Celebration of the Eucharist | 2020

Key Terms for this Section
Christ · Epistle · Gospel · Ecclesia
The Nicene Creed · Trinity · Canon · The Great Schism

9.1 | Galilee & the Messiah

A Jewish Movement in Galilee

2,000 years ago, in a Roman-controlled, impoverished district in the north of Israel, a rabbi from the small village of Nazareth gathers a following of women and fishermen. It is the Jewish historian Josephus who is the first outsider to take note of this rabbi, six decades after his death (c. 93 CE), when he describes James’ execution as “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.” The first Romans to mention this rabbi (Pliny around 112 and Tacitus about 115) do so three generations after the events of his life. Rome hardly took any notice of Jesus during his lifetime.

And yet more than half of humanity today belongs to a tradition that honors him —
Christians as Lord. Muslims as prophet. Both call him Messiah (cf. Sec. 10).

• 6 CE | Judas of Galilee calls tribute money to Caesar a betrayal of God
• ca. 33 | A Roman prefect has Jesus of Nazareth tortured to death by crucifixion
• 40s | Barnabas and Paul teach Jews and Gentiles together. First called "Christians."
• ca. 49 | James and Peter agree with Paul: Gentile believers need not be circumcised
• 70 | The Second Temple in Jerusalem falls during the First Roman-Jewish War.

Christianity did not start out as a Western European religion, written in Greek and centered on Rome. That all comes much later. The movement eventually called Christianity began as a grassroots movement of Jews in the Roman-occupied Galilee. This first generation had no Christian Bible (and did not discuss having one), no church building, and no priesthood to define correct belief (Gr. orthodoxy). Many doctrines that are today considered essential to Christianity (eg. Original Sin, a formal theory of atonement, even Christmas) would take centuries to develop.

Put simply, the first followers of Jesus were Jewish.

Jesus certainly counts himself among the Jews. And as we zoom in on the activities of that first generation, we find his followers in Jewish activities, for Jewish reasons, following Jewish prophecies, led by a Jewish rabbi. When John baptizes, he is performing an immersion (Gr. baptisma) akin to a Jewish mikveh (cf. Sec. 8.4). When Jesus and his followers quote “scripture,” they are quoting the Hebrew Bible. Jesus often speaks of “the Law and Prophets...“ This is the Torah and Nevi’im of the Hebrew Bible we discussed in Sec. 8.1. Jesus quotes or alludes to the Hebrew Bible dozens of times in the Gospels, including the Psalms and all five Torah scrolls (particularly Exodus). In fact, he begins his public ministry reading Isaiah 61 in a synagogue.

Three social pressures we’ve already discussed shape this generation of Jews: the ongoing Roman occupation of Israel, the Jewish hope for a Messiah to end that occupation, and a Hellenistic apocalyptic expectation for a new beginning. The inner circle of Jesus arose out of those first-century pressures.

• Fishermen like Peter & Andrew and James & John were being taxed to the bone
• Philip & Nathanael hope for a Messianic future King of Israel “as the Nevi’im foretold”
• Mary of Magdala came a fish-salting town under the same economic pressures
• Jewish tax collectors like Matthew impoverished fellow Jews at the behest of Rome
• While Simon was a Zealot, fighting for Israelite independence from Rome

As a symbol of commerce and regional pride, fish became a powerful totem for early Christians. It represented everything the Jews of that region worked for, and what the Romans took from them to feed their occupying army. By the 200s, the ichthys fish will be the predominant totem of Christianity, centuries before the Latin cross.

The Christ

Herod the Great establishes a port at Caesarea (lit. ‘Caesar’s city‘) on Israel’s coast, later home to Rome’s governors. In Galilee, his son Herod Antipas rebuils Sepphoris, just four miles from Nazareth. Wealth flowed into these cities, leaving rural villages like Nazareth economically drained. Heavy taxation and Roman violence prompted a variety of political responses among the Jews.

Section 8 already introduced the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Zealots.

• The Sadducees collaborate with Rome, negotiating Jewish regional autonomy
• The Pharisees (out in the countryside) criticize Romans and Sadducean collaboration
• The Zealots assassinate Romans and collaborating Jews, aiming for Israelite independence through armed struggle

Here, in Section 9, we add two more factions to the board.

• The Essenes retreat to the desert, away from Roman and Sadducean influence
• The messianic movements hope for an anointed leader who will end the occupation

Some messianic and Zealot ideals overlapped: both hoped for a heroic figure (like Joshua, King David, or Judah Maccabee) who could lead a successful rebellion against Rome. The Zealot ideals of Judas of Galilee held that paying taxes to Caesar was a betrayal of God, Israel’s only king. In the spirit of fighting men like King David, the Zealots arm themselves and kill in defense of Israel, fighting the ongoing Hellenization of the Holy Land.

But under the yoke of imperial subjugation, the Biblical prophets had also leaned into the notion of radical pacifism — swords beaten into plowshares, a king who breaks the bow and speaks peace to the nations, and nations looking to Jerusalem for moral guidance. Later tradition gathered these hopes around a coming Messiah (Heb. mashiach, ‘anointed one’), in Greek Christos, the Christ. In that Messianic Age, the exiles return, their fortunes are restored, and the Jewish People know everlasting joy.

This is the context of the story of Jesus of Nazareth, whom Christians claim as the Messiah of Jewish prophecy. Jesus proclaims the Kingdom of God before the Romans have him tortured and killed, mocking him as ‘King of the Jews‘ — a rival to their Lord, Caesar (cf. John 19:12).

Born to a Jewish mother, Mary, Jesus was raised in the Jewish tradition of the Second Temple period (circumcised, studied Torah, and keeping its festivals). At about 30 years old, Jesus seeks out the ministry of John the Baptist. John is an apocalyptic figure admired by Jesus. John draws Jews out of the Hellenized cities of Israel, back to the purity of the Judean desert to proclaim a message far removed from the Roman mode of civilization. John’s message is that the Kingdom of God is here — in radical opposition to the Empire of Caesar (cf. Sec. 7.4).

For his defiance, John is beheaded by Herod Antipas, Rome’s client, who feared his popularity among Jews.

But John’s arrest does not end the Kingdom Movement. Jesus takes up the message. Whereas the crowds went out to John, Jesus goes to them, sending out (Gr. apostello) those he teaches to spread the message. After the Romans kill Jesus, his all-Jewish movement calls itself “the Way,” while opponents call it “a sect of the Nazarenes.” After Jesus is killed, the movement continues to meet in Jerusalem under Peter and, later, Jesus’ aforementioned brother, James (cf. Sec. 9.2).

The Letters of Paul | 47-64 CE

The earliest Christian writings describing Jesus are teaching letters, or epistles (Gr. epistolē), written by a Pharisee outside of Jesus’ inner circle, a man who never met Jesus in life, the Apostle Paul. Paul claims to have been sent (Gr. apostello) by the resurrected Jesus in a mystical revelation. He makes it very clear that he “did not confer with any human, nor did [he] go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before [him]” (Gal. 1:16–17), for three years. Instead, Paul claims his authority (ie. apostleship) comes directly from his mystical encounter with the Christ.

Throughout his epistles, Paul never mentions a virgin birth or any of Jesus’ miracles. Paul’s Jesus is simply “born of a woman, born under the law.” What Paul does emphasize is that Jesus is the prophesied Messiah and Son of God. Rejecting Caesar’s world of idolatry, strife, and envy, Paul envisions the Kingdom of God succeeding Rome with righteousness, peace, and joy. He attributes Jesus’ death to “the rulers of this age.” Of his fellow Jews, the Pharisee Paul heaps endless praise.

For Paul, everyone in the world can now be united in the Kingdom of God through their faithfulness (Lt. fides) to Jesus. His epistles outline Jesus’ movement as dedicated to morality, faithfulness, and an apocalyptic sense that Jesus would soon return. But, most radically, Paul’s Jesus welcomed everyone into the Kingdom of God, not just Jews. By the mid-first century, Paul’s message had spread across the eastern Mediterranean, carrying the treasonous conviction that Caesar did not hold ultimate authority over the world.

Today, while some of Paul’s letters are lost, the surviving letters of Paul and his associates make up nearly half the books of the New Testament canon.

Key Terms for this Lesson: Christ · Epistle

9.2 | The Church in a Roman World

Paul & Jerusalem Meet | ca. 50 CE

At home in the Roman Empire, the Pharisee Paul interacts with Gentiles (non-Jews) who seek a relationship with the God of Israel but do not wish to commit to full Jewish practice (above all, circumcision). The covenant's mark (Sec. 8) carries real social cost: in a culture where Roman masculinity was paramount, circumcised men face ridicule for their covenant with God, and for most Gentiles the demands of the Jewish law were simply too much. So we have records of Gentiles who attended synagogues, were interested in the God of Israel, yet remained non-Jews. The book of Acts calls them Phoboumenoi, the "God-Fearers." Paul's message to them was simple: through Jesus, you do not have to become Jewish (ie. bound to the "works of the law") to belong to God's Kingdom.

So Paul stood up and with a gesture began to speak: “Fellow Israelites and others who fear God: listen!” Paul, Acts 13:16

Following Paul’s mystical encounter with Jesus, he goes off to Arabia for 3 years. After Jesus’ death, the remnant of the old Nazarene movement was in Jerusalem, initially led by Peter. However, over time, the Jerusalem leadership moved to Jesus’ more Torah-observant brother, James. The two sides meet in Jerusalem, where James outlines four requirements, in line with the Noahide Laws (Sec. 8.2), that Gentile converts must follow, but says “not to trouble” them with the rest of Torah. The peace is uneasy. When Peter later visits Antioch, Paul “opposed him to his face” for withdrawing from eating with non-Jews. Still, Paul’s ecclesia (Gr. ekklesia, ‘assembly,’ the word English Bibles translate ‘church’) and James’ Jerusalem church remain in fellowship. Within decades, their movement is known as Christianity.

The Synoptic Gospels | 70-85 CE

The 20 years after the Jerusalem Council were decisive.

Paul leaves for his third mission, writing epistles to the Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans. Paul is eventually arrested and shipwrecked, writing more epistles from prison. Around 64 CE, Peter and Paul are executed under Emperor Nero in Rome. The First Jewish-Roman War begins two years later in 66. And the first Gospel story of Jesus is committed to writing.

When the Romans declared victory over another devastated city, runners carried the “good news“ back to the Empire. That announcement was called an evangelion. It was Caesar’s word: an inscription of 9 BCE calls Augustus’ birthday the beginning of “good news” for the world. Paul and then Mark take this word for Jesus. The Old English translation of evangelion is gōdspel, our Gospel.

Thus, the Gospels are the Christian message of the good news of Jesus Christ.

Written against the backdrop of the Temple’s destruction, the Gospel of Mark is the first Gospel written. While dozens of gospels were written, only four are in the New Testament canon: the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and later John.

The Gospel of Mark (or gMark) is short, direct, and written in plainer Greek than Paul’s schooled prose. Like Paul, this first Gospel omits Jesus’ birth and childhood. Instead, it opens with John the Baptist, and Jesus comes from Nazareth to be baptized by him. Unlike Paul’s letters, gMark’s Jesus is a healer and exorcist (performing 4 exorcisms and over a dozen other miracles). gMark’s Jesus also shows great concern for the poor, urging a rich man to sell what he owns and telling his disciples to feed the hungry crowd.

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Gospel of Mark 10:21

The Gospels of Luke and Matthew each use gMark’s foundation but adapt it for distinct audiences. gLuke tends to emphasize poverty and marginalized women, while gMatthew frames the story of Jesus in the context of Jewish royalty. These two gospels hold the only birth narratives (Lat. nativitas) of Jesus in the New Testament. In gLuke, the angel Gabriel announces to Mary (Jesus’ mother) that she will give birth to the Messiah (in gMatthew an angel tells her betrothed, Joseph, in a dream). In gLuke, Mary lays her newborn in a lowly manger. In gMatthew, Jesus receives kingly gifts from visiting Persian priests.

