Salvation Four of the Greatest

Salvation

Four of the greatest world religions: Judaism; Christianity; Islam, and Hindi, describe salvation. Using ideas from the books of Genesis and Exodus, from the Old Testament of the Jews; the Book of Matthew from the New Testament of the Christians; Suras 1 and 2 from the Koran of the Muslims, and the Bhagavad Gita from the Mahabharata of the Hindus, it is possible to understand the essence of salvation within those four respective world religions, both separately and comparatively.

Within the Jewish holy book the Old Testament, the first of the five books of the Old Testament is Genesis. Genesis 1-9 describes God's creation of the Earth in seven days; the Garden of Eden; Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, having tasted the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Life after being commanded by God not to taste it; the births of Adam and Eve's sons Cain and Abel; Cain's killing of his brother Abel; and God's punishment of Cain by placing a mark on his head: to both stigmatize Cain in life, and to keep him safe from death. Salvation of humanity within the Old Testament, however, does not begin until Genesis 7:1, at which time God tells Noah "Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before Me in this generation" (10). God then floods the Earth, destroying everything except Noah and his family and the pairs of beasts (one of each gender) inside the ark. In Genesis 9:1, after the flood has ceased and Noah re-opens the ark, God tells Noah, "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth'" (12). That is humanity's time of salvation.

In Exodus 1-24 from the Old Testament, Moses, upon God's command, on Mount Sinai (Exodus 3), leads the Jews out of bondage in Egypt, after many generations of enslavement and persecution there, at the hands of the Egyptian Pharaohs (Exodus 5-12).

Moses leads the Jews across the Red Sea (Exodus 14), and through a barren desert, to the "land of milk and honey." Within Exodus 1-24, from the Old Testament, that journey and its aftermath represent (eventual) salvation. Exodus 31-33 tells of Moses returning from Mount Sinai with the tablets containing the Ten Commandments, only to find that in his absence, his brother Aaron has allowed the Jews to create a molten (golden) calf, which they now worship (a pagan idol) instead of God. Moses smites those who do not worship the Golden Calf instead of God (only the sons of Levi are left), and then returns to Mount Sinai to ask God's forgiveness of his people's sins. On Mount Sinai, God forgives all but those who have gone against Him (Exodus 32). The implication of this is that salvation comes to those who refuse, like Moses and the Levites, to stray from the path of God.

The Christian New Testament describes salvation, according to the word of God, through his Son Jesus (Christians believe Jesus was the son of God, who came to earth to save humanity; the Jews do not). One example of this may be found within the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). In the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus preaches the way to salvation, beginning by saying "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5, p. 1209). The content of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in many ways reinforces that of Moses' Ten Commandments and other teachings of the Old Testament, but also contains some key differences.

For example, Jesus states (as a direct challenge to the Pharisees of the time, a sect of Judaism that insisted on strict interpretation of the Mosaic laws): "That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5, p. 1209). This means that followers of Jesus must seek to be more righteous than the Pharisees, whom Jesus implies are less than righteous.