Judaism and Islam Two Religions of Law in Comparison and Contrast

Campbell explains that polytheism, as that term implies, is "the realisation and idolize of a plurality of gods" (242). He does not, however, jump to the closure that monotheism is its direct opposite. Instead, he makes further distinctions. He describes monalatry as "the worship of a single god--one's own--while recognizing others," and cites the Hindu tradition of variously privileging shibah and Vishnu or other gods in the Hindu theogony, depending on novel and circumstance. Two kinds of monotheism atomic number 18 cited: ethnic and syncretic. The latter kind of monotheism takes the put one across that "all concepts of deity are limited [but] infers an ultimately unimaginable god above all, to whom all refer," and in that category Campbell says may fall the Greco-Roman concept of deity, as well as "in the broadest sense[] the humanistic learning of Europe since the Renaissance" (Campbell 243). except to that point, although the Golden Age philosophers in Greece flourished in the context of the classic pantheon (Zeus, Apollo, Hera, etc.), there is evidence in their texts of the collapse of the personalities within the pantheon into a more generalized concept of deity. In the Apology, for example, Socrates describes himself as "a sort of gadfly, given to the State by the theology . . . unceasingly fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you" (Plato 49).

Ethnic monotheism is identified with Judaism. Whereas syncretic monotheism is characterized as "i

The Islamic commitment to monotheism is much slight vexed than that of Judaism, as if Muhammad and his followers took heed from the Jewish texts of the pitfalls of devotedness and never wavered from the commitment they made to Allah. Muhammad's reference to the Jews as "the wad of the book" (cited by Campbell 422) illustrates the broad-based understanding on the part of Muslims as well as Jews that Islam has a diachronic context and historical antecedents.

However, Islam, which acknowledges both Judaism and Christianity as prophetic religious forerunners, claims, like them, customary religious authority. This is because of Muhammad's visionary experience, which moved him to either reject or absorb other religions as inadequate and establish his own.

Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. New York: Viking, 1962.

Ergin quotes from the Quran to reinforce the point, reemphasizing the monotheism shared by Muslims and Jews: "O People of the Book! Let us pester to a common formula to be binding on both us and you: That we worship none but God; that we associate no partners with Him; that we erect not, from among ourselves, Lords and patrons other than God" (Surat Al 'Imran, 64).

Another view of Islam is that it is a religion of peace and that it has affinities with Judaism (and Christianity) that are as important as differences between them. For example:

[T]he head word to be decided doubtless was not whether ecclesiastic or Baal was the sole god, but which of them was the more powerful god. . . . It was not until a later date that it was explicitly asserted by the prophets that Jehovah was the only Deity and that beside Him there was no other (Dummelow 224; dialect added).

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