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Anyway, back to the podcast.
Hi, you're listening to Pods with Nick and James, a conversation podcast to do with various interesting topics.
Something that I've really enjoyed doing this last couple of months is getting prepared for these podcasts
and actually using my brain, learning about some new things, discussing them with a good friend of mine,
and then learning something and respectfully disagreeing at times. It's all good.
How are you doing today, Nick?
I'm good. Thank you very much, James. Looking forward to the topic today.
OK, so today's topic is one which I've kind of avoided because of my own personal investment and views in it.
I've tried to be even-handed and I've definitely done my best to research the things that I've ignorant of,
only to learn that it's not a pothole of ignorance. It's a massive chasm.
So you start filling it in and you just realize, oh, no, it's far worse than I thought.
OK, so today's topic, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to switch off immediately after this, I completely understand.
But we're going to be talking about the Abrahamic faiths.
And the reason why I've decided to focus on these is partly because I'm a born-again Christian,
but also partly because these three faiths make up a majority of the religious practices on planet Earth.
And therefore, they've influenced history, they've influenced politics,
they influence culture and many different things in today's society.
It's hard to be in a Western culture or be in a culture in the New World or Europe or the Middle East
without there being some clear influence of one of these three faiths on either the words that you're using,
the expectations in society or I'm struggling to think of all the different ways, but they all I can say is, trust me, they're there.
Yeah, it's a core, isn't it? It's a center of our society, you know, and it has been for thousands of years.
Now, I will say that it's a topic that fascinates me, genuinely fascinates me.
I'll probably go along the lines of saying agnostic, but that's a discussion for another day.
So I don't necessarily have a faith.
I'm not naive enough to think that the universe can happen without some kind of divine intervention,
but in my own defense, even Stephen Hawking said the same thing.
So even the most scientific of minds eventually gets to the point where they go,
it's not actually just going to happen by itself.
So based on that, it's always been something that's fascinated me,
but I've always struggled to lock into a specific belief system.
But I hold a lot of respect for religions as a whole because they give strength to millions,
if not billions of people around the world, and although they don't necessarily work for me,
they do for them, and that's valuable.
But it was something that I was very tentative coming into.
I chose every topic I could think of other than religion because I know that you are religious
and I know my beliefs can be quite strong at times, and I didn't want to offend anyone,
but I think we're at a point now where we've had quite a few podcasts, we understand each other quite well.
I don't think there's going to be any kind of offense.
Well, absolutely. And part of this podcast is about kind of disagreeing amenably, which is possible.
Although, you know what, I was going to use a particular celebrity who's actually very good at successfully disagreeing,
but they're currently being disgraced.
Not Piers Morgan, no?
No, no, no, no, not Piers Morgan. Definitely not Piers Morgan.
But yeah, you know what, if it turns out they were innocent, I will bring them up again because they have had an influence on me.
But if it turns out they're guilty, I'm just going to need to scrub a large amount of stuff away.
Right. Okay. So what I'm hoping to cover on this podcast is a basic description of who Abraham was,
then why the three faiths are called the three Abrahamic faiths,
and then a basic lowdown of some of them and then some of the major events and conflicts in between the three of them,
which unfortunately is just basic history of Lerne.
It's just a lot of the major events have been influenced by these things. Just for an out there, although I will bring this up again,
weirdly enough, the Dark Age in Europe was at the exact same time as the Golden Age of Islam.
Is that a coincidence? I don't think it is.
I think it just shows that influence, resources, growth, and yeah, as different societies and cultures and creeds are vying for power,
as one rises, others go into decline.
I think it tells me that the Islamic faith monopolized the paper industry at the Middle Ages.
Well, you know what they did? They did monopolize a lot of things and they did actually did incredibly, incredibly well.
But we'll get into that. Right. So first off, I guess I'll start with although what in your mind, Nick, is an Abrahamic faith?
So I do know this. This is a faith which recognizes Abraham, the prophet.
Yeah. Yeah. And so although we've already mentioned the main three, did you know that there's loads?
Well, there's three core, three slash four, but one's died out. I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head.
There are there's Islam, Judaism and Christianity.
Am I right? That's going by memory. That's not OK. So those are the main three.
Yeah. Weirdly enough, though, any any religion or any. OK, so I don't actually like the word cult because it just immediately seems to you think of somebody on the street handing out pamphlets.
You think of. Yeah, it's got too many negative connotations and I don't actually hate other people who believe different stuff to me.
And if you get in my face about it, I will get defensive, but I don't disrespect you for wanting to share something with me.
I just want to add I was incorrect that the fourth one had died out.
The fourth one actually was only considered as a Abrahamic faith in the 19th century because it was a branch off of the Islamic faith. And that's the bar high the bar high faith.
OK, fantastic. Yeah. All right. Weirdly enough, that that is on there.
And yeah, I would still consider that a I consider anything that branches out from any of those three faiths is an Abrahamic faith.
Yeah, yeah, because I think there's so many different churches now, isn't there?
Christian churches, they all have their own worship regime, shall we say, for like a better term.
And they all they all call themselves different things, but essentially they all follow Christianity.
Absolutely. Well, but like arguably.
So this is my own opinion here, but definitely Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons could consider themselves Abrahamic faiths because they take the base of Christianity.
Weirdly enough, other than Baha'u'llah, which I I'm not I wasn't aware of. I haven't done enough research into this, but also a number of other faiths in the that can be considered Abrahamic are Yazdi, Jura's, Samaritan and Rastafari or Rastafarianism are also Abrahamic faiths.
I'll go into a little bit of the yeah, I'll just start talking about who Abraham was.
So Abraham or Abram, as he was originally known, was a bloke who lived about 1800 BC, which it also really surprises me just how quickly records disappear.
It really shouldn't because paper only lives so long, but but considering how possibly old the earth is. You say that, but the Dead Sea Scrolls lasted in a cave for 2000 years.
Yeah, but this is my thing. The fact that we have so little that goes beyond like several hundred years BC.
Yeah, I don't think that's necessarily lack of records or lack of records. I think that is the amnesia of humanity at the same time as monopoly and domination, because you think the great Library of Alexandria in Egypt.
