Chapter 12
Islām—The Way to God by Submission
[Artwork—Arabic characters]
“IN THE name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.” This sentence translates the Arabic text, above, from the Qur’ān. It continues: “Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds: The Beneficent, the Merciful: Owner of the Day of Judgement. Thee (alone) we worship; Thee (alone) we ask for help. Show us the straight path: The path of those whom Thou hast favoured; Not (the path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray.”—The Qur’ān, surah 1:1-7, MMP.
These words form Al-Fātiḥah (“The Opening”), the first chapter, or surah, of the Muslim holy book, the Holy Qur’ān, or Koran. Since more than 1 in 6 of the world’s population is Muslim and devout Muslims repeat these verses more than once in each of their five daily prayers, these must be among the most recited words on earth.
According to one source, there are over 900 million Muslims in the world, making Islām second only to the Roman Catholic Church in numbers. It is perhaps the fastest growing major religion in the world, with an expanding Muslim movement in Africa and the Western world.
The name Islām is significant to a Muslim, for it means “submission,” “surrender,” or “commitment” to Allāh, and according to one historian, “it expresses the innermost attitude of those who have hearkened to the preaching of Mohammed.” “Muslim” means ‘one who makes or does Islām.’
Muslims believe that their faith is the culmination of the revelations given to the faithful Hebrews and Christians of old. However, their teachings diverge from the Bible on some points, even though they cite both the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures in the Qur’ān. To understand the Muslim faith better, we need to know how, where, and when this religion started.
Muḥammad’s Calling
Muḥammad was born in Mecca (Arabic, Makkah), Saudi Arabia, about 570 C.E. His father, ‛Abd Allāh, died before Muḥammad’s birth. His mother, Āminah, died when he was about six years old. At that time the Arabs practiced a form of worship of Allāh that was centered in the Mecca valley, at the sacred site of the Ka‛bah, a simple cubelike building where a black meteorite was revered. According to Islāmic tradition, “the Ka‛bah was originally built by Adam according to a celestial prototype and after the Deluge rebuilt by Abraham and Ishmael.” (History of the Arabs, by Philip K. Hitti) It became a sanctuary for 360 idols, one for each day of the lunar year.
As Muḥammad grew up, he questioned the religious practices of his day. John Noss, in his book Man’s Religions, states: “[Muḥammad] was disturbed by incessant quarreling in the avowed interests of religion and honor among the Quraysh chiefs [Muḥammad belonged to that tribe]. Stronger still was his dissatisfaction with the primitive survivals in Arabian religion, the idolatrous polytheism and animism, the immorality at religious convocations and fairs, the drinking, gambling, and dancing that were fashionable, and the burial alive of unwanted infant daughters practiced not only in Mecca but throughout Arabia.”—Surah 6:137.
Muḥammad’s call to be a prophet took place when he was about 40 years of age. He had the custom of going alone to a nearby mountain cave, called Ghār Ḥirā’, for meditation, and he claimed that it was on one of these occasions that he received the call to be a prophet. Muslim tradition relates that while he was there, an angel, later identified as Gabriel, commanded him to recite in the name of Allāh. Muḥammad failed to respond, so the angel ‘caught him forcefully and pressed him so hard that he could not bear it anymore.’ Then the angel repeated the command. Again, Muḥammad failed to react, so the angel ‘choked him’ again. This occurred three times before Muḥammad started to recite what came to be viewed as the first of a series of revelations that constitute the Qur’ān. Another tradition relates that divine inspiration was revealed to Muḥammad like the ringing of a bell.—The Book of Revelation from Ṣaḥīḥ Al-Bukhārī.
Revelation of the Qur’ān
What is said to have been the first revelation received by Muḥammad? Islāmic authorities generally agree that it was the first five verses of surah 96, entitled Al-‘Alaq, “The Clot [of Blood],” which reads:
“In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
Read: In the name of thy Lord who created.
Created man from a clot.
Read: And thy Lord is the Most Bounteous,
Who taught by the pen,
Taught man that which he knew not.”—MMP.
According to the Arabic source The Book of Revelation, Muḥammad answered, “I do not know how to read.” Therefore, he had to memorize the revelations so that he could repeat and recite them. The Arabs were skilled in the use of memory, and Muḥammad was no exception. How long did it take for him to receive the complete message of the Qur’ān? It is generally believed that the revelations came during a period of some 20 to 23 years, from about 610 C.E. to his death in 632 C.E.
Muslim sources explain that upon receiving each revelation, Muḥammad immediately recited it to those who happened to be near. These in turn committed the revelation to memory and by recitation kept it alive. Since the manufacture of paper was unknown to the Arabs, Muḥammad had the revelations written down by scribes on the primitive materials then available, such as shoulder blades of camels, palm leaves, wood, and parchment. However, it was not until after the prophet’s death that the Qur’ān took its present form, under the guidance of Muḥammad’s successors and companions. This was during the rule of the first three caliphs, or Muslim leaders.
Translator Muhammad Pickthall writes: “All the surahs of the Qur’an had been recorded in writing before the Prophet’s death, and many Muslims had committed the whole Qur’an to memory. But the written surahs were dispersed among the people; and when, in a battle . . . a large number of those who knew the whole Qur’an by heart were killed, a collection of the whole Qur’an was made and put in writing.”
Islāmic life is governed by three authorities—the Qur’ān, the Ḥadīth, and the Sharī‛ah. Muslims believe that the Qur’ān in Arabic is the purest form of the revelation, since, they say, it was the language used by God in speaking through Gabriel. Surah 43:3 states: “We have made it a Qur-ān in Arabic, that ye may be able to understand (and learn wisdom).” (AYA) Thus, any translation is viewed as only a dilution that involves a loss of purity. In fact, some Islāmic scholars refuse to translate the Qur’ān. Their viewpoint is that “to translate is always to betray,” and therefore, “Muslims have always deprecated and at times prohibited any attempt to render it in another language,” states Dr. J. A. Williams, lecturer on Islāmic history.
Islāmic Expansion
Muḥammad founded his new faith against great odds. The people of Mecca, even of his own tribe, rejected him. After 13 years of persecution and hatred, he moved his center of activity north to Yathrib, which then became known as al-Madīnah (Medina), the city of the prophet. This emigration, or the hijrah, in 622 C.E. marked a significant point in Islāmic history, and the date was later adopted as the starting point for the Islāmic calendar.
Eventually, Muḥammad achieved dominance when Mecca surrendered to him in January of 630 C.E. (8 A.H.) and he became its ruler. With the reins of secular and religious control in his hands, he was able to clean out the idolatrous images from the Ka‛bah and establish it as the focal point for pilgrimages to Mecca that continue down to this day .
Within a few decades of Muḥammad’s death in 632 C.E., Islām had spread as far as Afghanistan and even to Tunisia in North Africa. By the early eighth century, the faith of the Qur’ān had penetrated into Spain and was at the French border. As Professor Ninian Smart stated in his book Background to the Long Search: “Looked at from a human point of view, the achievement of an Arabian prophet living in the sixth and seventh centuries after Christ is staggering. Humanly, it was from him that a new civilisation flowed. But of course for the Muslim the work was divine and the achievement that of Allah.”
Muḥammad’s Death Leads to Division
The prophet’s death provoked a crisis. He died without any male progeny and without a clearly designated successor. As Philip Hitti states: “The caliphate [office of caliph] is therefore the oldest problem Islam had to face. It is still a living issue. . . . In the words of Muslim historian al-Shahrastāni [1086-1153]: ‘Never was there an Islamic issue which brought about more bloodshed than the caliphate (imāmah).’” How was the problem solved back there in 632 C.E.? “Abu-Bakr . . . was designated (June 8, 632) Muḥammad’s successor by some form of election in which those leaders present at the capital, al-Madīnah, took part.”—History of the Arabs.
The successor to the prophet would be a ruler, a khalīfah, or caliph. However, the question of the true successors to Muḥammad became a cause for divisions in the ranks of Islām. The Sunnī Muslims accept the principle of elective office rather than blood descent from the prophet. Therefore they believe that the first three caliphs, Abū Bakr (Muḥammad’s father-in-law), ‛Umar (the prophet’s adviser), and ‛Uthmān (the prophet’s son-in-law), were the legitimate successors to Muḥammad.
That claim is contested by the Shī‛ite Muslims, who say that the true leadership comes through the prophet’s blood line and through his cousin and son-in-law, ‛Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, the first imām (leader and successor), who married Muḥammad’s favorite daughter, Fāṭimah. Their marriage produced Muḥammad’s grandsons Ḥasan and Ḥusayn. The Shī‛ites also claim “that from the beginning Allah and His Prophet had clearly designated ‛Ali as the only legitimate successor but that the first three caliphs had cheated him out of his rightful office.” (History of the Arabs) Of course, the Sunnī Muslims view that differently.
What happened to ‛Alī? During his rule as the fourth caliph (656-661 C.E.), a struggle over leadership arose between him and the governor of Syria, Mu‛āwiyah. They joined battle, and then to spare further Muslim bloodshed, they threw their dispute open to arbitration. ‛Alī’s acceptance of arbitration weakened his case and alienated many of his followers, including the Khawārij (Seceders), who became his deadly foes. In the year 661 C.E., ‛Alī was murdered with a poisoned sabre by a Khārijī zealot. The two groups (the Sunnī and the Shī‛ah) were at loggerheads. The Sunnī branch of Islām then chose a leader from the Umayyads, wealthy Meccan chiefs, who were outside of the prophet’s family.
For the Shī‛ah, ‛Alī’s firstborn, Ḥasan, the prophet’s grandson, was the true successor. However, he resigned and was murdered. His brother Ḥusayn became the new imām, but he too was killed, by Umayyad troops on October 10, 680 C.E. His death or martyrdom, as the Shī‛ah view it, has had a significant effect on the Shī‛at ‛Alī, the party of ‛Alī, down to this day. They believe that ‛Alī was the true successor to Muḥammad and the first “imām [leader] divinely protected against error and sin.” ‛Alī and his successors were considered by the Shī‛ah to be infallible teachers with “the divine gift of impeccability.” The largest segment of the Shī‛ah believe that there have been only 12 true imāms, and the last of these, Muḥammad al-Muntaẓar, disappeared (878 C.E.) “in the cave of the great mosque at Sāmarra without leaving offspring.” Thus “he became ‘the hidden (mustatir)’ or ‘the expected (muntaẓar) imām.’ . . . In due time he will appear as the Mahdi (divinely guided one) to restore true Islam, conquer the whole world and usher in a short millennium before the end of all things.”—History of the Arabs.
Every year, the Shī‛ah commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Ḥusayn. They have processions in which some cut themselves with knives and swords and otherwise inflict suffering on themselves. In more modern times, Shī‛ite Muslims have received much publicity because of their zeal for Islāmic causes. However, they represent only about 20 percent of the world’s Muslims, the majority being Sunnī Muslims. But now, let us turn to some of the teachings of Islām and note how the Islāmic faith affects the daily conduct of Muslims.
God Is Supreme, Not Jesus
The three major monotheistic religions of the world are Judaism, Christianity, and Islām. But by the time Muḥammad appeared toward the beginning of the seventh century C.E., the first two religions, as far as he was concerned, had wandered from the path of truth. In fact, according to some Islāmic commentators, the Qur’ān implies rejection of Jews and of Christians in stating: “Not (the path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray.” (Surah 1:7, MMP) Why is that?
A Qur’ānic commentary states: “The People of the Book went wrong: The Jews in breaking their Covenant, and slandering Mary and Jesus . . . and the Christians in raising Jesus the Apostle to equality with God” by means of the Trinity doctrine.—Surah 4:153-176, AYA.
The principal teaching of Islām, for utter simplicity, is what is known as the shahādah, or confession of faith, which every Muslim knows by heart: “La ilāh illa Allāh; Muḥammad rasūl Allāh” (No god but Allah; Muḥammad is the messenger of Allah). This agrees with the Qur’ānic expression, “Your God is One God; there is no God save Him, the Beneficent, the Merciful.” (Surah 2:163, MMP) This thought was stated 2,000 years earlier with the ancient call to Israel: “Listen, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah.” (Deuteronomy 6:4) Jesus repeated this foremost command, which is recorded at Mark 12:29, about 600 years before Muḥammad, and nowhere did Jesus claim to be God or to be equal to Him.—Mark 13:32; John 14:28; 1 Corinthians 15:28.
Regarding God’s uniqueness, the Qur’ān states: “So believe in God and His apostles. Say not ‘Trinity’: desist: it will be better for you: for God is One God.” (Surah 4:171, AYA) However, we should note that true Christianity does not teach a Trinity. That is a doctrine of pagan origin introduced by apostates of Christendom after the death of Christ and the apostles.—See Chapter 11.
Soul, Resurrection, Paradise, and Hellfire
Islām teaches that man has a soul that goes on to a hereafter. The Qur’ān states: “Allah receiveth (men’s) souls at the time of their death, and that (soul) which dieth not (yet) in its sleep. He keepeth that (soul) for which He hath ordained death.” (Surah 39:42, MMP) At the same time, surah 75 is entirely devoted to “Qiyāmat, or the Resurrection” (AYA), or “The Rising of the Dead” (MMP). In part it says: “I do call to witness the Resurrection Day . . . Does man think that We cannot assemble his bones? . . . He questions: ‘When is the Day of Resurrection?’ . . . Has not He [Allāh] the power to give life to the dead?”—Surah 75:1, 3, 6, 40, AYA.
According to the Qur’ān, the soul can have different destinies, which can be either a heavenly garden of paradise or the punishment of a burning hell. As the Qur’ān states: “They ask: When is the Day of Judgement? (It is) the day when they will be tormented at the Fire, (and it will be said unto them): Taste your torment (which ye inflicted).” (Surah 51:12-14, MMP) “For them [the sinners] is torment in the life of the world, and verily the doom of the Hereafter is more painful, and they have no defender from Allah.” (Surah 13:34, MMP) The question is asked: “And what will explain to thee what this is? (It is) a Fire blazing fiercely!” (Surah 101:10, 11, AYA) This dire fate is described in detail: “Lo! Those who disbelieve Our revelations, We shall expose them to the Fire. As often as their skins are consumed We shall exchange them for fresh skins that they may taste the torment. Lo! Allah is ever Mighty, Wise.” (Surah 4:56, MMP) A further description states: “Lo! hell lurketh in ambush . . . They will abide therein for ages. Therein taste they neither coolness nor (any) drink save boiling water and a paralysing cold.”—Surah 78:21, 23-25, MMP.
Muslims believe that a dead person’s soul goes to the Barzakh, or “Partition,” “the place or state in which people will be after death and before Judgment.” (Surah 23:99, 100, AYA, footnote) The soul is conscious there experiencing what is termed the “Chastisement of the Tomb” if the person had been wicked, or enjoying happiness if he had been faithful. But the faithful ones must also experience some torment because of their few sins while alive. On the judgment day, each faces his eternal destiny, which ends that intermediate state.
In contrast, the righteous are promised heavenly gardens of paradise: “And as for those who believe and do good works, We shall make them enter Gardens underneath which rivers flow to dwell therein for ever.” (Surah 4:57, MMP) “On that day the dwellers of Paradise shall think of nothing but their bliss. Together with their wives, they shall recline in shady groves upon soft couches.” (Surah 36:55, 56, NJD) “Before this We wrote in the Psalms, after the Message (given to Moses): ‘My servants, the righteous, shall inherit the earth.’” The footnote to this surah refers the reader to Psalm 25:13 and 37:11, 29, as well as to the words of Jesus at Matthew 5:5. (Surah 21:105, AYA) The reference to wives now makes us turn to another question.
Monogamy or Polygamy?
Is polygamy the rule among Muslims? While the Qur’ān permits polygamy, many Muslims have only one wife. Because of the numerous widows that were left after costly battles, the Qur’ān made room for polygamy: “And if ye fear that ye will not deal fairly by the orphans, marry of the women, who seem good to you, two or three or four; and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) or (the captives) that your right hands possess.” (Surah 4:3, MMP) A biography of Muḥammad by Ibn-Hishām mentions that Muḥammad married a wealthy widow, Khadījah, 15 years his senior. After her death he married many women. When he died he left nine widows.
Another form of marriage in Islām is called mut‛ah. It is defined as “a special contract concluded between a man and a woman through offer and acceptance of marriage for a limited period and with a specified dowry like the contract for permanent marriage.” (Islamuna, by Muṣṭafā al-Rāfi‛ī) The Sunnīs call it a marriage for pleasure, and the Shī‛ah, a marriage to be terminated in a specific period. States the same source: “The children [of such marriages] are legitimate and have the same rights as the children of a permanent marriage.” Apparently this form of temporary marriage was practiced in Muḥammad’s day, and he allowed it. Sunnīs insist that it was prohibited later, while the Imāmīs, the largest Shī‛ite group, believe that it is still in effect. In fact, many practice it, especially when a man is absent from his wife for a long period of time.
Islām and Daily Life
Islām involves five pillars, or principal obligations, and six basic beliefs. One of the obligations is that the devout Muslim turn to Mecca five times a day in prayer (ṣalāt). On the Muslim sabbath (Friday), the men flock to the mosque for prayer when they hear the haunting call of the muezzin from the minaret of the mosque. Nowadays many mosques play a recording rather than have a live voice give the call.
The mosque (Arabic, masjid) is the Muslim place of worship, described by King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia as “the cornerstone for the call to God.” He defined the mosque as “a place of prayer, study, legal and judicial activities, consultation, preaching, guidance, education and preparation. . . . The mosque is the heart of Muslim society.” These places of worship are now found all over the world. One of the most famous in history is the Mezquita (Mosque) of Córdoba, Spain, which for centuries was the largest in the world. Its central portion is now occupied by a Catholic cathedral.
Conflict With and Within Christendom
Beginning in the seventh century, Islām spread westward into North Africa, eastward to Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, and down to Indonesia. As it did so, it entered into conflict with a militant Catholic Church, which organized Crusades to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims. In 1492 Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain completed the Catholic reconquest of Spain. Muslims and Jews had to convert or be expelled from Spain. The mutual tolerance that had existed under Muslim rule in Spain later evaporated under the influence of the Catholic Inquisition. However, Islām survived and in the 20th century has experienced resurgence and great growth.
While Islām was expanding, the Catholic Church was going through its own turmoil, trying to keep unity in its ranks. But two powerful influences were about to burst on the scene, and they would shatter even further the monolithic image of that church. They were the printing press and the Bible in the language of the people. Our next chapter will discuss Christendom’s further fragmentation under those and other influences.
[Footnotes]
“Qur’ān” (which means “Recitation”) is the spelling favored by Muslim writers and the one we will use here. It should be noted that Arabic is the original language of the Qur’ān, and in English there is no universally accepted translation. In quotations the first number represents the chapter, or surah, and the second is the verse number.
Muslims believe that the Bible contains revelations of God but that some of them were falsified later.
In English the prophet’s name has various spellings (Mohammed, Muḥammad, Mahomet). Most Muslim sources prefer Muḥammad, which we will use. Turkish Muslims prefer Muhammed.
Thus, the Muslim year is given as A.H. (Latin, Anno Hegirae, year of the flight) rather than A.D. (Anno Domini, year of the Lord) or C.E. (Common Era).
For further information on the Trinity and the Bible, see the brochure Should You Believe in the Trinity? published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., 1989.
On the subject of the soul and hellfire, compare these Bible texts: Genesis 2:7; Ezekiel 18:4; Acts 3:23. See Reasoning From the Scriptures, pages 168-75; 375-80, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., 1985.

