Talk:Abrahamic religions/Archive 2

message: I'm not a member of the religion WikiProject, but a Jewish editor reviewing it for the Judaism Wikiproject.  I give it a B rating because the article has all the basic necessary elements: well-organized sections, development of individual religions in context of a broader theme, images, and references.  However, the quality of the writing is shoddy and inconsistent.  It's typical for such articles to have different authors representing the various religions, and someone needs to review the whole article - and it's a very long article - to harmonize the various elements according to summary style, improve the quality of writing, and resolve POV disputes. Shalom Hello 02:19, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

message: I am curious as to why the article seems to only be about the "Big 3" abrahamic religions and does not mention smaller abrahamic religions such as Rastafari.  Rastafarians worship the abrahamic God ("Jah") just as these do.  Please discuss. --76.121.134.253 (talk) 18:43, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Rastafari

message: This section needs reworking. Let's remove the terms "negative" and "positive" and let readers make their own value judgments. 
:"It may be that a distinguishing characteristic of the Abrahamic religions is their generally negative stance on homosexuality, zoophilia and, in some cases, human sexuality in general, notably outside of marriage and in non-procreative contexts."
:"A distinguishing characteristic of the Abrahamic religions is their general respect and reverence for human sexuality, enshrining it in the institution of marriage, and disavowing sexual acts outside of this context, such as homosexuality, zoophilia, and pedophilia."
::Two ways of saying the same thing. Again,
:"sexuality was considered in a more positive light (positive in the sense that it was not recommended by their Non-Abrahamic religions to legislate death punishments for the practices of homosexuality or prostitution.)"
:"sexuality was treated in a less reverential light (see Herodotus where marriageable girls in Babylon were offered for a duration as temple prostitutes before entering into marriage)."
::The fact that the parenthetical explanation of "positive" was as long as the original sentence argues that this can be worded much better.
:"It seems to be a mark among some versions of the rise of Abrahamic traditions that all sexuality was eliminated from the concept of the divine. Notable exceptions include Judaism (i.e. Song of Songs, Kabbalah, Hassidism), Sikhism and within Islam."
::sounds like original research. if you cannot source that, let's remove it.
''
:"By the time of the triumph of Christianity, in the late 4th century CE this was generally true throughout the realms of the declining Roman Empire. For example, within territories where Christianity and Judaism held political power the presence of femininity in local deities as well as the Godhead was eliminated. Contrastingly, the Non-Abrahamic religions accepted female high-priestesses. They also believed in the existence of many powerful female divinities like Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, and Isis, who was worshipped as the archetypal wife and mother."
::Christians and Jews didn't endorse worship of the Moon in the persona of Diana and this means they eliminated sexuality from the concept of the divine? wp:nor. second, eliminating worship of another religion does not equate to eliminating doctrine within one's own religion proper. why not mention something about Theotokos, Mary mother of Jesus as Mother of God? i suspect there might be a Theotokos page, and could prolly copy/paste the intro to here.
:"In general Abrahamic Religions negate the possibility of sexual openness with respect to the divine nature."
::sexual openness? For Abrahamic religions, what you mean by sexual openness may very well be sexual perversion. first of all, source? no source, let's delete.
''
Homosexuality
"Many of the sacred texts of the Abrahamic Religions refer to homosexual behavior as an abomination, deriving from the Holiness Code of the book of Leviticus and an interpretation of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and the punishment the deserved. By the first century, the writings of Philo Judaeus and Flavius Josephus evolved it into a fully developed form. Thus the condemnation of homosexuality in all Abrahamic religions has a single Old Testament source in addition to any separate reference in other holy books. While the Abrahamic religions unequivocally condemn male homosexuality, lesbianism is nowhere explicitly mentioned in the Old Testament, the New Testament, or the Qur'an; though some scholars have argued the passage in Romans 1:26, "Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural," is a reference to it."
finally, incorporation of this link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_homosexuality
The Jackal God 04:08, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This whole section is totally unsourced and highly dubious. Abrahamic views on sexuality aren't particulary distinguishing. Just ask the Dalia Lama's views on premarital sex and homosexuality. The severity of the punishments  may be distinguishing, but Abrahamic punishments are severe in general. This whole section needs immediate sourced to avoid being chopped as WP:OR. Ashmoo (talk) 08:44, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