Oh, yeah, but around how much knowledge was in that library, which then was lost forever because it was destroyed. And there's numerous times where things like that have happened.
Like the great library in Babylon and Babylon itself is a bunch of stones in Iraq. Yeah.
And nowadays it's not. Yeah, it's actually a real shame. But anyway, okay. So Abraham was a man who lived that long ago.
At that point in time, any anybody who seemed to have a number of tribes under their command, or had a city under under their command called themselves a king.
Countries as a whole don't seem don't seem to really exist at this point. It mostly seems to be city states and surrounding areas or people who nomads and sojourners.
He was.
He came from a polytheistic culture.
Weirdly enough, he grew up it that he lived in Mesopotamia and seems his journey seems to mostly be southward through the Middle East and into Egypt.
He.
I don't, I wasn't able to find much historic sources what I find interesting about Abraham is, although he is the link of all three of these babes, they all interact with him slightly differently.
Yeah.
So, the, the Jewish faith, although calls itself an Abrahamic faith.
When looking through historic records and stuff they don't. It seems to be the, the main patriarch in the Jewish faith is King David, despite there being several other patriarchs for him.
The star of David being the symbol of the Jews. Yes.
Exactly, exactly. Now, King David lived about 800 years after Abraham.
So you had you, you had Abraham, about a couple of hundred years maybe about 300 years I think I'm just.
These are ballpark figures you then had Moses, and then after after Moses you have the time of the judges in Israel, which then led to the eventual establishment of a monarchy.
Despite what it says in the Bible about God, not really wanting that but the people really wanted it so he gave it to him.
Abraham, okay so Abraham lived that long he had. He was an incredibly.
He took a great risk in that he had a settlement and had great possessions already.
Yet, in a dream.
He was told by God to get up and move to the land I will show you.
Now, the weird thing is Abraham's dad had argued some people argue had already been given the call himself, but chose not to go and just made a massive temple to God.
I think it's called the ziggurat of ours or something it's in. Yeah, the name vaguely.
Yeah, so that that was.
I think that was a breath that was Abraham's dad, who got the call.
Just divided and somewhat to believe in God, but at the same time, wasn't going to upon end his whole family life leave. So instead he built a massive pyramid instead.
So Abraham left took a great risk and throughout the course of his life.
Had a large number of
interactions with God, according to the Bible and a large number of interactions on his journey to say that it was smooth sailing for him would be an absolute lie.
He made a huge number of mistakes which, in my mind, the more I read about it, the more actually kind of made me relate to him a lot more.
There are times when he even like does what I do in life I can't say for yourself but sadly I quite often make the same mistake, multiple times.
I do my best to learn from him, but it doesn't always work out that way.
Abraham definitely made the same mistake several times.
But he kept on going he kept on trying. He did his best to trust in God, and for the most part, it worked out for him in the end.
Abraham had to.
Although we had a number of huge number of children in his old age.
The two main sons are the ones which have had the largest influence on the Abrahamic faiths.
So one of Abraham's so Abraham's eldest is
is a gentleman called Ishmael.
And he's after Ishmael.
Is he the bloke that the main character of Moby Dick is talking about?
Because the first line of Moby Dick is call me Ishmael.
And I've never read the book.
I don't know whether or not it's him he's talking about.
It could quite easily be because Ishmael was
Okay, so the story the story of Abraham I'll go a bit more into it.
So he moves away with his family.
He's told this and he's also told that he's going to be the father of many nations.
However, he's already seventy five years old when he up ends his fat when he up ends everything he's got and moves off.
Yeah.
He so it looks pretty flipping unlikely from the get go and he then has to wait several more decades.
I'm not sure if everyone lived that longer or if it's just a thing that happened with with him or what's going on there.
But there are theories that he was already old.
There are theories that say that the further back in history that you go the longer people died the longer people live for.
Now he's a a niche theory.
But if you look at the the King's List in Egypt the like up until like 6000 BC like there was a certain age to like the length of time that the pharaohs would live.
And they predominantly got longer the further back in time you went.
And then after that it was the time that came before I can't remember the actual name for it.
The time that came before the Egyptian faith the kings of the Egyptian and they were the what preceded the Egyptians.
They lived for thousands of years.
So it's I know it's hypothetical and it's literally just off of a wall in some pyramid somewhere.
But I like to think there's a little bit of truth in a lot of things that is being lost and therefore open to interpretation.
So may well be that people did live a lot longer back then.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well the thing is he he was already old and this I won't go into everything that happened with Abraham because that would be a thing in and of himself.
But basically he he goes to the Egyptians and gets his wife to pretend that he's that she's his sister.
And then another point he's go he goes to Syria and does the same thing again even though in both instances it just goes badly.
Like I'm talking plague start happening in Egypt and plague start happening in Syria both times that Abraham does this.
And yet is that because God told him to go somewhere else and not not where no it's because it's because in both instances because Abraham says that his wife's available.
The king of that area tries to get it on with his wife.
Was his wife that good looking even though he was 75? Was he a bit of a Hugh Hefner?
Well OK apparently she was 65. So again I'm really not sure what to what to make of this.
But apparently she was absolutely stunning and these kings would often fall head over heels for her.
She was an elf. Which possibly possibly like it's it's just it's a bit weird.
I find it weird that that happens twice. At one point Abraham had a large caravan which he and again I'm not I'm talking the traditional caravan.
My brain did immediately go to like the the the car kind of like thing.
Yeah but no no no I knew it.
Well he was a sojourner and weirdly enough the Ishmaelites also became sojourners and will go into Arabic culture in a little bit.
Abraham though Abraham traveled a lot and had a number of experiences with God and kind of like a deepening of that relationship.
One of the he failed twice when he gets Sarah to pretend that she's not his wife.
Another time that he now this is the weird thing because in the Bible it's down as a mistake.
I doubt it's down as a mistake in the Quran. I will be I've downloaded an audio version of the Quran.
I'm going to be listening to that a bit more as I've been done several hours of research into the history of Islam.