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Gospel of Luke 6:20

The first three gospels (Mark, Luke, and Matthew) are known as the synoptic Gospels, as they can be “seen together“ (Gr. synopsis). All three share a similar portrait of Jesus’ last week: his arrest, trial, and crucifixion under the mocking Roman charge of “King of the Jews.” As the Romans torture Jesus to death, gMark and gMatthew show the soldiers making him a parody of imperial power, dressing him in a purple robe, crowning him with thorns, and (in gMatthew) putting a scepter in his hand.

The soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole cohort around him. They stripped him and put a purple robe on him, and after twisting some thorns into a crown they put it on his head. They put a reed in his right hand and knelt before him and mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Gospel of Matthew 27:27-29

Though gMark ends with an empty tomb, gLuke and gMatthew each add extended resurrection narratives. Women are the first witnesses at the tomb, and both accounts culminate in Jesus' physical reappearance among his followers. gLuke also describes Jesus later ascending into heaven.

The Gospel & the Romans | 100 CE

About three decades after the Jewish Temple’s destruction, the Gospel of John emerged with a markedly different perspective. About 90% of gJohn is found nowhere else in the Gospels. Why? Because 35 years after Jesus’ death, the second generation of Christians lived through the Roman-Jewish War (66–70). That was the audience of the Gospel of Mark. gMark’s generation was a mix of fewer Jews and more Gentiles, with dwindling access to the disciples (tradition places the disciple John in Ephesus into the 90s). While gMark and gLuke tend to lean more toward a Gentile audience, gMatthew leans more Jewish. However, the third generation of Christians was mostly Greek-speaking Gentiles, with no ties to the vanished Temple or the disciples.

The text of gJohn has no Jewish genealogy, birth story, or baptism. Instead, gJohn portrays Jesus as the Logos, a word at home in Greek philosophy. gJohn’s unique approach reflects an audience with a predominantly Greek worldview. In gJohn, Jesus speaks in long discourses and metaphors rather than the Jewish parables of the synoptic Gospels. This final gospel narrative stresses Jesus’ cosmic mission as Savior of the World rather than focusing on his Jewish ties to King David’s lineage (cf. gMatthew) or Jewish struggles against Caesar’s occupying empire (cf. gMark).

Lastly, while the synoptic depiction of Jesus shuns grandiose titles, gJohn’s Jesus speaks declaratively and unreservedly about his divine role. In seven “I am” sayings, the Gospel of John proclaims Jesus as “The Light of the World,” “The Good Shepherd,” “The Way, the Truth, and the Life,” and so on.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me. Gospel of John 14:6

For another century, the Christian movement remains small and largely hidden (less than 1% of all Romans).

A few times in those first centuries, Rome turned on the Christians. Why? Well, Rome could tolerate almost any god. After all, Jews had lived throughout the Roman Empire successfully, with an ancient exemption from sacrificing to Rome’s gods. Gentile Christians had no such standing. They shunned the Imperial Cult of Caesar, often at the edge of a sword, the mouth of a lion, or the flame of a torch. In imitation of Christ, they prayed for those who persecuted them and died without resistance.

Under Emperor Nero, when a fire broke out in 64 CE, Nero made the Roman Christians scapegoats for the blaze and had the believers killed in his gardens and circus (Tacitus). Persecution then flared locally for two centuries, turning empire-wide under Decius (250) and in the Great Persecution of Diocletian (ca. 303). However, within ten years, the Roman view of Christianity would be dramatically reversed.

Key Terms for this Lesson: Ecclesia · Gospel

9.3 | Constantine & the Creed

The Constantinian Shift | 313

For three centuries the Christians had been a small, sometimes hunted minority.
Their fortunes turned when a warlord had a dream.

• 312 | Constantine takes the Roman throne under the sign of the Christ (XP)
• 313 | The Edict of Milan: Christianity becomes legal across the empire
• 325 | The Council of Nicaea: the Son is “of one substance” with the Father
• 367 | Athanasius’ list: The 27 books of the Christian New Testament are decided
• 380 | Nicene Christianity: Theodosius makes Christianity the Rome’s official religion

In 312 CE, on the eve of battle at Milvian Bridge outside Rome, the warlord Constantine (d. 337) saw a sign of the Christ. He saw a sign blazing in the sky with the words “Under this sign, you shall conquer.” A dream then told him to mark his shields. Constantine awoke and painted the first two Greek letters of Christ (XPISTOS), the chi-rho (“XP”), on them.

He won the battle, the day, and soon after, the entire Roman Empire.

Following Constantine’s dramatic victory, he declared in the Edict of Milan that Christian identity and worship were legal. His changes had an enormous theological effect on Christianity known as the Constantinian Shift. While the early Church Fathers argued for Christian pacifism (cf. Sec. 9.2), Constantine recast the Christian God as the God of Military Victory. Moreover, Constantine began favoring Christians for high-ranking positions, Roman governorships, and even judicial roles. The emperor also took major funding from pagan temples and put it toward building massive Christian structures in tribute to his victory. When the requirements for pagan ritual in the Roman military ended, the enriched Roman Christian bishops decreed that, from now on, any Christian who refused to serve in the Roman legions could be excommunicated. Over the next century, half the empire joined the religion of their emperor. Led by Christian military officers, pagan ritual was banned entirely from the legions. By 416 CE, the Roman military was an exclusively Christian organization.

In short,
when the Roman empire became Christian, European Christianity largely became imperial.

Several Christianities

Outside of 4th century Rome, there had been different local Christianities with their own texts. Here are a few of the larger communities...

• The Ebionites (Hb. Poor Ones) traced their lineage back to the Nazarene Movement led by James (cf. Sec 9.2). Following their Gospel, they taught Jesus was Messiah but not God. They viewed Jesus as ‘adopted’ by God at baptism. Adoptionism was a popular theology among early Jewish-Christians. After the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70, many Ebionite Jewish-Christians fled east across the Jordan, toward Arabia, and carried their message there.

• The Marcionites taught Jesus was a divine manifestation of the God of Love, unrelated to the God of the Hebrew Bible. The lasting effect they had was their insistence on the development of a superior “New Testament” for Christian use.

• The Modalists (ie. Sabellianism) were nontrinitarian Christians who taught that Jesus was a ‘mode’ of God, not a divine persona, because God is inherently One. The Ebionites and other pre-Nicene Christian groups also did not subscribe to the later Nicene concept of the Trinity.

• The Gnostics (ie. mystics) taught Jesus was a divine being who only appeared human to give humanity secret knowledge of its own divine nature. Among their scriptures was the Gospel of Thomas (parts of which may predate gMark). Their movement eventually went east into Persia.

• The Arians, the most popular rival to the Nicene caucus, taught Jesus was God’s Son, created by God and subordinate to God. The theology of Arius travelled north and west of Rome, where it gained traction among the Goths in France and Spain well into the 500s.

• And there was the Roman Church, who had the support of the emperor. The Church in Rome, who traced their lineage to Peter, taught that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. This claim is foundational to the theology of the Trinity.

The Nicene Creed | 325-381

Turning back to Constantine: in 324, Constantine defeated his co-claimant to the throne in the Roman East. In this way, Constantine unified the fracturing empire politically. But the people’s hearts were still divided.

So in 325, Constantine called on all Christian bishops throughout the empire to meet at Nicaea (today, a city in Türkiye). There, the divisions among Christians were debated and decided on. Out of that debate came the Nicene Creed, the central statement of correct Christian belief, backed by the Roman emperor and intended for all of Christendom.

In the Council’s wording, Jesus is “of one substance” (Gr. homoousion) with God. For Nicene Christians, Jesus the Son shares God’s very being (ie. “begotten, not made”). *However, the first draft of the Creed ends simply on the Holy Spirit. By the 360s, a new heresy had developed which taught that the Holy Spirit was a kind of ministering angel subordinate to God. So, in 381, the Nicene Creed was expanded. Part of that expansion explained that the Holy Spirit “with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified.” This is the theology of the Trinity, that God is three consubstantial persons: the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit.

The 381 Creed, authored at the First Council of Constantinople, also affirms belief in “one holy catholic and apostolic church.” Note here that the Greek word ‘catholic’ simply means universal in this case. The four marks of the Church thereafter are:

• One: There is only one true Church
• Holy: The One Church is set apart (ie. sacred) by God for a special purpose in the world
• Catholic: The One Holy Church is universal (Gr. katholikos) — for all people
• Apostolic: The One Holy Catholic Church is derived from Jesus and the bishops

Key Terms for this Lesson: The Nicene Creed · Trinity

9.4 | Canon & Schism

Christian Canon | 367-397

After the Nicene Creed had been decided in 325, Christian theologians spent the next seventy years debating Marcion’s notion of a unified Christian scripture. For the first three centuries of Christianity, each regional church had largely curated its own scripture. There were dozens of gospels and scriptures beloved by diverse communities of believers.

Syrian Christians taught from the Didache and the Clementine Writings. Christians in Egypt read the Gospel of the Egyptians, often alongside the more esoteric Apocryphon of John and the Gospel of Mary. Christians in Rome read the Shepherd of Hermas which served as an allegory of repentance. Christians in Israel read the Apocalypse of Peter. In Greece, the church at Corinth read 1 Clement aloud. And in France, Christians learned from the writings of Irenaeus of Lyons, who cited the Shepherd as scripture.

Before there was a unified Church, there was little need for a unified canon. But that changed after the Council of Nicaea.

A canon is a set of texts agreed to be authoritative for a community. Over the centuries, agreed upon criteria for a Christian canon began to surface in theological debates. A Christian text could be considered scripture if it had apostolicity (roots in the apostles), catholicity (used by the whole church, not one region), and orthodoxy (agreement with the rule of faith).

By the mid-200s, the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had been more or less decided upon (first championed by the aforementioned Irenaeus). In 367, the bishop Athanasius was the first to list 27 particular books as belonging to the Christian canon. North African bishops then held a Synod in Hippo (an African port city) in 393 to decide on the canon officially.

The gathered bishops kept the Greek ordering of the Hebrew Bible (the Septuagint’s, cf. Sec. 7.4), placing the prophetic writings at the end (in the earlier Jewish canon, the Nevi’im are in the middle of the Bible). The four Gospels then headed the New Testament, followed by the Acts of the Apostles, Paul’s Epistles, and then the General Epistles. The decided arrangement was thematic rather than chronological. A later meeting at Carthage, in 397, confirmed the list, including the long-disputed Book of Revelation.

Some adherents who revered non-canonical texts objected, but under Roman authority, the official list prevailed. Eventually, the Western churches coalesced around this canon, while older communities, like those in Syria or Egypt, held onto their books (eg. the Didache) as edifying scripture.

Today, there are several authoritative lists of Christian canon, though near universal consensus on the inclusion of the same 39 Old Testament texts and 27 New Testament texts.

• Roman Canon, 397: 73 books
  (39 Hebrew + 27 New Testament + 7 Deuterocanonical books)

• Syriac Canon, 411: 61 books
  (39 Hebrew + 22 New Testament, omits Rev., 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, and Jude)

• Armenian Canon, 506: 77-79 books
  (39 Hebrew + 27 New Testament + 11-13 Intertestamental books)

• Ethiopian Canon, 640 (fall of Egypt): 81 books
  (39 Hebrew + 27 New Testament + 15 additional books, eg. 1 Enoch)

• Orthodox Canon, 692: 76-81 books
  (39 Hebrew + 27 New Testament + 10-15 Greek additions, eg. 3 Maccabees)

• Protestant Canon, 1534 (Luther Bible): 66 books
  (39 Hebrew + 27 New Testament; Apocrypha set apart, later dropped)

Original Sin & Atonement

After centuries of serious debate over scriptural authority, Western Christian theology began to stabilize with the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430). Among his influential ideas was the theology of Original Sin, the claim that humanity inherits a sinful disposition from Adam and Eve’s original disobedience. This fundamental theological view posits that baptism and God’s grace are essential to overcoming one’s moral corruption (ie. you can’t be a good person without God). With the Christian doctrine of Original Sin in place, the atonement of sin became a critical question for the Church.