text: The claim that Abrahamism unequivocally condemns male homosexuality is completely false. There are many sects that allow it, and there have been many different interpretations of the Lev. verses. As mentioned, sexuality certainly isn't very distinguishing, particularly when many scholars argue as to the actual intention of the Lev. verses. I'm beginning to wonder if this really even has a place in this article. You could perhaps say something like, "Abrahamic religions have varying traditions of dealing with homosexuality, many of which have been the death penalty, though no tradition has been held consistently." Is there really anything else that can be said here? The other article covers this. Wakablogger2 (talk) 23:43, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Sexuality in Abrahamic Religion

message: I think the forced conversions (and attempted force conversions) of the Ottoman Empire need to be mentioned in this article if the Crusades are to be mentioned and this article is to remain balanced.--Girl-razor 22:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Ottoman Empire

message: "This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Abrahamic religion article. This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject."
This whole section should be deleted--Editor2020 (talk) 19:54, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This isn't a blog. Argue about this elsewhere. For a bit more info on the subject, see Abrahamic religion. -- Boracay Bill 22:48, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

text: I find it Ironic that you would draw a distinction between the Islamic view and "the Jewish/Christian ONE", since the Islamic and Jewish views seem FAR closer to each other than either does to Christianity.--Ff11 (talk) 20:28, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wow people are narrow minded 

message: I think I had it with overzealous Zionists playing the "politically correctness". "This place is not the right place for any political free expression". I suggest you continue to decide about everything, what is correct and what is not, what is revisionist and what is Zionist BUT you change the label on the tab at the top of this page from "Discussion" to "Fascism" if not to "Zionist media fascism".
I wonder if an edit on a "Discussion" page needs Bronfman's approval to get published.
70.83.31.41 (talk) 23:36, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  This is not a discussion page ? 

message: I think Mandaeism/Sabianism qualifies as an Abrahamic religion. (The preceeding was an unsigned contribution 27 May 2007 by .)
:I think that "Abrahamic religions" could be used in several different meanings. I guess there are at least the following:
#As used in the Qur'an, when referring tho those three large recognised "religiuons of the book" which themselves refer to Abraham, i.e., Judaeanism, Christianity, and Islam. (This is to be contrasted with e.g. Zoroastrism, which was recognised as a religion of the book but not as abrahamic.)
#Ancient or modern religions or "subreligions" who themselves actually refer to a tradition going back to Abraham as a main source of their religion. I think that academic scolars of religion would be more apt to decide on which faiths to include. However, I guess that not only mandaeanism should qualify, but also some other very old but dwindling, as e.g. samaritanism, and some rather modern with large numbers of followers, as mormonism. I suspect that a reasonable listing of these faiths should be considerably longer.
#Such religions or faiths which are actually classified as abrahamic by modern users of this term. This does sometimes include Bahá'í, according to one reference to an American institute of abrahamitic religions. I do not have the slightest ideas of which use the term has e.g. in modern predominantly moslem countries.
:I have no opinion on whether the different meanings merit separate articles or not; but, if I'm right, clearly they merit some kind of recognition.JoergenB 18:33, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mandaeism 

