World religions. Рахимбергенова М.Х. - 41 стр.

the achievement of well-being in this life through obedience to the commands                From early times Yahweh was thought of not simply as the embodiment
of God.                                                                                of physical power, as many gods have been, but as essentially moral: he was
     After death the soul of man descends into a shadowy existence in Sheol,           just and holy, and demanded justice and holiness of men, as the story of Na-
where it enjoys neither much sorrow nor much bliss.                                    than and David testifies. Hebrew religion was the first to embrace ethical
     Israelite religion is a religion animated by the fear of God, but also by trust   monotheism. An offense against morality is also an offense against God’s
in God. On the one hand, “it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the Liv-    command, and therefore against God himself. This is the concept of sin. In the
ing God”. But on the other, he has shown that he loves his people, and if they         Torah, sin can be unwitting as well as deliberate. Sins are to be atoned for by
carry out his commands, he will be faithful to them.                                   offering sacrifice.

              The Lord is my shepherd,                                                                                  Salvation history
              I shall not want…                                                              A distinctive feature of Israelite religion is its sanctification of the history
              Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,            of the Hebrew people, as salvation history. Yahweh not only created heaven
              I fear no evil;                                                          and earth, but he also brought about certain definite events, which were be-
              For thou art with me.                                                    lieved to have happened in the history of the Hebrew people. He appeared to
                                                            (Psalm 23)                 Moses in a burning bush, rescued the people from slavery in Egypt, fed them in
                                                                                       the desert, revealed his Law to them through Moses on Mt Sinai, led them back
                                 God and creation                                      into Palestine, and appointed Saul and David as kings.
      Yahweh appears to have been at first associated with a shrine on Mount Si-                  “A wandering Aramean was my father; and he went down into Egypt
nai, before being adopted as the sole god of the Hebrews. During the earliest pe-           and sojourned there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great,
riod of the religion, the Hebrew people accepted that the gods of other peoples             mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly, and afflicted
existed, such as Baal or Astarte, but the Hebrews for the most part worshipped              us, and laid upon us hard bondage. Then we cried out to the Lord the God
only their own god. This state of affairs has been called henotheism. In the                of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice, and saw our affliction, our
course of time, however, the religion became genuinely monotheistic: Yahweh                 toil, and our oppression; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a
came to be considered as the only true God, the creator of heaven and earth.                mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror, with signs and
      The concept of creation, which characterizes Judaism and its daughter re-             wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land
ligions, Christianity and Islam, interprets the relationship between the world              flowing with milk and honey”.
and the divine differently from the Upanishads and Buddhism. According to the                                          (Deuteronomy 26; Revised Authorized Version)
Upanishads and Mahayana Buddhism, the divine is the sole genuine reality and
the world is essentially an illusion which our mind impose on that divine real-             When the nation was all but destroyed by the Babylonians, this event was
ity, in a sense revealing it, but also in an important and obvious sense conceal-      seen as a punishment inflicted by God for the sins of the people. Eventually, the
ing it. Both forms of religion are monistic. According to the Hebrew concept of        people hoped, God would send his chosen servant, the Messiah, who would re-
creation, by contrast, the world is real, and distinct from God. Creation is not       store Israel to its rightful place among the nations, ushering in an era of lasting
monistic, but perhaps we might say, pluralistic. Although the world is depend-         peace and prosperity.
ent on God for its existence, and continues to be dependent on him throughout               Just as the Israelite concept of creation is different from that of the Indian
its history, god is not the world, and the world is not God. The relationship be-      religions mentioned, so also is their concept of history. In the Upanishads and
tween God and the world is more like that between a carpenter and a chair that         Buddhism, the course of the world is cyclical. Samsara is an everlasting cycle
he makes, or an artist and his painting, whereas for the Upanishads and Maha-          of birth, death and rebirth, and the same holds true for the world as a whole: eon
yana Buddhism the relationship is more like that between, say, ourselves as we         succeeds eon, and in each eon the illusory world arises and eventually declines
are in reality, and as we appear in a concave or convex mirror which distorts          back into nothingness before arising again in the next eon. In the Hebrew con-
our image, or between the magician’s stage assistant who is not actually sawn          cept, by contrast, history is a straight line, beginning with creation, and continu-
in half, and the illusion the magician produces that she is sawn in half.              ing on to its final consummation. It is more like a drama, with a beginning, a
                                                                                       middle, and an end.
                                        81                                                                                      82