[Skybird]

NeonSamurai,

I readily admit my knowledge on Judaism is not as much as what I know on islam and Christianity and the church. and I certainly have not read the Thora - nor have I referred to it!

However, before Jesus lived, there was only Judaism, and the texts on Jesus were not written earlier than two generations after his assumed death when he is said to have been crucified (something Islam denies to have happened, and since Islam sees Jesus not as God's son but as a high ranking prophet, this christian claim about crucification is one of the three things islam takes extremely queer about the christians, the other two being their suspicious concept of the divine trinity, and the upholding of a book/the bible - meaning a priests' hierarchy and dogma - instead of the idea, which means a profaning of the content, in their view, and they are probably right there).

As I see it, the Bible'S stories of the times before jesus base on the Abrahamic god of the Jews and represent some kind of "reformed", or chnaged/altered form of Judaism. the history of Judaism is a history of constant conflict and war, isn't it, the whole region there still lives and dies by this old tradition's "heritage", and the ,otives for this often were religious. Do nyou want to say the many tribal wars and conquests had nothing to do with relgious beliefs of theirs?

I did not refer to the Thora, becasue I do not know much about it, I do not even know if it is a changed, modernised version today or by content is still the same old thing they already carried in front of their army three thousand years ago (I fear the latter, when seeing orthodox Jews and their habits). But the old stories of the bible are basing on the Judaic concept of a god - as much as I know that is a god as tyrannic and punishing and psychotic like the god of the old testament, which makes sense if both traditions are linked, yes? I think here is a reason for the proverbial hairplitting philosophic thinking - and intellectual superiority - in Judaic tradition, for which already the pharisees in Roman times and earlier were famous: it really needed some tricks and efforts to re-interprete such a brutal deity and change it's image into a man-loving, forgiving, kind old grandfather who takes care for his children. I must admit I tend to see both the church'S and the Jews image of a god like this as truly schizophrenic: celebrating a god that rescues somebody's life after having send him the car that rolled over him, who tests his creations by asking them to sacrifice their children or wiping out opposing people/tribes, and promises salvation and forgiveness - not in life, no, not earlier than after death.

Anyhow, the church's dogma as represented in the full bible moved beyond the Judaic tradition, and Jesus teachings as included in the Gospels moved even further beyond the church'S dogmatic teaching. Muhammad also based on the abrahamic tradition, but took it and implemented changes to it that had the primary purpose of making muhammad's version of abrahamic traditon different to that of the Jews that at that time he already must have hated very much after his collision with their theologicans who showed him how little his insight into Judaism was - a big, narcissistic offence for him. I am convinced that Islam'S hostile attitude especially towards the Jews is nothing else but a echo from Muhammad'S narcissim that was offended so very much by the Jews not accepting him as somebody of equal woprth and qualification.

From all these four (!) traditions, I see the teachings of Jesus as the most advanced, and being the one of the four that is almost completely disconnected from the meaning of the old Abrahamic cult the other traditions (church, Judaism and Islam) are basing on.