The Qur’ān and the Bible
“He has revealed to you the Book with the truth, confirming the scriptures which preceded it; for He has already revealed the Torah and the Gospel for the guidance of men, and the distinction between right and wrong.”—Surah 3:2, NJD.
“Almost all the historical narratives of the Koran have their biblical parallels . . . Adam, Noah, Abraham (mentioned about seventy times in twenty-five different sūrahs and having his name as a title for sūrah 14), Ishmael, Lot, Joseph (to whom sūrah 12 is dedicated), Moses (whose name occurs in thirty-four different sūrahs), Saul, David, Solomon, Elijah, Job and Jonah (whose name sūrah 10 bears) figure prominently. The story of the creation and fall of Adam is cited five times, the flood eight and Sodom eight. In fact the Koran shows more parallelism to the Pentateuch than to any other part of the Bible. . . .
“Of the New Testament characters Zachariah, John the Baptist, Jesus (‛Īsa) and Mary are the only ones emphasized. . . .
A comparative study of the . . . koranic and biblical narratives . . . reveals no verbal dependence [no direct quotation].”—History of the Arabs.

The Three Sources of Teaching and Guidance
The Holy Qur’ān, said to have been revealed to Muḥammad by the angel Gabriel. The Qur’ān’s meaning and words in Arabic are viewed as inspired.
The Ḥadīth, or Sunnah, “the deeds, utterances and silent approval (taqrīr) of the Prophet . . . fixed during the second century [A.H.] in the form of written ḥadīths. A ḥadīth, therefore, is a record of an action or sayings of the Prophet.” It can also be applied to the actions or sayings of any of Muḥammad’s “Companions or their Successors.” In a ḥadīth, only the meaning is viewed as inspired.—History of the Arabs.
The Sharī‛ah, or canon law, based on principles of the Qur’ān, regulates a Muslim’s entire life in the religious, political, and social senses. “All man’s acts are classified under five legal categories: (1) what is considered absolute duty (farḍ) [involving reward for acting or punishment for failing to act]; (2) commendable or meritorious actions (mustaḥabb) [involving a reward but no punishment for omission]; (3) permissible actions (jā’iz, mubāḥ), which are legally indifferent; (4) reprehensible actions (makrūh), which are disapproved but not punishable; (5) forbidden actions (ḥarām), the doing of which calls for punishment.”—History of the Arabs.

The Six Pillars of Belief
1. Belief in one God, Allāh (Surah 23:116, 117)
2. Belief in angels (Surah 2:177)
3. The divine books: Torah, Gospel, Psalms, Scrolls of Abraham, Qur’ān
4. Belief in many prophets but one message. Adam was the first prophet. Others have included Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and “the Seal of the Prophets,” Muḥammad (Surah 4:136; 33:40)
5. The last day: when all the dead will be raised from their graves
6. Belief in destiny, its good and its bad. Nothing happens that God has not decreed

The Five Pillars of Islam
1. Repeat the creed (shahādah): “No god but Allah; Muḥammad is the messenger of Allah” (Surah 33:40)
2. Prayer (ṣalāt) toward Mecca five times a day (Surah 2:144)
3. Charity (zakāh), the obligation to give a percentage of one’s income and of the value of some property (Surah 24:56)
4. Fasting (ṣawm), especially during the month-long celebration of Ramaḍān (Surah 2:183-185)
5. Pilgrimage (ḥajj). Once in a lifetime, every Muslim must make the journey to Mecca. Only illness and poverty are licit excuses (Surah 3:97)


The Bahā’ī Faith—Seeking World Unity
The Bahā’ī faith is not a sect of Islām but is an offshoot of the Bābī religion, a group in Persia (today Iran) that broke away from the Shī‛ite branch of Islām in 1844. The leader of the Bābīs was Mīrzā ‛Alī Moḥammad of Shīrāz, who proclaimed himself the Bāb (“the Gate”) and the imām-mahdī (“rightly guided leader”) from the line of Muḥammad. He was executed by the Persian authorities in 1850. In 1863 Mīrzā Ḥoseyn Alī Nūrī, a prominent member of the Bābī group, “declared himself to be ‘He whom God will make manifest,’ whom the Bāb had foretold.” He also took the name Bahā’ Ullāh (“Glory of God”) and formed a new religion, the Bahā’ī faith.
Bahā’ Ullāh was banished from Persia and was eventually imprisoned in Acco (today Acre, Israel). There he wrote his main work, al-Kitāb al-Aqdas (The Most Holy Book), and developed the doctrine of the Bahā’ī faith into a comprehensive teaching. At Bahā’ Ullāh’s death, the leadership of the fledgling religion passed to his son ‛Abd ol-Bahā’, then to his great-grandson, Shoghi Effendi Rabbānī, and in 1963 to an elected administrative body known as the Universal House of Justice.
Bahā’īs believe that God has revealed himself to man by means of “Divine Manifestations,” including Abraham, Moses, Krishna, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Jesus, Muḥammad, the Bāb, and Bahā’ Ullāh. They believe that these messengers were provided to guide mankind through an evolutionary process in which the appearance of the Bāb initiated a new age for mankind. The Bahā’īs say that to date his message is the fullest revelation of God’s will and that it is the primary God-given instrument that will make world unity possible.—1 Timothy 2:5, 6.
One of the basic precepts of Bahā’ī is “that all the great religions of the world are divine in origin, that their basic principles are in complete harmony.” They “differ only in the nonessential aspects of their doctrines.”—2 Corinthians 6:14-18; 1 John 5:19, 20.
Bahā’ī beliefs include the oneness of God, the soul’s immortality, and the evolution (biological, spiritual, and social) of mankind. On the other hand, they reject the common concept of angels. They also reject the Trinity, the reincarnation teaching of Hinduism, and man’s fall from perfection and subsequent ransom through the blood of Jesus Christ.—Romans 5:12; Matthew 20:28.
The brotherhood of man and the equality of women are major features of Bahā’ī belief. Bahā’īs practice monogamy. At least once a day, they pray any one of three prayers revealed by Bahā’ Ullāh. They practice fasting from sunup to sundown during the 19 days of the Bahā’ī month of ‛Alā, which falls in March. (The Bahā’ī calendar consists of 19 months, each having 19 days, with certain intercalary days.)
The Bahā’ī faith does not have many set rituals, nor does it have clergy. Any who profess faith in Bahā’ Ullāh and accept his teachings may be enrolled as members. They meet for worship on the first day of every Bahā’ī month.
The Bahā’īs see themselves as having the mission of the spiritual conquest of the planet. They try to spread their faith through conversation, example, participation in community projects, and information campaigns. They believe in absolute obedience to the laws of the country in which they reside, and though they vote, they abstain from participation in politics. They prefer noncombatant duty in the armed forces when possible but are not conscientious objectors.
As a missionary religion, Bahā’ī has experienced rapid growth in the last few years. The Bahā’īs estimate that there are nearly 5,000,000 believers worldwide, though actual adult enrollment in the faith is presently a little over 2,300,000.