While there was no question how the Romans crucified Jesus, the ultimate, theological reason why he was crucified was far from settled. The Early Church Fathers like Irenaeus and Origen championed Ransom Theory: claiming that humanity was held captive by Satan due to our sinful nature and the crucifixion set us free. But later theologians would argue this made Satan too powerful. A later Medieval theologian, Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1109), introduced Satisfaction Theory, where Christ repays the honor owed to God that humanity could not. This set the stage for Peter Abelard (d. 1142), who systematized the long-held Moral Influence Theory idea that Jesus’ suffering was a vivid demonstration of divine love meant to inspire moral change in believers. Finally, in the modern era, two new theological views arose. The lawyer John Calvin (d. 1564) described Penal Substitution Theory, asserting that Christ bore the penalty owed by humanity for sin, thus satisfying God’s justice so that believers would be saved from eternal damnation. Later, the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (d. 1645) developed Governmental Theory, arguing that Christ’s death served as a profound demonstration of divine justice, showing us by example that forgiving sin does not compromise the moral order of society.

We will further explore the theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin in Section 11.

Medieval Church & Schism

In 410 CE, the Germanic Goths sack Rome. Constantinople then becomes the preeminent Christian city in the world.

In 431, the Church of the East (ie. Persian and Indian Christians) splits off from the imperial Church over theological and political differences. In 451, the Oriental Orthodox Church (incl. the Egyptian Coptic, Syriac, and Armenian churches) does the same. What’s left of the Church in the 500s are the Latinate Western Christians (answering to Rome) and the Greek Eastern Christians (answering to Constantinople).

In 527, Emperor Justinian takes the Constantinopolitan throne, seeking to recapture lost territories and strengthen Christianity’s clout. He closes Plato’s Academy (529), marking the beginning of the Middle Ages. He also creates the famous Justinian Law Code (with principles like contract law, property rights, and procedural fairness), fusing the old Roman laws with the growing body of Christian law.

In the 600s, the Muslim world begins to show up on Christian maps (cf. Sec. 10). In 711, a Muslim army crosses from North Africa and takes Spain from the Christian Goths, developing Islamic culture in Spain for nearly 800 years. For much of the Middle Ages, Mediterranean power would be balanced between:

• Eastern Christians: the Byzantine Empire centered in Constantinople (Türkiye)

• Eastern Muslims: the Abbasid dynasty centered in Baghdad (Iraq)

• Western Muslims: the Umayyad dynasty centered in Córdoba (Spain)

• Western Christians: the Latin Church centered in Rome (Italy)

Despite constant antagonism from neighboring tribes, the Bishop of Rome continues to press his advantage. Having established missions in Ireland (400s) and England (600s), Rome presses on with successful missions to Germany in the 700s and Northern Europe in the 800s. On Christmas Day, 800, the Bishop of Rome crowns king Charles of the Franks as the first emperor of what became known as the “Holy Roman Empire.” Charlemagne (Fr. Charles the Great) then provides Rome with converts and tax revenue, while Rome provides Charles with an authentic claim to the long-lost Roman throne of Caesars and emperors. Constantinople was not amused.

What was once One Church was now a bitter rivalry between the Latinate West and the Byzantine Greek East. The title “Pope” (Papa) had been an honorary title of respect for senior bishops. Leo the Great (d. 461) was the first to build a legal argument that the Bishop of Rome held supreme authority over the Church (cf. Matt 16:18). Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) then rebuked Constantinople’s patriarch for the title “universal bishop.” After the crowning of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III (d. 816), it was clear that Rome no longer needed Constantinople.

In 1054, the inevitable finally happened.

What began as a theological dispute ended with the legates of the Roman Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicating one another from Christendom. Afterward, the Christian West recognized the Pope as the undisputed head of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church. The Western Church came to be known as the Roman Catholic Church.

Meanwhile, the patriarch of Constantinople continued to work with other cities’ patriarchs as his office had always done, believing they continued to serve Christendom with the “correct beliefs” (Gr. orthos doxa). The Eastern Church came to be known as the Orthodox Church. The earth-shattering split between the Catholic West and the Orthodox East became known as the Great Schism of 1054.

Key Terms for this Lesson: Canon · The Great Schism

Recommended Sources

Robert Louis Wilken, The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity
Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction
Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way
Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought
Larry W. Hurtado, Destroyer of the gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World

Last Section: Judaism
This Section: Christianity, Pt. 1
Next Section: Islam

The Kaaba | Mecca, Saudi Arabia, 2018

For more on Islam:
See my 14-Week Islam Course

Key Terms for this Section
Kaaba · Hijra · S-L-M root · Qur’an
Sunni & Shia · Sharia · The Five Pillars · Mosque

10.1 | Arabia & the Messenger

Arabia & the Kaaba

Arabia in the 500s was a world unto itself: a vast desert rimmed by trading coasts, wedged between the two superpowers of the age — the Christian Byzantine Empire lay to the northwest and the Persian Empire to the northeast. Along the western caravan road, the Hijaz, sat two towns that matter for the rest of this section:
Mecca, and, to its north, the older town of Yathrib, soon renamed Medina.

• 610 | The first revelation happens in a cave on Mount Hira (cf. 10.2)
• 615 | Persecuted followers of Muhammad find refuge under a Christian king
• 622 | The Hijra, the community migrates to Medina. Year 1 of the Islamic calendar
• 630 | Muhammad and the Believers return to Mecca and clear out the idols
• 632 | Muhammad dies in Medina with no clear line of succession

Islam did not arrive in an empty desert. Long before Muhammad ﷺ, Mecca was a pilgrimage and trading city built around an ancient shrine, the Kaaba, a cube-shaped sanctuary that Arab tradition held had been raised by Abraham and his son Ishmael, the ancestor (in that tradition) of the Arab people. It will become the shrine toward which all Muslims face in prayer.

This phrase, which follows the prophet’s name at the beginning of this section, is the Arabic blessing “peace be upon him.” It is the honorific observant Muslims traditionally add to their prophets, notably to Muhammad. It is placed here, once, so you’ll know what it is when you see it elsewhere online.

Arabia knew the God of Abraham.

However, Arabia was also a polytheistic society to its core. In the late 500s, the Kaaba housed 360 idols. Meccan prosperity ran on those idols. Arab culture and honor code let warring tribes trade in peace on holy ground, and Mecca had every idol in the peninsula. Everyone was welcome to trade!

During the Jahiliyah (the ‘time of ignorance’ before Muhammad), The families who kept the Kaaba grew very wealthy from the trade in their area. The Qur’an, the scripture of Islam, remembers the arrangement. It’s 106th surah is named for the Quraysh, the tribe that kept the shrine.

For the security of the Quraysh, their security on the journeys of winter and summer, let them worship the Lord of this House, who fed them against hunger and made them safe from fear. Surah Quraysh, Qur’an 106:1–4

Scattered through Arabia were Jews, some with communities reaching back to the First Temple era, and many more arriving after Rome destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE (Secs 7–8). Three Jewish tribes (the Qaynuqa, the Nadir, and the Qurayza) lived in Yathrib in Muhammad’s day. There were Christians, too, of several rival kinds, some of whom honored Jesus as a prophet rather than as God. And there were the hanifs, Arab monotheists who worshipped the God of Abraham and rejected the idols without belonging to either older tradition. One of them, Waraqa, cousin of Muhammad’s wife, will reappear in a moment.

Mecca & the Messenger

The Prophet Muhammad was born around 570 into the Arab clan of Banu Hashim (part of Mecca’s leading tribe, the Quraysh). But his road was one of hardship, not Quraishi wealth. Orphaned young, he was raised first by his grandfather and then by his uncle Abu Talib (d. c. 619). Muhammad worked the caravan trade, earning among Meccans the nickname al-Amin, “the Trustworthy One.”

In his 20s, his excellent character caught the notice of Khadija (d. 619), a self-made older woman and widow, who ran her own caravan business. She hired Muhammad, and later proposed marriage. Their marriage would last about 25 years, until her death. The marriage brought Muhammad security and standing and, by the tradition’s account, a settled prosperity that only sharpened his unease at the gulf between Mecca’s haves and have-nots. He took to spending nights alone in a cave on Mount Hira, above the city, in prayer and reflection.

There, in 610, Muslims hold that the angel Jibril (Gabriel) came to him with a single command, “Recite,” and that what he began to recite was the word of God (cf. Sec. 10.2). He came down from the mountain shaken, and it was Khadija who first believed him. Among the earliest to follow were his young cousin and son-in-law Ali (d. 661) and his friend Abu Bakr (d. 634).

The message Muhammad began to preach was unsparing and, to Mecca’s establishment, dangerous: there is only one God, the idols are nothing, and the rich and powerful must answer for how they treat the poor. If Mecca took that seriously, the whole idol-and-pilgrimage economy (and the families who ran it) stood to lose everything.

The Quraysh leadership answered the first Muslims with ridicule, then pressure, then persecution. In 615 some Believers were driven into exile across the Red Sea to Christian Abyssinia, while Abu Bakr spent his wealth buying the freedom of enslaved converts. Then, in 619, Khadija and Abu Talib both died. Muslims remember it as the Year of Sorrow, and with his uncle went the clan protection that had shielded him.

To Medina & Back Again

When a delegation from the Arab-Jewish city of Yathrib invited Muhammad north to arbitrate an old feud between two of the cities tribes, the Believers went with Muhammad. In 622 CE the community migrated from Mecca to Yathrib in a moment known as the Hijra (Ar. emigration). This event now marks Year One of the Islamic calendar (1 AH), a reckoning the caliph Umar instituted circa 638. Yathrib became known to the tradition as Medina, “the City.”

At Medina, the movement became a community. Muhammad drew up the Constitution of Medina, a compact binding the town’s Muslims, Jews, and others into a community defined by mutual-defense and aid. The years that followed brought open conflict with Mecca, remembered in the battles of Badr (624) and Uhud (625).

In 630 CE Muhammad returns to Mecca at the head of 10,000 followers and takes the city with little bloodshed.

A general amnesty is declared for the whole city. He and Ali went straight to the Kaaba and cleared it of its idols, restoring it, in the tradition’s understanding, to the worship of the one God for which Abraham had first raised it. Then the Believers circled it seven times, as Muslims on pilgrimage still do.

Two years later, in 632, after a final illness during which Abu Bakr led the prayers in his place, the Prophet died at Medina. Muslims hold him to be the last — the Seal of the Prophets (Qur’an 33:40). Over the decades that followed, the recitations he had delivered were gathered into a single book, the Qur’an.

Key Terms for this Lesson: Kaaba · Hijra

10.2 | The Qur’an & Its World

Recite & Salaam

According to Islamic tradition, while alone in the cave, Muhammad experienced a transformative event. The angel Gabriel (the same messenger who came to Daniel and to Mary) visited him and commanded that there is only one God. Moreover, Muhammad was told to go to the people of Mecca, renounce their idol worship, and recite the word of God to them. The first words he was given were these:

“Recite! In the name of your Lord, who created — created humanity from a clinging clot. Recite, for your Lord is Most Generous — who taught by the pen, taught humanity what it did not know.” Qur’an 96:1–5

He came down from the mountain shaken, and was comforted by his wife Khadija, who took him to her Christian cousin Waraqa, a man who knew the earlier scriptures (Sahih al-Bukhari 3). Waraqa confirmed that Muhammad bore all the signs of prophethood. For the next 23 years, until his death, Muhammad continued to recite the words as he received them.

The Arabic word for “recitation” is Qur’an. It shares its root (Q-R-ʾ) with the angel’s first command, iqra’ (recite).

While we’re on Arabic etymology, it would benefit us to also look to the word root for Islam and Muslim. Both words share an S-L-M Semitic root (س ل م). From this same root, we derive:

• Salaam, peace (also a greeting)
• Salamah, safety
• Salim, whole/unbroken

Because all triliteral Semitic roots share a family of meaning, we may best understand Islam as invoking peace (salaam), safety/refuge (salamah), and wholeness (salim). In Arabic, if you add “mu-” to the beginning of a word, it means ‘one who does.’ So “mu-SLM’ simply means one whose aim is ‘S-L-M’ (peace/safety/wholeness/Islam).

In short, the Islamic tradition takes its own name from the Arabic root for peace.

The Qur’an & Its Guardians

The Qur’an, the chief scripture of Islam, is about the size of the New Testament,
and it defies most of our literary expectations.

