Judaism And Christianity Similarities

Judaism is one of the oldest religions on the face of the Earth and influences civilizations and other religions such as Christianity and Islam. About 1 in 500 people are Jewish, which totals between 13-14 million followers, and 40% of those millions of followers are living in the United States. The biggest difference between these Abrahamic religions and other major religions around the world such as Hinduism and Buddhism are that they are monotheistic. Monotheistic means that they believe in one overruling God that created the world. Yet these monotheistic have differences based on their holy book and who they believe in. Judaism reads the Tanakh, Christianity reads the Bible, and Islam reads the Qur’an. The Torah and the Bible are similar and even contain some of the same stories of prophets. Judaism coming nearly 2,000 years prior to Christianity, greatly influenced the religion, and a significant

The Tanakh is made up of subcategories such as the Torah which is the first five books of the Old Testament, including Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (Doniger 585). The fact that the Bible also contains these first five books shows how influential Judaism was in the founding of Christianity. In the early days of Christianity, the religion was considered a denomination of Judaism and Jesus and his apostles were all Jewish. Many saw Jesus as the messiah, the individual who would lead the Jews back to Israel, but others did not which lead to the deciding factor that separated Judaism and Christianity (Novak 227). Judaism does not believe in the prophecies of the New Testament and rejects Jesus Christ as mankind’s savior. Christianity adopted Jesus as their savior who rose from the dead and allowed mankind to be saved by God. Judaism believes that eventually someone will rise and bring them back to Israel to restore the Davidic