Chapter 11
Apostasy—The Way to God Blocked
WHY are Christendom’s first 400 years of history so important? For the same reason that the first few years of a child’s life are important—because they are the formative years when the foundation is laid for the future personality of the individual. What do Christendom’s early centuries reveal?
Before we answer that question, let us recall a truth that Jesus Christ expressed: “Go in through the narrow gate; because broad and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are the ones going in through it; whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are the ones finding it.” The road of expediency is broad; that of right principles is narrow.—Matthew 7:13, 14.
At the inception of Christianity, there were two ways available to those espousing that unpopular faith—hold to the uncompromising teachings and principles of Christ and the Scriptures or gravitate toward the wide and easygoing path of compromise with the world of that time. As we will see, the history of the first 400 years shows which path the majority eventually chose.
The Seduction of Philosophy
Historian Will Durant explains: “The Church took over some religious customs and forms common in pre-Christian [pagan] Rome—the stole and other vestments of pagan priests, the use of incense and holy water in purifications, the burning of candles and an everlasting light before the altar, the worship of the saints, the architecture of the basilica, the law of Rome as a basis for canon law, the title of Pontifex Maximus for the Supreme Pontiff, and, in the fourth century, the Latin language . . . Soon the bishops, rather than the Roman prefects, would be the source of order and the seat of power in the cities; the metropolitans, or archbishops, would support, if not supplant, the provincial governors; and the synod of bishops would succeed the provincial assembly. The Roman Church followed in the footsteps of the Roman state.”—The Story of Civilization: Part III—Caesar and Christ.
This attitude of compromise with the Roman world stands in stark contrast to the teachings of Christ and the apostles. The apostle Peter counseled: “Beloved ones, . . . I am arousing your clear thinking faculties by way of a reminder, that you should remember the sayings previously spoken by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles. You, therefore, beloved ones, having this advance knowledge, be on your guard that you may not be led away with them by the error of the law-defying people and fall from your own steadfastness.” Paul clearly counseled: “Do not become unevenly yoked with unbelievers. For what fellowship do righteousness and lawlessness have? Or what sharing does light have with darkness? . . . ‘“Therefore get out from among them, and separate yourselves,” says Jehovah, “and quit touching the unclean thing”’; ‘“and I will take you in.”’”—2 Peter 3:1, 2, 17; 2 Corinthians 6:14-17; Revelation 18:2-5.
In spite of this clear admonition, apostate Christians of the second century took on the trappings of the pagan Roman religion. They moved away from their pure Biblical origins and instead clothed themselves with pagan Roman garb and titles and became imbued with Greek philosophy. Professor Wolfson of Harvard University explains in The Crucible of Christianity that in the second century, there was a great influx into Christianity of “philosophically trained gentiles.” These admired the wisdom of the Greeks and thought they saw similarities between Greek philosophy and teachings of the Scriptures. Wolfson continues: “Sometimes they variously express themselves to the effect that philosophy is God’s special gift to the Greeks by way of human reason as Scripture is to the Jews by way of direct revelation.” He continues: “The Fathers of the Church . . . entered upon their systematic undertaking to show how, behind the homely language in which Scripture likes to express itself, there are hidden the teachings of the philosophers couched in the obscure technical terms coined in their Academy, Lyceum, and Porch [centers for philosophical discussion].”
Such an attitude left the way open for Greek philosophy and terminology to infiltrate Christendom’s teachings, especially in the fields of Trinitarian doctrine and the belief in an immortal soul. As Wolfson states: “The [church] Fathers began to look in the stockpile of philosophic terminology for two good technical terms, of which one would be used as a designation of the reality of the distinctness of each member of the Trinity as an individual and the other would be used as a designation of their underlying common unity.” Yet, they had to admit that “the conception of a triune God is a mystery which cannot be solved by human reason.” In contrast, Paul had clearly recognized the danger of such contamination and ‘perversion of the good news’ when he wrote to the Galatian and Colossian Christians: “Look out: perhaps there may be someone who will carry you off as his prey through the philosophy [Greek, phi•lo•so•phi′as] and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary things of the world and not according to Christ.”—Galatians 1:7-9; Colossians 2:8; 1 Corinthians 1:22, 23.
Resurrection Annulled
As we have seen throughout this book, man has constantly struggled with the enigma of his short and finite existence that ends in death. As German author Gerhard Herm stated in his book The Celts—The People Who Came Out of the Darkness: “Religion is among other things a way of reconciling people to the fact that some day they must die, whether by the promise of a better life beyond the grave, rebirth, or both.” Virtually every religion depends on the belief that the human soul is immortal and that after death it journeys to an afterlife or that it transmigrates to another creature.
Nearly all the religions of Christendom today also follow that belief. Miguel de Unamuno, a prominent 20th-century Spanish scholar, wrote about Jesus: “He believed rather in the resurrection of the flesh [such as Lazarus’ case], according to the Jewish manner, not in the immortality of the soul, according to the [Greek] Platonic manner. . . . The proofs of this can be seen in any honest book of interpretation.” He concluded: “The immortality of the soul . . . is a pagan philosophical dogma.” (La Agonía Del Cristianismo [The Agony of Christianity]) That “pagan philosophical dogma” infiltrated into Christendom’s teaching, even though Christ plainly had no such thought.—Matthew 10:28; John 5:28, 29; 11:23, 24.
The subtle influence of Greek philosophy was a key factor in the apostasy that followed the death of the apostles. The Greek immortal soul teaching implied a need for various destinations for the soul—heaven, hellfire, purgatory, paradise, Limbo. By manipulating such teachings, it became easy for a priestly class to keep their flocks submissive and in fear of the Hereafter and to extract gifts and donations from them. Which leads us to another question: How did Christendom’s separate priestly clergy class originate?—John 8:44; 1 Timothy 4:1, 2.
How the Clergy Class Was Formed
Another indication of apostasy was the retreat from the general ministry of all Christians, as Jesus and the apostles had taught, to the exclusive priesthood and hierarchy that developed in Christendom. (Matthew 5:14-16; Romans 10:13-15; 1 Peter 3:15) During the first century, after Jesus’ death, his apostles, along with other spiritually qualified Christian elders in Jerusalem, served to counsel and direct the Christian congregation. None exercised superiority over the others.—Galatians 2:9.
In the year 49 C.E., it became necessary for them to meet together in Jerusalem to resolve questions affecting Christians in general. The Bible account tells us that after open discussion, “the apostles and the older men [pre•sby′te•roi] together with the whole congregation favored sending chosen men from among them to Antioch along with Paul and Barnabas, . . . and by their hand they wrote: ‘The apostles and the older men, brothers, to those brothers in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia who are from the nations: Greetings!’” Evidently the apostles and elders served as an administrative governing agency for the widespread Christian congregations.—Acts 15:22, 23.
Now since that governing group in Jerusalem was the early Christian arrangement for general oversight for all Christians, what system of direction did they have in each congregation, at the local level? Paul’s letter to Timothy makes it clear that the congregations had overseers (Greek, e•pi′sko•pos, source of the word “episcopal”) who were spiritual elders (pre•sby′te•roi), men who were qualified by their conduct and their spirituality to teach their fellow Christians. (1 Timothy 3:1-7; 5:17) In the first century, these men did not constitute a separate clergy class. They did not wear any distinctive garb. Their spirituality was their distinction. In fact, each congregation had a body of elders (overseers), not a monarchical one-man rule.—Acts 20:17; Philippians 1:1.
It was only as time passed that the word e•pi′sko•pos (overseer, superintendent) became converted to “bishop,” meaning a priest with jurisdiction over other members of the clergy in his diocese. As the Spanish Jesuit Bernardino Llorca explains: “First, there was not sufficient distinction made between the bishops and the presbyters, and attention was only paid to the meaning of the words: bishop is the equivalent of superintendent; presbyter is the equivalent of older man. . . . But little by little the distinction became clearer, designating with the name bishop the more important superintendents, who possessed the supreme priestly authority and the faculty to lay on hands and confer the priesthood.” (Historia de la Iglesia Católica [History of the Catholic Church]) In fact, bishops began to function in a kind of monarchical system, especially from the beginning of the fourth century. A hierarchy, or ruling body of clergy, was established, and in time the bishop of Rome, claiming to be a successor to Peter, was acknowledged by many as the supreme bishop and pope.
Today the position of bishop in the different churches of Christendom is a position of prestige and power, usually well remunerated, and often identified with the elite ruling class of each nation. But between their proud and elevated situation and the simplicity of organization under Christ and the elders, or overseers, of the early Christian congregations, there is an enormous difference. And what shall we say of the gulf between Peter and his so-called successors, who have ruled in the sumptuous setting of the Vatican?—Luke 9:58; 1 Peter 5:1-3.
Papal Power and Prestige
Among the early congregations that accepted direction from the apostles and elders in Jerusalem was the one in Rome, where Christian truth probably arrived sometime after Pentecost 33 C.E. (Acts 2:10) Like any other Christian congregation of the time, it had elders, who served as a body of overseers without any one of them having the primacy. Certainly none of the earliest overseers in the Rome congregation were viewed by their contemporaries as bishops or as a pope, since the monarchical episcopate at Rome had not yet developed. The starting point of the monarchical, or one-man, episcopate is hard to pin down. Evidence indicates that it began to develop in the second century.—Romans 16:3-16; Philippians 1:1.
The title “pope” (from the Greek pa′pas, father) was not used during the first two centuries. Former Jesuit Michael Walsh explains: “The first time a Bishop of Rome was called ‘Pope’ seems to have been in the third century, and the title was given to Pope Callistus . . . By the end of the fifth century ‘Pope’ usually meant the Bishop of Rome and no one else. It was not until the eleventh century, however, that a Pope could insist that the title applied to him alone.”—An Illustrated History of the Popes.
One of the first bishops of Rome to impose his authority was Pope Leo I (pope, 440-461 C.E.). Michael Walsh further explains: “Leo appropriated the once pagan title of Pontifex Maximus, still used by the popes today, and borne, until towards the end of the fourth century, by Roman Emperors.” Leo I based his actions on the Catholic interpretation of Jesus’ words found at Matthew 16:18, 19. He “declared that because St. Peter was the first among the Apostles, St. Peter’s church should be accorded primacy among the churches.” (Man’s Religions) By this move, Leo I made it clear that while the emperor held temporal power in Constantinople in the East, he exercised spiritual power from Rome in the West. This power was further illustrated when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 C.E.
Since 1929 the pope of Rome has been viewed by secular governments as the ruler of a separate sovereign state, Vatican City. Thus, the Roman Catholic Church, like no other religious organization, can send diplomatic representatives, nuncios, to the governments of the world. (John 18:36) The pope is honored with many titles, some of which are Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor to the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Sovereign of the Vatican City. He is carried with pomp and ceremony. He is given the honors assigned to a head of State. In contrast, note how Peter, supposedly the first pope and bishop of Rome, reacted when the Roman centurion Cornelius fell down at his feet to do obeisance to him: “Peter lifted him up, saying: ‘Rise; I myself am also a man.’”—Acts 10:25, 26; Matthew 23:8-12.
The question now is, How did so much power and prestige ever accrue to the apostate church of those early centuries? How was the simplicity and humility of Christ and the early Christians converted into the pride and pomp of Christendom?
Christendom’s Foundation
The turning point for this new religion in the Roman Empire was 313 C.E., the date of Emperor Constantine’s so-called conversion to “Christianity.” How did this conversion come about? In 306 C.E., Constantine succeeded his father and eventually, with Licinius, became coruler of the Roman Empire. He was influenced by his mother’s devotion to Christianity and his own belief in divine protection. Before he went to fight a battle near Rome at the Milvian Bridge in 312 C.E., he claimed that he was told in a dream to paint the “Christian” monogram—the Greek letters khi and rho, the first two letters of Christ’s name in Greek—on his soldiers’ shields. With this ‘sacred talisman,’ Constantine’s forces defeated his enemy Maxentius.
Shortly after winning the battle, Constantine claimed that he had become a believer, although he was not baptized until just prior to his death some 24 years later. He went on to obtain the support of the professed Christians in his empire by “his adoption of the [Greek letters] Chi-Rho [Artwork—Greek characters] as his emblem . . . The Chi-Rho had, however, already been used as a ligature [joining of letters] in both pagan and Christian contexts.”—The Crucible of Christianity, edited by Arnold Toynbee.
As a result, the foundation of Christendom was laid. As British broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge wrote in his book The End of Christendom: “Christendom began with the Emperor Constantine.” However, he also made the perceptive comment: “You might even say that Christ himself abolished Christendom before it began by stating that his kingdom was not of this world—one of the most far reaching and important of all his statements.” And one most widely ignored by Christendom’s religious and political rulers.—John 18:36.
With Constantine’s support, Christendom’s religion became the official State religion of Rome. Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion, explains: “Christian bishops, once targets for arrest, torture, and execution, now received tax exemptions, gifts from the imperial treasury, prestige, and even influence at court; their churches gained new wealth, power, and prominence.” They had become friends of the emperor, friends of the Roman world.—James 4:4.
Constantine, Heresy, and Orthodoxy
Why was Constantine’s “conversion” so significant? Because as emperor he had a powerful influence in the affairs of the doctrinally divided “Christian” church, and he wanted unity in his empire. At that time debate was raging among the Greek- and Latin-speaking bishops about “the relation between the ‘Word’ or ‘Son’ of ‘God’ which had been incarnate in Jesus, and ‘God’ himself, now called ‘the Father’—his name, Yahweh, having been generally forgotten.” (The Columbia History of the World) Some favored the Biblically supported viewpoint that Christ, the Lo′gos, was created and therefore subordinate to the Father. (Matthew 24:36; John 14:28; 1 Corinthians 15:25-28) Among these was Arius, a priest in Alexandria, Egypt. In fact, R. P. C. Hanson, a professor of divinity, states: “There is no theologian in the Eastern or the Western Church before the [fourth century] outbreak of the Arian Controversy, who does not in some sense regard the Son as subordinate to the Father.”—The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God.
Others considered that viewpoint of Christ’s subordination to be heresy and veered more toward the worship of Jesus as “God Incarnate.” Yet, Professor Hanson states that the period under question (the fourth century) “was not a history of the defence of an agreed and settled [Trinitarian] orthodoxy against the assaults of open heresy [Arianism]. On the subject which was primarily under discussion there was not as yet any orthodox doctrine.” He continues: “All sides believed that they had the authority of Scripture in their favour. Each described the others as unorthodox, untraditional and unScriptural.” The religious ranks were thoroughly divided on this theological issue.—John 20:17.
Constantine wanted unity in his realm, and in 325 C.E. he called for a council of his bishops at Nicaea, located in the Eastern, Greek-speaking domain of his empire, across the Bosporus from the new city of Constantinople. It is said that anywhere from 250 to 318 bishops attended, only a minority of the total number, and most of those attending were from the Greek-speaking region. Even Pope Sylvester I was not present. After fierce debate, out of that unrepresentative council came the Nicene Creed with its heavy bias toward Trinitarian thought. Yet it failed to settle the doctrinal argument. It did not clarify the role of God’s holy spirit in Trinitarian theology. Debate raged for decades, and it required more councils and the authority of different emperors and the use of banishment to achieve eventual conformity. It was a victory for theology and a defeat for those who held to the Scriptures.—Romans 3:3, 4.
Over the centuries, one result of the Trinity teaching has been that the one true God Jehovah has been submerged in the quagmire of Christendom’s God-Christ theology. The next logical consequence of that theology was that if Jesus really was God Incarnate, then Jesus’ mother, Mary, was obviously the “Mother of God.” Over the years, that has led to veneration of Mary in many different forms, this in spite of the total lack of texts that speak of Mary in any role of importance except as the humble biologic mother of Jesus. (Luke 1:26-38, 46-56) Over the centuries the Mother-of-God teaching has been developed and adorned by the Roman Catholic Church, with the result that many Catholics venerate Mary far more fervently than they worship God.
Christendom’s Schisms
Another characteristic of apostasy is that it leads to division and fragmentation. The apostle Paul had prophesied: “I know that after my going away oppressive wolves will enter in among you and will not treat the flock with tenderness, and from among you yourselves men will rise and speak twisted things to draw away the disciples after themselves.” Paul had given clear counsel to the Corinthians when he stated: “Now I exhort you, brothers, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you should all speak in agreement, and that there should not be divisions among you, but that you may be fitly united in the same mind and in the same line of thought.” In spite of Paul’s exhortation, apostasy and divisions soon took root.—Acts 20:29, 30; 1 Corinthians 1:10.
Within a few decades of the death of the apostles, schisms were already evident among the Christians. Will Durant states: “Celsus [second-century opponent of Christianity] himself had sarcastically observed that Christians were ‘split up into ever so many factions, each individual desiring to have his own party.’ About 187 [C.E.] Irenaeus listed twenty varieties of Christianity; about 384 [C.E.] Epiphanius counted eighty.”—The Story of Civilization: Part III—Caesar and Christ.
Constantine favored the Eastern, Greek, side of his empire by having a vast new capital city built in what is today Turkey. He named it Constantinople (modern Istanbul). The result was that over the centuries the Catholic Church became polarized and split both by language and by geography—Latin-speaking Rome in the West versus Greek-speaking Constantinople in the East.
Divisive debates about aspects of the still-developing Trinity teaching continued to cause turmoil in Christendom. Another council was held in 451 C.E. at Chalcedon to define the character of Christ’s “natures.” While the West accepted the creed issued by this council, Eastern churches disagreed, leading to the formation of the Coptic Church in Egypt and Abyssinia and the “Jacobite” churches of Syria and Armenia. The unity of the Catholic Church was constantly threatened by divisions on abstruse theological matters, especially regarding the definition of the Trinity doctrine.
Another cause for division was the veneration of images. During the eighth century, the Eastern bishops rebelled against this idolatry and entered into what is called their iconoclastic, or image-destroying, period. In time they returned to the use of icons.—Exodus 20:4-6; Isaiah 44:14-18.
A further big test came about when the Western church added the Latin word filioque (“and from the Son”) to the Nicene Creed to indicate that the Holy Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the Son. The end result of this sixth-century emendation was a rift when “in 876 a synod [of bishops] at Constantinople condemned the pope both for his political activities and because he did not correct the heresy of the filioque clause. This action was part of the East’s entire rejection of the pope’s claim of universal jurisdiction over the Church.” (Man’s Religions) In the year 1054, the pope’s representative excommunicated the patriarch of Constantinople, who in return put a curse on the pope. That split eventually led to the formation of the Eastern Orthodox Churches—Greek, Russian, Romanian, Polish, Bulgarian, Serbian, and other self-governing churches.
Another movement was also beginning to cause turmoil in the church. In the 12th century, Peter Waldo, from Lyons, France, “engaged some scholars to translate the Bible into the langue d’oc [a regional language] of south France. He studied the translation zealously, and concluded that Christians should live like the apostles—without individual property.” (The Age of Faith, by Will Durant) He started a preaching movement that became known as the Waldenses. These rejected the Catholic priesthood, indulgences, purgatory, transubstantiation, and other traditional Catholic practices and beliefs. They spread into other countries. The Council of Toulouse tried to check them in 1229 by banning the possession of Scriptural books. Only books of liturgy were allowed and then only in the dead language of Latin. But more religious division and persecution was yet to come.
Persecution of the Albigenses
Yet another movement got started in the 12th century in the south of France—the Albigenses (also known as Cathari), named after the town of Albi, where they had many followers. They had their own celibate clergy class, who expected to be greeted with reverence. They believed that Jesus spoke figuratively in his last supper when he said of the bread, “This is my body.” (Matthew 26:26, NAB) They rejected the doctrines of the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, hellfire, and purgatory. Thus they actively put in doubt the teachings of Rome. Pope Innocent III gave instructions that the Albigenses be persecuted. “If necessary,” he said, “suppress them with the sword.”
A crusade was mounted against the “heretics,” and the Catholic crusaders massacred 20,000 men, women, and children in Béziers, France. After much bloodshed, peace came in 1229, with the Albigenses defeated. The Council of Narbonne “forbade the possession of any part of the Bible by laymen.” The root of the problem for the Catholic Church was evidently the existence of the Bible in the language of the people.
The next step that the church took was to establish the Inquisition, a tribunal set up to suppress heresy. Already a spirit of intolerance possessed the people, who were superstitious and all too willing to lynch and murder “heretics.” The conditions in the 13th century lent themselves to the abuse of power by the church. However, “heretics condemned by the Church were to be delivered to the ‘secular arm’—the local authorities—and burned to death.” (The Age of Faith) By leaving the actual executions to the secular authorities, the church would ostensibly be free of bloodguilt. The Inquisition started an era of religious persecution that resulted in abuses, false and anonymous denunciations, murder, robbery, torture, and the slow death of thousands who dared to believe differently from the church. Freedom of religious expression was stifled. Was there any hope for people who were seeking the true God? Chapter 13 will answer that.
While all of this was happening in Christendom, a lone Arab in the Middle East took a stand against the religious apathy and idolatry of his own people. He started a religious movement in the seventh century that today commands the obedience and submission of nearly one thousand million people. That movement is Islām. Our next chapter will consider the history of its prophet-founder and explain some of his teachings and their source.
[Footnotes]
The expressions “immortal soul,” “hellfire,” “purgatory,” and “Limbo” are nowhere found in the original Hebrew and Greek of the Bible. In contrast, the Greek word for “resurrection” (a•na′sta•sis) occurs 42 times.
The Greek word e•pi′sko•pos literally means ‘one who watches over.’ In Latin it became episcopus, and in Old English it was transformed into “biscop” and later, in Middle English, to “bishop.”
A popular legend says that Constantine saw a vision of a cross with the Latin words “In hoc signo vinces” (In this sign conquer). Some historians say it was more likely in Greek, “En toutoi nika” (In this conquer). The legend is doubted by some scholars because it contains anachronisms.
The Oxford Dictionary of Popes states regarding Sylvester I: “Although pope for almost twenty-two years of the reign of Constantine the Great (306-37), an epoch of dramatic developments for the church, he seems to have played an insignificant part in the great events that were taking place. . . . There were certainly bishops whom Constantine made his confidants, and with whom he concerted his ecclesiastical policies; but [Sylvester] was not one of them.”
For a detailed consideration of the Trinity debate, see the 32-page brochure Should You Believe in the Trinity? published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., 1989.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, is mentioned by name or as his mother in 24 different texts in the four Gospels and once in Acts. She is not mentioned in any apostolic letter.