The Qur’an has little narrative continuity and almost no chronological order. It is made of 114 chapters called surahs arranged (after the short opening) mostly from longest to shortest. Surahs are not arranged by story or theme. Each surah is labelled as Meccan or Medinan, according to where Muhammad was when the message was revealed. There are 86 earlier Meccan and 28 later Medinan surahs.

Mary, the mother of Jesus (Ar. Isa) is the only woman the Qur’an names, and Surah Maryam is the only surah named for a woman, a measure of her honor in the tradition. To many Muslims, the fact that the Qur’an is not shaped like an ordinary book is part of the point: its form is held to be beyond human convention.

Two features matter most for understanding how Muslims hold their scripture. First, the language is the revelation. The Qur’an was revealed in Meccan Arabic, and Muslims hold that the Arabic is the scripture. That is, any translation is regarded as an interpretation — useful but secondary. That is why the Qur’an is recited in Arabic in mosques from Indonesia to Ohio, whether or not the worshippers speak Arabic as their first language.

To memorize the entire Qur’an in Arabic is among the most honored achievements in a Muslim life. Doing so earns one the title hafiz, “guardian.” There are millions alive today, many of them children. It is a text that could survive the loss of every printed copy and still be recited.

Finally, the text was standardized early. Within a generation of Muhammad’s death (ca. 650), under the caliph Uthman, a single authoritative written version was established and copies sent across the growing community.

The Qur’an & the Bible

The Qur’an alludes to and sometimes retells stories from the Bible, rather than introducing them whole cloth.

Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus all appear as prophets in its pages, though many times without details a Bible reader might expect. For example, the Garden’s serpent and the visit of the shepherds to Jesus go unmentioned. This is due to the Qur’anic interest aiming for the moral of the account, not its chronology or details.

Jesus (Isa) is particularly honored in the Qur’an.

The Qur’an affirms the virgin birth (19:20) of Jesus, calling him Messiah and prophet (3:45). On the crucifixion, the Qur’an reads the story differently than the Gospels do: “they did not kill him and did not crucify him, but it was made to seem so to them” (4:157). The next verse reads:

Rather, Allah raised [Jesus] up to Himself. And Allah is Almighty, All-Wise.
Qur’an 4:158

What the Qur’an will not grant is that Jesus is God’s son in the Christian sense. Its deepest insistence is the one it shares with the Jewish tradition: God is one, without partner or equal. In theological moments like this, where the Bible and the Qur’an differ, Islamic teaching holds that the earlier texts were altered in transmission over the centuries (tahrif), and that the Qur’an is the final, unaltered clarification.

The disciplined study of the Qur’an’s meaning (verse by verse, drawing on Muhammad’s example and the Arabic itself) is called tafsir. This tradition of commentary compares well to the Talmudic commentary Section 8 described concerning the Torah.

Speaking of comparison: there is a well-worn warning given to students focused on interfaith dialogue and understanding. At first, it may seem that the Qur’an is to Muslims what the Bible is to Christians, but this is not the case. Rather, each of the three Abrahamic traditions has a central ‘miracle’ that holds it together.

• The central miracle of Judaism is the Promised Land, Israel
• The central miracle of Christianity is Jesus, the Son of God
• The central miracle of Islam is the Qur’an (framed as the perfect text of God’s word)

Just as Christians hold that God entered the world in a person, Muslims hold that God’s word entered the world as a recitation. God’s speech made audible to humanity.

The Qur’an remains unchanged from its original Arabic across 1,400 years and 5 continents. A book you can put on a shelf can gather dust, but a recitation lives only in being spoken. It opens with seven verses, spoken at least 17 times a day by every practicing Muslim:

In the name of God, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to God, Lord of all worlds — the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful, Master of the Day of Judgment. You alone we worship, and You alone we ask for help. Guide us along the Straight Path — the path of those You have blessed, not those who have gone astray. Al-Fatiha, the opening of the Qur’an

Key Terms in this Section: S-L-M root • Qur’an

10.3 | Divisions, Law, & the Golden Age

Sunni & Shia | 632-680

From the death of Muhammad in 632 to the abolition of the caliphate in 1924, the community’s story opens out to the whole Mediterranean and Near Eastern world: Damascus, Baghdad, Córdoba.

• 632 | The Succession Crisis: Abu Bakr becomes the first caliph
• 680 | Muhammad’s grandson Husayn is killed at Karbala, Iraq
• 750 | The Abbasid Revolution occurs wherein a new dynasty takes the caliphate
• 1258 | The Mongols sack Baghdad, ending the Abbasid Golden Age

When Muhammad dies in 632, there is no written rule of succession. The community divides over the question that day, and has never recovered. The larger group held that leadership should pass to the most capable and respected of Muhammad’s Companions. They accepted Abu Bakr, and then a line of early leaders known as the Rightly Guided Caliphs (the Rashidun), as his rightful successors (Ar. khalifa, “successor,” and so caliph). This caucus became the Sunni (the ‘majority’).

A second group held that leadership belonged by right within Muhammad’s own family, beginning with Ali, his cousin and son-in-law, and passing through his descendants, the Shiatu Ali, (the ‘Party of Ali’), today known as the Shia.

The division was sealed in grief. What happened?

In 680 at Karbala, in Iraq, Muhammad’s grandson Husayn (d. 680), Ali’s son, was killed with his small band by the forces of the Umayyad caliph Yazid. For Shia Muslims, Husayn’s death is the defining sorrow of their history, mourned every year on Ashura.

Today, the Islamic Community is roughly 90% Sunni and about 10% Shia. The Shia are the majority in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain, and Sunnis nearly everywhere else. But do not lose sight of the fact that Sunni and Shia are two branches of one religion.

Both revere the same Quran and the hadith, the reported words and deeds of Muhammad.

Sharia & Fiqh

Within a generation of Muhammad’s death, the young caliphate needed exactly what the Qur’an does not supply: a codified set of standards for conduct. So, the community turned to the customs and practices of Muhammad and the early days. By combining Islamic belief (Sunnah) and behavioral norms (Hadith), the community was able to build a set of Islamic moral conventions called Sharia.

Sharia is not a set of laws. In Islam, Sharia is an ideal: perfect justice, perfect peace, centered on a perfect religion. But because it’s an ‘ideal,’ true Sharia has never been attained. Rather, the set of Islamic laws that arise from debates about Sharia are called Fiqh. In brief, Fiqh is what imperfect scholars, arguing with one another, have made of religion. They may be doing their best, but it is far from perfect.

Put another way: Sharia is the horizon. Fiqh is the walking.

As to Fiqh (ie. Islamic Law), Sunni Islam classically recognizes four schools of law: the Hanafi, the Maliki, the Shafi’i, and the Hanbali, each named for an 8th or 9th-century jurist. Shia Islam has its own: the Jafari school. And running alongside these branches of Fiqh are devotional and reform movements, Sufism and Salafism among them, that are not ‘schools of law’ but orientations toward it.

So, what do the schools argue about?

Above all, Islamic sources. Did the Prophet really say this? Did he really do that? The study of answering is isnad — the chain of transmission from Muhammad down to the reader, and the schools differ sharply in how strong a chain of custody they demand. Some accept only the most rigorously attested reports. Others admit weaker chains or supplement them with theological or historical reasoning.

There are many fiqhs. There is one sharia.

One further distinction settles a question American readers often ask. Sharia has two dimensions: religious duties and legal codes. It’s only religious duties that bear on Muslims living in the United States, and for a reason internal to Sharia itself. Sharia holds that Muslims are to obey the law of the land in which they live. The legal-code dimension governed medieval Córdoba; it has no standing in Texas, and Muslim jurists say so. Recall the Constitution of Medina, in which Muhammad’s community guaranteed freedom of religion to the Jews of the city in exchange for their loyalty. The reciprocity runs the other way too: wherever freedom of religion is promised, the Muslims who live there owe that government their allegiance. That is not a modern accommodation. It goes all the way back to Medina.

The Islamic Golden Age | 636-1258

The century after Muhammad’s death saw one of the most rapid expansions in history.

Arab-Muslim armies held Damascus by 636 and took Jerusalem in 638, then Egypt, then North Africa, and in 711 crossed the strait into Iberia (Spain). Conquered Jews and Christians, called “People of the Book,” were generally granted protected status (dhimmi). They kept their religious traditions and governed their own communities in return for a special tax (the jizya) and a subordinate legal standing.

What the conquests built was one of the world’s great intellectual civilizations: the Islamicate civilization (scholars call Islamicate those lands and cultures defined by Muslim rule); this is set apart from Islamic, the religion. The Umayyad dynasty ruled from Damascus from 661. The Abbasids who followed took power in 750, and in 762 Baghdad was founded and became the intellectual capital of the world.

In Baghdad, at the House of Wisdom, scholars gathered and translated the learning of Greece, Persia, and India, and then evolved past it. Al-Khwarizmi (d. c. 850) gave his name to the algorithm and his book’s title, al-jabr, to algebra. In Persia, Ibn Sina (Latinized Avicenna, d. 1037) wrote a medical encyclopedia, the Canon of Medicine, used in Europe for some five centuries. Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 1198), in Córdoba, wrote the commentaries on Aristotle that would reintroduce the philosopher to the Latin West.

The Greek philosophy Europe had largely lost came back to it through Arabic, by way of translators at Toledo in reconquered Spain, and it arrived in time to set European thought alight. In Muslim Spain, Córdoba at its height was a city of libraries, street lamps, and physicians. The long era Spain remembers as convivencia, the centuries between 711 and 1492 when Muslims, Christians, and Jews shared the peninsula, was both a real and remarkable coexistence and an unequal one.

And the tradition suffered as well as flourished. In 1258 the Mongols sacked Baghdad, slaughtered its people, and threw the libraries of the House of Wisdom into the Tigris until the river ran black with ink.

Key Terms for this Lesson: Sunni & Shia · Sharia

10.4 | The Pillars, the Mosque, & Muslims in America

The Architecture of a Muslim Life

So what does a Muslim actually do? The answer, everywhere in the world, rests on five practices: the Five Pillars of Islam. They are not a creed to be argued but a life to be built, and a Muslim in Jakarta, Cairo, Lagos, or Dearborn builds it from the same five.

Shahadah • The Declaration of Faith
Rooted in the Arabic "to testify," the Shahada is the Islamic creed: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger. It states the absolute monotheism of Islam and names Muhammad as the last of the prophets. It is the first thing whispered to a newborn and the last thing a dying Muslim hopes to say; to say it sincerely, before witnesses, is to become a Muslim.

Zakat • Almsgiving
Rooted in the Arabic "to purify," zakat is the yearly giving of a portion of one's accumulated wealth: customarily 2.5 percent of one's excess wealth (nisab) to those in need. It is not a tax (it does not fund a government) and not a tithe (it does not fund a religious institution). It is alms, redistributed to the poor, the debt-burdened, and the traveler. It is the direct counterpart of the Jewish tzedakah Section 8 taught, giving understood not as optional charity but as an obligation of righteousness.

Sawm • Fasting
Through the month of Ramadan, Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. No food, drink, or bodily indulgence is permitted during daylight, as a discipline of gratitude, self-restraint, and solidarity with the hungry. The fast is eased for the sick, the traveling, the pregnant, and the young. Ramadan ends in the feast of Eid al-Fitr, one of the two great festivals of the Muslim year.

Hajj • Pilgrimage
Once in a lifetime, every Muslim (who is able) is to make the Hajj, the great pilgrimage to Mecca, in the pilgrimage month. Pilgrims put on ihram, plain white garments that erase every mark of wealth and rank, and circle the Kaaba seven times, walking between the hills of Safa and Marwah, and cast stones in a symbolic "stoning of the devil." About 2,000,000 pilgrims converge on Mecca each year, the largest annual gathering of human beings on earth.

Salat • Prayer
Five times a day — dawn, midday, afternoon, sunset, and night — a Muslim stops and prays, facing Mecca, in a sequence of standing, bowing, and prostration, with recitation from the Qur'an at each step. Prayer is preceded by wudu, a ritual washing. The five daily prayers are the "tent pole" of Islam, the structure the day is pitched around, and a small daily rehearsal of all five pillars at once.