message: The article implies that Sikhism is purely or simply Indic in origin when this is completely fallacious. Sikhism has dual roots in BOTH Sanatana Dharma and Islam. It cannot be said to be soley based on one.
Carlon 16:23, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you kind of missed the point, but your outcome seems logical, though somewhat crude. Half the world does care about Abraham/Ibrahim, so maybe you shouldn't be as explicit in your language. Just a thought, since half the world being really angry at you might not be a pleasing proposition. I'm Muslim, and I understand the context of what you said and the fact that you aren't intentionally trying to insult Abraham/Ibrahim or his followers but some people may not be so open-minded (,just look at how some of these religious conflicts started in the first place). Also, people would care more about what you think if you didn't swear during explaining it (there is a lot of prejudice against people inappropriately swearing on Wikipedia ;) ). But I agree in your opinion that Sikhism can't be counted as Abrahamic, since it's teachers weren't descended from Abraham/Ibrahim, or that it doesn't put any major significance to Abraham/Ibrahim in it's tenets or doctrines, even if it's blurry as to what influence Islam had on Sikhism, Sikhism still isn't directly linked to Abraham/Ibrahim except for it's worship of One God (as Abraham/Ibrahim is quite famous-- specifically in Islam-- for the smashing up of his community's polytheistic idols during which he outsmarted the priests, while he was only a boy-- which for that reason of him outsmarting them remains as one of my fave Quaranic stories); which I think could be included but other than that (which is quite important, but would be even more important if the article was dealing with "Monotheistic faiths", which could branch out to more than just Abrahamic faiths, with the Trinity's classification as Monotheistic a bit iffy.), I don't think Sikhism should really be included in this article or be considered Abrahamic. Wow, I can really write a lot when inspired. (corrected typos)khlieeq t • e • c 08:38, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Just checked and their does seem to be a mention of Sikhism as monothestic and having a similar prophetic teachers, but it's from an Indic origin, so can't be classed as Abrahamic. Though Dharmic on the other hand, I'm not sure since I don't know as much about faiths other than Islam, Christianity and Juadism and a little bit about Sikhism since we did it as school; which seemed kindof weird as we didn't do anything on more common or influential Dharmic religions like Buddhism or Hinduism, they mainly only focused on the Abrahamic and substantially alot of the RME curriculum had to do with Sikhism-- did it twice in Primary (once when we were studying India, and they never touched on Hinduism or Buddhism), might end updoing it again. khlieeq t • e • c 08:51, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias regarding Sikhism 

message: There should be mentioned, that all these religions have institution of holy war. Isn't there much differences between crusade and djihad? Even that both leads mostly to bad results. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 91.135.18.243 (talk • contribs).
It is important to consider if an action taken in the name of a religion is in fact a general characteristic of said religion, or a misuse of it. Jihad is 'holy war' sanctioned by Islam. Whereas, in the Christian religion, crusading is not doctrinal or in any religious text. The Jewish account does include warfare against others, but it would seem that it only applies to the religion when it is DIRECTLY called for by God.
Frstep1 (talk) 02:47, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is not correct.  Although the New Testament does not sanction or command war, the Old Testament explicitly does, and the Old Testament is still a part of Christianity.--Ff11 (talk) 20:25, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Holy War 

message: So Jesus Crops up in Hinduism, but its not related?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.71.220.22 (talk) 23:34, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hindu 

message: It may well be that the expression was coined by James Kritzeck in his 1965 Sons of Abraham: I was unable to find any earlier attestation, and he seems to be quite fond of it.  But it is of course almost impossible to prove that there was no earlier use of the term. OED knows the adjective "Abrahamic" from the early 19th century, but only in meanings directly related to Abraham himself. This is confirmed by a corpus search at gutenberg.org, which gives "Abrahamic covenant", "Abrahamic promise", but no "Abrahamic religions". There is one attestation of "all true Abrahamic faith (Rom. 4:1-5)" in Chafer, Satan (1909). Here, reference is made to the link of Christianity to the Abrahamic covenant in the epistle to the Romans, but the intention is not to inlcude Islam. dab (𒁳) 10:51, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin of the expression

message: "Indeed, there exists among their followers a general understanding that they worship the same one God."
I've tagged and modified the above statement for two reasons: first, because it has no source, and second, because it's quite inaccurate.  Of course, many people assert such a thing (witness the section up above), but the opposite is also widely asserted.  Consider Christianity alone: the historic creeds that to which most Christian churches hold assert the doctrine of the Trinity, which doesn't go very well with An-Nisa 171: "And do not speak of a trinity;/it is best for you to refrain."  I'm not seeking to say that this statement isn't made — of course it's said, and quite widely — but it isn't at all general.  Nyttend 04:58, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The statement is now "Many of their followers believe...", a statement that is common knowledge and requires no proof. I'm removing the tag. Lockesdonkey 17:55, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Common understanding that all three worship the same God 

message: The Origins section is starting to look good. The current first few sentences may be a little confusing, speaking first of Judaism as having its origins in the Israelite culture of the 2nd and 1st millenia, and then of Israelite culture as being Canaanite in origin. This is true of course, but perhaps the form of words is confusing, so I changed "Israelite" to "Canaanite/Israelite" in the first sentence. PiCo 03:01, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origins 

