In a little more than a hundred pages, it has been quite clear to me that all three faiths not only share many of the same stories, but also the same language of signs that interprets them. All three religions have their interpretive fundamentalists, surely, though the Jews are less prone to this than the rest of us, but we share a system of mystical interpretation that brings together a whole set of thinkers that never co-existed in time or space.
A good example is Feiler's account of the interpretation of the shofar by a Jerusalem shofar-maker. The shofar-maker refers to the shofar as a lawyer. Traditionally, the shofar is blown at Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, the beginning of a week in which God is said to take an annual account of the sins and good deeds of the world. The shofar, the maker says, is a reminder to God of Abraham's offering of Isaac.
The concept of Jesus as our lawyer or Advocate with the Father is familiar from Christianity, and Christians from very ancient times have recognized parallels between Jesus's self-offering and the binding/sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis. (I've probably written on the prefiguring of Jesus as advocate in the Book of Job.) Indeed, in Ascensiontide, we often sing the Rosh Hashanah Psalm, "God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of the ram's horn." Now, I have no idea what that really meant to the God-inspired Jew who wrote that. But I do know what it meant to early Christian interpreters reading Jesus' life.
Later Jewish interpreters replied by arguing that the story in Genesis suggests that Isaac himself was actually killed and raised by God after three days. Isaac's sacrifice became the inspiration for Jewish martyrdom in the face of forced conversion by Christians, an idea signified for Jews by the imposition of ashes. One can almost hear the Letter to the Hebrews, "These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth." (Feiler has engaged obliquely with Hebrews in Abraham so far (particularly the idea of relating to God by living as an alien), but I'm curious to see what else he makes of it.)
For Muslims, the binding of Isaac is more complex, as is the Crucifixion of Jesus. The Koran actually says that Isaac was the sacrifice, though if you were to ask most Muslims, they would say Ishmael was. Moreover, the Koran suggest the binding occurred in a dream rather than in waking life, as Genesis does. As for the Crucifixion, the Islamic account is a weird twist on the typological thread in the Gospel accounts.
So let me remind you of the Christian absorption of Jewish typology. As alluded to in the Letter to the Hebrews, the Crucifixion is a culmination of the Jewish sacrificial system. Traditionally, the Yom Kippur sacrifice involved the choosing of two goats. In the Gospels, Pilate gives the Jewish people the choice of releasing Jesus and the similarly named Jesus Barabbas (Jesus, son of the father). One is guilty of preaching a subversive spiritual kingdom. The other is guilty of "stasis," a word that signifies in Greek, the subversion of the temporal order (riot, rebellion...). And the high priest's party stirs up the crowd to call for Jesus, not Barabbas (but yet...). Thus, just as the Kohen Gadol (the High Priest) casts lots between the two goats, so here as well. Who is sacrificed in the Temple or who is offered to Azazel, the demon of the desert (and quietly shoved off a cliff in the wilderness) is not something the Gospel writers are very clear about. But within the first century after Jesus's death, incidents of Jesus's life (especially his last days) were being interpreted as a sort of Jewish Fasti, the Jewish sacred calendar encompassed in a human life.
For Islam, the Crucifixion is unacceptable, in two ways. First, if Jesus were actually killed, the typological parallels to Ishmael/Isaac would be impossible to ignore, making Jesus very much like God's son/partner. But the Koran is clear that God has neither son, nor partner. Second, the entire post-Easter narrative has to be wrong, because it makes Jesus, the authoritative advocate with the Father and the Holy Spirit into the Paraclete. Muslims believe that Jesus promised the Paraclete. They, however, believe that Muhammad was the Paraclete. Therefore, the Islamic Crucifixion involves Jesus being assumed into heaven before even being placed on the cross. Someone is put in his place, bearing his likeness. The Koran, I think, is ambiguous on who exactly it was. Islamic-influenced pseudo-Gospels put Judas there. I wouldn't be surprised if some say Barabbas. The idea that Simon of Cyrene was substituted pre-dates Islam by four centuries. In fact, like the ambiguity about whom exactly Abraham sacrificed, Islam attains greater intellectual consistency by not specifying who exactly suffered on the Cross.
I point to these complexities, because I notice that the stories that three most numerous Near Eastern monotheistic religions (note that few others exist in very small numbers) tell and the rituals they use are a strongly overlapping set. Rather than create entirely new typologies, polemic among the Big Three is a process of re-shaping, call and response. Rather than making up a new game, religions explore the creative freedom of the game that Abraham or God or whoever invented. The closest phenomenon I can think of is that of the evolution of U.S. history textbooks over the 20th century, in which the same first three centuries of European settlement, revolution, republic-making, expansion, and civil war are shaped into a vast diversity of narratives that tell us how historians want to see the United States.
Which leads me to a fascinating conclusion. That the big Three are the same logical system. However, as Russell and Godel established, there is no universal system of mathematical logic. Every system must be based on axioms. The fun is trying to see what axioms are the most general. For Judaism, I find it in the opening of the Krias Shema, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one." In Islam, I hear it in the Shahada, "There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God." The distinctions between the big Three very much stem from these axioms. But what is the Christian equivalent? The historical Creeds are just too long to be the fundamental axioms. And many Christians reject the Creeds. The Creeds contain the axioms that distinguish smaller sub-sets of faith in Jesus.
Instead, I find the fundamental axiom of Christianity in Rite I of the Book of Common Prayer (which I was fortunate to hear this morning), "Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God..." In other words, by stating that Jesus is Lord, both explicitly and with the English for "Shema" (hear!), these words are a very subtle variation on the opening lines of the Krias Shema. The close parallel of the axioms fundamentally distinguishes Judaism and Christianity by the messianic secret above messianic secret of Jesus, "I am the Lord." But it's not a contest.
The brothers of this holy house extend these thoughts to you on the Sunday of Judgment in Advent and pray that you may greet your counsel with boldness at the time of his appearing.
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