And it's it's fascinating and it's actually yeah just so much stuff about it is surprising.
So right. So something that used to happen in cultures is if a woman couldn't conceive he could get Abraham also did have slaves.
At this time it was a nor it was fairly normal. I'm not going to try and justify it.
It was just a normal thing in that society in that families would or richer families would have would have slaves.
It wasn't the same as the triangular or European slave trade. But it's still you know wasn't great.
These people were in that household and not free to leave and would not receive a wage for the work they did for the family.
Sarah Abraham's wife gives Hagar her slave to Abraham to conceive children for him.
And Hagar gives birth to Ishmael who who is because God had said you and Sarah are going to have kids.
It was kind of like a it was a way of trying to make it work but not making it work in the right way.
So God says that he will bless Ishmael and make Ishmael into a nation which Ishmael as it turns out is the father of the twelve Arabic princes who then go on to become twelve Arabic tribes in modern day Saudi Arabia.
It's interesting that Islam is seen as the Arabic the Islamic nation is tied to the Arabic nation despite the Prophet Mohammed's attempts to separate the two which we'll get into in a minute.
But yeah so Abraham first has Ishmael who is then sent away when Sarah starts to get jealous of Hagar and that's a whole messed up story there like a lot of drama.
And then eventually so she gives her to her husband to birth children and then gets jealous that she's getting it all.
Yeah I really yeah I get really I yeah and the way that at one point Hagar actually runs away and runs away without any hope of surviving because Sarah makes her life that difficult.
I really struggle with Sarah as a biblical character.
But it I don't know it's unfortunate because a lot of Sarah's I know obviously nowadays are quite quite nice people.
Yeah names do not control something but the biblical character of Sarah was not great.
And then again a lot of people a lot of biblical people and a lot of historical people when you look at their their words and their choices or at least the ones that are recorded and put forward to you aren't great.
I can't help but think that they weren't that bad when you go back maybe just 30 40 50 years.
They wouldn't have been seen so barbaric.
Yeah quite possibly and to be fair and quite possibly the way that Sarah behaved is quite similar to the way that some girls behave nowadays like you gave him up.
Yeah let him be if he's got with your ex best mates best friend then just leave him alone.
Yeah it's yeah you know what but I guess the very nature of people doesn't change is what this kind of quite clearly shows.
So just keep it in your trousers.
No generally yeah yeah like you know what I won't even go into the stories which kind of just support that view generally.
All right so Ishmael at this point in the in the Jewish in the Jewish Torah and in or sorry the Torah sorry the Tanakh the Torah or the Pentateuch the first five books.
Ishmael isn't really mentioned.
It's mentioned that he goes off and when Jacob is sold into slavery I'll mention who Jacob is in a minute when Jacob is sold into slavery he's sold to Ishmaelites so the descendants of Ishmael but he's very much not mentioned.
The weird thing is so this is where the separation happens.
The Quran.
Which for those that don't know is the Islamic holy book.
Yeah. Yeah absolutely right and I'm sorry that I'm so tired you know what we need to do these things earlier but well I this is my mistake not allowing enough time.
The Quran traces traces back to Abraham through Ishmael.
Yeah rather than through the Christian and Jewish yeah Jewish teachings which go back to Abraham through Isaac.
Now the weird thing so I guess Islam is the newest of the three major Abrahamic faiths.
It was started by the Prophet Muhammad in.
Can I just check the the you're talking about the Quran.
Do you actually mean the Noble Quran.
I do it is it noble or is it the Holy Quran.
Noble Quran is the one that the three religions are derived from the Quran is the Islamic holy book.
Okay so I'm referring to specifically.
The Islamic holy book okay which is separate from the Torah and and the New Testament.
Yeah so.
The the Quran will come back to Islam in just a moment but that's where its link to Abraham is.
The other the others link to Abraham through his son Isaac who as most people will know is the one that is promised by God.
Then God looks like he's going to ask Abraham to sacrifice him and then last minute says yeah I was just testing your faith.
Yeah so I don't do it. She's I don't know a lot of a lot of people are able to take a lot from that story.
I've always really struggled with it. I get the sense that a lot of other people really struggle with it.
Like I generally speaking I think it was a typo I think it was a typo.
I think I think it was like God said to him to sacrifice his song and the message didn't come out properly.
And then he's just about to chop his head off and he's like what are you doing?
No no no I appreciate what you're trying to do for me and I admire the love that you're showing me but let's not do this.
Absolutely.
I'm going to annoy so many people with that analogy.
But this is the thing like I think everybody is worried about annoying the other people.
It will always be the extremes of people that come to you and tell you that they're annoyed.
I think what we all need to do is just learn to be able to be able to talk like and discuss these things like Abraham is a historic figure.
The thing that I like to do as well is that I don't understand it. I don't understand that part of the scriptures.
But I also know there's no way for me to really know what happened which means it's completely open to interpretation.
Which means it's completely open to hypothesis.
Right so because it's second hand knowledge.
Yeah yeah yeah okay. So I can play with it whatever way I want and I'm not actually doing anything wrong.
No no to a point.
To a point like yeah okay right.
I'll go back to Abraham.
So Abraham and Hagar have Ishmael. Ishmael is who the Quran links the teachings of Mohammed back to Abraham.
Although weirdly enough the birthplace of Islam in Mecca and then later in Medea is was polytheistic and neither Christian nor Jewish when it came about.
So although Christianity is a branch off of Judaism Islam despite being an Abrahamic faith and relying on monotheism being what they call Jehovah and Yahweh in the Arabic language.
It's it's yeah so it is but it's not it's not a further branch off. It's not like Mormonism which is a so Mormonism would be a branch off of Christianity which in turn was a branch off of Judaism.
So right.
Okay so Isaac.
So you've got sorry you've got Abraham you've got Isaac. Isaac then has Jacob and then Jacob twelve sons create the twelve they're very fond of their twelves in ancient mythology and in the Bible generally has twelve sons and those form the twelve tribes of Israel.
So you've got is that the twelve is that the Jehovah's Witness twelve tribes of twelve thousand that will ascend to the heavens after Judgment Day.