Early Christians and Pagan Rome
“As the Christian movement emerged within the Roman Empire, it challenged pagan converts, too, to change their attitudes and behavior. Many pagans who had been brought up to regard marriage essentially as a social and economic arrangement, homosexual relationships as an expected element of male education, prostitution, both male and female, as both ordinary and legal, and divorce, abortion, contraception, and exposure [to death] of unwanted infants as matters of practical expedience, embraced, to the astonishment of their families, the Christian message, which opposed these practices.”—Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, by Elaine Pagels.

Christianity Versus Christendom
Porphyry, a third-century philosopher from Tyre and an opposer of Christianity, raised the question “as to whether followers of Jesus, rather than Jesus himself, were responsible for the distinctive form of the Christian religion. Porphyry (and Julian [fourth-century Roman emperor and opposer of Christianity]) showed, on the basis of the New Testament, that Jesus did not call himself God and that he preached, not about himself, but about the one God, the God of all. It was his followers who abandoned his teaching and introduced a new way of their own in which Jesus (not the one God) was the object of worship and adoration. . . . [Porphyry] put his finger on a troubling issue for Christian thinkers: does the Christian faith rest on the preaching of Jesus or on the ideas forged by his disciples in the generations after his death?”—The Christians as the Romans Saw Them.

Peter and the Papacy
At Matthew 16:18, Jesus said to the apostle Peter: “And I tell you, you are Peter [Greek, Pe′tros], and on this rock [Greek, pe′tra] I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.” (RS) Based on this, the Catholic Church claims that Jesus built his church on Peter, who, they say, was the first of an unbroken line of bishops of Rome, and Peter’s successors.
Who was the rock that Jesus indicated at Matthew 16:18, Peter or Jesus? The context shows that the point of the discussion was the identification of Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” as Peter himself confessed. (Matthew 16:16, RS) Logically, therefore, Jesus himself would be that solid rock foundation of the church, not Peter, who would later deny Christ three times.—Matthew 26:33-35, 69-75.
How do we know that Christ is the foundation stone? By Peter’s own testimony, when he wrote: “Coming to him as to a living stone, rejected, it is true, by men, but chosen, precious, with God . . . For it is contained in Scripture: ‘Look! I am laying in Zion a stone, chosen, a foundation cornerstone, precious; and no one exercising faith in it will by any means come to disappointment.’” Paul also stated: “And you have been built up upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, while Christ Jesus himself is the foundation cornerstone.”—1 Peter 2:4-8; Ephesians 2:20.
There is no evidence in Scripture or history that Peter was regarded as having primacy among his peers. He makes no mention of it in his own letters, and the other three Gospels—including Mark’s (apparently related by Peter to Mark)—do not even mention Jesus’ statement to Peter.—Luke 22:24-26; Acts 15:6-22; Galatians 2:11-14.
There is not even any absolute proof that Peter was ever in Rome. (1 Peter 5:13) When Paul visited Jerusalem, “James and Cephas [Peter] and John, the ones who seemed to be pillars,” gave him support. So at that time Peter was one of at least three pillars in the congregation. He was not a “pope,” nor was he known as such or as a primate “bishop” in Jerusalem.—Galatians 2:7-9; Acts 28:16, 30, 31.

