A new and expanded edition of a highly successful textbook on world religions with a comparative approach which explores how six major religions are lived and expressed through their customs, rituals and everyday practices.
A new edition of this major textbook, exploring the world's great religions through their customs, rituals and everyday practices by focusing on the 'lived experience'
This comparative study is enriched and broadened with the inclusion of a sixth religion, Daoism
Takes a thematic, comparative and practical approach; each chapter explores a series of key themes including birth, death, ethics, and worship across all six religions at each time
Broadens students' understanding by offering an impartial discussion of the similarities and differences between each religion
Includes an increased range of student-friendly features, designed to allow students to engage with each religion and extend their understanding
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At the heart of religion lies the belief in a transcendent reality that provides an overarching context for human life and all that it contains. Seen through religious eyes, this visible world is not the full story. There is a dimension beyond the visible that holds the key to the origin, the purpose and the ultimate destiny of the cosmos and its inhabitants. Where religions tend to diverge is on the specific nature of this dimension. Is it personal or impersonal? Is it one or many? Is it masculine or feminine? Is it fundamentally similar to or different from us? The answers to such questions can be found by investigating one of the principal practical ways in which Hindus, Buddhists, Daoists, Jews, Christians and Muslims access the transcendent – their use or non‐use of the sacred image.
1.2 The Second Commandment
One of the most fundamental guides for religious and ethical life in Judaism is a list of ten commandments that Jews believe were revealed by God in ancient times.1 The first commandment on the list consists of the simple statement “I am the Lord your God,” which Jews interpret to mean that one must have religious faith. Belief in God is the first and foremost step. But it is the second commandment that holds the key to the Jewish understanding of the nature of divine reality. It begins with the phrase: “You shall have no other gods before me.” This statement could be interpreted to mean that there are many gods but that the Jews should ensure that their god has priority: a position known as henotheism. However, the traditional Jewish interpretation has been that only one, true God exists. In other words, this is a monotheistic religion and one of the most serious sins is the interposing of “other (false) gods” before the One – idolatry.
The monotheistic bedrock of Judaism is manifest in a host of religious writings and practices, a classical example of which is the 13 Principles of the Jewish Faith (Box 1.1) enumerated by the outstanding twelfth‐century philosopher Maimonides. His summary of the key elements of Jewish faith was converted into a poetic version known as the Yigdal hymn, which has been included in the daily worship service. Each morning in synagogues across the world, Jews chant:
Exalted be the Living God and praised.
He exists – unbounded by time in His existence.
He is One – and there is no unity like His Oneness.
Inscrutable and infinite is His Oneness.
Box 1.1 The 13 Principles of the Jewish Faith (Maimonides)
God exists.
God is one.
God is incorporeal.
God is eternal.
God alone should be worshiped.
God has communicated through the prophets.
Moses was the greatest of the prophets.
The Torah is the word of God.
The Torah is authentic and cannot be changed.
God is aware of all of our actions.
God rewards the just and punishes the wicked.
The Messiah will come.
The dead will be resurrected.
Another striking statement of monotheism in the daily liturgy is the prayer that is considered by many to be the most important in Judaism: the Shema (Box 1.2). It opens with the declaration “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” The text goes on to exhort believers to love the one God with all of their being and to bring these words to mind “when you lie down and when you rise.” In obedience to the command, the rabbinic tradition has incorporated the Shema into official evening and morning prayers. As the sun rises and sets each day, God’s oneness is proclaimed by Jews at prayer in all corners of the world.
Box 1.2 The Shema
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4–9).
The Shema is not only verbally expressed on a regular basis at prayer, but is also literally worn on the body and fixed to doorways as a constant reminder of the divine unity. The same Deuteronomy text exhorts the believer to bind these words “as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” Once again, in literal obedience to the divine command, the Shema is inscribed in black ink on parchment and placed inside special containers known as the tefillin and the mezuzah. The tefillin are small black boxes that are strapped to the forehead and left arm at weekday morning prayers, while the mezuzah is fixed to the doorposts of Jewish homes at eye level as a constant reminder of the oneness of God each time the believer passes. So essential is the idea of God’s unity that it is placed before the Jewish mind and heart when they are stationary in prayer or on the move with their ordinary daily routine.
Given that Judaism is committed to belief in one God, how do Jews conceive of the deity? What images come to mind? The next line of the Yigdal hymn provides the beginning of an answer: “He has no semblance of a body nor is He corporeal; nor has His holiness any comparison.” Although the Jewish scriptures and the Talmud occasionally refer to God’s hands, eyes, mouth and other bodily parts, Jewish theology insists that such anthropomorphisms are metaphorical in nature and in no way imply that God is actually physical in any sense. Maimonides stressed the point by including the statement “God is incorporeal” among his 13 fundamental principles. The principle itself is concise, but Maimonides dedicated the first book in his major work, Guide for the Perplexed, to outlining the figurative nature of such language and insisting on the absolute difference between the Creator and creation. Human minds may legitimately use familiar concepts such as bodily features to imagine the divine, but to interpret that language literally would be to fail to appreciate the otherness of God and fall into idolatry. It would be to project finite qualities onto the infinite. God is, by definition, divine not human.
The principle that it is absolutely beyond our ability to express the fullness of God in word or form stands behind the remainder of the second commandment:
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.2
The prohibition on images is not only aimed at avoiding worship of other gods, which would naturally undermine the monotheistic principle, but is also concerned with flawed attempts to depict the one true God. The ultimate mystery that shrouds the deity should never be forgotten. Among the world religions, Judaism in particular stresses the otherness and invisibility of God, which is the original meaning of the term kadosh, usually translated as “holy” but perhaps more accurately rendered “different.” The God of Judaism is truly transcendent and any attempt to depict the Holy Other is doomed to failure. It can only lead to misinterpretation and idolatry. The biblical episode that perhaps best captures the Jewish concern not to reduce God to something finite via an image or idol is when Moses destroys the golden calf that the Israelit...