The Mosque

The building where Muslims gather is the mosque (Arabic masjid, “place of prostration”). Its layout is typically functional and spare: a minaret (tower) from which the adhan (the famous call to prayer) is sounded five times a day; and inside, a niche in one wall, the mihrab, marking the direction of Mecca that all prayer faces. From most of the United States, that direction is northeast (the shortest path to Mecca arcs over the North Atlantic).

Worshippers leave their shoes at the door. There are no pews and no chairs, only carpet, and the congregation prays in rows, shoulder to shoulder. There are no images of people or animals, either. A mosque is decorated with geometric pattern and calligraphy, verses of the Qur’an written as art.

The gathering of the week is Jummah, the Friday midday prayer, when a sermon (khutbah) is preached from a raised pulpit, the minbar. It is the counterpart to the Jewish Shabbat service on Friday evening and the Christian service on Sunday morning.

Leading the congregation is the imam, a prayer leader and teacher, not a priest. He performs no sacrament and holds no power to mediate between a worshipper and God. In Sunni Islam especially, the imam is simply the one who stands in front, often the most learned or respected present.

Islam in America

Islam is not new to America, nor is it foreign to it.

Of the approximately 12.5 million Africans who arrived in America as slaves, about one-third of them were Muslim. Islam has been a part of the African continent’s history from the time of Muhammad in countries like Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Benin, and Nigeria. It is not Muslims who are new to America. Rather, it is the recognition of their contributions that is new.

American politicians like James Oglethorpe (GA), Thomas Jefferson (VA), and John Quincy Adams (MA) all spoke with and wrote about Black American Muslims who came to our country as slaves. They observed 19th-century African-American Muslims in Islamic prayer, abstaining from pork, and covering their heads in traditional Islamic regalia. Some carried hard-won Islamic talismans brought from Africa on slave ships, like amulets and gris-gris bags, some of which are still being passed down.

The majority of African-American slaves who could read were Muslim and were often given supervisory roles on plantations. Some literate Muslims like Ayuba Suleyman Diallo and Abdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori wrote letters to secure their freedom. Diallo eventually met the British royal family after securing his freedom. Similarly, Sori, a prince, penned a letter in 1826 that reached President John Quincy Adams, resulting in his freedom as well. Millions more, of course, were not so lucky.

Of the millions who remained in America, some maintained their Islam. Omar ibn Said was an Islamic theologian who feigned conversion to the Christian religion of his masters while continuing to write and instruct on Islam during his enslavement in North Carolina. His is the only autobiography written by a Muslim American slave. The vast majority of African Muslim slaves were forced to convert to Christianity. While the Christian Bible does speak of freedom, a Slave Bible was published in 1807 and distributed to plantations. In it, the Biblical verses extolling freedom from captivity were removed.

While several expressions of Black Muslim identity developed independently in the United States, the 1960s Civil Rights leader Malcolm X is recognized as the first theologian to encourage African Americans to return to Islam. Many African-Americans followed Malcolm (ie. Malik el-Shabazz) on his journey to Sunni Islam. Today, 20% of the Muslim population of America is African-American (half of which are converts), while only 3% of African-Americans are Muslim (Pew Research).

We close Module 3 here, with the youngest of the Abrahamic traditions taking its place beside the two we met before it. The same one God, the same Abraham, the same insistence that how we treat the poor is the measure of our fidelity, told a third way. What every one of these traditions faces next is the modern world: the pressures of science, the nation-state, reform, and revival that have reshaped all of them.

Key Terms for this Lesson: The Five Pillars · Mosque

Recommended Sources

Michael Sells, Approaching the Qur’án: The Early Revelations
Jonathan A. C. Brown, Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction
Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Vol. 1
Edward E. Curtis IV, Muslims in America: A Short History
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Heart of Islam

Last Section: Christianity, Pt. 1
This Section: Islam
Next Section: Christianity, Pt. 2: Reformed

Torah Scroll | showing Exodus15:22-16:36, 2019

Key Terms for this Section
Rabbinic Judaism · Talmud · Israel · Mitzvot
Passover · The High Holy Days · Shabbat · Tzedakah

8.1 | From Temple to Talmud

Greece, Hellenism, & the Maccabean Response | 332-63 BCE

When Alexander the Great and his Macedonian-Greek armies take Persia in 332 BCE, the response in Israel split in two. Over the next century and a half, the split hardened into two political factions.

• The Jewish Sadducees (wealthy urban elites)
embrace Greek assimilation for their own material gain

• The Jewish Pharisees (rabbis out in the countryside among the people)
resist Hellenization much longer

The Pharisees are the faction from which Rabbinic Judaism arises. The Pharisees (the later Apostle Paul among them) are the party of the people, and the tradition this lesson describes is theirs.

• 332 BCE | The European Alexander the Great arrives, bringing Hellenism to Israel
• 167 BCE | The Maccabean Revolt of the Jews against Greece
• 70 CE | The Fall of the Second Jewish Temple during the First Jewish-Roman War
• 132-5 | Bar Kochba leads the 2nd Jewish-Roman War, the last revolt until 20th century
• 500s | The completion of the Talmud, the official rabbinical commentary on the Torah

Greek influence ran deep, from the Greek names given to Jewish children to the development of gymnasiums. The gymnasiums were a particular scandal in Israel. Like the Greek public bathhouses, the gymnasium was a place to be undressed (that’s literally what the word means in Greek). Due to the European ridicule of Jews in bathhouses and gymnasiums, some Jewish families stopped circumcising their boys. Hebrew lessons began to disappear. Eventually, the Hellenic influence in Israel became so great that the Greeks placed a statue of Zeus in the Temple. That statue was the last straw...

He extended the glory of his people. Like a giant, he put on his breastplate; he bound on his armor of war and waged battles, protecting the camp with his sword. 1 Maccabees 3:3

In 167 BCE, Judah Maccabee (Heb. ‘Judah the Hammer’) wages a guerrilla war against Greek rule and takes the Temple back! The Greeks retaliate by defiling the Temple with pig’s blood, a powerful taboo in Jewish culture. The Maccabees eventually win, take the Temple back, cleanse and rededicate it. The Hebrew for ‘Rededication’ is Hanukkah. Jewish independence is forever after celebrated by that holiday. By 140 BCE, the Maccabees had founded the Hasmonean dynasty, and local self-rule returned for the second time to Israel since the days of King David. Ezra’s Great Assembly was replaced by the Sanhedrin, a council of rabbinic sages who could now weigh in on civil matters the Greeks used to decide for Jews.

Over a short time, however, the Hasmoneans grew corrupt and Hellenized too, and their dynasty fell under its own weight.

Rome & the Burning of the Temple | 63 BCE - 135 CE

Rome takes Jerusalem in 63 BCE, under Pompey (Julius Caesar’s brother-in-law), and thereafter rules through intermediaries.

These puppet-kings, Herod the Great (37- 4 BCE) chief among them, were Jewish traitors who chose personal enrichment over the Jewish rule of Israel. The reaction was powerful. Against Roman imperialism (and Jewish collaboration!) rose the Zealots, a faction of Israelite fighters who, like the Maccabees of old, sought to defeat their imperial masters by force.

Their struggle became the First Roman-Jewish War (66-73 CE). It ends with the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Today, the Western Wall, an outer retaining wall of the original temple mount complex, remains the focal point of Jewish prayer today. For Jews, the losses in the Roman-Jewish war were the most cataclysmic loss in their history until the Holocaust.

A last revolt flared in 132 CE, when Simon bar Kochba rose against Roman plans to remake the Temple Mount a shrine to Jupiter!

Bar Kochba’s first victories with the Zealots won a third brief span of local self-rule for the region, and his followers hailed him as the Messiah. However, within 3 years, Rome crushed the uprising (135 CE), and Bar Kochba was killed. From there, Israel became a possession of several different empires. The land became a Roman province (135), a Byzantine province (390), then it became a district ruled from Baghdad (636) until European Crusaders took it (1099). Then it became a colony ruled from Cairo (1187), then the Turkish Empire had it for four centuries (1517) until the British took it from the Turks in the First World War (1917). Then, in May 1948, home rule returned to the Levant for the fourth and final time with the founding of the State of Israel.

Scattered by several successive empires, the world’s Jews formed into three distinct flavors: Ashkenazi (European), Sephardi (Spanish and North African), and Mizrahi Jews (Middle Eastern). Today about half the world’s Jews live in Israel, the majority of whom have Mizrahi heritage. Most of the other half of the world’s Jews — the Jewish Diaspora — live in the United States.

The Western Wall (2020), part of the Temple Mount complex
with the Islamic Dome of the Rock atop it, where the Temple once stood.

Rabbinic Judaism: Bible & Talmud

With the Temple gone from the City of David, Jewish life turned to the Pharisaic tradition in the countryside.

• The Temple in Jerusalem was succeeded by synagogues (Gr. assemblies).
• The Temple priesthood was succeeded by rabbis (Hb. revered).
• The Temple sacrifices were succeeded by the study of the Torah

In these ways, after the Temple, Rabbinic Judaism was born: focused on Torah study, rabbinic tradition, and synagogue attendance.

The text of the Hebrew Bible is almost entirely ancient Hebrew (98.8%), with the remaining 1.2% composed in Aramaic. Within its Hebrew: 4% of that vocabulary (320 words) comes from other languages. 133 words from Egyptian (eg. pharaoh), 85 Persian (eg. decree), 85 Babylonian (eg. palace), 7 Greek (eg. lute), 5 Hittite (eg. armor), 3 Hurrian (idolatrous priest), and 2 from India (eg. ape and peacock).

Particular focus is given to Hebrew here because the Torah is presented overwhelmingly in Hebrew, known in Rabbinic Judaism as the “Leshon HaKodesh” (the Holy Language). For many believers, to study the word of God requires one to invest in the language that God revealed Godself in. Within the Bible there are riddles, word play, puns, and acrostics that can only be revealed with Hebrew study.

• In Genesis, Isaac (Yitzhak) comes from “laughter” (tsachak). When his 90-year-old mother learned she would have Isaac, she laughed.
• Word play: The serpent, the most crafty (arum) of all creatures, tests Adam and Eve while they are naked (arummim).
• Another: God shows Jeremiah an almond branch (shaked) as a sign that God likewise watches (shokad) over Israel.
• Psalm 119 is an acrostic of the Hebrew alefbet: 22 stanzas in praise of Torah study, starting in Hebrew A, B, G, D...

While riddles and puns are fun, rabbis take Torah study quite seriously.

After the fall of the Temple (70 CE), the rabbis spend the next 400 years developing the Talmud — an enormous body of Biblical commentary that adjudicates on serious questions posed by Jews. The first layer of the Talmud was the Mishnah, completed around 200 CE. It carried rulings on rabbinical questions from Torah study. For example, while the Torah commands Jews to leave part of their harvest to the poor (Deut. 24:19), the Mishnah adds that these gleanings are for Jews and non-Jews alike. Why? Because Jews should “promote the ways of peace” for the sake of social harmony and human dignity (Peah 4:9).

Over the next 300 years, Torah commentary continued with even more real-world questions and answers in an additional layer of Talmud called the Gemara. For example, the Torah commands the return of lost property (Deut. 22:1), and the Mishnah later responds — yes, but if you can’t find the owner, you can keep the item. However, a story of a rabbi living in Iraq added another layer of commentary summarized below.

A rabbi hires workers to transport barrels of wine for him. While moving, the workers break a barrel and lose its wine. Under the law, the workers are expected to compensate the man for the lost wine. But because these workers are poor and cannot pay for the wine, they are asked to give up their cloaks instead. However, a sage later adjudicates the situation and tells the owner to give the cloaks back. Why? Because Proverbs says to “walk in the way of good people” and the Mishnah likewise says we should seek the “ways of peace.” Further, because the workers had worked all day, the sage ordered the owner to pay them their full wages and return their cloaks. Here, the Gemara establishes “acting beyond the letter of the law,” because true ethics often requires a compassionate bending of the law in order to prioritize human dignity. (Bava Metzia 83a)

In sum, the Talmud is essentially the Mishnah (ca. 200 CE) and the Gemara (ca. 500 CE).
Representing layers of adjudication of Jewish life after the Temple, the Talmud remains the cornerstone of Rabbinical Judaism.