That's what they're the twelve tribes. Yeah. Although if you speak I've spoken a lot with Jehovah's Witnesses and although like there's limited in their theology there's limited space in heaven. You don't necessarily need to get holy to the point of that point in order to have everlasting life like their idea is is that the world is going to be made new which the waiting room is quite large and although you might not actually make it into the party.
You can stand in the waiting room until space becomes available. Well no it's more it's more like the heavens the heavens aren't going to be a special thing but like the world's going to be made into a new paradise like even if you don't get it.
I don't know I'm trying to think of it. It's like the premium seats in a cinema. Yeah you know I'm probably going to get chucked out.
You just referred to heaven as the premium seats in a cinema. Yeah yeah like and then and then and then earth. Like the ones that with the regular seats. And it's just like I mean it might not be quite as fancy but you're still getting to watch the film.
Yeah, anyway right. Oh god forgive us all. Right. Okay. So like that is so you've got that you've got the free you've got the Judaism was then started by or or Judaism or because you have Israel and Judah are two separate kingdoms but they were made up of the same
people groups and they were united by King David, who was followed by King Solomon. And Solomon built the first Jewish temple. So at the time of so you had the Ark of the Covenant from the time of Moses.
You then had the tabernacle at the time of David, the tabernacle weird word I know is the is the name of the holy place within the tent of meeting, so you then have the tent of meeting where the priest would go in in order to talk with God.
I realized that he has just gone into a space with a load of sheets in order to speak with a deity, but it's just the way that it's done and I can understand separation and wanting a bit of peace and quiet.
When you want to, when you want to pray I get that.
You've then got the first temple, which was destroyed by the Babylonians in about 600 BC, which was then.
So sorry 1000 BC is King David, a little bit after that is his son King Solomon, King Solomon builds the temple. It lasts for about 400 years in 600 BC the first temple was destroyed.
A lot of people in Israel are sent off to the Babylon. This is when the prophet Dan, who, although despite being high and mighty in Babylon, stuck very much to his Jewish roots so is celebrated in the Bible, sticking to his Jewish roots and being incredibly faithful, even when put under
threat of pain of death, like he just literally said, yeah, no I am what I know what I know to be true.
I was gonna say I am what I am as Descartes, it wasn't, it wasn't Daniel.
You're right, you're right but it's the, the essence of what he did in, in the face of persecution and threats was very much in the in line with Descartes, of just literally, I'm not going to change, I'm not going to whimper I'm not going to falter, which is easy to claim to do.
I'm more or less than what I am. Yeah. Exactly. Or just like, God's right. You're not on this, I don't necessarily need to defend myself.
No offense.
Mostly people did take offense to it.
Anyway, so you had Solomon, you had Solomon.
The, the original temple that was destroyed.
The Babylonians took off a load of all the best people within Israel to Babylon.
Weirdly enough, when Babylon fell which is what I'm wondering if, if Cyrus, Cyrus of Persia
took Babylon, and then sent all of the Jews back to Jerusalem, and then additionally sent a load of workers so they could rebuild their temple.
The second temple. This second temple lasted from about, it was about, it was mid 500 BC to about 70 AD is when the Romans then decided to destroy the second temple and rename Judea Palestine.
Which, yeah, it's just literally what it, what it's called today, other than we, yeah, the modern day thing of Israel and Palestine comes, is was partly started by the Romans trying to rename an entire area, their own name for it so that it lost its cultural identity and power.
So, Judea, weirdly enough, it's the ruins of the second temple that was destroyed at that time, which is the one like partial wall that's remaining is the weeping wall in Jerusalem, where a number of Jewish people go to, go to make pilgrimage there.
Right, so that's a quick, that's a brief history of some of the stuff that has happened in Judaism. At the time of the destruction of the second temple.
The Jewish people are then dispersed throughout all of the Middle East and eventually all through Europe.
It's important to point out to the listeners that this is historically accurate as well. Like it's not just a matter of faith and what's written in the great book, there is scientific evidence that states that most of the proceedings of like human distribution,
shall we say, or migration across the planet was roughly as accounted in in the great books. That's absolutely, that's absolutely true.
Although, to be fair, at this point at 70 AD, a lot of the Bible had already been written.
And it's not scriptural that the Jews are spread out throughout the whole of Europe. It's just kind of recorded history. But this is the thing that, you know, I'll keep going with just the basic history of where the Abrahamic faith.
The Jewish people were then spread out throughout the whole of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Their religion had already been codified by Solomon.
A number of things have been written down. They already had, you know, their scrolls and stuff and it was all kind of official at that point. It wasn't until about, although the original books of the Bible were written in about 70 AD,
that didn't become like a full on codified book. When I say codified, I'm not even sure it's the right word here, but I just mean put together, made official, everyone agreed, or everyone of import or who was given say over it agreed that this is the stuff that's holy, these other letters were leaving out.
So I'm not even going to touch upon this, which is a different copy of the Bible where other books have been included. The codification of the Bible happened at the Council of, I think it's the Council of Nicene, sometime in the 300s.
Weirdly enough, although Constantine legalized Christianity, I learned of a day that he didn't in fact make it the state religion, despite moving the entire capital of his empire to a small town called Byzantium.
It was actually a couple of generations after Constantine, when the, I think it was the Emperor Theodore made Christianity the official state religion. Constantine just made it a recognized and legal religion.
Up until that point it had been illegal.
So that's where the beginnings of Judaism and Christianity came into play and you know what I've missed some stuff here and I apologize to our listeners. You know what, I'm going to write a script next time and I'll just try and follow that.
Just to be clear, it was Jesus who, or it was just as Abraham, here we go. Abraham gave birth to Isaac and Ishmael or Ishmael and Isaac.
Isaac, through heraldry, Isaac gave birth to the Jewish nation as a whole through Jacob and then Jacob's twelve sons. So Jewish was part, was both a religion with an allegorical book of the Torah,
but it was also a racial identity, just as the twelve Arabic princes was also a racial identity.