message: "It is the choice of Abraham as a common label that makes them Abrahamic."
What is this supposed to mean? The whole paragraph need to be rewritten, but especially this line.--Editor2020 (talk) 19:50, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin section--paragraph 2 

message: This is from the Wikipage 'Abraham'. It conflicts with the meaning given here.
"For the latter part of his life, he was called Abraham, often glossed  as av hamon (goyim) "father of many (nations)" per , although it does not have any  literal meaning in Hebrew. JewishEncyclopedia.com states, "The form 
'Abraham' yields no sense in Hebrew". Many interpretations were offered, including an analysis of a first element  abr- "chief", which however yields a meaningless second element."--Editor2020 (talk) 20:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Meaning of 'Abraham' 

message: the main picture for this article shows the star of david for the jews, the cross for the christians, and..."allaah" for the muslims? instead of the word for "God" in arabic, why doesn't this picture have the star and crescent of islam?
i might add that "allaah" is a word used by arabic-speaking jews, christians AND muslims to refer to the God. although arabic is a sacred language in the islamic tradition, i don't think that its use in this picure is appropriate. Bulbasaur (talk) 00:33, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Main Picture 

message: I think Islamic symbol should be changed to a crescent or a crescent with a star? radiant guy (talk) 04:26, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Symbols 

message: Article says: "Abrahamic religions is a term of Islamic origin."
(A) I don't think that this is true.
This could be a badly phrased attempt to say that the name "Abraham" is of "Islamic" (Arabic) origin, but I don't think that that's true either. 
(B) The cites given to support this are "J.Z.Smith 1998, p.276" and "Anidjar 2001, p.3".  As far as I  can tell, the article does not clearly specify what these are. Can anybody please track these down and check whether they confirm this or not?
-- 201.37.229.117 (talk) 20:01, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Jonathan Z. Smith and Gil Anidjar, both appropriate scholars to cite, but I can't find a work by Smith of 1998 or by Anidjar of 2001. Probably second editions. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:02, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I went through the refs and linked to the actual work intended in the references. The reason you didn't find works by these scholars is that Smith's is a book chapter and Anidjar's is the introduction to his translation of Derrida. Merzul (talk) 10:44, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abrahamic religions: A term of Islamic origin. No, I don't think so. 

message: An anon added   asking what is meant with "parallels" in this context. I'm also confused, so I ask it here. The last section of the lead paragraph needs some clarification. Merzul (talk) 10:45, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Parallels of the "Abrahamic" category 

message: I support renaming the article to Abrahamic religions to reflect contents of the article, use in cited references, and lack of any identified group of worshipets of Abrahamic religion (in the singular)--Meieimatai 07:00, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Religion (as such) is not always a singular noun. "Religion" can refer to broad groups (such as "monotheistic religion" or "neopagan religion"), as well as a singular religion (such as "the Judaic religion" or "an ascetic religion"). Vassyana (talk) 08:52, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Tis in English--Meieimatai 10:31, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

text: There's a reason we have Cow and not Cows. Singular number is preferred in titles. Ilkali (talk) 13:47, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No, what we do have is Cattle, which is plural as a grouping for the a member of the subfamily Bovinae of the family Bovidae. Abrahamic religions is also an attempted taxonomy, though one distinctly different from the approaches taken for other religions--Meieimatai 13:53, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, bad example. You're missing the point, though. Read the MoS. Ilkali (talk) 16:05, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

text: Vassanya, you continued veiled insults and assumption of your superior knowledge do no justice to yourself in the eyes of other editors. I had pointed out before that to be a religion in singular, a religion, but the commonly accepted definition in social sciences has to have a group of worshippers attached to it. It has nothing to do with your assuming of a lack of familiarity or confusion with terminology by myself or others.--Meieimatai 22:07, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Requested move

message: The symbol of Islam is not the writing of Allah in Arabic characters. It's a crescent with a star. Can someone change it please. It's an ancyclopedia,it must be true.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.99.77.111 (talk) 14:15, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  The symbol of Islam is NOT a crescent moon and star. It has no official symbol, just as Christianity has no official symbol. But why do the Christians use the cross? It's because it symbolizes their Lord. The Arabic calligraphy of "Allah" symbolizes our Lord, and that's why it's better to use that than the crescent moon and star. The crescent only represents the start of Ramadan, by the way. Armyrifle (talk) 14:58, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Symbol Of Islam 

