Comparative studies

Comparisons between the traditions follow, topic by topic. Comparison helps readers see where the Abrahamic traditions agree and where they part ways. It works best when each tradition is described in its own terms before any contrast is drawn.

Comparisons: the category itself

The phrase “Abrahamic religions” is younger than the traditions it groups. Before the middle of the twentieth century, appeals to Abraham ran the other way: each community invoked him to argue that it, and not its neighbours, was the rightful heir of what had been promised to him. The ecumenical sense, in which Abraham stands for common ground, took hold after the Second World War and spread through interfaith and academic discourse, and again after 2001.¹ One scholar of religion argues that the category is an invention with no historical referent, serviceable in dialogue and unreliable as a tool of analysis.²

Two consequences follow. The grouping is a modern convenience, so its boundaries are arguable, and restricting the family to three traditions has itself been questioned: Mandaeism, too, traces a line of prophets back to Abraham’s own forebears. The older use of Abraham, as the figure the communities argued over, also sits closer to what the sources show than the modern picture of a heritage held in common.

The oldest scripture to speak of a religion of Abraham standing before the later communities is the Qur’an. It observes that the Torah and the Gospel were revealed after Abraham, calls him a ḥanīf and a muslim in the root sense of one who submitted to God, and summons its hearers to the millat Ibrāhīm (ملة إبراهيم, the path of Abraham).³ On the Qur’an’s own account, then, the idea of an Abrahamic religion is older than the modern phrase by some thirteen centuries, and it has a definite content: the worship of God alone.

The four traditions at a glance

This table gathers the themes the sections below discuss. The home page carries five of these rows; all eleven are here.

Theme	Judaism	Mandaeism	Christianity	Islam
Belief in God	Strict monotheism; one God in covenant with Israel	One God, the Great Life; light and darkness opposed	One God understood as Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit	Tawḥīd, the absolute oneness of God
Sacred texts	Torah, Tanakh, Talmud, rabbinic literature	Ginza Rabba, Qolasta, the Book of John, in Mandaic	Old and New Testaments; canons vary by church	Qur’an; ḥadīth as the record of prophetic practice
Abraham	Patriarch, father of the Jewish people	Not accepted as a prophet	Father of faith and recipient of the promise	Ibrāhīm, prophet and exemplar of pure monotheism
Moses	Prophet and lawgiver who received the Torah	Not accepted as a prophet	Prophet and lawgiver of the Old Covenant	Mūsā, prophet who received the Tawrāt
Jesus	Historical figure; not accepted as Messiah	Held to have altered the teaching of John	Messiah, Son of God, and Saviour	ʿĪsā, prophet and Messiah; not divine
Prophets	Many prophets; prophecy ceased in antiquity	Adam to Aram; John the Baptist last	Old Testament prophets; John the Baptist	A line of prophets sealed by Muhammad
Prayer	Three daily services; synagogue worship	Three times a day, facing north, after washing	Personal and liturgical prayer; the Lord’s Prayer	Ṣalāh five times daily, facing Makkah
Major festivals	Passover, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hanukkah	Dehwa Rabba; Dehwa Daimana, the birth of John	Christmas, Easter, Pentecost	ʿĪd al-Fiṭr, ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā
Places	Jerusalem, Hebron, Mount Sinai	Rivers of southern Iraq and Khuzestan	Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Rome	Makkah, Madinah, Jerusalem
Ethics	Rooted in Torah and rabbinic tradition	Purity, truthfulness, charity and strict pacifism	Love of God and neighbour; the Sermon on the Mount	Guided by the Qur’an, sunnah and sharia
Afterlife	Diverse views; Olam Ha-Ba, the world to come	The soul’s ascent to the World of Light	Resurrection, judgement, heaven and hell	Resurrection, judgement, paradise and hellfire

The Venn diagram below shows, in simplified form, which beliefs all four traditions hold, which three of them share, and which belong to Mandaeism alone. See The Abrahamic family tree and what the traditions share for the reasoning behind it.

God

All four traditions affirm one God, creator of the world. Mandaeism calls God the Great Life and teaches a dualism of light and darkness that the others do not share. Judaism expresses this in the Shema. Christianity affirms one God in three persons. Islam’s doctrine of tawḥīd (توحيد, oneness) stresses God’s absolute unity and rejects any partner to God. Jewish and Muslim theologians have long recognised how closely their understandings of divine unity agree, and medieval thinkers in both traditions developed their arguments in conversation with each other. See How the Abrahamic Religions Understand Monotheism.

