The Jews do believe in Messiah; they just don't recognize Him for who He is and think the Messiah is yet to come. (Of course, one big reason they don't recognize Jesus as Messiah is because their rabbis exclude such scriptures as Isaiah 53 in order to hide the truth.) The Jews do believe in our saving, redeeming God; but you have a point when you say they would tell the same. So, like the Muslims, the Jews are lost in their sins unless they have faith in the Redeemer; but whereas the Jews' faith in God to provide a redeemer might conceivably (only God knows for certain) be accounted to them for righteousness, the Muslims have no faith in redemption or in a God who redeems.
The Quran refers to Jesus as “the Messiah”. One could just easily substitute “Muslims” for “Jews” and “God” for “Messiah”, and end up at the same conclusion. There are two ways to identify a person: actions, or attributes. If you ask a Muslim, “is God the one who revealed Himself to Abraham?”, he would say, “yes, this is who God is”. A Christian (or a Jew) would say the same. If you ask a Muslim, “is God the one who gave Moses the Law at Sinai?”, he would say, “yes that is who God is”. A Christian (or a Jew) would say the same. If you ask a Muslim, “is God the one who sent Jesus, the Messiah?”, he would say, “yes, that is who God is”. A Christian would say the same. Likewise, if you ask a Muslim, “is God omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal, and ever the same?”, he would say, “yes, those are God’s attributes”. A Christian would say the same. If you ask a Muslim, “is God the creator, upholder, ruler, and judge of the world, in this life and next?”, he would say, “yes, those are God’s attributes”. A Christian would say the same. Bearing in mind that each of the persons of the Trinity just is God, each and all bearing one and the same set of attributes and actions (cf. Athanasian Creed), on what grounds do you claim that the object of worship in Christianity and Islam consists of different Gods? That doesn’t make any sense.
Muslims consider Jesus to have been a prophet, and they don't use "Messiah" to mean the same thing you, I, or the Jews mean when using the word. So they don't view Him as a redeemer; they're just using the word as an 'honorific' to a man who was a prophet. See here.
Jews don’t use it the same way, either. Why then do they get a pass but Muslims do not, when Muslims affirm that Jesus was sent by God while Jews do not? Your position doesn’t make sense.
I'm not so sure they would. To Muslims, Allah is the god of Ishmael. The Jews are viewed virtually as swine and the God they worship is the God of Jacob (Israel) rather than the god of Ishmael. I'll agree that their view of Allah includes many of the same attributes as those of YHWH, but not all. Allah is not loving toward His people, for instance. Allah is believed to be harsh and unloving. God says, "Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife." But Allah said to Muhammad that when he wanted the wife of another, he had only to command that man to divorce her so Muhammad could marry her that night (and Muhammad did that very thing on more than one occasion). God says, "Thou shall not kill." But Allah's word, the Quran, tells Muslims to seek out and kill the Jewish and Christian 'infidels.' One may know that oxygen and nitrogen are both gases. They both have protons, neutrons, and electrons. Yet it is only necessary to show one dissimilarity in order to prove that oxygen and nitrogen are not the same. Likewise, to prove that YHWH and Allah are not the same, it is only necessary to show one dissimilarity. I have shown several.
Oh, come now! When Jews use the word "Messiah" they are referring to that one unique individual who will come to save them. They do not use the word for any old prophet! Or do you claim that Samuel, Obadiah, and Amos were called Messiah by the Jews?? As to the 'why' of my position, look at it this way. The Israelites worshiped God in keeping with the measure of the revelation He gave to them in O.T. times. When Jesus came, He revealed much more and consequently Christians worship God in accordance with this greater measure of revelation. When Muhammad came he revealed falsehoods, he perverted everything, and he drew his followers away from the faiths of Christianity and Judaism; he lured them into a new faith with a new scripture given to him by Satan's fallen angel masquerading as Gabriel, worshiping a false god in denial of the risen and revealed Christ.
https://www.ciu.edu/content/allah-islam-same-yahweh-christianity Notwithstanding this link and what I've stated up to this point, I will concede that the use of "Allah" as the name of the Islamic god may not be entirely proper and correct within Islam, even though many Muslims do use the word as their god's name. I found this quote on an Islamic website just now: Many Muslims believe that Allah is the actual name of the God in the Quran, rather than Allah being the Arabic word for the word God. They do not realise that it is wrong to personalise God as He is not a person.https://www.quran-islam.org/articles/god_or_allah_(P1160).html This quote does, however, support my contention that the Islamic Allah and our God are not the same entity; notice what the Islamic writer states: their god "is not a person"!
