Christianity and Judaism the Diversity Between the

¶ … Christianity and Judaism The diversity between the modern strains of Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism, as outlined in Michael Molloy's text Experiencing World Religions, may seem so diverse in and of themselves, that a reader may be prompted to exclaim that even Judaism itself is not a perfectly harmonious tradition.

How can a scholar begin to compare the two traditions? (Molloy, 2005) But another observer may be apt to protest that because both Judaism and Christianity are monotheistic traditions, and both can lay claim to the same basic Near Eastern scriptures, one can speak of a clear and seamless 'Judeo-Christian' ethical tradition, despite the fact that Judaism spawned Christianity as a sect and a religion -- and Christians were later to persecute Jews.

(Got Questions, 2005) However, although the relationship between the two religions is quite close in geographical, historical, and scriptural origins, today the religious are quite far apart in their approach to dogma. Unlike Christianity's focus on making the soul prepared for the world to come (only natural, given that it began as an eschatological-minded splinter sect of Judaism) "Judaism does not focus much on abstract cosmological concepts," notes the author of the Judaism 101 Website Tracey Rich.

Rather "Judaism focuses on relationships: the relationship between God and mankind, between God and the Jewish nation between the Jewish nation and the land of Israel, and between human beings." (Rich, 2001) Christianity, in contrast, was founded not as a religion tied to a nation -- one of the religions early disciples, the Jewish Paul, was explicitly called the apostle to the gentiles or the non-Jewish people.

"The Apostle Paul, a Jew and a strict adherent of Judaism, encountered Jesus Christ in a vision (Acts 9:1-9) and proceeded to become the greatest witness for Christ and the author of almost half of the New Testament." (Got Questions, 2005) Christianity evolved into an individualistic religion focused on the relationship of the individual believer to God. Right thought rather than right action was stressed in Christianity, as opposed to Judaism.

(Rich, 2001) Protestant Christianity explicitly identified itself as a portable religion, transmitted by texts in the vernacular, rather than mediated and confined through rituals and loyalty to the land.

In contrast to Judaism's major schisms, which have focused on the ways of keeping the commandments in the modern era, Christian ideological fissures have largely occurred as a result over debates as to what to believe, from the controversies over the Trinitarian nature of the divine during the religion's early struggles, to Martin Luther's denial of the ability of God to be mediated through the Church's bureaucratic system of human hierarchy and interpretation, to the continuing split between Protestants and Catholics about the authority of the Pope.

A Reform and Conservative Jewish debate is more likely to center on the appropriateness of keeping what commandments, rather than their mutual loyalty to the land of Israel. Of course, perhaps the most significant difference for Christians is that "Christianity teaches that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies of a coming Messiah / Savior (Isaiah 7:14; 9:6-7; Micah 5:2), but "Judaism does not believe that Jesus was the Messiah. Taking it.