Beginning
Judaism regards itself as the religion of the descendants of Jacob, a grandson of Abraham. It has a strictly unitary view of God, and the central holy book for almost all branches is the Masoretic Text as elucidated in the oral Torah.
Christianity began as a sect of Judaism in the Mediterranean Basin of the 1st century CE and evolved into a separate religion—the Christian Church—with distinctive beliefs and practices. Jesus is the central figure of Christianity, considered by almost all denominations to be divine, a part of a single God (one person of a Triune God). The Christian Bible is usually held to be the ultimate authority, alongside Sacred Tradition in some denominations (such as Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy).
Islam arose in Arabia in the 7th century AD with a strictly unitary view of God. Muslims (adherents of Islam) typically hold the Qur'an to be the ultimate authority, as revealed and elucidated through the teachings and practices of a central, but not divine, prophet, Muhammad. Less well-known Abrahamic religions, originally offshoots of Shi'a Islam, include the Bahá'í Faith and Druze.
Read more about this topic: Abrahamic Religions
Famous quotes containing the word beginning:
“What we call birth
Is but a beginning to be something else
Than what we were before; and when we cease
To be that something, then we call it death.”
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)
“Autonomy means women defining themselves and the values by which they will live, and beginning to think of institutional arrangements which will order their environment in line with their needs.... Autonomy means moving out from a world in which one is born to marginality, to a past without meaning, and a future determined by others—into a world in which one acts and chooses, aware of a meaningful past and free to shape one’s future.”
—Gerda Lerner (b. 1920)
“Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)