Judaism specifically denies that the role of the Messiah is to make atonement for mankind’s sins, by dying and being resurrected. It’s clear enough where these talking points are coming from. Fundamentalist assumptions about the Bible are preventing you from properly understanding and applying it in this case. 1. Have you read the Quran in either the original Arabic or in a responsible English translation? 2. Have you taken the time to read and study the classic (or at least historically important) Islamic theologians and philosophers, like al-Ghazzali, al-Juwaini, ibn Rushd, ibn Arabi, and so on? If the answer to either of these questions is “No”, then there’s no point in continuing this discussion.
I'm having trouble finding it, (members may be able to help me) but wasn't one of the kings of Persia ( or a northern region) called messiah in the OT?
It’s possible. “Messiah” as later Judaism (and Christianity) understood the term is post-biblical usage. The word itself just means “ anointed” and could refer to anyone holding a regal or sacerdotal office.
BTW the person you’re thinking of is Cyrus. I don’t recall the exact reference, but it’s in the Book of Isaiah. He is called “my anointed”, or “messiah”.
That's a convenient way out: set the study bar high enough that one can be sure I don't meet the criteria to be worthy of one's time. Did I mention atonement? Not that I recall. I believe I said 'redeemer.' Judaism does specifically expect God to redeem them: Job 19:25; Ps. 19:14; 78:35; Isaiah Ch. 41, 43, 44, 47, & 48; etc.
It’s not a high bar. When critics of the Church make broad, sweeping statements about Christianity, I feel no obligation to cut them any slack if they display rank unfamiliarity with the primary sources, nor should anyone else here. I expect the same intellectual integrity when people discuss Islam or Judaism publicly, which brings me to my next point. But what does “redemption” mean? Redemption certainly includes “atonement” in the Christian understanding of the Messiah’s work. It does not in the Jewish understanding. Judaism’s “magisterium”, so to speak, is the Oral Torah of the Mishnah and the Talmud. The “Old Testament”, as we call it, is not an independent source of teaching in Judaism; it means what the Oral Torah says it means, in other words. There is no “sola scriptura” in Judaism. And the idea that one person can atone for the sins of another, for example, is simply antithetical to the teaching of the Rabbis. The point here is that Judaism explicitly rejects the understanding of the Messiah that Christianity takes for granted. Judaism says Jesus was not sent by God, was not the Messiah, and that they worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Islam says that Jesus was sent by God, was the Messiah, and worships the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (the Quran does not teach that Ishmael took the place of Isaac, contrary to popular opinion). The views of Islam in this regard are objectively closer to Christianity than are those of Judaism, yet you have no qualms saying Jews and Christians worship the same God, even if their understanding of Him differs in certain respects. If that’s true, then a fortiori it’s true of Muslims as well. To claim otherwise is a waste of time.
Let's put it this way: God is triune (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). God revealed himself to the Hebrews in the Old Testament, but only partially; the Hebrews were still (and would remain to some degree) a people prone to idolatry and sycnretization with other religious faiths. For God to attempt to explain his Trinitarian nature would have been futile at that point in the relationship. The monotheism of God was a vital tonic to the pagan polytheism of the time. He spoke and taught the Hebrews as he would children; the revelation of his nature would grow as the Hebrews grew, until the incarnation of the Son in Jesus Christ, when the triune nature of God was made apparent to all. (Though, as many point out, the word "Trinity" never actually appears in Scripture, the principle is expounded throughout the books of the New Testament.) So God the Father, YHWH, was God's first revelation to the Hebrews (though we do get hints of his triune nature in, e.g., the first chapter of Genesis ("the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters"). The Muslim Allah, in contrast, is strictly unitarian. Jesus Christ (Isa) is in no way God, but (as others have pointed out) a prophet -- and not even the final one (whom they believe was Mohammed). Theirs is a religion of works, not of faith. Liberal theologians often complain about Biblical inerrantists, but we can't hold a candle to Muslims, who believe that the Quran was literally dictated word for word to Mohammed by an angel (Gabriel, by tradition). Mohammed (who, let us remember, could neither read nor write) memorized this revelation and then passed it along later to scribes. Muslims not only believe that the Quran is inerrant; they believe that the Quran can only be read in Arabic to get the full truth. (If you see the parallels between this story and Joseph Smith, the angel Moroni, and the golden tablets, you're not the only one.) Finally, Jews are God's chosen people (Ex. 6:7, Jer. 30:22). God said so himself. Absent every other thing we've discussed here, that is the material difference. God chose them, and will preserve them until the last day, when a remnant will finally accept Jesus Christ as their Lord (Rev. 7:1-8). All of the other peoples of the earth do not have the same assurance. There is only one way to salvation -- only one. And that is through the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12, John 14:6).