Christianity wasn't, Christianity isn't a racial identity at all, and that's one of the things that I find interesting about the three is that the other two can be seen as both a religion and a racial or hereditary identity, whereas Christianity just isn't.
It's literally just about belief.
I'm not sure if that actually makes it better or worse because it makes it harder to pin down as it's about the ongoing in an individual's heart.
All right. Okay, so can I just add a point? I just want to add a point about Jewish people. So just as a massively commonly misconceived idea, Jewish people didn't build the pyramids. They were not enslaved by the Egyptian people and then forced to build the pyramids.
So at the start, the great pyramid of Giza was built, what, 8,000 years ago, 6,000 BC, 4,000 BC, something like that. So way before the Jewish people even existed. So it couldn't have happened. So take that first grade teacher.
Also, I don't know if it's the same with Islam, but the Jewish belief and the Christian belief can both be attributed to ages of the zodiac. So the age of Taurus ended in about 2100 BC and that entered into the age of Aries.
Now, I don't know if you remember this part from the Bible, but when Moses, was it Moses that climbed Mount Sinai? And when he came down, he killed all his people because they were worshipping a golden calf.
The calf being, of course, a symbol of...
I mean, he was really pissed off with them and I imagine he probably did.
I don't know if he killed a calf, but he definitely broke down the calf.
In the non-pc version of the Bible, I read that... in the non politically... not rather, in the non nursery version of the Bible, I read that he came down and killed all his people because they were worshipping a false prophet in the form of the golden calf.
Now the calf was, of course, the symbol that they used to worship, the symbol of Taurus. And what is the common symbol of the Jewish faith?
What do they blow in the morning on the Sabbath day?
They blow the ram's horn.
Is it a ram's horn? Interesting.
The most common area of course is the ram.
Now, at the year one... not b-e-c-e, I don't know, c-e I suppose, not b-e-f-e before, but obviously c-e.
The year one is when the age of Pisces begins. Now what's the symbol of Christianity?
Well there's been a number of them, but I think I know where you're going with this. One of them is the fish.
Yes, absolutely. So Christianity is the symbol of the fish.
So, Jesus fed 40,000 with a couple of loaves and a few fish. His people were fishermen predominantly.
There's a massive theme throughout Christianity where Pisces comes into it quite heavily.
I don't know if it's the same with Islam, whether there's an age of the zodiac faith that would link in.
I'm not saying they go hand in hand, but I think it's good to see where different...
It's good to see the patterns here.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I will admit, because this is actually something I know, because everyone may be able to tell that I'm not as knowledgeable with Jewish or Islamic history as I should be,
I don't know why I've been trying to bone up on it, but it comes down to confidence as well when you've just learned something, sometimes you're not certain about it.
One thing I do know is that Jesus fed... there were two separate occasions where fish were...
No, actually, you know... Oh my god, there's loads more.
Okay, yeah, actually, alright.
So Jesus fed 5,000 with a certain number of fish and then a certain few bits of bread, and it was shared out.
And then there was a few... about a year after that, he fed 4,000, did the same thing again, but there was actually slightly more fish and slightly more bread.
So the second miracle isn't remembered nearly as much, because just generally it was slightly less.
The miracle there was the multiplication of food.
Yeah, exactly. It's unfortunate.
And some people say that, oh well, some people believe that Jesus had a certain number of miracles that he could perform, and he was slowly but surely working through that,
and some people say, oh well, maybe he was running out of power. But that's another thing for another time.
Once again, once again...
Yeah, to be fair, the fish does come up in it as well.
Yeah, now interestingly...
At the point where... oh, okay.
St Peter, the leader of the church after Jesus' death and his place in the Bible...
The place which the Basilica of St Peter is named after in Rome, the Church of St Peter.
Apparently he's buried underneath it, isn't he?
I don't know enough about the Vatican and about the...
Okay, that's amazing. I want that to... I believe that sounds accurate, and I want that to be true, whether he's actually under there or not is another thing.
But Peter at one point has to get the temple tax. He's told to get the coins out of the mouth of a fish.
I will admit, I don't like the idea of the sign of Pisces being there, but there are... I will freely admit there are parallels there.
There's a reason for that, and I'll come to it in a second, but also there's a third link which comes into the age of Aquarius, which believe it or not is the age that we're in now.
We're just coming into it now. It starts around about now, maybe leading into the next 50 years or so.
It's when the age of Aquarius starts.
Now, do you remember the discussion that Jesus has with his disciples when they ask him how long is he going to be with them for?
Until the end of the age.
Until the end of the age, and they say, how will we know when the end of the age is?
And he said, look to a man, you will see a man carrying a pitcher of water, he will go into a house, follow him into that house.
And you know what the symbol of Aquarius is, don't you? It's the man with the pitcher of water.
Okay, that's interesting.
I'm thinking of a different quote, I think, like how are we to know when these things will happen in the end of the Gospels?
Jesus says to his disciples, it is not for you to know the times and dates that the Father has set by his own authority.
But that's interesting.
It's important to remember though that the Romans, I think it was, when they adopted Christianity and pushed rather heavily Christianity across the Western world,
they had an amazing way of adopting people into their faith.
And one of the things that they did was they adopted quite a lot of pagans into their faith by adopting some paganistic holidays into the faith.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, the spring equinox obviously is now Easter, the winter equinox is now Christmas.
However, their tales that existed within the faith before, but they've adapted the times that they happened in order to fit in with paganistic beliefs to give them the time that they still needed to celebrate.
They were like, yeah, it's fine, you can celebrate, it's just a Christian holiday, you can have it with us now, you know, like come over to Christianity, basically is what they were doing.
That's why when people, the massive question that I always hear when it comes to stuff like Christianity and like Christmas and Easter,
is the stories, the Christian stories that go along with that festival and how they don't seem to marry up on a time scale.
And it is because it is because the times for those festivals were actually changed to suit and to fit in with other religions.
And in this case, obviously, the pagan belief quite heavily.
That was, yeah, that was unfortunately an official, yeah, church and Catholic policy.
Yeah, like, unfortunately, that is entirely right. And weirdly enough, that's actually one of the things that I respect about Jehovah's Witnesses is that they don't celebrate Christmas.
