ishtat
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2004
- Posts
- 5,374
The muslims want you to think that they worship the same god as Christians and Jews do. They don't. Yaweh is the God of the Bible. allah is the muslim God. Yes it is their word for god, but it only refers to the islamic god. Never heard of ahura mazda other than the name of a car named a mazda.
Your first assertion is interesting. The fact is that the Christians Mohamed knew have diasappeared from History. He was very familiar with Ebionite Christianity which had established itself solidly in Western Arabia by the 6th century. Waraqah ibn Nawfal a cousin of Mohamed's wife Khalijah was a learned Ebionite Christian monk who regularly discussed religious issues with Mohamed.
The Ebionites looked to the Jewish Christianity of James the brother of Jesus for leadership. As such they acknowledged Jesus as a great holy man but objected to his deification, particularly in the Trinity which the Ebionites regarded as nonsense. The Ebionites revered Jesus for his humanity and as a great prophet and teacher. The Ebionites also objected to any divine aspect of Mary though she was revered as being 'an ideal' for women.
The Ebionites only used one gospel, that of Matthew though they seem to have acquired it before the initial two chapters were added (the nativity story)
The Ebionites were especially hostile to Paul of Tarsus, who they saw as perverting the original teachings of Jesus to conform with Hellenistic philosophy.
However, after the destruction of the second temple in AD70 and the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem, the Ebionites became a religious isolate. But there is no doubt that Mohamed's concept of God as one and only is almost entirely attributable to this Christian sect. The fact that he called his one God Allah, the name of the chief Arabian Pagan god was a sensiible move in the same tradition as when the Christians converted the Pagan fertility festival of Eostre into the Christian festival of Easter.
So I regret to say that your notion that Allah and God are different is completely incongruent with historical fact. Allah and Yaweh are one. both emanating from the Jewish tradition.
Ahura Mazda is the name of God in the monotheistic religion of Zoroastrianism, sometimes called Mazdayasna. At the time of Christ Zoroastrianism was the greatest monotheistic religion in the world. It was the official religion of the Persian empire from about 540 BC until the Moslem conquests post 700 AD, 1,200 years.
Jesus would have been well aware of it because his everyday language, Aramaic was the official language of the Persian empire.
The nativity story has a strong connection with Zoroastrianism, these days the story of the three wise men from the east is often seen as a quaint relic - a story for children, but in its original context it was vitally important. The men were called Maji (the specific title of a Zoroastrian priest). Maji were the advisors and officials to the Emperor of Persia. the greatest empire of its day. The story therefore is not just a quaint tale for children but a political staement about the Emperors representitives paying homage to the new Lord (Jesus).
However, the most fundamental impact of Zoroastrianism on Judaism and Christianity is much older. Zoroastrianism first came to the notice of the west in about 540 BC when Cyrus the Great of Persia released the Jews from their Babylonian captivity. Zoroastrianism had much earlier origins with the Aryan invaders who emerged from central Asia in the late second millenium BC. One wave of invaders went south into India and founded Hinduism and its early scriptures (the Vedas) from about 1700-1500 BC. Zoroaster and his predecessors stayed North through Bactria and Eastern Iran and it is here that their earliest scriptures the Gathas were proclaimed in Avestan, an extinct Old Persian language. Some of their ritual still connects the two streams, examples being the prevalence of vegetarianism and the veneration of particular animals.
Zoroaster was the first to preach the idea that Mazda had granted men 'freewill' to choose right or wrong. He was the first to preach the idea of a day of Judgement and the concept of hell, and of a future saviour (Saoshant). He also preached the equivalent of the golden rule in the mantra of "good thoughts, good words, good deeds. To this day the religion is known as the "Good religion" in India.
It'd take too long to explain all the connections but this wiki article is a decent start:-
http://enwikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism
Prior to the Jews exile to Babylon by Nebuchanezzor circa 587BC the Jews had been flip flopping over the establishment of monotheism from one king of Israel to the next for 500 years + ( See Kings and Judges) When Nehemiah and Ezra returned from Babylon to Israel after 539 BC they had experienced a successful monotheistic state and they set out to completely expunge the old Gods in favour of Yaweh in their own country . That experience of living in Babylon forced the issue and was clearly a necessary pre-requisite to the development of Christianity.
That's all for now but just as a topical note: if your church has been any charitable help to the Yazidis who were victimised by ISIL recently, you have been helping some of the heirs of Zoroastrianism. Other groups include the Manicheans and the Mithraic traditions some of which even pre-date the Zoroastrians in their origins.