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III
PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam developed in the same region of the Middle East
and have overlapping scriptural traditions.1
All three are monotheistic, posit-
ing a single all-powerful god, who transcends the natural world, which is his
creation. All three portray God not only as the god of their particular group or
region, but the god of everyone, everywhere. And all three spawned intellectuals
who tried to integrate what was handed down in Scripture with pagan philosophy
derived from Greece. Because the three religions had so much in common, their
intellectuals faced common problems, such as the problem of evil. The theories
that they developed to handle these problems were not just narrowly construed
theologies but worldviews that incorporated what today we would call philosophy,
science, and religion.
Yet, there were important differences between each of these emerging reli-
gions and the Greek philosophy on which their intellectuals drew. Chief among
these was that Greek philosophy placed a higher premium on secular reason and
tended to view its questions ahistorically. By contrast, Jewish, Christian, and
Islamic philosophers tended to emphasize revelation as a preeminent source of
knowledge and to view their questions within the context of what they took to
be the histories of their respective peoples, as related in their holy scriptures.
Judaism
The “Tanakh” (or Hebrew Bible)
is the basic Jewish Scripture. It includes the
“Torah” (Hebrew for “Law”), the “Prophets,” and the “Hagiographa” (Greek
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