They don't celebrate like birthdays simply for that reason, because it's it's not part of what they believe is in the Bible.
So therefore it's just like right, because the pagans won the pagans won from the book of the Quran or the Quran.
The pagans were Scandinavian.
I believe they started, I think, some of the more Scandinavian, but like the brigades, the original Britons or the bloomin were paganistic.
Yeah, it's difficult to know, like when it comes to the current bloodline.
You know what? That's a whole other topic.
We're opening a whole can of worms in.
Okay, so right. All right. Back to. All right. Back to basic, basic history.
All right. So I've covered, although not well, and I'm really sorry listeners.
Basic Judaism started with Abraham and his journey of faith and then followed on his sons and then the the Old Testament picks up on different generations of that family or later on, just people who heard from God and were assigned.
Christianity kicks in at the time of the second temple very close to its destruction and is this temple mound in Israel.
Yes, temple mound in the Wailing and the Wailing War in Jerusalem. Yeah, that's the remains of the second temple.
So, yep, you've, you've got that Christianity starts as a, as a Jewish movement, but in Acts chapter 10.
And then Paul, oh no sorry, Peter has a, has a vision where he's, where he's basically told that it's time to start preaching this to non Jewish people.
And then a movement across culture was then adopted by the Romans, who then, yeah, within the Byzantine Empire, as it turns out, the Byzantine Empire was actually very,
yeah, they were, it was not religiously tolerant to the point where there were several sects of Christianity that just weren't recognized and, but, and were treated better under Muslim rule during the Muslim conquests.
So this is where I'm going to pick things up. We're now in about 650 AD.
The Prophet Muhammad is born into a well respected clan, but his mother and father die early on, and he is adopted by his uncle who, although is head of the clan,
is an orphan. Muhammad's rights are not negligible, but he's definitely not part of the ruling class. He is not set to inherit a huge amount or to rule.
Muhammad's early life were that he was, weirdly enough from what I've read, Muhammad didn't, although he had visions, I will need to read the Quran more, but from the history of Islam, it doesn't talk about miracles or anything.
It's just he had a vision and he was born in, he grew up in the city of Mecca. At the time, Mecca was the center of the Arabic nation.
The Arabic nation was actually really similar to the Jewish nations or to, at the times when Jews have sojourned and moved around the places, that's what the Arabs did, was that they were mostly a,
sorry, I'm losing my words here, they were a nomadic set of people who moved around. Tribal and in-clan fighting was commonplace.
There was a strict system of justice of, stick for tat, you kill me, I'll kill you, if you kill a member of my family, I'll kill a member of your family.
And because of the lack of resources, that sort of fighting and that sort of difficulty was commonplace.
There was over 300 gods in Mecca, in the temple, there were 300 different idols which people would go to a particular building in Mecca, which I now can't remember, and it's me, that people would go worship.
Muhammad had a vision and he was, at one point, yeah, so from that point on, he was monotheistic, which means believes in one god, which was not the same as the rest of his clan or the rest of his people.
And additionally, he believed a number of things which were against the culture or were different from the way Arabic culture was back then.
He starts slowly telling people covertly and gets a bit of a following going.
To begin with, as the following grows, more notice is taken of them. And after a while, despite having once had a good name in the city as an honest trader, he is then outcast.
He takes his followers to Medina, where they slowly but surely grow into even more of a movement.
And even more, I'm also, I apologize to anyone who's Muslim and listening to this.
I've memorized some of this, I haven't memorized all of it and I am going to get things wrong, I apologize.
He then kept on growing, kept on changing, kept on spreading the faith all over the place.
And he then goes back to Mecca in order to complete a pilgrimage and he's able to, at this point, gain access to Mecca and overtake the city in a bloodless siege.
Which is, I don't know, is pretty flippin' impressive.
Like in most wars, when a city is broken open or when the army is let in, things don't normally go well for the city that let people in.
Yeah, Mohammed did that and that's why the city of Mecca is the prophet's birthplace, but it was also the cultural hub for the Arabic, for Arabia or for the Arabic nation as a whole.
Later on Mohammed destroys all of the idols in the temple and creates the Islamic nation from a beginning there.
It then spreads more and more and I've gotten to the point in their history where the caliphs, which were the elected officials.
What I find interesting about Mohammed from what little I've learnt of him is where Abraham, King David, Moses and a number of the other prophets were also statesmen.
Like they led civilization or they led the people under them, which is what Mohammed did incredibly well.
What I find interesting is that Jesus seems to have gone out of his way to not do that.
He led people through parables, through teachings, but it doesn't necessarily seem to have the same organisation.
I don't think he saw himself in the same light, did he? I think him being foreseen as the son of God, I think if you think about yourself as the son of the CEO of a company,
you may well know probably more intimately than most of the other people under that umbrella of that organisation what the vision of your father is.
But you're not going to lead with the iron fist in the same way that your father would because that's his job.
That's it. That's a fair point.
I'll just do the historical stuff and leave all of the other research stuff to discuss another time under another topic.
All right. So upon Mohammed's death, he elected an official. There seems to have been four really, really good caliphs who even knew Mohammed or at least had met him and said shared in some of his trials.
Each of them didn't sit on a throne, often wore the same sort of clothes as everyone else.
And although they ruled at this point a budding empire, they prayed in the mosque with everyone else.
It seems to be that it was either the fourth or fifth caliph who then started passing out all of the positions of power to his own family, where things started to go a little bit awry.
I'm trying to think of the right word. Yeah, things started to go a little bit awry as this is the opposite of what Mohammed had said.
What I have learned about Islam is that it is incredibly interesting just what we're told through the media. So how it is in certain places at the moment compared to what it was originally.
So originally Mohammed set down that every no Arab is better than a non-Arab and no non-Arab is better than an Arab.
Intrinsically, it's entirely down to the individual's devotion to God.
Islam and Muslim actually shares the word which simply means to submit, which unfortunately then paints the whole negative thing of religion as a system of control, but we'll cover that and another point.
It's just it's really weird that Mohammed seemed to set down this really egalitarian way without hierarchy.