Key Terms for this Lesson: Rabbinic Judaism · The Talmud

8.2 | Peoplehood & the Path

A People called Israel

While Christians and Muslims find their traditions primarily through believing the right things, Jewish identity is less about believing than it is about belonging. Jews were a people long before they had any sort of creed. Remember, the Hebrew Bible has no word for ‘religion.’ Instead, the ancient Israelites called themselves after a man renamed Israel. His descendants, the Jews, have been called a tribe, a nation, and even a race. However problematic those labels are, one underlying point remains: a person’s Jewishness comes from their parents, not their beliefs.

A person can fully believe every word of the Hebrew Bible, or be unobservant and ignorant of the scripture. Their beliefs have no bearing on their identity as a Jew.

Outside of the corridors of religion, the Jewish People have their own languages, foods, calendar, clothes, texts, art, music, land, history, traditions, totems, taboos, humor, customs, and holidays. They are a small people, about 16 million or so (about 0.2% of the world). Yet they have changed the world immeasurably. In the last century, Jews discovered general relativity (Einstein) and psychoanalysis (Freud). They invented aspirin (Eichengrün) and the defibrillator (Zoll), Google searches (Page & Brin), USB flash drives (Moran), and word-processing (Berezin). They gave the world the ballpoint-pen (Bíró), instant cameras (Land), Barbie (Handler), and Levi’s jeans. Jewish comic book writers gave us the moral tales of Superman, Spiderman, and the X-Men. Jews founded Paramount, Universal, and Warner Bros Studios. There have been 8 Jewish-American supreme court justices. And, since WWII, there have been about 30 Jewish heads of state outside of Israel, including the presidents of Mexico, Ukraine, and Switzerland, as well as the prime ministers of France, Belgium, and Austria.

In the 1950s, a Jew cured the world of polio then gave the vaccine away for free. If he’d sold it, he’d be worth billions. He chose to save lives instead. And though they make up 0.2% of the world’s population, Jews represent 22% of all Nobel Prize laureates. Outside of religion, the impact of Jewish creativity, intelligence, and leadership is hard to compare.

Then there is also a Jewish religious tradition, called Judaism. The ways ancient Jews framed the moral landscape — with covenant, scripture, forgiveness, the sabbath, and a God without image — remain fundamental to over half the religious adherents and foundational to Western civilization. After all, Jesus, his disciples, and the apostle Paul were also Jews and identified as such.

So where did this identity begin? The name carries the ethos. Israel comes from the story of Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, who wrestles through the night with a mysterious figure at a river crossing and will not let go:

“You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and man and prevailed.” Genesis 32:28

Israel means, literally, to struggle with God.
And struggle turns out to be central to Jewish life rather than a lapse from it: questioning, arguing, wrestling with the tradition to reach a deeper truth. Abraham argues with God to spare the city of Sodom for the sake of its righteous few. Moses, who answers God’s call with a single word (“Hineni,” Here I am), goes on to argue God out of destroying the people at the foot of Sinai. Like Abraham, Moses changes God’s mind. The name Israel has attached itself to a person, a people, a land, and a modern state, but it has never lost the verb inside it.

For Jews, to wrestle with God is not a failure of faith. In the Jewish tradition,
it is the definition of faith.

Covenant & Mitzvot

Underneath the peoplehood is the covenant, the “everlasting“ bond traced from Abraham between his descendants and God Almighty. Its sign, given in Genesis 17, is circumcision, a mark on the body of a people ‘set apart.’ That covenantal otherness will matter a great deal to Paul and the story of early Christianity (Sec. 9). Today, Christians read the Jewish covenant primarily in one of two ways. Some hold to dual-covenant theology, in which God’s covenant with the Jews still stands alongside the Christian one. For example, the Catholic Church has held, since the Second Vatican Council in 1965, that God’s covenant with the Jews still stands. Others hold to replacement theology, in which the newer covenant under Christ supersedes God’s covenant with Abraham.

From a Jewish perspective, the covenant with God made through Abraham is absolute.

For each Jew, the choice of how to follow that covenant is a deeply personal decision. But, regardless of their choice, a Jew is a Jew, whether or not she is observant of the Jewish religion. In Judaism, the choice to observe the Hebrew Bible’s tenants is not about escaping eternal punishment (Jews do not have this concept) but about living a blessed life that honors thousands of years of Jewish tradition. Those who do choose to observe must decide how closely they follow traditional Halacha. Literally “the Path,” Halacha is generally translated “Jewish Law” — the sum of all Jewish wisdom and tradition, centered on the 613 mitzvot (Hb. commandments) of the Torah. These commandments turn chiefly on repentance, prayer, and charity in the service of repairing a world broken by sin.

That “repair of the world“ (Hb. tikkun olam) is the great work of Rabbinic Judaism.
It’s the “why” of modern Judaism.

Righteousness for the Nations

One question remains: if Halacha is binding only to Jews, what of everyone else? To Jewish thinking, the commandments given to Adam and Noah are binding on all people, since all are “children of Adam.” These are the Seven Laws of Noah:

• Prohibition of murder | Sanctity of human life
• Prohibition of theft | Honesty and the balance of private property and public good
• Prohibition of idolatry | Worship belongs to God alone — not to power or fame
• Prohibition of sexual immorality | Fidelity and the family
• Prohibition of blasphemy | Reverence toward God
• Prohibition of cruelty to animals | Humane stewardship of the natural world
• Establishment of courts of justice | A fair system of law for every people

Non-Jews who keep these seven are, in Jewish tradition, counted righteous. Halacha binds Jews only. The nations have their own path to righteousness, a universal moral framework, and what it asks of them is conduct.

Key Terms for this Lesson: Israel · Mitzvot

8.3 | They Tried to Kill Us: History & Holidays

As Judaism bills itself as a “religion of life,” a tour of the empires who tried to end the Jewish people doubles as a tour of Jewish holidays! Or, as the late, great comedian Alan King once opined:

They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat!
Jewish-American comedian Alan King, summarizing all Jewish holidays in 9 words

Ancient Egypt | Passover, Shavuot, & Sukkot

In the Book of Exodus, Passover is liberation from Egyptian bondage, the Israelites’ escape from Pharaoh’s rule. Its central ritual is the Seder, a meal that follows a prescribed order of prayers, symbolic foods, and readings from the Haggadah, the book that dramatically retells the Exodus at the dinner table.

On the plate sits a roasted shank bone for the paschal lamb, bitter herbs for the bitterness of slavery, and matzah, the unleavened bread of a people who left in too much of a hurry for the dough to rise. Everyone at the Seder table recounts the ten plagues, spilling a drop of wine for each. The youngest child asks why this night is different from all other nights. The answer takes the rest of the evening.

Two more festivals grow out of the same story. Shavuot marks the giving of the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai, the covenant between God and Israel made law. Its customs include all-night Torah study, dairy treats, and the reading of the Book of Ruth, the story of a Moabite woman who chose to make the Jewish people her own.

Additionally, Sukkot remembers the 40 years in the wilderness at the fall harvest. Families build a temporary hut (a sukkah) with a roof loose enough to see the stars through, share their meals in it for a week, and wave Four Species: a palm frond, myrtle, and willow bound together, held with a citron.

Together, Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot are the three ancient Temple festivals, the pilgrimages on which, while the Temple stood, the whole of Israel shared when they went up to Jerusalem.

Persia & Greece | Purim & Hanukkah

Purim remembers a plot to annihilate the Jews of ancient Persia, and its undoing by the cleverness of Queen Esther and her cousin Mordecai. The whole Book of Esther (ie. the whole megillah) is read aloud in the synagogue, and every time the villain Haman’s name is read, the congregation drowns it out with noisemakers.

Gifts of food go to friends and gifts of money go to the poor. Children come in costume, and the adults are told, by the Talmud’s own instruction, to drink until they can no longer tell the hero from the villain. It is the one day of the Jewish year given over to laughter.

As stated in Sec. 8.1, Hanukkah remembers the Maccabean Revolt against the Greeks in the 100s BCE. When the Maccabees took back the defiled Temple and rededicated it, the tradition holds, they found only one day’s worth of pure oil for the Temple lamp, and it burned for eight. That is the miracle the holiday keeps.

Each night for eight nights, one more candle is lit on the menorah, a nine-branched candelabrum, from the ninth candle, the shamash (the ‘helper’), whose only job is to light the others. Families exchange gifts, spin a four-sided top called a dreidel, and eat what can be fried in oil: potato pancakes (latkes) and jelly doughnuts (sufganiyot).

Hanukkah is a minor holiday in the tradition’s own ranking (this surprises many students). It became a major one in America, where it sits across December from Christmas.

Days of Awe & Mourning

On Tisha B’Av (Hb. 9th of the month of Av), Jews mourn the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem: the first, by Babylon (586 BCE), and the second by Rome (70 CE). Tradition states the destruction happened on the same day of the year. Other catastrophes have gathered onto the date since. Observant Jews fast on Tisha B’Av for 24 hours, sitting on the floor (as mourners do), and read the Book of Lamentations by candlelight. The synagogue dims its lights, and the curtain is taken down from the Ark that holds the Torah scrolls.

However, not every holiday remembers an empire.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur stand at either end of the ten High Holy Days, when Jews reaffirm the covenant between God and the Jewish people. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, opened by the shofar, a ram’s horn, blown in the synagogue in long and broken blasts. What follows are the Ten Days of Awe — given to introspection, repentance, and the renewal of one’s commitments to God and to one’s neighbors. The liturgy pictures a Book of Life, opened on Rosh Hashanah and sealed on Yom Kippur, and the greeting of the season asks that one be inscribed in it for a good year.

The tradition holds that a wrong done to another person cannot be forgiven by God until it has been set right with that person, so the ten days are spent intentionally repairing the relationships in one’s life. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, closes them with a full day’s fast, prayer from morning to nightfall, and the reading of the Book of Jonah, the story of a reluctant prophet and a city that repented.

The final holiday is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, established after the birth of the modern State of Israel.

It is the day of collective mourning and reflection on the atrocities of the Holocaust, during which six million Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators from 1939 to 1945. This solemn day commemorates the strength and resilience of Jewish survivors and honors the memory of those lost. Activities include memorial ceremonies, candle-lighting, survivor testimonies, and educational events to ensure that the horrors of the Holocaust are never forgotten and that future generations understand the importance of tolerance, empathy, and vigilance against discrimination and genocide.

This video shows Israelis on Yom HaShoah getting out of their cars and standing together at the sound of the bomb sirens. This moment is shared across Israel in an act of solidarity against the unprecedented genocide perpetuated by the Holocaust.

Run the tour back and a pattern stands out: the Jewish year is a map of the empires Jews have outlived — Egypt, Persia, Greece, Babylon, Rome, and Nazi Germany. The holidays remember. But memory is only half of a Jewish life. The other half is practice: the weekly rest of Shabbat and the daily round of the mitzvot.

For that, we turn to lesson 8.4.

Key Terms for this Lesson: Passover · The High Holy Days

8.4 | A Modern Jewish Life

Jewish Practice | Shabbat & Tefillah

It’s sundown on Friday.
A Jewish wife lights two candles, covers her eyes, and says the blessings. Someone lifts a cup of wine and blesses it, then uncovers two loaves of braided bread (challah) and blesses those. There is a meal with speaking parts. And no one is looking at a phone.

This is the beginning of Shabbat, the sacred day of Jewish rest and the most important holiday on the Jewish calendar. It comes every week! In the Genesis narrative, God made the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th, sanctifying it as a day of rest for all humanity. Shabbat begins at sundown Friday and ends at nightfall Saturday, a 25-hour pause from the demands of everyday life for reflection, family, synagogue, and community.

Work and commerce are set aside. Devices are put away. For six days, Jews work to “repair the world.” But on the 7th they rest inside a weekly foretaste of the Messianic Age — the “World to Come” — when everyone has enough (Micah 4:4), no one studies war anymore (Isaiah 2:4), there are no more weapons (Ezekiel 39:9), and peace is held in unbroken perpetuity (Isaiah 11:6–9).