Chapter 10
Christianity—Was Jesus the Way to God?
So far, with the exception of the chapter on Judaism, we have considered major religions that are based to a large extent on mythology. Now we will examine another religion that claims to bring mankind nearer to God—Christianity. What is the basis for Christianity—myth or historical fact?
THE history of Christendom, with its wars, inquisitions, crusades, and religious hypocrisy, has not helped the cause of Christianity. Devout Muslims and others point to the moral corruption and decadence of the Western, “Christian” world as a basis for rejecting Christianity. Indeed, the so-called Christian nations have lost their moral rudder and have suffered shipwreck on the rocks of faithlessness, greed, and self-indulgence.
That the standards of original Christianity were different from the permissive mores of today is attested to by Professor Elaine Pagels in her book Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, wherein she states: “Many Christians of the first four centuries took pride in their sexual restraint; they eschewed polygamy and often divorce as well, which Jewish tradition allowed; and they repudiated extramarital sexual practices commonly accepted among their pagan contemporaries, practices including prostitution and homosexuality.”
Therefore, it is fair to ask, Is Christendom’s history and its modern moral state a true reflection of the teachings of Jesus Christ? What kind of man was Jesus? Did he help to bring mankind nearer to God? Was he the promised Messiah of Hebrew prophecy? These are some of the questions we shall consider in this chapter.
Jesus—What Were His Credentials?
In earlier chapters we have seen the prominent role that mythology has played in nearly all the major religions of the world. Yet, when we turned to the origins of Judaism in our previous chapter, we did not start with a myth but with the historical reality of Abraham, his forebears, and his descendants. With Christianity and its founder, Jesus, we likewise start, not with mythology, but with a historical personage .
The first verse of the Christian Greek Scriptures, commonly known as the New Testament, states: “The book of the history of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” (Matthew 1:1) Is that an idle claim presented by Matthew, a former Jewish tax collector and an immediate disciple and biographer of Jesus? No. The following 15 verses spell out Abraham’s line of descendants down to Jacob, who “became father to Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.” Therefore, Jesus really was a descendant of Abraham, Judah, and David and as such held three of the credentials of the foretold “seed” of Genesis 3:15 and of Abraham.—Genesis 22:18; 49:10; 1 Chronicles 17:11.
Another of the credentials for the Messianic Seed would be his place of birth. Where was Jesus born? Matthew tells us that Jesus was “born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king.” (Matthew 2:1) Physician Luke’s account confirms that fact, telling us regarding Jesus’ future adoptive father: “Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to David’s city, which is called Bethlehem, because of his being a member of the house and family of David, to get registered with Mary, who had been given him in marriage as promised, at present heavy with child.”—Luke 2:4, 5.
Why was it important that Jesus be born in Bethlehem rather than in Nazareth or any other town? Because of a prophecy uttered during the eighth century B.C.E. by the Hebrew prophet Micah: “And you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, the one too little to get to be among the thousands of Judah, from you there will come out to me the one who is to become ruler in Israel, whose origin is from early times, from the days of time indefinite.” (Micah 5:2) Thus, by his place of birth, Jesus held another of the credentials for being the promised Seed and Messiah.—John 7:42.
In fact, Jesus fulfilled many more prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures, thus proving that he had all the credentials for being the promised Messiah. You can check some of these in the Bible. But now let us briefly examine Jesus’ message and his ministry.
Jesus’ Life Points the Way
The Bible account tells us that Jesus was reared as a normal Jewish youth of his time, attending the local synagogue and the temple in Jerusalem. (Luke 2:41-52) When he reached the age of 30, he started his public ministry. First he went to his cousin John, who was baptizing Jews in symbol of repentance in the river Jordan. Luke’s account tells us: “Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus also was baptized and, as he was praying, the heaven was opened up and the holy spirit in bodily shape like a dove came down upon him, and a voice came out of heaven: ‘You are my Son, the beloved; I have approved you.’”—Luke 3:21-23; John 1:32-34.
In due course, Jesus entered upon his ministry as the anointed Son of God. He went throughout Galilee and Judea preaching the message of the Kingdom of God and performing miracles, such as healing the sick. He accepted no payment and did not look for wealth or self-aggrandizement. In fact, he said that there is more happiness in giving than there is in receiving. He also taught his disciples how to preach.—Matthew 8:20; 10:7-13; Acts 20:35.
When we analyze Jesus’ message and the methods he used, we see a distinct difference between his style and that of many of Christendom’s preachers. He did not manipulate the masses with cheap emotionalism or with hellfire scare tactics. Rather, Jesus used simple logic and parables, or illustrations, from everyday life to appeal to the heart and the mind. His famous Sermon on the Mount is an outstanding example of his teachings and methods. Included in that sermon is Jesus’ model prayer, in which he gives a clear indication of Christian priorities by putting the sanctifying of God’s name in first place. —Matthew 5:1–7:29; 13:3-53; Luke 6:17-49.
In his dealings with his followers and with the public in general, Jesus manifested love and compassion. (Mark 6:30-34) While preaching the message of God’s Kingdom, he also personally practiced love and humility. Thus, in the final hours of his life, he could say to his disciples: “I am giving you a new commandment, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among yourselves.” (John 13:34, 35) Therefore, the essence of Christianity in practice is self-sacrificing love based on principle. (Matthew 22:37-40) In practice this means that a Christian should love even his enemies, although he may hate their evil works. (Luke 6:27-31) Think about that for a moment. What a different world this would be if everyone actually practiced that form of love!—Romans 12:17-21; 13:8-10.
Yet, what Jesus taught was far more than an ethic or philosophy, such as those taught by Confucius and Lao-tzu. Furthermore, Jesus did not teach, as did the Buddha, that one can work out one’s own salvation by the pathway of knowledge and enlightenment. Rather, he pointed to God as the source of salvation when he said: “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten Son, in order that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life. For God sent forth his Son into the world, not for him to judge the world, but for the world to be saved through him.”—John 3:16, 17.
By manifesting his Father’s love in his own words and deeds, Jesus drew people closer to God. That is one reason why he could say: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. . . . He that has seen me has seen the Father also. How is it you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in union with the Father and the Father is in union with me? The things I say to you men I do not speak of my own originality; but the Father who remains in union with me is doing his works. . . . You heard that I said to you, I am going away and I am coming back to you. If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going my way to the Father, because the Father is greater than I am.” (John 14:6-28) Yes, Jesus was “the way and the truth and the life” because he was leading those Jewish people back to his Father, their true God, Jehovah. Therefore, with Jesus mankind’s search for God suddenly took on impetus because God, in his supreme love, had sent Jesus to the earth as a beacon of light and truth to lead men to the Father.—John 1:9-14; 6:44; 8:31, 32.
On the basis of the ministry and example of Jesus, the missionary Paul could later say to the Greeks in Athens: “And [God] made out of one man every nation of men, to dwell upon the entire surface of the earth, and he decreed the appointed times and the set limits of the dwelling of men, for them to seek God, if they might grope for him and really find him, although, in fact, he is not far off from each one of us. For by him we have life and move and exist.” (Acts 17:26-28) Yes, God can be found if a person is willing to make the effort to search for him. (Matthew 7:7, 8) God has made himself and his love manifest in that he has furnished an earth that supports a seemingly endless variety of life. He supplies what is necessary to all mankind, whether they be righteous or unrighteous. He has also provided mankind with his written Word, the Bible, and he sent his Son as a redeeming sacrifice. Moreover, God has provided the assistance people need to help them find the way to Him.—Matthew 5:43-45; Acts 14:16, 17; Romans 3:23-26.
Of course, Christian love must be manifested not just by words but more importantly by deeds. For that reason the apostle Paul wrote: “Love is long-suffering and kind. Love is not jealous, it does not brag, does not get puffed up, does not behave indecently, does not look for its own interests, does not become provoked. It does not keep account of the injury. It does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”—1 Corinthians 13:4-8.
Jesus also made clear how important it is to proclaim the Kingdom of the heavens—God’s rule over submissive mankind.—Matthew 10:7; Mark 13:10.
Every Christian an Evangelizer
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus emphasized to the crowds their responsibility to illuminate others by their words and actions. He said: “You are the light of the world. A city cannot be hid when situated upon a mountain. People light a lamp and set it, not under the measuring basket, but upon the lampstand, and it shines upon all those in the house. Likewise let your light shine before men, that they may see your fine works and give glory to your Father who is in the heavens.” (Matthew 5:14-16) Jesus trained his disciples so that they would know how to preach and teach during their travels as itinerant ministers. And what was their message to be? That which Jesus himself preached, the Kingdom of God, which would rule the earth in righteousness. As Jesus explained on one occasion: “Also to other cities I must declare the good news of the kingdom of God, because for this I was sent forth.” (Luke 4:43; 8:1; 10:1-12) He also stated that part of the sign identifying the last days would be that “this good news of the kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations; and then the end will come.”—Matthew 24:3-14.
In 33 C.E., before he finally ascended to heaven, the resurrected Jesus instructed his disciples: “All authority has been given me in heaven and on the earth. Go therefore and make disciples of people of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit, teaching them to observe all the things I have commanded you. And, look! I am with you all the days until the conclusion of the system of things.” (Matthew 28:18-20) This is one reason why Christianity, from its very inception, was an active, proselytizing religion that provoked the anger and jealousy of the followers of the prevailing Greek and Roman religions of that day, which were based on mythology. The persecution of Paul in Ephesus clearly illustrated that fact.—Acts 19:23-41.
The questions now are, What did the message of the Kingdom of God offer concerning the dead? What hope for the dead did Christ preach? Was he offering salvation from “hellfire” for the “immortal souls” of his believers? Or what?—Matthew 4:17.
Hope of Everlasting Life
Perhaps the clearest insight into the hope that Jesus preached can be gained from what he said and did when his friend Lazarus died. How did Jesus view this death? Setting out for Lazarus’ home, Jesus said to his disciples: “Lazarus our friend has gone to rest, but I am journeying there to awaken him from sleep.” (John 11:11) Jesus compared Lazarus’ death state to sleep. In a deep sleep, we are conscious of nothing, which agrees with the Hebrew expression at Ecclesiastes 9:5: “For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all.”
Although Lazarus had been dead four days, we note that Jesus said nothing about Lazarus’ soul being in heaven, hell, or purgatory! When Jesus arrived at Bethany and Martha, Lazarus’ sister, came out to meet him, he said to her, “Your brother will rise.” How did she answer? Did she say he was already in heaven? Martha answered: “I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.” That clearly shows that the Jewish hope at that time was the resurrection, a return to life here on earth.—John 11:23, 24, 38, 39.
Jesus responded: “I am the resurrection and the life. He that exercises faith in me, even though he dies, will come to life; and everyone that is living and exercises faith in me will never die at all. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25, 26) To prove his point, Jesus went to the cave where Lazarus was entombed and called him forth alive in the sight of his sisters, Mary and Martha, and neighbors. The account continues: “Therefore many of the Jews that had come to Mary and that beheld what he did put faith in him . . . Accordingly the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus out of the memorial tomb and raised him up from the dead kept bearing witness.” (John 11:45; 12:17) They had seen the miracle for themselves, and they believed and testified to its actuality. Jesus’ religious opposers must also have believed the event, for the record tells us that the chief priests and the Pharisees plotted to kill Jesus “because this man performs many signs.”—John 11:30-53.
Where had Lazarus gone during the four days he was dead? Nowhere. He was unconscious, asleep in the tomb awaiting a resurrection. Jesus blessed him by miraculously raising him from the dead. But according to John’s account, Lazarus said nothing about having been in heaven, hell, or purgatory during those four days. Why not? Simply because he had no immortal soul that could journey to such places.—Job 36:14; Ezekiel 18:4.
Therefore, when Jesus spoke of everlasting life, he was referring to such life either in the heavens as a transformed immortal spirit coruler with him in his Kingdom, or he was referring to life everlasting as a human on a paradise earth under that Kingdom rulership. (Luke 23:43; John 17:3) According to God’s promise, his figurative dwelling with obedient mankind on earth will bring abundant blessings to the earth. All of this, of course, depends on whether Jesus was really sent and approved by God.—Luke 22:28-30; Titus 1:1, 2; Revelation 21:1-4.
God’s Approval—Reality, Not Myth
How do we know that Jesus had God’s approval? In the first place, when Jesus was baptized, a voice out of heaven was heard saying: “This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved.” (Matthew 3:17) Later, confirmation of this approval was given before other witnesses. The disciples Peter, James, and John, formerly fishermen from Galilee, accompanied Jesus to a high mountain (probably Mount Hermon, which rises to 9,232 feet [2,814 m]). There something remarkable took place before their eyes: “And [Jesus] was transfigured before them, and his face shone as the sun, and his outer garments became brilliant as the light. And, look! there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, conversing with him. . . . Look! a bright cloud overshadowed them, and, look! a voice out of the cloud, saying: ‘This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved; listen to him.’ At hearing this the disciples fell upon their faces and became very much afraid.”—Matthew 17:1-6; Luke 9:28-36.
This audible and visible confirmation from God served to strengthen Peter’s faith enormously, for he later wrote: “No, it was not by following artfully contrived false stories [Greek: my´thois, myths] that we acquainted you with the power and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, but it was by having become eyewitnesses of his magnificence. For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when words such as these were borne to him by the magnificent glory: ‘This is my son, my beloved, whom I myself have approved.’ Yes, these words we heard borne from heaven while we were with him in the holy mountain.” (2 Peter 1:16-18) The Jewish disciples Peter, James, and John actually saw the miracle of the transfiguration of Jesus and heard God’s voice of approval out of the heavens. Their faith was based on a reality they had seen and heard, not on mythology or on “Jewish fables.” —Matthew 17:9; Titus 1:13, 14.
Jesus’ Death and Another Miracle
In the year 33 C.E., Jesus was arrested and put on trial by the Jewish religious authorities, falsely accused of blasphemy for calling himself the Son of God. (Matthew 26:3, 4, 59-67) Since those Jews did not have the legal authority to put him to death, they sent him to the Roman rulers and again accused him falsely, this time of forbidding payment of taxes to Caesar and of saying that he himself was a king.—Mark 12:14-17; Luke 23:1-11; John 18:28-31.
After Jesus had been passed from one ruler to another, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, on the insistence of the religiously inspired mob, took the line of least resistance and sentenced Jesus to death. As a consequence, Jesus died in disgrace on a stake, and his body was placed in a tomb. But within three days an event took place that transformed the disconsolate disciples of Jesus into joyful believers and zealous evangelizers.—John 19:16-22; Galatians 3:13.
The religious leaders, suspecting that Jesus’ followers would resort to trickery, went to Pilate with a request: “‘Sir, we have called to mind that that impostor said while yet alive, “After three days I am to be raised up.” Therefore command the grave to be made secure until the third day, that his disciples may never come and steal him and say to the people, “He was raised up from the dead!” and this last imposture will be worse than the first.’ Pilate said to them: ‘You have a guard. Go make it as secure as you know how.’ So they went and made the grave secure by sealing the stone and having the guard.” (Matthew 27:62-66) How secure did it prove to be?
On the third day after Jesus’ death, three women went to the tomb to grease the body with perfumed oil. What did they find? “And very early on the first day of the week they came to the memorial tomb, when the sun had risen. And they were saying one to another: ‘Who will roll the stone away from the door of the memorial tomb for us?’ But when they looked up, they beheld that the stone had been rolled away, although it was very large. When they entered into the memorial tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side clothed in a white robe, and they were stunned. He said to them: ‘Stop being stunned. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was impaled. He was raised up, he is not here. See! The place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, “He is going ahead of you into Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”’” (Mark 16:1-7; Luke 24:1-12) In spite of the religious leaders’ special guard, Jesus had been resurrected by his Father. Is that a myth or a historical fact?
About 22 years after this event, Paul, a former persecutor of Christians, wrote and explained how he came to believe that Christ had been resurrected: “For I handed on to you, among the first things, that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried, yes, that he has been raised up the third day according to the Scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that he appeared to upward of five hundred brothers at one time, the most of whom remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep in death. After that he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-7) Yes, Paul had a factual basis for risking his life in the cause of the resurrected Jesus, and it included the testimony of some 500 eyewitnesses who had seen the resurrected Jesus in person! (Romans 1:1-4) Paul knew Jesus had been resurrected, and he had an even more powerful reason for saying so, as he further explained: “But last of all he appeared also to me as if to one born prematurely.”—1 Corinthians 15:8, 9; Acts 9:1-19.
The early Christians were willing to die as martyrs in the Roman arenas. Why? Because they knew that their faith was based on historical realities, not on myths. It was a reality that Jesus was the Christ, or the Messiah, promised in prophecy and that he had been sent to the earth by God, had received God’s approval, had died on a stake as God’s integrity-keeping Son, and had been resurrected from the dead.—1 Peter 1:3, 4.
We recommend that you read the whole of that chapter 15 of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians to understand what Paul believed about the resurrection and why it is essential to the Christian faith. The essence of his message is expressed in these words: “However, now Christ has been raised up from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep in death. For since death is through a man [Adam], resurrection of the dead is also through a man. For just as in Adam all are dying, so also in the Christ all will be made alive.”—1 Corinthians 15:20-22.
The resurrection of Christ Jesus thus has a purpose that will eventually benefit all mankind. It also opened the way for Jesus eventually to fulfill the rest of the Messianic prophecies. His righteous rulership from the invisible heavens must soon extend to a cleansed earth. Then there will be what the Bible describes as “a new heaven and a new earth” in which God “will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.”—Revelation 21:1-4.
Apostasy and Persecution Expected
Shortly after Jesus’ death and resurrection, another miracle took place that gave strength and momentum to the preaching by those early Christians. On the day of Pentecost of the year 33 C.E., God poured out from heaven his holy spirit, or active force, upon some 120 Christians met together in Jerusalem. The result? “And tongues as if of fire became visible to them and were distributed about, and one sat upon each one of them, and they all became filled with holy spirit and started to speak with different tongues, just as the spirit was granting them to make utterance.” (Acts 2:3, 4) The foreign-language-speaking Jews who were in Jerusalem at that time were astonished to hear those supposedly ignorant Galilean Jews speaking in foreign tongues. The result was that many believed. The Christian message spread like wildfire as these new Jewish believers returned to their homelands.—Acts 2:5-21.
But storm clouds soon gathered. The Romans became apprehensive of this new and apparently atheistic religion that had no idols. Starting with Emperor Nero, they brought down terrible persecution upon the Christians in the first three centuries of our Common Era. Many Christians were condemned to die in the coliseums, to satisfy the sadistic bloodlust of the emperors and the mobs who flocked to see prisoners being thrown to wild beasts.
Another disturbing factor in those early days was something that the apostles had prophesied. For example, Peter stated: “However, there also came to be false prophets among the people, as there will also be false teachers among you. These very ones will quietly bring in destructive sects and will disown even the owner that bought them, bringing speedy destruction upon themselves.” (2 Peter 2:1-3) Apostasy! That was a falling away from true worship, a compromising with the current religious trends of the Roman world, which was saturated with Greek philosophy and thought. How did it come about? Our next chapter will answer that and related questions.—Acts 20:30; 2 Timothy 2:16-18; 2 Thessalonians 2:3.
[Footnotes]
By “Christendom” we refer to the realm of sectarian activity dominated by religions that claim to be Christian. “Christianity” refers to the original form of worship and access to God taught by Jesus Christ.