YHWH is not specifically God the Father. St. Paul, quoting the prophet Isaiah, said “at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, every tongue confess”, etc. The original text from Isaiah was referring to YHWH. (I feel constrained to note that any decent modern commentary would point this out.) In the Book of Revelation, Jesus is depicted as both “the Ancient of Days” (cf. Daniel 7) and as the “son of man” who rides on the clouds. He is also “the First and the Last”, which again was attributed to YHWH in the OT. It was the pre-incarnate Logos who appeared to the Patriarchs, and whom they called “YHWH”, at least according to the Fathers. There was some nuance added to this in the wake of the Arian controversy, but that’s the main gist of it.
I'm aware. The Hebrews were referring to the triune God, whether they were aware of it or not at the time. YHWH is not the name Hebrews gave to God; God told them his name (I AM) (Ex. 3:14). (Though the Hebrew form YHWH is "HE IS", as in "HE IS sent me to give you his word"). Hebrews in fact almost never spoke the word YHWH; they were so in awe of God that they thought even forming the words of God's holy name in speech was blasphemous, so they used other terms (see below). The New Testament never uses that term (obviously, because it is written in Greek and not Hebrew). But I'm fine with calling the triune God YHWH. Or El Shaddai, or Adonai Elohim, or El Olam. They all are names for the same God, so whatever you like. I am an English speaker and feel most comfortable with plain "God", but that's me.
To hear it chanted in Arabic is to begin to understand why they think this. There is a rhythmic, almost musical quality to the words that genuinely gets lost in translation. More interesting still, is their approach to it, i.e., there is no “Islamic lectionary”. The daily canonical prayers are always performed the same way, and their purpose is solely to praise God. The reading and study of the Quran in a systematic fashion is something that is done outside the context of the daily public services. It bears mentioning that every canonical prayer begins with the recitation of the first chapter of the Quran, which bears some resemblance to Psalm 1.
Muhammad was a poor young man from a poor family. In that time and place most young men were married by age 20, but not until Muhammad was 25 could his family arrange for him a marriage to an unattractive 40-year-old widow. Happily for Muhammad, that widow had just inherited sizable holdings from her deceased husband. Life was looking up for Muhammad. But then he had his first encounter with a spirit being. While taking refuge in a cave one night, a spirit choked him repeatedly until he agreed to speak the words given to him by that spirit. He returned home in a panic to his wife in Mecca, sure that he was being possessed by a demon, and begged his wife to hide him. Over the following months and years, these visitations came more and more often. It was not long before Muhammad began saying that the spirit being was actually the angel Gabriel, sent by Allah to give the people messages through Muhammad. Some of these messages encouraged Muhammad and a handful of his friends to commit robberies. The Meccans soon drove him and his wife out of the city, and they moved to Medina. In Medina, Muhammad spread his wealth around and bought more friends (a nice word for them). But money started getting tight as he bought more companions, so Muhammad got the ‘word’ from Gabriel to start raiding Meccan caravans. The robberies got bigger and bolder, and then in one raid the group killed 5 people as well as robbing all the goods. Muhammad kept 20% of the plunder, while the others divided up the remainder. Things kept escalating; the proceeds of raids bought more compatriots and allowed bigger raids with greater plunder. Battles with the Meccans and others soon developed. In the meantime, Muhammad’s wife died. By this time Muhammad’s messages had already included laws for his followers including a law that they could marry up to 4 wives each (substantial encouragement for the risk-takers!); however, he was never able to marry another so long as his first wife was alive. But immmediately upon her demise, Muhammad married not one, but two females on the same night...... and one of them was only six years old! (To be fair, it must be admitted that Muhammad allegedly did not consummate the marriage with little Aisha until she was nine.) For the next half-dozen or so years of Muhammad’s life, he became insatiable. He declared (and the Quran says) that Allah permitted him unlimited wives, permitted him to marry virgins without the required witnesses and without the woman’s consent, and permitted him to demand that other men divorce their wives and give them to Muhammad if he so desired. Any time Muhammad wanted something that was forbidden, he conveniently received a ‘revelation’ from Gabriel that allowed him to have his way (in other words, Muhammad was making things up for the Quran as he went along). Muslims are taught to this day that Muhammad’s multiple marriages (over 20 in all) were made to strengthen the tribe and to further the cause of Islam, but close examination reveals that Muhammad married these women out of lust... women who were young, beautiful, and arousing. He even married an Egyptian and a