The blessings and prayers recited on Shabbat must be done with intention (Hb. kavanah): with sincerity, focus and personal commitment. Intention sits at the core of all Jewish prayer (Hb. tefillah). Observant Jews perform tefillah (prayer) three times each day — morning, afternoon, and evening — asking God for success, wisdom, forgiveness, healing, justice, righteousness, and peace. The prayers are proscribed in a specific set of actions, following a Jewish prayer book (Hb. siddur).

Jewish Life | Ritual & Charity

Observant Jewish communities also maintain a mikveh: a ritual bath for spiritual purification. According to Torah, the bath must draw from a natural water source such as rainwater (Lev. 11:36). This ritualized washing was around long before Christians took up the practice (cf. John the Baptist). Torah is also the source of kashrut: the Jewish dietary laws describing kosher food. These mitzvot govern which foods are permitted and how they are prepared: meat and dairy kept separate, and certain meats such as pork and shellfish prohibited. Many modern Jews keep kosher as a mode of intentional living, bringing a spiritual dimension to the ordinary act of eating and affirming the holiness of daily life.

Of course, the search for holy and righteous living goes beyond the dinner table.

The search for righteousness is a specific goal for Jews, insofar as the word righteousness in Hebrew (tzadik) is a cognate of tzedakah, or charity. For Jews, righteousness and charity are connected at the level of grammar. Tzedakah is the Jewish obligation to act righteously toward those in need. It is the Torah’s duty to do justice. It is bound up intimately with one’s accountability to their community. The well-being of each is bound to the welfare of all. Tzedakah asks that one give, and that one teach others to give, and it binds everyone, rich or poor alike.

Jewish Movements in Brief

With the coming of modernity and the European Enlightenment, Jewish communities had to decide how they would carry their traditions forward. As Jews often do, they argued and they argued well.

Broadly, two families of responses emerged.

Jews who hold that ancient Halacha remains binding on modern Jews are known as Orthodox. Jewish Orthodoxy itself has two broad divisions of its own: the Haredi, who seek a full separation from modern culture, and the Modern Orthodox, who try their best to balance full ritual observance with modern life. About 9% of American Jews are some form of Orthodox.

The other camp, the majority of Jews who embraced modern change, are today’s Progressive Jews.

Progressive movements read Halacha more dynamically. Among progressives, Reform Judaism stresses personal choice in ritual observance (ie. some eat bacon and some don’t). Conservative Judaism seeks a balance of tradition and choice. The smaller Reconstructionist and Renewal movements offer newer perspectives still. About 37% of American Jews are Reform, 17% Conservative, and 4% belong to the smaller other movements in progressive Judaism.

However, it must be stressed that although these different movements have vastly different views on piety, no movement questions another’s place as a contributing member of the Jewish family. Walk into any synagogue, in Brooklyn, Tel Aviv, Dallas, or London, and the room looks very nearly the same. At the front stands the ark, within it is a Torah scroll. There is a ner tamid (eternal lamp) and Jewish prayer books set out for the congregation. The congregation faces Jerusalem. And on Friday night the Shabbat candles are lit in remembrance of God’s word.

Key Terms for this Lesson: Shabbat · Tzedakah

Recommended Sources

• Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy
• The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford University Press)
• Robert Alter, The Literary Guide to the Bible
• Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation
• Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath

Last Section: The Biblical World
This Section: Judaism
Next Section: Christianity, Pt. 1

Map of Bible Lands | Library of Congress, 1913

Key Terms for this Section
Covenant · Canaan · The Babylonian Exile · The Torah
Monotheism · The Second Temple · Apocalypse · Messiah

7.1 | Before Israel: Mesopotamia & Egypt

Law & Covenant

Welcome to Module III. Our course now moves into the Ancient MENA: the Middle East & North Africa.

To the east lies Mesopotamia (~Iraq)
To the west lies Egypt, the Nile, and North Africa
Between those two civilizations was the ancient land of Canaan.
The former Canaanite territories are found in modern Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, and parts of modern Jordan & Syria.

• 1754 BCE | The Law Code of Hammurabi creates a covenant between Mesopotamia and the god Shamash
• 1500s BCE | The earliest mention of Canaan in the archeological record
• 1200s BCE | The Collapse of the Bronze Age creates opportunities for smaller groups to rise
• 1208 BCE | The earliest mention of Israel in the archeological record (on an Egyptian victory stele)
• 800s BCE | The earliest mention of the House of David in the archeological record

Israel and the surrounding area is the location of the Hebrew Bible, the stories of Jesus Christ, and remains fundamental to the Islamic tradition. Israel is mentioned over 40 times in the Qur’an, over 70 times in the New Testament, and over 2,000 times in the Hebrew Bible. Outside of scholarship, many folks will treat the Biblical scripture as something floating above the modern Middle East. For them, the Bible is filled with timeless stories that one either takes on faith or not. This course speaks from the opposite view. In every lesson, we will meet something pulled from the ground (a stone, a scroll, a coin) that pins a page to a place and date.

About 3,800 years ago, in Mesopotamia (~Iraq), the Code of Hammurabi was cut into a tall stone pillar (a stele) and set up for all to see. Its 282 laws make up one of humanity’s earliest legal frameworks. But the laws are only half the monument. Alongside them, King Hammurabi kept a covenant, a sacred two-way agreement, between his people and Shamash, the Mesopotamian god of justice. The king promised to honor Shamash, uphold justice, and protect the weak. In return, the god Shamash pledged his divine protection and support.

That bargain mirrored the politics of the age. A small vassal state offered its allegiance to a great king in exchange for protection, and a king offered his own state the protection of a patron god.

It is the same shape the Bible will eventually give to the relationship between God and Israel.

Flood, Creation, & Patriarch

Collective punishment by the gods appears in Mesopotamia’s most famous literary work, the Epic of Gilgamesh, written in the 1700s BCE.

A great flood is sent to punish humankind’s wrongdoing. One virtuous man is warned, builds an ark, and saves his family and some animals. When the waters subside, a dove finds land, and the survivor is rewarded.

You probably know this story. In Gilgamesh the survivor is Utna. In Genesis he is later called by the Hebrew name Noah. Both narratives spare the faithful few from divine judgment, and they share the same core images: watery chaos, the ark as refuge, and renewal after the waters recede. Each keeps its own distinct features. But the recurring flood motif points to shared cultural currents across the ancient Near East.

The Mesopotamian Epic of Creation runs the same way. Primordial waters are ordered by divine acts, a god is slain so that humanity can be formed from his blood, and a hidden sacred garden is reserved for the gods. The Hebrew book of Genesis also has creation emerging from a watery void and a psychodrama set in a sacred garden. But there is one massive difference between the earlier Mesopotamian narratives and the later Hebrew one. Where the Mesopotamian gods quarrel, scheme, and war among themselves, Genesis presents one God acting alone, with divine moral purpose.

Much of the setting and plot of Mesopotamia’s cultural narratives is shared with what will one day become Israel. No where is that more evident than in the story of the Israelite patriarch, Abraham. In Genesis, Abraham and his family are led out of Mesopotamia, from Ur of the Chaldeans (Ur Kaśdim), into the Land of Canaan (ie. Israel). Abraham’s Mesopotamian setting shows in more than his hometown. The covenant Abraham makes with God in Genesis 17 is the same two-way, Hammurabian bargain we just read. In this “everlasting“ covenant, Abraham’s children are promised the Land of Canaan forever, and that God in turn will protect those children, the Israelites.

Cana'an & the Emergence of Israel

The ancient Land of Canaan is first attested in the 1500s BCE. Canaan takes in all of modern Israel (Shechem, Jerusalem), Palestine (Jericho, Bethlehem, Shiloh), and parts of Jordan (Gilead, Rabbah), Lebanon (Tyre, Sidon), and Syria (Hazor, the Golan). Its indigenous people were the Canaanites, and their language was an early member of the Semitic language family. Modern Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic all descend from it. As we saw in Section 1.2, the early Israelites emerged from within this Canaanite world and its many gods — among them Ba’al the storm god, Asherah the queen consort, the agrarian god Dagon, the war goddess Anat, and Mot, the god of death. All of these gods (‘ilm, cognate with the Hebrew Elohim) were subordinate to El, the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon.

South of Canaan lay the New Kingdom of Egypt (ca. 1570-1069 BCE). The Hebrew Bible preserves a cultural memory of Israel’s God, Yahweh, arriving from Seir, a southern region between Egypt and Canaan.

The LORD came from Sinai, and dawned from Seir upon us.
Deuteronomy 33:2

In the 1300s BCE, about a century before any mention of Israel, Egyptian records describe Seir as the homeland of the Shasu people, a nomadic Midianite tribe whom Egypt enslaved. According to Egyptian history, the Shasu (meaning ‘those who walk’) worshipped a god named Yahu. There’s no scholarly consensus on where the name Yahu comes from. Still, the name Yahu (with no Canaanite origin) and the story elements of enslavement, Midianites, and walking rhyme with alluring precision with the later Book of Exodus. In Exodus, the figure Moses (an Egyptian name) marries a Midianite woman, then leads his people out of Egyptian enslavement through the Seir and into Canaan at the behest of Yahweh.

Over the next century, natural disasters and invasions brought the Bronze Age civilizations to utter ruin.
The next era of history will be known as the Iron Age (1200-500 BCE).

At the outset of the Iron Age, when Egypt withdraws from Canaan, a power vacuum opens, and in the central hill country a highland culture begins to present itself as distinct from its Canaanite neighbors: its language is Hebrew, its God is Yahweh (YHVH), and its name for itself is Israel. That people would endure for thousands of years and eventually call their religion Judaism.

It’s during the Iron Age that the Biblical tradition tells of Israelite tribes consolidating into two kingdoms, each with its own priestly keepers of memory. In the larger Northern Kingdom, Levite priests preserved and passed down the stories of Moses’ flight from Egypt with his family and his people’s journey to Canaan. In the Southern Kingdom, Zadokite priests preserved and passed down the Mesopotamian-rooted stories of Abraham and his family leaving Ur for Canaan. Carried across generations, these two streams of memory would later form the backbone of the texts of Genesis (Abraham) and Exodus (Moses).

Key Terms for this Lesson: Covenant · Canaan

7.2 | Babylon: Kingdom, Temple, & Exile

The House of David

Within four centuries of the Bronze Age Collapse, the archaeological record attests to an Israelite dynasty called the House of David. The words turned up in 1993 on a broken slab of basalt at Tel Dan, in northern Israel, carved by an enemy king boasting of the Davidic kings he had killed. The biblical narrative gives David humbler beginnings. He grows up under King Saul, who is at war with an Aegean people settled on the coast around present-day Gaza, the Philistines. The shepherd boy ends the Philistine threat by killing their champion, Goliath, with a slingshot, is claimed by divine providence, and is made king. As Israel’s leader, David moves the capital from Hebron to Jerusalem, thereafter the ‘City of David.’ Jews today still consider Jerusalem the capital of Israel for this reason. Once he is anointed (Heb. mashiach, messiah) as king, David becomes a formidable warrior who spends his reign fighting the Philistines, and late in life plans a permanent Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

• 800s BCE | The earliest mention of the House of David in the archeological record
• 722 BCE | Assyria takes the Northern Kingdom, consolidating power in the south
• 586 BCE | Babylon (Iraq) takes the Southern Kingdom, causing the Babylonian Exile
• 538 BCE | Persia (Iran) ends the Exile; the Jewish written record begins

Because David is said to have “blood on his hands,” Jewish tradition holds he is not fit to build the Temple. The task falls to his son Solomon, who builds a Temple whose stone walls, quarried steps, and complex subterranean chambers are still preserved. This is the Great Temple of Solomon (ca. 957-586 BCE), whose focal point is the Holy of Holies (Kodesh HaKodashim), which once held the Ark of the Covenant — the golden chest containing the Ten Commandments. This remains the holiest place on earth for the Jewish People.

The First Temple fell when it was destroyed by the invading Babylonians in 586 BCE.

Exile & the Jews

After the Temple’s destruction, the Babylonian Empire (~Iraq) resettled a substantial number of Israelites eastward in Babylonian lands in an event known as the Babylonian Exile. The captives remembered what they had lost:

By the rivers of Babylon,
there we sat down, and we wept
as we remembered Zion (Israel).
There on the poplar trees
we hung our harps,
when our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded joyous music.
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

But how can we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
If I forget thee, Jerusalem,
may my right hand wither.