The Bible teaching of the ransom and its importance will be clarified in Chapter 15.
The expression “immortal soul” appears nowhere in the Bible. The Greek word translated “immortal” and “immortality” appears only three times and refers to a new spirit body that is put on or acquired, not something inherent. It applies to Christ and to anointed Christians, who become corulers with him in his heavenly Kingdom.—1 Corinthians 15:53, 54; 1 Timothy 6:16; Romans 8:17; Ephesians 3:6; Revelation 7:4; 14:1-5.
For a more detailed consideration of this Kingdom rulership, see Chapter 15
Roman biographer Suetonius (c. 69-140 C.E.) recorded that during Nero’s reign, “punishments were . . . inflicted on the Christians, a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief.”


Was Jesus a Myth?
“Is the life story of the founder of Christianity the product of human sorrow, imagination, and hope—a myth comparable to the legends of Krishna, Osiris, Attis, Adonis, Dionysus, and Mithras?” asks historian Will Durant. He answers that in the first century, to deny that Christ had ever existed “seems never to have occurred even to the bitterest gentile or Jewish opponents of nascent Christianity.”—The Story of Civilization,: Part III, “Caesar and Christ.”
The Roman historian Suetonius (c. 69-140 C.E.), in his history The Twelve Caesars, stated regarding the emperor Claudius: “Because the Jews at Rome caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus [Christ], he expelled them from the city.” This occurred about the year 52 C.E. (Compare Acts 18:1, 2.) Note that Suetonius expresses no doubt about the existence of Christ. On this factual basis and in spite of life-endangering persecution, early Christians were very active proclaiming their faith. It is hardly likely that they would have risked their lives on the basis of a myth. Jesus’ death and resurrection had taken place in their lifetime, and some of them had been eyewitnesses to those events.
Historian Durant draws the conclusion: “That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.”

Who Wrote the Bible?
The Christian Bible consists of the 39 books of the Hebrew Scriptures ), called by many the Old Testament, and the 27 books of the Christian Greek Scriptures, often called the New Testament. Thus, the Bible is a miniature library of 66 books written by some 40 men in the course of 1,600 years of history (from 1513 B.C.E. to 98 C.E.).
The Greek Scriptures include four Gospels, or accounts of the life of Jesus and the good news that he preached. Two of these were written by immediate followers of Christ, Matthew, a tax collector, and John, a fisherman. The other two were written by the early believers Mark and Luke, the physician. (Colossians 4:14) The Gospels are followed by the Acts of Apostles, an account of the early Christian missionary activity compiled by Luke. Next are 14 letters from the apostle Paul to various individual Christians and congregations, followed by letters from James, Peter, John, and Jude. The final book is Revelation, written by John.
That so many persons of diverse backgrounds and living in different times and cultures could produce such a harmonious book is strong proof that the Bible is not simply the product of human intelligence but is inspired by God. The Bible itself states: “All Scripture is inspired of God [literally, “God-breathed”] and beneficial for teaching.” Thus, the Scriptures were written under the influence of God’s holy spirit, or active force.—2 Timothy 3:16, 17, Int.

[Footnotes]
The Catholic Bible includes some additional books that form the Apocrypha and that are not viewed as canonical by Jews and Protestants.



Jesus and the Name of God
When teaching his disciples how to pray, Jesus said: “You must pray, then, this way: ‘Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified. Let your kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also upon earth.’”—Matthew 6:9, 10.
Jesus knew the vital significance of his Father’s name and gave emphasis to it. Thus, to his religious enemies, he said: “I have come in the name of my Father, but you do not receive me; if someone else arrived in his own name, you would receive that one. . . . I told you, and yet you do not believe. The works that I am doing in the name of my Father, these bear witness about me.”—John 5:43; 10:25; Mark 12:29, 30.
In prayer to his Father, Jesus said: “‘Father, glorify your name.’ Therefore a voice came out of heaven: ‘I both glorified it and will glorify it again.’”
On a later occasion, Jesus prayed: “I have made your name manifest to the men you gave me out of the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have observed your word. And I have made your name known to them and will make it known, in order that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in union with them.”—John 12:28; 17:6, 26.
As a Jew, Jesus had to be conversant with his Father’s name, Jehovah, or Yahweh, for he knew the scripture that says: “‘You are my witnesses,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘even my servant whom I have chosen, in order that you may know and have faith in me, and that you may understand that I am the same One. Before me there was no God formed, and after me there continued to be none. . . . So you are my witnesses,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘and I am God.’”—Isaiah 43:10, 12.
Therefore, the Jews as a nation were chosen to be Jehovah’s witnesses. As a Jew, Jesus was also a witness of Jehovah.—Revelation 3:14.
Apparently by the first century, most Jews were no longer pronouncing God’s revealed name. However, there are manuscripts that prove that early Christians using the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures could have seen the Hebrew Tetragrammaton used in the Greek text. As George Howard, a professor of religion and Hebrew stated: “When the Septuagint which the New Testament church used and quoted contained the Hebrew form of the divine name, the New Testament writers no doubt included the Tetragrammaton in their quotations. But when the Hebrew form for the divine name was [later] eliminated in favor of Greek substitutes in the Septuagint, it was eliminated also from the New Testament quotations of the Septuagint.”
Therefore, Professor Howard reasons that first-century Christians must have clearly understood texts such as Matthew 22:44, where Jesus quoted the Hebrew Scriptures to his enemies. Howard says, “The first century church probably read, ‘YHWH said to my Lord’” instead of the later version, “‘The Lord said to my Lord,’ . . . which is as ambiguous as it is imprecise.”—Psalm 110:1.
That Jesus used the divine name is attested to by the Jewish accusation centuries after his death that if he performed miracles, it was “only because he had made himself master of the ‘secret’ name of God.”—The Book of Jewish Knowledge.
Jesus certainly knew God’s unique name. In spite of Jewish tradition at that time, Jesus would surely have used the name. He did not allow the traditions of men to overrule the law of God.—Mark 7:9-13; John 1:1-3, 18; Colossians 1:15, 16.