Jew; of course, neither of these women were Muslims, let alone of any Arab tribe. Muhammad gave his wives standing orders that they were to come to him at the peak of their menstrual flow so he could then have intercourse with them; this appears to have been his favorite time to have relations. Muhammad did many brutal things besides planning, conducting, and ordering robberies. He ordered the murders of captives who had surrendered peacefully. He cheated his own friends of their shares of the plunder (“Allah” declared it all to be for Muhammad) on at least one occasion, when the take was unusually large. He (supposedly Allah, through Gabriel) decreed that his Muslim followers could take as wives the married women whom they took as plunder. One time, Muhammad spotted a particularly comely Jewish girl whom one of his gang had just married (after murdering her father, torturing her husband to find out where the family money was hidden, and killing him as well) and demanded that the man divorce her that day so that Muhammad could enter into her that night. As one can imagine, since the Quran was dictated piecemeal (as occasions arose) by a self-absorbed man with the help of a fallen angel, that book is filled with mistakes, grammatical errors, distortions of history, and contradictions. It is completely unworthy of respect as a 'holy book.' Islam is nothing more than a man-made religion. (Source: Mohammad Al Ghazoli, a former Muslim, onetime consultant to Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi, and convert to Christianity)
One thing that has struck me about Muslims over the years is their utter refusal to engage in textual criticism of the Quran. Both Jews and Christians are enthusiastic textual critics, going back almost to the beginnings. There has always been a lively (and often heated) scholarly exchange regarding manuscript variants, translations, adaptations, versions, and so on. The Bible was written over the course of centuries, but many different hands, and in three different languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek). The Bible has stood the test of time. It has been submitted to every rigorous scholarly examination both believers and doubters can come up with. The Bible itself is a product of text-critical processes. Consider Jeremiah -- it was a collection of poems and sermons by Jeremiah, with biographical information about Jeremiah, and redacted by his pupil Baruch. The recension of Chronicles from the books of Samuel and Kings (1-4 Reigns in the Septuagint) is a similar example. Even in the New Testament it is apparent that both Matthew and Luke were working in part from at least one earlier source (probably Mark, and maybe another document called the Q source). The books of the Bible are extensively hyperlinked and often quoted in later books. The Bible submits itself to examination, even within itself. The Muslim world has no such relationship to the Quran. To the extent that Quranic textual criticism exists, it comes from non-believers living in the West, and their findings are almost universally ignored within Islam itself. Islam has developed into a belief system that is astonishingly unable to be self-critical or even particularly self-aware. Just try searching on the term "Quran textual criticism" -- most of the hits you get back will be from Western (and mostly Jewish or Christian) sources (even those in Arabic!). It is this utter unwillingness to be critical and introspective that is the greatest weakness of Islam; it's why so little scholarship of note has come out of the Islamic world, especially in modern times. The religion itself positively discourages critical thought. Ibn Rushd (Latin name: Averroes)* was probably the most significant Islamic scholar (besides Avicenna), and had he prevailed over his Sunni detractors, Islam today would probably look very different. Ibn Rushd advocated for the incorporation of certain Greek philosophical ideas into the Muslim faith (especially Aristotelian philosophy). Among his other works, he wrote medical treatises, a commentary on Plato's Republic, and advocated for the role of women in civic life and government (and even the military). But in 1195 his Sunni enemies caught up with him -- he was condemned by an Islamic tribunal in Cordoba (in modern-day Spain), his books were ordered burned, and he was sent into exile. What might have been the Islamic equivalent of the Protestant Reformation was stopped dead. I often compare Islam to Mormonism because honestly, they share basically the same origin story and they have the same hostility to scholarly inquiry. *Interestingly, the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides was a big fan of Averroes.
In the early years of Islam the academic atmosphere was much more open. There was textual criticism done in those days (after all, there were rival editions of the Quran and they certainly had an interest in standardizing the text...St. John of Damascus famously cited a Surah that did not make it into the final edition). After about the first 100 years, much study of that type ossified (possibly because the task was seen as completed), though inquiry in areas like philosophy, law, and medicine continued for centuries afterward. H.A. Wolfson has written some great stuff on the subject that makes for some fascinating reading.