message: From WP:V:
*"Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, or the material may be removed."
And from Jimbo on the WP:V page:
*'"I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons."
The uncited section tag has been there for a while, and leaving unsourced material that editors are challenging is against policy.  Regards, -- Jeff3000 (talk) 12:44, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Terrible bias among editors. Yeah YOU. It is not an example of "I heard it somewhere" The Abrahamic religions are male oriented.  You just seem to have an objection to me (and another editor) pointing out that fact in the common aspects section. Most of the comments in that section are uncited. Should they all be removed? I see you do a lot of work on Bahai articles. Do you see the god of the Bahai faith as being male? --Sting Buzz Me... 13:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Another Wikipedia policy assume good faith.  Go ahead and remove all the material, or find a citation. (And by the way Islam doesn't see God as male.) Regards, -- Jeff3000 (talk) 13:49, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It is impossible to assume good faith with your obvious bias. Stop edit warring your personal point of view and grow up. I notice you didn't answer the question re Bahai = male god. Bahai doesn't belong in the article as it is not an Abrahamic religion. Just another relatively modern scam copy cat religion. The Bahai articles you work on are full of uncited comments, just as most of Wikipedia is! My point is that the god of Abraham (and hence Abrahamic religions) is male and as such is a "common aspect" that needs to be mentioned in the article. Do you happen to have a reference that the god of Abraham was/is a female? No you don't so leave the information intact please.--Sting Buzz Me... 00:03, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

text: Hey you're edit warring just out of sheer contempt for the facts. Read what it says please: "A patriarchal orientation, meaning that God is described as Male." It is NOT saying that god IS a male it is saying that god is DESCRIBED as a male. Now read your various religious texts and you will see that terms such as Father, Son, His, Him, He, are all used when discussing god. Do you get it now? The info doesn't need to be cited as it is common knowledge for anyone reading texts in relation to the God of Abraham, that in fact Abrahams God was being described as a male.--Sting Buzz Me... 00:29, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I would suggest you read some more about the concept of God in Islam.  Wikipedia has a good article:  Islamic concept of God.  In Islam any such description of human attributes to God would be against many of their concepts.  The use of the terms "His" in the English translation are due to there being no good word to translate the original Arabic which has no masculinity/femininity applied to the pronouns referring to God. If it such common sense, you should have no problem finding a source.  On another point, I've asked for a third-party comment. Regards, -- Jeff3000 (talk) 00:34, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: AGF Sting, it appears that you're being a bit aggressive about this conflict and it would be good for both of you to show restraint and charity towards one another. Since Sting is apparently the one making the claim, he needs to provide verifiable and credible sources for those claims. Your charges about Jeff being biased also smack of religious bigotry; it's really irrelevant what your or his religious convictions are, both of you need to provide sources for claims. It's as simple as that. If you cannot provide a source for a claim that is particularly controversial, it is likely to be removed more swiftly. I suggest that you state clearly what your thesis is, provide the sources from which you got these ideas, and then we can figure out a text that works best. If you cannot do either of those things, you are going to find it difficult to collaborate on Wikipedia articles of any type. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:34, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

text: The use of "His" and "Him" in these contexts is clearly not intended to imply maleness in some cases, and that is particularly so in some of these religious traditions.  In fact, the teachings of some of these religions clearly state that they do not consider the concept of maleness (or gender) to apply to their concept of God.  Considering this, it seems obvious that the statement should be removed, because it is clearly not entirely true (in addition to being unsourced). -Wookipedian (talk) 18:36, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uncited material 

message: Aren't the religions of Yazdanism (practiced mainly by Kurds and some Armenians) considered Abrahamic religions? No mention is made of these in this article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.238.157.110 (talk) 01:00, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I wouldn't think so. Just like Zoroastrianism, they have very close similarities to the Islam, Christianity and Judaism but they do not have Abraham as an important figure. Persian Warrior----Contact Me! 03:05, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yazdanism as an Abrahamic Religion