used during a certain time frame, enabling a philologist to determine a rough date of the text
      - e.g. If I were to read "far out" or "psychedelic" in a book, it would generally be considered to be from the 60s during the counter culture era.
- The Torah was made Holy
  - Holy comes from the word gadosh, meaning "set apart"
    - Jews circumcised because it set them apart
  - In the book, there was a lot of restrictions and direction on how to be clean and whole
    - Unclean was anything considered mixing of or hybridization. Anything confusing.
    - To be whole referred to the human body being a container
      - Leaking people are not whole (oozing wounds or leprosy)
  - There are a lot of prescriptions against dead things
- Slavery
  - The first open denial of slavery comes from the Hebrews when they say that every 50th year, all slaves are released
    - The first person that condemned slavery completely was the Hebrew philosopher, Job
    - Throughout the middle east, slavery was seen as necessary and virtuous
      - Who were the slaves?
        
        These were seen as male or female of a foreign country (prisoners of war)
        
        Children sold by poor parents, debtors, people who sold themselves into slavery
      - What type of slaves?
        
        Agricultural slaves
        
        Not economically feasible
        
        House slaves
        
        Temple slaves
        
        State slaves
      - Slaves were seen as property, although they had a limited list of rights
        
        They had to be taken care of and released after a certain time
    - This shows that the Hebrews saw slavery as evil
  - Hebrews were one of the first people that saw their people as having a particular identity, no matter where they were located.
    - e.g. A Hebrew in Mexico is still a Hebrew
- Periods in Jewish History
  - 950-586 BCE Solomon's Temple Period
  - 586-30 BCE Second Temple Period
    - Not as good as Solomon's temple
  - 20 BCE-70 CE Herod's Temple Period
    - Took around 50 yrs to build (20 BCE-60 CE), very elaborate
    - Funded by the Romans
    - Around 60 CE, there was a political revolt against the Romans
      - Political revolt is one of the Romans' biggest pet peeves (crucifixion was reserved for political agitators i.e. Jesus)
      - In 70 CE, the Romans "make a desert and call it peace"
      - All that was left was a piece of a wall supporting the other walls in the temple (The Wailing Wall)
      - Vespasian was the Emperor that started the destruction of Jerusalem, and his son Tidus finished the job.
- Hellenized Jews (Greek Jews)
  - Philo of Alexandria
    - Lived around the turn of the millenia (the year zero) in Alexandria, Egypt
    - His writings date to around 30 CE
    - Takes Platonic philosophy and Jewish tradition to create the idea of the "vital soul"
      - The vital soul is restored by death, released from its body
      - Some souls trapped in bodies lose focus
      - The good souls would at least get to the level of the angels, whereas the highest level of heaven is Yahweh's level
        
        There was only one soul to make it to the highest level: Moses
    - Didn't believe strongly in a Judean state
      - Judea believed in a completely different form of afterlife than Philo
Christianity
- Very similar to Mithras, although predated by it
- Baptism by blood figuratively
Islam
- The Prophets