Abrahamic religion

In the study of comparative religion, an Abrahamic religion is any of those religions deriving from a common ancient Semitic tradition and traced by their adherents to Abraham ("Father/Leader of many" Hebrew אַבְרָהָם Arabic ابراهيم), a patriarch whose life is narrated in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, and as a prophet in the Qur'an.

This forms a large group of related, largely monotheistic religions, generally held to include Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Bahá'í Faith (based upon Islam), and comprises about half of the world's religious adherents.

According to the Jewish tradition, Abraham was the first person to reject idolatry, hence he symbolically appears as the founder of monotheistic religions. In that sense, Abrahamic religion could be simply equated with monotheistic religion, but not all monotheistic religions are Abrahamic. In Islam he is considered as the first monotheist and is often refered to as Ibrahim al-Hanif or Abraham the Monotheist. The term, desert monotheism, is sometimes used for a similar purpose of comparison in historical contexts, but not for modern faiths.

All the Abrahamic religions are derived to some extent from Judaism as practiced in ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah prior to the Babylonian Exile, at the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE. Many believe that Judaism in Biblical Israel was renovated and reformed to some extent in the 6th century BCE by Ezra and other priests returning to Israel from the exile. Samaritanism (see: Samaritans) separated from Judaism in the next few centuries.

Abraham Ishmael Isaac Islam Judaism Christianity Sunni Muslims Shiite Muslims Catholicism Protestantism

New Testament

That portion of the Bible containing the life and teachings of Christ, including the gospels, the Epistles, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Revelation of John.

The New Testament (Καινή Διαθήκη), sometimes called the Greek Testament or Greek Scriptures, and sometimes also New Covenant which is the more accurate translation of the original Greek, is the name given to the part of the Christian Bible that was written by various authors c. AD 48–140 and gradually collected into a single volume over the next few centuries. Some minor groups commonly refer to the New Testament as the B'rit Chadashah, Hebrew for New Covenant, or the Apostolic Writings.

The New Testament is twenty-seven separate works: the four narratives of Jesus Christ's ministry, called "Gospels"; a narrative of the Apostles' ministries, which is also a sequel to the third Gospel; twenty-one early letters, commonly called "epistles" in Biblical context, which were written by various authors and consisted mostly of Christian counsel and instruction; and an Apocalyptic prophecy, which is also technically the twenty-second epistle.

The common language spoken in the time of Jesus was Aramaic. However, the original text of the New Testament was most likely written in Koine Greek, the vernacular dialect in 1st-century Roman provinces, and has since been widely translated into other languages, most notably, Latin, Syriac, and Coptic.

New Testament view on the life of Jesus the Gospels Acts of the Apostles the letters of Paul General epistles Book of Revelation