And then what I've what I'm seeing through Muslim history is that slowly but surely the structures that you see in all societies with rich at the top or at the bottom slowly start to work their way in.
And it actually seems to be out of a practical sense to begin with. So to begin with, the caliph would pray in the mosque with people.
Then one of the caliphs gets murdered by a slave whilst praying in the mosque surrounded by the people with no bodyguards.
So they then separate that and give him his own give him his own space. For a while the caliph is chosen by the last one until there starts to be a whole load of infight, not a whole load, but you know war starts to almost break out over succession and over who gets to choose the next caliph and stuff.
So then it's made hereditary.
Then, things like thrones.
You know, the caliph, the first four caliphs didn't sit on a throne. And then the ones some of the ones after that started to the caliph used to pray in the mosque with the people, then, and this thing which was simply a spiritual but governance position, quite quickly became what looks like a kingship.
Well I say quite quickly and over several generations became a kingship.
And then what surprised me even more is that some of the family which had then decided to make the caliph hereditary. At one point there's then nearly a rebel uprising from one of the actual descendants of Mohammed, like literally his grandson.
And yet, the current ruler literally kills Mohammed's grandson in order to contain their own power.
Now what was it we said in in money and government and every other podcast we've done. Power corrupts an absolute power corrupts absolutely isn't it.
Yeah, no.
And I'm pretty sure that's a that's a fake. Well I'm absolutely certain that's a famous quote although I can't remember said it.
But it's just kind of interesting that you then have that the Muslim conquest.
From. It's interesting. This book is clearly written by some somebody who is Muslim themselves and is trying to share their culture from the Muslim side of it the Muslim conquest positive thing from the other Westerners they're a negative thing.
Islam is like the, the state of Islam did spread throughout the whole of Europe.
And during this time.
Christianity fell into a dark age.
Christianity, or the viewpoint from that has been put forward by that is that it went into a dark age because of the ratings both of the Vikings in the north, and then of the Islamic pirates in the south.
What I was taught in school, or generally I don't know I was taught this in school, just generally is that people kept by becoming too religious, then knowledge stopped being a thing, and just people stopped following the sciences of following sense.
Because I kind of can actually buy more into the idea of commerce, if commerce slows down to a certain point, and you don't have anything any more, then you're just working hand to mouth if you're working hands and mouth.
You don't tend to have a lot of stuff like science, our culture.
I don't know if that's necessarily down to the way that things are it's just I've had different through my researches had different narratives put forward by different states and different backgrounds.
And one after the Islamic conquest in the Islamic Golden Age has spread throughout all of North Africa, the Middle East, and several parts of Europe, Spain, being the most notable one.
You then have the reconquista happened in Spain.
But just as a quick shout out.
The Islamic ruling of Spain from several different records from several different sides, seems to mostly be positive.
At this time, was.
I can't remember the exact dates and I'm really sorry to.
I mean, like that long because I think the Spanish Inquisition came in in the early 19th century or ended in the early 19th century.
And that was led by Catholic Kings in Spain.
Yeah, it wasn't a huge amount. It wasn't a huge amount, but there was a couple of hundred years where Spain was ruled by the Islamic State, but the Islamic State had rules of religious tolerance, which separated it from both the.
The Pope or the Christendom states ruled by the Pope and by the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire.
There were genuine rules of.
Religious tolerance, however.
Although there was tolerance, you were taxed more.
If you didn't follow Islam, and this is additionally.
One of the caliphs, I can't remember which one.
Made the unwise decision of okay well we need to keep our tax revenues working.
And the argument is, if you.
If you pay Zarat, it's a lot less.
Oh, sorry, which is the Islamic Zarat is is one of the five pillars of Islam.
Oh my god, I can't believe how much I've not covered here.
All right, I'm really sorry guys. Judaism has the Ten Commandments.
Christianity has fruits of the spirit and also follows the Ten Commandments but believes that you do them from just your heart, rather than as a rule.
Islam, although has a number of has a number of rules has the five pillars, one of them being Zarat, which is like the mandatory tax of giving to the of giving to the Islamic State which is then supposed to be distributed to the poor.
There was another tax for non.
Non Muslims, which was higher than the Zarat.
But was often lower than other kingdom.
However, one of the caliphs and made the mistake of realizing that if everybody converted to Islam.
There'd be a lot less taxation, or he didn't want in pure or false conversion to Islam, so he literally made it so that if you were Arabic, or read, if you were, if you were already a Muslim.
When, when your land was conquered, you just paid the rat.
If you convert, if you were either a non Muslim or converted to Islam.
You still, regardless of what you believe, you still paid the, the non
Islamic tax, you still paid as if you were a non believer.
And that was the one bad thing and that caused a lot of issue which will go into another point. But things in Spain actually seem to have gone really well you had you had Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, or getting along, or openly debating in in courts and in public squares,
these three people groups, getting along.
There was a great wealth of knowledge in Spain, there was scientific breakthroughs, there were a number of just really positive scholarly things and philosophy going on in Spain with those free Abrahamic faiths getting along well.
And then the reconquista happened.
And that wasn't great.
And then, after the reconquista, it got worse, and the Spanish Inquisition happened.
Yeah, I wonder whether the Spanish Inquisition happened in order to remove the other religions power.
Absolutely. That's exactly what it was about.
Interestingly, the Spanish Inquisition started in a town called Carcassonne, which is famous in the board game community because it got a famous board game named after it.
It's also where Robin Hood Prince of Thieves was filmed. So if you go to Carcassonne, they'll really try and up play the Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.
Oh, okay. Have you? Yeah, I went on a holiday there when I was in school.
Oh, okay. Did they play upon the film? Did they play upon the film element?
I mean, I was 16. Yeah, I was 16. You think I would have listened even if they had done?
I mean, I. Yeah, right. Fair point. I was a very ignorant boy.
No, that's a beautiful place. I was absolutely beautiful.
Well, I wasn't great. Okay. But yeah, you've got that. Additionally, about that sort of time, you've got the Crusades happening, which just generally are.