Revelation and scripture

Judaism receives the Torah as revelation given at Sinai and interpreted through an ongoing oral tradition. Christianity sees the fullest revelation in the person of Jesus, witnessed by the scriptures. Islam regards the Qur’an as God’s own speech, revealed to Muhammad in Arabic and transmitted both in writing and through the memory of many reciters in every generation.

Prophets

Each tradition orders the prophets differently, and each order carries an argument. Jewish teaching holds that prophecy ceased in antiquity. Christian teaching reads the prophets as pointing towards Jesus. Islamic teaching describes a succession of messengers sent to every people, carrying one message whose law developed with circumstances and sealed by Muhammad; on that account the earlier communities received the same religion and departed from it.⁴ Mandaeans count a line from Adam to Aram that closes with John the Baptist, and place the founders of the other traditions outside it.

The Hebrew Bible describes a line of prophets from Moses to Malachi. Christianity sees prophecy fulfilled in Jesus. Islam recognises many biblical prophets and holds that Muhammad is the last of them.

Mandaeism holds that its knowledge was first revealed to Adam and passes down through the Ginza Rabba and a priesthood trained to read it. Its law is kept by that hereditary priesthood: it requires baptism in running water again and again through life, and it forbids killing and the carrying of weapons.

Law and practice

Judaism and Islam are both religions of detailed law, halakhah and sharīʿah (شريعة, the path), developed by scholars through interpretation. Most Christian churches teach that believers are not bound by the ritual law of the Torah and place worship in sacraments and liturgy.

The afterlife

All four traditions teach a judgement and life beyond death, though they describe it differently. Jewish thought has held a range of views about the world to come and the resurrection of the dead. Christianity and Islam both teach bodily resurrection, judgement, and eternal reward or loss.

Mandaeism describes the judgement as an ascent. After death the soul passes through the maṭarātā (watch-houses), where it is purified, and reaches the scales of Abathur, where its deeds are weighed against the soul of Shitil, the purest of human souls. A soul found worthy crosses by a ship of light to the World of Light.⁵

The front page carries a shorter version of this comparison.

For the periods behind these differences, see the History and timeline; for short answers to common questions, see the FAQ.

The traditions in pairs

Readers often ask how two of the traditions compare with each other. The short answers follow; the sections above give the detail.

Judaism and Christianity

Christianity began as a movement within Judaism, and the Hebrew Bible is its Old Testament. The two part on Jesus: Christians hold him to be the Messiah and the Son of God, and read the covenant as opened to all nations through him, while Judaism awaits a Messiah still to come, regards no human being as divine, and lives by the commandments of the Torah as the rabbis interpreted them.

Judaism and Islam

Judaism and Islam are close in structure. Both hold that God is strictly one, with no incarnation; both are religions of law, with a code for daily life covering prayer, diet and circumcision; both forbid images in worship; and both trace their people to Abraham, through Isaac and through Ishmael. They differ on the last prophet and the final scripture: Judaism recognises neither Jesus nor Muhammad, and Islam holds that the Qur’an confirms and completes the revelation given to Moses.

Christianity and Islam

Christianity and Islam are the two largest religions in the world, together more than half of humanity. Both honour Jesus as the Messiah, born of the virgin Mary, and both expect his return. They part on who he is: Christianity worships him as God the Son, crucified and risen, while the Qur’an honours him as a prophet and the word of God given to Mary, denies that he is divine, and denies that he was crucified. Islam also holds that Muhammad is the final prophet, which Christianity does not accept.

Mandaeism and the other three

Mandaeism shares with the others belief in one God, revealed scripture and a judgement of the soul, and it honours John the Baptist, as Christianity and Islam do. It rejects Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad as prophets, and practises baptism repeatedly, always in running water.

Notes

1. Aaron W. Hughes, Abrahamic Religions: On the Uses and Abuses of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 17-35. ↩
2. Ibid., p. 35. ↩
3. Qur’an 2:135; 3:65-67. ↩
4. Ismaʿil Raji al Faruqi, in Wing-tsit Chan, Ismaʿil Raji al Faruqi, Joseph M. Kitagawa and P. T. Raju, comps., The Great Asian Religions: An Anthology (New York: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 323, 326. ↩
5. E. S. Drower, The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), pp. 197-199. ↩