Chapter 9
Judaism—Searching for God Through Scripture and Tradition
MOSES, Jesus, Mahler, Marx, Freud, and Einstein—what did all of them have in common? All were Jews, and in different ways, all have affected the history and culture of mankind. Very evidently Jews have been noteworthy for thousands of years. The Bible itself is a testimony to that.
Unlike other ancient religions and cultures, Judaism is rooted in history, not in mythology. Yet, some might ask: The Jews are such a tiny minority, about 18 million in a world of over 5 thousand million people, why should we be interested in their religion, Judaism?
Why Judaism Should Interest Us
One reason is that the roots of the Jewish religion go back some 4,000 years in history and other major religions are indebted to its Scriptures to a greater or lesser degree. Christianity, founded by Jesus (Hebrew, Ye•shu′a‛), a first-century Jew, has its roots in the Hebrew Scriptures. And as any reading of the Qur’ān will show, Islām also owes much to those scriptures. (Qur’ān, surah 2:49-57; 32:23, 24) Thus, when we examine the Jewish religion, we also examine the roots of hundreds of other religions and sects.
A second and vital reason is that the Jewish religion provides an essential link in mankind’s search for the true God. According to the Hebrew Scriptures, Abram, the forefather of the Jews, was already worshiping the true God nearly 4,000 years ago. Reasonably, we ask, How did the Jews and their faith develop?—Genesis 17:18.
How Did the Jews Originate?
Generally speaking, the Jewish people are descendants of an ancient, Hebrew-speaking branch of the Semitic race. (Genesis 10:1, 21-32; 1 Chronicles 1:17-28, 34; 2:1, 2) Nearly 4,000 years ago, their forefather Abram emigrated from the thriving metropolis of Ur of the Chaldeans in Sumeria to the land of Canaan, of which God had stated: “I will assign this land to your offspring.” (Genesis 11:31–12:7) He is spoken of as “Abram the Hebrew” at Genesis 14:13, although his name was later changed to Abraham. (Genesis 17:4-6) From him the Jews draw a line of descent that begins with his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel. (Genesis 32:27-29) Israel had 12 sons, who became the founders of 12 tribes. One of those was Judah, from which name the word “Jew” was eventually derived.—2 Kings 16:6.
In time the term “Jew” was applied to all Israelites, not just to a descendant of Judah. (Esther 3:6; 9:20) Because the Jewish genealogical records were destroyed in 70 C.E. when the Romans razed Jerusalem, no Jew today can accurately determine from which tribe he himself is descended. Nevertheless, over the millenniums, the ancient Jewish religion has developed and changed. Today Judaism is practiced by millions of Jews in the Republic of Israel and the Diaspora (dispersion around the world). What is the basis of that religion?
Moses, the Law, and a Nation
In 1943 B.C.E., God chose Abram to be his special servant and later made a solemn oath to him because of his faithfulness in being willing to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, even though the sacrifice was never completed. (Genesis 12:1-3; 22:1-14) In that oath God said: “By Myself I swear, the LORD [Hebrew: יהוה, YHWH] declares: Because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your favored one, I will bestow My blessing upon you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven . . . All the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by your descendants [“seed,” JP], because you have obeyed My command.” This sworn oath was repeated to Abraham’s son and to his grandson, and then it continued in the tribe of Judah and the line of David. This strictly monotheistic concept of a personal God dealing directly with humans was unique in that ancient world, and it came to form the basis of the Jewish religion.—Genesis 22:15-18; 26:3-5; 28:13-15; Psalm 89:4, 5, 29, 30, 36, 37 (Psalm 89:3, 4, 28, 29, 35, 36, NW).
To carry out His promises to Abraham, God laid the foundation for a nation by establishing a special covenant with Abraham’s descendants. This covenant was instituted through Moses, the great Hebrew leader and mediator between God and Israel. Who was Moses, and why is he so important to Jews? The Bible’s Exodus account tells us that he was born in Egypt (1593 B.C.E.) to Israelite parents who were slaves in captivity along with the rest of Israel. He was the one “whom the LORD singled out” to lead His people to freedom in Canaan, the Promised Land. (Deuteronomy 6:23; 34:10) Moses fulfilled the vital role of mediator of the Law covenant given by God to Israel, in addition to being their prophet, judge, leader, and historian.—Exodus 2:1–3:22.
The Law that Israel accepted consisted of the Ten Words, or Commandments, and over 600 laws that amounted to a comprehensive catalog of directions and guidance for daily conduct. It involved the mundane and the holy—the physical and the moral requirements as well as the worship of God.
This Law covenant, or religious constitution, gave form and substance to the faith of the patriarchs. As a result, the descendants of Abraham became a nation dedicated to the service of God. Thus the Jewish religion began to take definite shape, and the Jews became a nation organized for the worship and service of their God. At Exodus 19:5, 6, God promised them: “If you will obey Me faithfully and keep My covenant, . . . you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Thus, the Israelites would become a ‘chosen people’ to serve God’s purposes. However, the fulfillment of the covenant promises was subject to the condition “If you will obey.” That dedicated nation was now obligated to its God. Hence, at a later date (the eighth century B.C.E.), God could say to the Jews: “My witnesses are you—declares the LORD [Hebrew: יהוה, YHWH]—My servant, whom I have chosen.”—Isaiah 43:10, 12.
A Nation With Priests, Prophets, and Kings
While the nation of Israel was still in the desert and heading for the Promised Land, a priesthood was established in the line of Moses’ brother, Aaron. A large portable tent, or tabernacle, became the center of Israelite worship and sacrifice. (Exodus, chapters 26-28) In time the nation of Israel arrived at the Promised Land, Canaan, and conquered it, even as God had commanded. (Joshua 1:2-6) Eventually an earthly kingship was established, and in 1077 B.C.E., David, from the tribe of Judah, became king. With his rule, both the kingship and the priesthood were firmly established at a new national center, Jerusalem.—1 Samuel 8:7.
After David’s death, his son Solomon built a magnificent temple in Jerusalem, which replaced the tabernacle. Because God had made a covenant with David for the kingship to remain in his line forever, it was understood that an anointed King, the Messiah, would one day come from David’s line of descent. Prophecy indicated that through this Messianic King, or “seed,” Israel and all the nations would enjoy perfect rulership. (Genesis 22:18, JP) This hope took root, and the Messianic nature of the Jewish religion became clearly crystallized.—2 Samuel 7:8-16; Psalm 72:1-20; Isaiah 11:1-10; Zechariah 9:9, 10.
However, the Jews allowed themselves to be influenced by the false religion of the Canaanites and other nations round about. As a result, they violated their covenant relationship with God. To correct them and guide them back, Jehovah sent a series of prophets who bore his messages to the people. Thus, prophecy became another unique feature of the religion of the Jews and constitutes much of the Hebrew Scriptures. In fact, 18 books of the Hebrew Scriptures bear prophets’ names.—Isaiah 1:4-17.
Outstanding among such prophets were Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, all of whom warned of Jehovah’s impending punishment of the nation for its idolatrous worship. This punishment came about in 607 B.C.E. when, because of Israel’s apostasy, Jehovah allowed Babylon, the then dominant world power, to overthrow Jerusalem and its temple and take the nation into captivity. The prophets were proved right in what they had foretold, and Israel’s 70-year exile for most of the sixth century B.C.E. is a matter of historical record.—2 Chronicles 36:20, 21; Jeremiah 25:11, 12; Daniel 9:2.
In 539 B.C.E., Cyrus the Persian defeated Babylon and permitted the Jews to resettle their land and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Although a remnant responded, the majority of the Jews remained under the influence of Babylonian society. Jews later were affected by the Persian culture. Consequently, Jewish settlements sprang up in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean. In each community a new form of worship came into being that involved the synagogue, a congregational center for the Jews in each town. Naturally, this arrangement diminished the emphasis on the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem. The far-flung Jews were now truly a Diaspora.—Ezra 2:64, 65.
Judaism Emerges With a Greek Garment
By the fourth century B.C.E., the Jewish community was in a state of flux and was thus prey to the waves of a non-Jewish culture that was engulfing the Mediterranean world and beyond. The waters emanated from Greece, and Judaism emerged from them with a Hellenistic garment.
In 332 B.C.E. the Greek general Alexander the Great took the Middle East in lightning-quick conquest and was welcomed by the Jews when he came to Jerusalem. Alexander’s successors continued his plan of Hellenization, imbuing all parts of the empire with Greek language, culture, and philosophy. As a result, the Greek and Jewish cultures went through a blending process that was to have surprising results.
Diaspora Jews began to speak Greek instead of Hebrew. So toward the beginning of the third century B.C.E., the first translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, called the Septuagint, was made into Greek, and through it, many Gentiles came to have respect for and familiarity with the Jews’ religion, some even converting. Jews, on the other hand, were becoming conversant with Greek thought and some even became philosophers, something entirely new to the Jews. One example is Philo of Alexandria of the first century C.E., who endeavored to explain Judaism in terms of Greek philosophy, as if the two expressed the same ultimate truths.
Summing up this period of give-and-take between Greek and Jewish cultures, Jewish author Max Dimont says: “Enriched with Platonic thought, Aristotelian logic, and Euclidian science, Jewish scholars approached the Torah with new tools. . . . They proceeded to add Greek reason to Jewish revelation.” The events that would take place under Roman rule, which absorbed the Greek Empire and then Jerusalem in the year 63 B.C.E., were to pave the way for even more significant changes.
Judaism Under Roman Rule
The Judaism of the first century of the Common Era was at a unique stage. Max Dimont states that it was poised between “the mind of Greece and the sword of Rome.” Jewish expectations were high because of political oppression and interpretations of Messianic prophecies, especially those of Daniel. The Jews were divided into factions. The Pharisees emphasized an oral law rather than temple sacrifice. The Sadducees stressed the importance of the temple and the priesthood. Then there were the Essenes, the Zealots, and the Herodians. All were at odds religiously and philosophically. Jewish leaders were called rabbis (masters, teachers) who, because of their knowledge of the Law, grew in prestige and became a new type of spiritual leader.
Internal and external divisions, however, continued in Judaism, especially in the land of Israel. Finally, outright rebellion broke out against Rome, and in 70 C.E., Roman troops besieged Jerusalem, laid waste the city, burned its temple to the ground, and scattered its inhabitants. Eventually, Jerusalem was decreed totally off-limits to Jews. Without a temple, without a land, with its people dispersed throughout the Roman Empire, Judaism was in need of a new religious expression if it was to survive.
With the destruction of the temple, the Sadducees disappeared, and the oral law that the Pharisees had championed became the centerpiece of a new, Rabbinic Judaism. More intense study, prayer, and works of piety replaced temple sacrifices and pilgrimages. Thus, Judaism could be practiced anywhere, at any time, in any cultural surroundings. The rabbis put this oral law into writing, in addition to composing commentaries on it, and then commentaries on the commentaries, all of which together became known as the Talmud.
What was the result of these varied influences? Max Dimont says in his book Jews, God and History that though the Pharisees carried on the torch of Jewish ideology and religion, “the torch itself had been ignited by the Greek philosophers.” While much of the Talmud was highly legalistic, its illustrations and explanations reflected the clear influence of Greek philosophy. For example, Greek religious concepts, such as the immortal soul, were expressed in Jewish terms. Truly, in that new Rabbinic era, veneration of the Talmud—by then a blend of legalistic and Greek philosophy—grew among the Jews until, by the Middle Ages, the Talmud came to be revered by the Jews more than the Bible itself.
Judaism Through the Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages (from about 500 to 1500 C.E.), two distinct Jewish communities emerged—the Sephardic Jews, who flourished under Muslim rule in Spain, and the Ashkenazi Jews in Central and Eastern Europe. Both communities produced Rabbinic scholars whose writings and thoughts form the basis for Jewish religious interpretation until this day. Interestingly, many of the customs and religious practices current today in Judaism really got their start during the Middle Ages.
In the 12th century, there began a wave of expulsions of Jews from various countries. As Israeli author Abba Eban explains in My People—The Story of the Jews: “In any country . . . which fell under the unilateral influence of the Catholic Church, the story is the same: appalling degradation, torture, slaughter, and expulsion.” Finally, in 1492, Spain, which had once again come under Catholic rule, followed suit and ordered the expulsion of all Jews from its territory. So by the end of the 15th century, Jews had been expelled from nearly all Western Europe, fleeing to Eastern Europe and countries around the Mediterranean.
Through the centuries of oppression and persecution, many self-proclaimed Messiahs rose up among the Jews in different parts of the world, all receiving acceptance to one degree or another, but ending in disillusionment. By the 17th century, new initiatives were needed to reinvigorate the Jews and pull them out of this dark period. In the mid-18th century, there appeared an answer to the despair the Jewish people felt. It was Hasidism a mixture of mysticism and religious ecstasy expressed in daily devotion and activity. In contrast, about the same time, philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, a German Jew, offered another solution, the way of Haskala, or enlightenment, which was to lead into what is historically considered to be “Modern Judaism.”
From “Enlightenment” to Zionism
According to Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86), Jews would be accepted if they would come out from under the restraints of the Talmud and conform to Western culture. In his day, he became one of the Jews most respected by the Gentile world. However, renewed outbursts of violent anti-Semitism in the 19th century, especially in “Christian” Russia, disillusioned the movement’s followers, and many then focused on finding a political refuge for the Jews. They rejected the idea of a personal Messiah who would lead the Jews back to Israel and began to work on establishing a Jewish State by other means. This then became the concept of Zionism: “the secularization of . . . Jewish messianism,” as one authority puts it.
The murder of some six million European Jews in the Nazi-inspired Holocaust (1935-45) gave Zionism its final impetus and gained much sympathy for it worldwide. The Zionist dream came true in 1948 with the establishment of the State of Israel, which brings us to Judaism in our day and to the question, What do modern Jews believe?
God Is One
Simply put, Judaism is the religion of a people. Therefore, a convert becomes part of the Jewish people as well as the Jewish religion. It is a monotheistic religion in the strictest sense and holds that God intervenes in human history, especially in relation to the Jews. Jewish worship involves several annual festivals and various customs. Although there are no creeds or dogmas accepted by all Jews, the confession of the oneness of God as expressed in the Shema, a prayer based on Deuteronomy 6:4 (JP), forms a central part of synagogue worship: “HEAR, O ISRAEL: THE LORD OUR GOD, THE LORD IS ONE.”
This belief in one God was passed on to Christianity and Islām. According to Dr. J. H. Hertz, a rabbi: “This sublime pronouncement of absolute monotheism was a declaration of war against all polytheism . . . In the same way, the Shema excludes the trinity of the Christian creed as a violation of the Unity of God.” But now let us turn to Jewish belief on the subject of the afterlife.
Death, Soul, and Resurrection
One of the basic beliefs of modern Judaism is that man has an immortal soul that survives the death of his body. But does this originate in the Bible? The Encyclopaedia Judaica frankly admits: “It was probably under Greek influence that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul came into Judaism.” However, this created a doctrinal dilemma, as the same source states: “Basically the two beliefs of resurrection and the soul’s immortality are contradictory. The one refers to a collective resurrection at the end of the days, i.e., that the dead sleeping in the earth will arise from the grave, while the other refers to the state of the soul after the death of the body.” How was the dilemma resolved in Jewish theology? “It was held that when the individual died his soul still lived on in another realm (this gave rise to all the beliefs regarding heaven and hell) while his body lay in the grave to await the physical resurrection of all the dead here on earth.”
University lecturer Arthur Hertzberg writes: “In the [Hebrew] Bible itself the arena of man’s life is this world. There is no doctrine of heaven and hell, only a growing concept of an ultimate resurrection of the dead at the end of days.” That is a simple and accurate explanation of the Biblical concept, namely, that “the dead know nothing . . . For there is no action, no reasoning, no learning, no wisdom in Sheol [mankind’s common grave], where you are going.”—Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10; Daniel 12:1, 2; Isaiah 26:19.
According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, “In the rabbinic period the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is considered one of the central doctrines of Judaism” and “is to be distinguished from the belief in . . . the immortality of the soul.” Today, however, while the immortality of the soul is accepted by all factions of Judaism, the resurrection of the dead is not.
In contrast with the Bible, the Talmud, influenced by Hellenism, is replete with explanations and stories and even descriptions of the immortal soul. Later Jewish mystical literature, the Kabbala, even goes so far as to teach reincarnation (transmigration of souls), which is basically an ancient Hindu teaching. (See Chapter 5.) In Israel today, this is widely accepted as a Jewish teaching, and it also plays an important role in Hasidic belief and literature. For example, Martin Buber includes in his book Tales of the Hasidim—The Later Masters a tale about the soul from the school of Elimelekh, a rabbi of Lizhensk: “On the Day of Atonement, when Rabbi Abraham Yehoshua would recite the Avodah, the prayer that repeats the service of the high priest in the Temple of Jerusalem, and would come to the passage: ‘And thus he spoke,’ he would never say those words, but would say: ‘And thus I spoke.’ For he had not forgotten the time his soul was in the body of a high priest of Jerusalem.”
Reform Judaism has gone so far as to reject belief in the resurrection. Having removed the word from Reform prayer books, it recognizes only the belief in the immortal soul. How much clearer is the Biblical idea as expressed at Genesis 2:7: “The LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” (JP) The combination of the body and the spirit, or life-force, constitutes “a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7; 7:22; Psalm 146:4) Conversely, when the human sinner dies, then the soul dies. (Ezekiel 18:4, 20) Thus, at death man ceases to have any conscious existence. His life-force returns to God who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 3:19; 9:5, 10; 12:7) The truly Biblical hope for the dead is the resurrection—Hebrew: techi•yath′ ham•me•thim′, or “revival of the dead.”
While this conclusion might surprise even many Jews, the resurrection has been the real hope of worshipers of the true God for thousands of years. About 3,500 years ago, faithful, suffering Job spoke of a future time when God would raise him from Sheol, or the grave. (Job 14:14, 15) The prophet Daniel was also assured that he would be raised “at the end of the days.”—Daniel 12:2, 12 (13, JP; NW).
There is no basis in Scripture for saying those faithful Hebrews believed they had an immortal soul that would survive into an afterworld. They clearly had sufficient reason to believe that the Sovereign Lord, who counts and controls the stars of the universe, would also remember them at the time of the resurrection. They had been faithful to him and his name. He would be faithful to them.—Psalm 18:26 (25, NW); 147:4; Isaiah 25:7, 8; 40:25, 26.
Judaism and God’s Name
Judaism teaches that while God’s name exists in written form, it is too holy to be pronounced. The result has been that, over the last 2,000 years, the correct pronunciation has been lost. Yet, that has not always been the Jewish position. About 3,500 years ago, God spoke to Moses, saying: “Thus shall you speak to the Israelites: The LORD [Hebrew: יהוה, YHWH], the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you: This shall be My name forever, this My appellation for all eternity.” (Exodus 3:15; Psalm 135:13) What was that name and appellation? The footnote to the Tanakh states: “The name YHWH (traditionally read Adonai “the LORD”) is here associated with the root hayah ‘to be.’” Thus, we have here the holy name of God, the Tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew consonants YHWH (Yahweh) that in their Latinized form have come to be known over the centuries in English as JEHOVAH.
Throughout history, the Jews have always placed great importance on God’s personal name, though emphasis on usage has changed drastically from ancient times. As Dr. A. Cohen states in Everyman’s Talmud: “Special reverence [was] attached to ‘the distinctive Name’ (Shem Hamephorash) of the Deity which He had revealed to the people of Israel, viz. the tetragrammaton, JHVH.” The divine name was revered because it represented and characterized the very person of God. After all, it was God himself who announced his name and told his worshipers to use it. This is emphasized by the appearance of the name in the Hebrew Bible 6,828 times. Devout Jews, however, feel it is disrespectful to pronounce God’s personal name.
Concerning the ancient rabbinic (not Biblical) injunction against pronouncing the name, A. Marmorstein, a rabbi, wrote in his book The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God: “There was a time when this prohibition [of the use of the divine name] was entirely unknown among the Jews . . . Neither in Egypt, nor in Babylonia, did the Jews know or keep a law prohibiting the use of God’s name, the Tetragrammaton, in ordinary conversation or greetings. Yet, from the third century B.C.E. till the third century A.C.E. such a prohibition existed and was partly observed.” Not only was the use of the name allowed in earlier times but, as Dr. Cohen says: “There was a time when the free and open use of the Name even by the layman was advocated . . . It has been suggested that the recommendation was based on the desire to distinguish the Israelite from the [non-Jew].”
What, then, brought about the prohibition of the use of the divine name? Dr. Marmorstein answers: “Hellenistic [Greek-influenced] opposition to the religion of the Jews, the apostasy of the priests and nobles, introduced and established the rule not to pronounce the Tetragrammaton in the Sanctuary [temple in Jerusalem].” In their excessive zeal to avoid taking the divine name in vain, they completely suppressed its use in speech and subverted and diluted the identification of the true God. Under the combined pressure of religious opposition and apostasy, the divine name fell into disuse among the Jews.
However, as Dr. Cohen states: “In the Biblical period there seems to have been no scruple against [the divine name’s] use in daily speech.” The patriarch Abraham “invoked the LORD by name.” (Genesis 12:8) Most of the writers of the Hebrew Bible freely but respectfully used the name right down to the writing of Malachi in the fifth century B.C.E.—Ruth 1:8, 9, 17.
It is abundantly clear that the ancient Hebrews did use and pronounce the divine name. Marmorstein admits regarding the change that came later: “For in this time, in the first half of the third century [B.C.E.], a great change in the use of the name of God is to be noticed, which brought about many changes in Jewish theological and philosophical lore, the influences of which are felt up to this very day.” One of the effects of the loss of the name is that the concept of an anonymous God helped to create a theological vacuum in which Christendom’s Trinity doctrine was more easily developed.—Exodus 15:1-3.
The refusal to use the divine name diminishes the worship of the true God. As one commentator said: “Unfortunately, when God is spoken of as ‘the Lord,’ the phrase, though accurate, is a cold and colorless one . . . One needs to remember that by translating YHWH or Adonay as ‘the Lord’ one introduces into many passages of the Old Testament a note of abstraction, formality and remoteness that is entirely foreign to the original text.” (The Knowledge of God in Ancient Israel) How sad to see the sublime and significant name Yahweh, or Jehovah, missing from many Bible translations when it clearly appears thousands of times in the original Hebrew text!—Isaiah 43:10-12.
Do Jews Still Await the Messiah?
There are many prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures from which Jews over 2,000 years ago derived their Messianic hope. Second Samuel 7:11-16 indicated that the Messiah would be of the line of David. Isaiah 11:1-10 prophesied that he would bring righteousness and peace to all mankind. Daniel 9:24-27 gave the chronology for the appearance of the Messiah and his being cut off in death.
As the Encyclopaedia Judaica explains, by the first century, Messianic expectations were high. The Messiah was expected to be “a charismatically endowed descendant of David who the Jews of the Roman period believed would be raised up by God to break the yoke of the heathen and to reign over a restored kingdom of Israel.” However, the militant Messiah the Jews were expecting was not forthcoming.
Yet, as The New Encyclopædia Britannica notes, the Messianic hope was vital in holding the Jewish people together throughout their many ordeals: “Judaism undoubtedly owes its survival, to a considerable extent, to its steadfast faith in the messianic promise and future.” But with the rise of modern Judaism between the 18th and 19th centuries, many Jews ended their passive waiting for the Messiah. Finally, with the Nazi-inspired Holocaust, many lost their patience and hope. They began to view the Messianic message as a liability and so reinterpreted it merely as a new age of prosperity and peace. Since that time, although there are exceptions, Jews as a whole can hardly be said to be waiting for a personal Messiah.
This change to a non-Messianic religion raises serious questions. Was Judaism wrong for thousands of years in believing the Messiah was to be an individual? Which form of Judaism will aid one in the search for God? Is it ancient Judaism with its trappings of Greek philosophy? Or is it one of the non-Messianic forms of Judaism that evolved during the last 200 years? Or is there yet another path that faithfully and accurately preserves the Messianic hope?
With these questions in mind, we suggest that sincere Jews reexamine the subject of the Messiah by investigating the claims regarding Jesus of Nazareth, not as Christendom has represented him, but as the Jewish writers of the Greek Scriptures present him. There is a big difference. The religions of Christendom have contributed to the Jewish rejection of Jesus by their non-Biblical doctrine of the Trinity, which is clearly unacceptable to any Jew who cherishes the pure teaching that “THE LORD OUR GOD, THE LORD IS ONE.” (Deuteronomy 6:4, JP) Therefore, we invite you to read the following chapter with an open mind in order to get to know the Jesus of the Greek Scriptures.
[Footnotes]
Compare Genesis 5:22-24, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures—With References, second footnote on verse 22.
All citations in this chapter, unless otherwise stated, are from the modern (1985) Tanakh, A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures, by scholars of The Jewish Publication Society.
The chronology here presented is based on the Bible text as the authority. (See the book “All Scripture Is Inspired of God and Beneficial,” published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of N.Y., Inc., Study 3, “Measuring Events in the Stream of Time.”)
The first-century Jewish historian Yoseph ben Mattityahu (Flavius Josephus) relates that when Alexander arrived at Jerusalem, the Jews opened the gates to him and showed him the prophecy from the book of Daniel written over 200 years earlier that clearly described Alexander’s conquests as ‘the King of Greece.’—Jewish Antiquities, Book XI, Chapter VIII 5; Daniel 8:5-8, 21.
During the period of the Maccabees (Hasmonaeans, from 165 to 63 B.C.E.), Jewish leaders such as John Hyrcanus even forced large-scale conversion to Judaism by conquest. It is of interest that at the beginning of the Common Era, 10 percent of the Mediterranean world was Jewish. This figure clearly shows the impact of Jewish proselytism.
According to The New Encyclopædia Britannica: “The trinitarian creed of Christianity . . . sets it apart from the two other classical monotheistic religions [Judaism and Islām].” The Trinity was developed by the church even though “the Bible of Christians includes no assertions about God that are specifically trinitarian.”
In addition to Biblical authority, it was taught as an article of faith in the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 10:1) and was included as the last of Maimonides’ 13 principles of faith. Until the 20th century, denial of the resurrection was viewed as heresy.
“The Bible does not say we have a soul. ‘Nefesh’ is the person himself, his need for food, the very blood in his veins, his being.”—Dr. H. M. Orlinsky of Hebrew Union College.
See Exodus 6:3 where in the Tanakh version of the Bible the Hebrew Tetragrammaton appears in the English text.
The Encyclopaedia Judaica says: “The avoidance of pronouncing the name YHWH is . . . caused by a misunderstanding of the Third Commandment (Ex. 20:7; Deut. 5:11) as meaning ‘Thou shalt not take the name of YHWH thy God in vain,’ whereas it really means ‘You shall not swear falsely by the name of YHWH your God.’”
George Howard, an associate professor of religion and Hebrew at the University of Georgia, states: “As time went on, these two figures [God and Christ] were brought into even closer unity until it was often impossible to distinguish between them. Thus it may be that the removal of the Tetragrammaton contributed significantly to the later Christological and Trinitarian debates which plagued the church of the early centuries. Whatever the case, the removal of the Tetragrammaton probably created a different theological climate from that which existed during the New Testament period of the first century.”—Biblical Archaeology Review, March 1978.