Yeah, they're bad. I've heard only one positive YouTube video on the Crusades and it didn't quite fit together.
Yeah, weirdly enough, there were eight. So with the Crusades, people might just say, oh, the Crusade or whichever.
There were eight separate Crusades. The first one was started by the king of the Emperor of Byzantium asking the pope for help.
And the pope said, yeah, sure. Everybody, all the warring realms in Christendom.
Put down your arms. You need to put your own things aside. Go help out the Byzantines and go defeat a Muslim army, which was at the time.
You know, it was just it was just warring nations, basically, but using the guise of religion as a way of doing it.
And unfortunately, that's where my knowledge ends and that's where my energy.
So I apologize. This is way too much of a monologue. You and you have done absolutely fantastically this week, James.
The amount of information that you've looked at, the amount of information you've pulled up on those three.
I didn't know that Islam and Judaism and Christianity were so so interlinked.
So it was nice hearing hearing the history of that. Yeah, I think it's incredibly interesting how so almost polar, different polar opposite.
They are now in, especially in the Western world, in how people perceive those religions and yet their beginnings are so close.
Absolutely. And like there is so much in common between.
Yeah, there is there is so much in common between them.
Like, I don't believe that they are the same. And this is this is the I guess this is both the thing that one of some of the things that they have in common.
Some of the things that drive them apart. I will just oh my God, too many points.
Right. I will just say this. The fact that they all believe in monotheism and they also all believe that their version of monotheism is right means that the moment you believe one thing to be right, it becomes exclusive to all other variations of that thing.
Yeah, though, as a as a practicing born again Christian, I do believe that is the case and I do believe that Jesus is the son of God and waves salvation all of that malarkey, but I am not unaware of how exclusitory that is to other religions.
So I'm always looking for common places and what I found through this research. I'm not going to say oh it's all the same, but I will say there is a lot of similarities.
Yeah, it's not it's not just one bit here and there. It's like, like 75.
Yeah.
You know, 70, 75%. I think that's a lot of the reason why I'm still not a child of faith.
Because I hear arguments all the time about how contradictory faiths are. But for me, it's always been. It's hard to tell when you're all screaming the same thing at me. It's hard to say which one of you even know like you're all saying the same thing or to my ears. It's the same thing being a non religious person.
Like even though you're all screaming essentially the same thing to me like and you're all adamant that you're correct and you want me to side predict particularly with one particular person or one particular belief.
How do you expect me to do that? You know, so I don't I can't I won't and that's not me stamping my feet like a five year old child that's me going. I just I know how I'm like I'm this is too much.
You know there's too many contradictions there's too little real information. I don't mean real information because I know there's so much information in like the great books, which is historically accurate.
Like I said, but if you if you can have a story that's been told for over 2000 years and then I'm born in 1988 years after that story begun and you expect me to listen to that story and go.
Yeah, that's absolutely how it happened. I don't have the capacity to do that. You know, yeah. Yeah. How do you get someone to buy into your narrative when it yeah, yeah, I get it.
And it I guess this is why I know Christians will invite you to pray and to try and have an experience yourself.
But again, that's a whole other and this is where I'm not I'm not naive and I'm not arrogant and I have been to church one of my closest friends the person that I class as my brother I've known him for 26 years very long time.
But he is a born again Christian very strong in his faith as well. But we like I've been to his church. I've I've watched him.
I forget the name of the word. I've watched him practice and like.
Oh, does he did he preach to worship worship. No, he he is worship. I forgot the word the word completely eluded me and I respected the fact by sat at the back and observed and I was quite happy to observe.
You know, like I said, I respect the power that it gives so many people and it's not just Christianity. It's every faith. Every recognized faith every every organized religion gives strength to so many people that they would not have if they did not have that faith.
Where where you as a person and within your faith put your faith into a deity which you have reason to believe is there for you and is doing everything for you.
My experience has taught me to put that faith into myself because throughout my life all the things that people look at or identify God as being the culprit of throughout their life.
But I put that blame on that responsibility and that praise on myself when I've done something right and I know it's my strength that's got me through it. It's my faith that's got me through when when I've made a mistake.
I've sought forgiveness from myself in order to get over that and move forwards from that. So it's not that I think I just look at things differently. I don't know that I don't I don't know that I wouldn't fit with a religion.
I just think that I have learned and been taught maybe through the trials and tribulations that I've been through to put that energy into myself and not into a deity.
Should we say no that's that's fair enough internal rather than external is what I'm hearing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I tried to be very sensitive with the way I was saying is I didn't offend anyone.
Again like part of this podcast and part of the reason why that we at least cover this. But again this has this has been too much of a speech and not enough and too much of a rambling speech rather than discussion.
So I'll need to it's fine. We'll cover it. We'll we'll cover religions as a whole. But what we've done now is we've given the groundwork for people to understand like at least those three core.
There's some others that we can discuss at another point such as Hindi and Sikh just to give people a bit of backstory because I think if you are going to go into discussing religion.
The reason why if I'm a firm believer in the phrase that if you're going to oppose something understand what you oppose and there's so many people that hands down oppose religion and they haven't got a blind clue what they're talking about.
You know I have stood on my doorstep talking conversing with Jehovah's Witnesses for 45 minutes and to an hour hour and a half sometimes discussing with them why their faith doesn't work with me and why they would be better off putting their energies into other people who do get that benefit.
Because I respect the fact that these people want to help. They don't want they don't want to turn up on my doorstep and and and talk to me in like they don't want to just annoy me.
They want to come and give me something to set me free. I'm just not I'm not a person that needs that. There are people out there who do and you should all respect that.
Yeah, that's a really positive thing I think to end this on.
You know what I've got a load of facts here but I think, yeah, that's genuinely encouraged by your attitude there Nick so I think we're going to end there.
This has been Pods with Nick and James. I'm really sorry guys I'll make sure I have more coffee. I'm recording this at a more reasonable time for next time. Thank you very much for listening.
We, yeah, hopefully see you next step, hopefully, well, hopefully you'll hear us next episode.
Yeah, cheers. Bye.
Take care guys. Bye bye.
Thanks for watching.