Millions of people have heard of the Ten Commandments, but few have ever read them. Therefore, reproduce the major part of their text here.
▪ “You shall have no other gods besides Me.
▪ “You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. . . . [At this early date, 1513 B.C.E., this command was unique in its rejection of idolatry.]
▪ “You shall not swear falsely by the name of the LORD [Hebrew: יהוה] your God . . .
▪ “Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. . . . The LORD blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.
▪ “Honor your father and your mother . . .
▪ “You shall not murder.
▪ “You shall not commit adultery.
▪ “You shall not steal.
▪ “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
▪ “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house . . . wife . . . male or female slave . . . ox or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”—Exodus 20:3-14.
Although only the first four commandments are directly concerned with religious belief and worship, the other commandments showed the connection between correct conduct and a proper relationship with the Creator.
The sacred Hebrew writings began with the “Tanakh.” The name “Tanakh” comes from the three divisions of the Jewish Bible in Hebrew: Torah (Law), Nevi’im (Prophets), and Kethuvim (Writings), using the first letter of each section to form the word TaNaKh. These books were penned in Hebrew and Aramaic from the 16th century to the 5th century B.C.E.
Jews believe that they were written under different and diminishing degrees of inspiration. Therefore, they put them in this order of importance:
Torah—the five books of Moses, or the Pentateuch (from Greek for “five scrolls”), the Law, consisting of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. However, the term “Torah” may also be used to refer to the Jewish Bible as a whole as well as to the oral law and the Talmud
Nevi’im—the Prophets, covering from Joshua through to the major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and then through the 12 “minor” prophets from Hosea to Malachi.
Kethuvim—the Writings, consisting of the poetic works, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, The Song of Songs, and Lamentations. In addition it embraces Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and First and Second Chronicles.
The Talmud
From the Gentile point of view, the “Tanakh,” or Jewish Bible, is the most important of Jewish writings. However, the Jewish view is different. Many Jews would agree with the comment by Adin Steinsaltz, a rabbi: “If the Bible is the cornerstone of Judaism, then the Talmud is the central pillar, soaring up from the foundations and supporting the entire spiritual and intellectual edifice . . . No other work has had a comparable influence on the theory and practice of Jewish life.” (The Essential Talmud) What, then, is the Talmud?
Orthodox Jews believe not only that God gave the written law, or Torah, to Moses at Mount Sinai but also that God revealed to him specific explanations of how to carry out that Law, and that these were to be passed on by word of mouth. This was called the oral law. Thus, the Talmud is the written summary, with later commentaries and explanations, of that oral law, compiled by rabbis from the second century C.E. into the Middle Ages.
The Talmud is usually divided into two main sections:
The Mishnah: A collection of commentaries supplementing Scriptural Law, based on the explanations of rabbis called Tannaim (teachers). It was put into written form in the late second and early third centuries C.E.
The Gemara (originally called the Talmud): A collection of commentaries on the Mishnah by rabbis of a later period (third to sixth centuries C.E.).
In addition to these two main divisions, the Talmud may also include commentaries on the Gemara made by rabbis into the Middle Ages. Prominent among these were the rabbis Rashi (Solomon ben Isaac, 1040-1105), who made the difficult language of the Talmud far more understandable, and Rambam (Moses ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides, 1135-1204), who reorganized the Talmud into a concise version (“Mishneh Torah”), thus making it accessible to all Jews.

Judaism—A Religion of Many Voices
There are major differences between the various factions of Judaism. Traditionally, Judaism emphasizes religious practice. Debate over such matters, rather than beliefs, has caused serious tension among Jews and has led to the formation of three major divisions in Judaism.
ORTHODOX JUDAISM—This branch not only accepts that the Hebrew “Tanakh” is inspired Scripture but also believes that Moses received the oral law from God on Mount Sinai at the same time that he received the written Law. Orthodox Jews scrupulously keep the commandments of both laws. They believe that the Messiah is still to appear and to bring Israel to a golden age. Because of differences of opinion within the Orthodox group, various factions have emerged. One example is Hasidism.
Hasidim (Chasidim, meaning “the pious”)—These are viewed as ultraorthodox. Founded by Israel ben Eliezer, known as Ba‛al Shem Tov (“Master of the Good Name”), in the mid-18th century in Eastern Europe, they follow a teaching that highlights music and dance, resulting in mystic joy. Many of their beliefs, including reincarnation, are based on the Jewish mystical books known as the Kabbala (Cabala). Today they are led by rebbes (Yiddish for “rabbis”), or zaddikim, considered by their followers to be supremely righteous men or saints.
Hasidim today are found mainly in the United States and in Israel. They wear a particular style of Eastern European garb, mainly black, of the 18th and 19th centuries, that makes them very conspicuous, especially in a modern city setting. Today they are divided into sects that follow different prominent rebbes. One very active group is the Lubavitchers, who proselytize vigorously among Jews. Some groups believe that only the Messiah has the right to restore Israel as the nation of the Jews and so are opposed to the secular State of Israel.
REFORM JUDAISM (also known as “Liberal” and “Progressive”)—The movement began in Western Europe toward the beginning of the 19th century. It is based on the ideas of Moses Mendelssohn, an 18th-century Jewish intellectual who believed Jews should assimilate Western culture rather than separate themselves from the Gentiles. Reform Jews deny that the Torah was divinely revealed truth. They view the Jewish laws on diet, purity, and dress as obsolete. They believe in what they term a “Messianic era of Universal brotherhood.” In recent years they have moved back toward more traditional Judaism.
CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM—This began in Germany in 1845 as an offshoot of Reform Judaism, which, it was felt, had rejected too many traditional Jewish practices. Conservative Judaism does not accept that the oral law was received by Moses from God but holds that the rabbis, who sought to adapt Judaism to a new era, invented the oral Torah. Conservative Jews submit to Biblical precepts and Rabbinic law if these “are responsive to the modern requirements of Jewish life.” (The Book of Jewish Knowledge) They use Hebrew and English in their liturgy and maintain strict dietary laws (kashruth). Men and women are allowed to sit together during worship, which is not allowed by the Orthodox.

Some Important Festivals and Customs
The majority of Jewish festivals are based on the Bible and, generally, either are seasonal festivals in connection with different harvests or are related to historical events.
▪ Shabbat (Sabbath)—The seventh day of the Jewish week (from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday) is viewed as sanctifying the week, and the special observance of this day is an essential part of worship. Jews attend the synagogue for Torah readings and prayers.—Exodus 20:8-11.
▪ Yom Kippur—Day of Atonement, a solemn festival characterized by fasting and self-examination. It culminates the Ten Days of Penitence that begin with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which falls in September according to the Jewish secular calendar.—Leviticus 16:29-31; 23:26-32.
▪ Sukkot (above, right)—Festival of Booths, or Tabernacles, or Ingathering. Celebrates the harvest and the end of the major part of the agricultural year. Held in October.—Leviticus 23:34-43; Numbers 29:12-38; Deuteronomy 16:13-15.
▪ Hanukkah—Festival of Dedication. A popular festival held in December that commemorates the Maccabees’ restoration of Jewish independence from Syro-Grecian domination and the rededication of the temple at Jerusalem in December 165 B.C.E. Usually distinguished by the lighting of candles for eight days.
▪ Purim—Festival of Lots. Celebrated in late February or early March, in commemoration of the deliverance of the Jews in Persia during the fifth century B.C.E. from Haman and his genocidal plot.—Esther 9:20-28.
▪ Pesach—Festival of Passover. Instituted to commemorate the deliverance of Israel from captivity in Egypt (1513 B.C.E.). It is the greatest and oldest of Jewish festivals. Held on Nisan 14 (Jewish calendar), it usually falls at the end of March or the beginning of April. Each Jewish family comes together to share the Passover meal, or Seder. During the following seven days, no leaven may be eaten. This period is called the Festival of Unfermented Cakes (Matzot).—Exodus 12:14-20, 24-27.
Some Jewish Customs
▪ Circumcision—For Jewish boys, it is an important ceremony that takes place when the baby is eight days old. It is often called the Covenant of Abraham, since circumcision was the sign of God’s covenant with him. Males who convert to Judaism must also be circumcised.—Genesis 17:9-14.
▪ Bar Mitzvah (below)—Another essential Jewish ritual, which literally means “son of the commandment,” a “term denoting both the attainment of religious and legal maturity as well as the occasion at which this status is formally assumed for boys at the age of 13 plus one day.” It became a Jewish custom only in the 15th century C.E.—Encyclopaedia Judaica.
▪ Mezuzah (above)—A Jewish home is usually easy to distinguish by reason of the mezuzah, or scroll case, on the right side of the doorpost as one enters. In practice the mezuzah is a small parchment on which are inscribed the words cited from Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21. This is rolled up inside a small case. The case is then fixed to every door of each room used for occupancy.
▪ Yarmulke (skullcap for males)—According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica: “Orthodox Jewry . . . regards the covering of the head, both outside and inside the synagogue, as a sign of allegiance to Jewish tradition.” Covering the head during worship is nowhere mentioned in the Tanakh, thus the Talmud mentions this as an optional matter of custom. Hasidic Jewish women either wear a head covering at all times or shave their heads and wear a wig.