Psalm 137:1-5

During their time in Babylon, the old tribal differences among Israelites began to fade. The Ten Tribes of the Northern Kingdom had long since assimilated or drifted from history. It was the Tribe of Judah that had held the recently sacked Southern Kingdom, and for this reason those who faced this exile were henceforth called Judeans — and later, with the rise of Rome, the Jews.

The Torah Written Down

The end of the Babylonian Exile marks the beginning of Jewish History, as the priests who were taken to Babylon begin to compile and write down the many oral traditions of the Israelites. These written traditions and laws became known as the Torah — the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The exile made the writing urgent: it became incumbent on the Jews to tell their stories, first to satisfy their captors and, more importantly, to preserve their own values and identity within a sprawling empire. And the earliest physical trace of that scripture pays off this lesson’s second artifact: the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls, dated to about 580 BCE — two tiny rolls of silver inscribed with the Priestly Blessing, the earliest surviving fragment of any biblical text.

Consider the summaries of some of the Torah’s key figures below,
noting how exiled writers found relevance in these stories for preserving Israelite identity.

Summaries of some of the Torah’s Key Figures

Adam • God loves us and created a “good” world.
Noah • God protects the righteous and destroys the wicked.
Abraham • God has promised us our former territory in Canaan.
Isaac • God will provide for us in our hour of need.
Jacob • The fragmented tribes of Israel are brothers.
Joseph • In-fighting among the tribes will only hurt us.
Moses • God has delivered us from imperial bondage before (ie. Egypt).
Joshua • Despite the odds, God will give us victory over our enemies.

These sixth-century stories were written in Hebrew, a Semitic language, and because the Akkadian of Babylon and the Hebrew of the Israelites were both Semitic, the two peoples could understand one another. Many Akkadian words entered the Hebrew Torah as a result of the exile: for example, the words for overseer, silver, decree, steal, burn, anger, and hope. Even the Babylonian ziggurats left their mark, becoming the Jewish story of hubris and the frailty of empire in the Tower of Babel.

Key Terms for this Lesson: Babylonian Exile · the Torah

7.3 | Persia: Temple & Torah

Cyrus, God’s Anointed

After the fall of the Babylonian Empire by the victorious Persians, Jewish scripture pays an astonishing compliment to a foreign king. The Persian Cyrus is the only non-Jew whom the Bible calls God’s messiah, God’s anointed.

“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, to subdue nations before him...” Isaiah 45:1

It was the Persians who broke the Babylonian chains binding the Israelites, and the Bible frequently presents Cyrus as God’s chosen instrument, liberating the Jewish people, funding their return, and supporting the rebuilding of the Temple.

• 538 BCE | Persia ends the Exile; the Jewish written record is codified (ie. the Torah)
• 516 BCE | The Second Temple is completed, paid for by the Persian Empire
• 458 BCE | The Jewish-Persian prophet Ezra brings the Torah to Jerusalem
• 332 BCE | Alexander the Great arrives, bringing Hellenism to Israel

Not since the pharaoh held sway over Israel had the Jews seen a leader like the Persian king, Cyrus. His own people called him the King of Kings: one king over many kingdoms. And a people who can envision one king for the world can envision one God for the world. Since the time of the Persian prophet Zoroaster (Persian: Zarathustra), Persia had turned from the pantheon of proto-Vedic culture to Zoroastrianism, a monotheistic tradition honoring God Almighty with the title Ahura Mazda (”Lord of Wisdom”). The careful reader will notice the word ahura (lord) from Section 2.2. Zoroaster is celebrated as the prophet responsible for reframing the shared pantheon of the Indo-Iranian region (cf. Sec. 4) into a cosmic battle of good and evil supernatural forces.

Today, Zoroastrianism is a monotheistic religion still practiced in India and Iran. Monotheism is a modern classification (cf. Henry More, 1660), representing a spectrum of belief centered on one God. It is a spectrum insofar as most forms of monotheism hold inclusive space for multiple forms or personae of God (eg. avatars, the holy spirit, etc.), lesser gods, divine children, angels and demons, etc. While monotheistic, the Zoroastrianism the Jews would have encountered during the Persian period (538-332 BCE) also included:

• a six-era Creation narrative
• a world genealogy founded on three sons
• the revelation of God’s word on a mountain to their prophet
• the world framed as a cosmic battle between good and evil (cf. dualism)
• God has angels, yazatas, who fight the forces of darkness, devas
• a prophesied future savior, born of a virgin, who redeems the world
• a belief in a final battle for the world in the End Times
• a belief in compensatory justice in an afterlife (ie. heavenly rewards)
• a belief in a general resurrection and uniting with God

Before the Babylonian Exile, rival gods vied for the Israelites’ attention. In Section 1, we identified the early Israelites as monolatrists, acknowledging other gods while generally holding Yahweh* supreme. Pre-Exile Yahwist prophets like Elijah had to contend with prophets of Ba’al and Jews who turned from Yahweh (eg. 1 Kings 18). The archeological record reflects this: studies that dig below the 500s BCE layers of Israel find a variety of idols and indigenous practices. However, all of that ends after the 500s BCE. When the Jews begin living under Persian rule, the archeology reflects an Israel laser-focused on monotheism.

The Second Temple & the Torah

Now rebuilt with Persian funds, the Second Temple was completed in Jerusalem in 516 BCE and has forevermore been the focal point of Jewish worship. This is the Temple that King Herod will one day refurbish and that Jesus will walk in (cf. Sec. 8 & 9). It will stand for nearly six centuries before its destruction at the hands of the Romans.

During the Second Temple period, the Persian-Jewish scribe Ezra brings the written Torah from the Persian court to Jerusalem and establishes a Jewish culture of literacy that mirrors Persian literary practice. From tales of palace intrigue (eg. Esther) to apocalyptic visions of the future (eg. Daniel), the mode and style of Persian storytelling is found throughout the Jewish text. We even find parallels in Royal Persian inscriptions.

Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Let any of those among you who are of his people (may their God be with them!) go up to Jerusalem in Judah and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel; he is the God who is in Jerusalem.
Ezra 1:2-3

(Line 12) He [God] took a righteous king, his favorite, by the hand, he called out his name: Cyrus, king of Anšan; he pronounced his name to be king all over the world. (Line 32) ...”I returned to [their] sanctuaries the gods who had lived therein... I gathered all their inhabitants and returned to them their dwellings.”
The Cylinder of Cyrus

We also find Persian concepts and vocabulary in Post-Exilic practice. The Persian word for a walled garden, pardes, enters the Bible as “paradise,” the same word that, centuries later, Jesus speaks from the cross to the man beside him: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). And the iconic sacred flame alight in Zoroastrian temples finds an echo in the eternal lamp (the ner tamid) that still burns in every synagogue today. In these ways, the Jewish people became a literary community with a written sacred scripture, forged in a Persian world and sharing themes with the wisdom traditions prized across it.

Persia & Cosmic Conflict

Interestingly, before the Exile, the God found in the Torah does not contend with an Evil Other — unlike the Persian framing of the world as a battle between light and dark. Most of the Torah’s stories involve either God’s own test (eg. the sacrifice of Isaac) or humanity’s own inclination toward wickedness (eg. the Flood). Herein, God is described as both ‘wounder and healer‘ and ‘bringer of disease and life.’ In the Jewish telling, there is no power or character opposing God Almighty in any supernatural sense. The famous serpent in the Garden of Eden, for Jews, is simply another “beast of the field.”

However, before the Exile, there is a member of God’s Heavenly court called “the adversary“ (Heb. ha-satan) who challenges humanity. But his challenge is that of a duty-bound prosecutor challenging an accused person, in an effort to discover the truth (cf. Job 1). Pointedly, this figure operates by God’s command. The Hebrew word for the adversary (ha-satan, השטן) is used in a myriad of other contexts. King David is called an adversary (satan) to the Philistines, just as a rival adversary (satan) is later raised up against his son, Solomon.

However, after the Exile, the Bible will show sharper distinctions between the forces of light and darkness.

Ancient Persian scripture envisioned history as a cosmic struggle between the Lord of Wisdom and the Spirit of Destruction, ending in the triumph of good. In turn, the Jewish writings of the later Persian and Greek eras (Daniel, Chronicles, Enoch) portray cosmic conflict with the same vividness. These latter texts give names and elaborate descriptions to angels and demons. In the Hebrew Chronicles (a later Greek-era text), there is a figure named Satan, who will later serve as the chief antagonist of the New Testament and Quran.

*Note on the Jewish name of God: while modern scholars may write YHVH as “Yahweh,” this pronunciation is not used in Jewish practice. Observant Jews respectfully avoid pronouncing “YHVH” altogether, and often say “HaShem“ (Hebrew for “the Name”) when referring to God casually, or “Adonai“ (”Lord” in Hebrew) in sacred contexts like synagogue worship. The term “Jehovah“ is a later medieval Christian attempt to vocalize YHVH, and is also not used by Jews.

Key Terms for this Lesson: Monotheism · the Second Temple

7.4 | Greece & Rome in the Holy Land

From Hebrew to Greek

In ancient Greece, across the Mediterranean from Israel, the philosopher Plato (d. 348 BCE) described the afterlife in ways that would later share deep similarity with Christian and Islamic thought.

In Plato’s Republic, a Greek warrior dies in battle, is revived, and reports what he saw beyond death: a judgment of souls (Gr. psychē) in which the good are rewarded and the wicked punished. Pointedly, this is a Greek story not found in the Hebrew Bible. Jewish tradition does not split a person into a temporal body and an immortal soul. The Torah instead speaks of the nefesh (נפש), ‘the breath of life,’ the whole living creature, body included. This is why traditional Jewish practice permits burial but not cremation: the body is part of the divine breath of life. Where the Greek imagined an immortal soul surviving the body, the Hebrew Bible pictured mortals descending down to Sheol, ‘the grave,’ from which no one returns and where, the Psalms say, the dead give God no praise.

• 332 BCE | Alexander the Great arrives, bringing Hellenism to Israel
• 200s BCE | The Hebrew Bible is translated into Greek for Hellenized Jewish readers
• 63 BCE | The Roman Empire takes control of Israel
• 31 BCE | Augustus Caesar becomes emperor of Rome
• 70 CE | During the Roman-Jewish War, the Romans destroy the Second Temple

However, with the coming of Hellenization (ie. the colonial spread of Greek culture and language) into Israel in the 300s BCE, Greek ways of seeing the world began to shape the literature and imagination of the region.

For example, the Greeks had an underworld, Hades, and a heavenly abode, Uranus (lit. the sky). In the Greek works of Plato, the good dead go to a celestial realm in the sky (Uranus) while the unjust suffer in the pit (Hades). 300 years after Plato, when the New Testament is written in Greek, Hades and Uranus will be the final destinations of the dead. Around 1380, the Wycliffe Bible translates Hades as “Hell” (from ‘Hel,’ daughter of Loki) and the sky realm Uranus/Ouranos as “Heaven” (from ‘Heofon,’ the Old English word for sky).

The Greek word demon enters the Bible’s vocabulary in a similar way. When the Hebrew Bible is translated into Greek, the monolatric phrase “other gods” (‘ilm) gets translated as daimon, the Greek cognate of the Persian deva (cf. Sec. 7.3). The Psalmist then warns (in translation):

All the gods of the nations are daimons, but the L-RD made the heavens.
Psalm 96:5

During the Hellenistic period, ‘demons’ become recognized as the evil intermediary beings fighting God’s ‘messengers’ (angels in Greek). This is repeated by the Apostle Paul when he tells the Corinthians that pagan offerings go to ‘demons,’ and not to God. Other Greek concepts like logos (the rational principle of the universe), agape (unconditional love), and soteria (salvation) become the philosophical bedrock of Christianity. The word christos (anointed), from which the religion is named, is also Greek.

Greek Bibles & Frameworks

In the 200s BCE, a group of Jewish scholars in Ptolemaic Egypt (tradition says there were seventy) produced a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible called the Septuagint (lit. the ‘Seventy’). Later, with the advent of Christianity, most second and third generation Christians were not Jewish and could not read Hebrew. But nearly all of them could read or understand Greek. For this reason, the Septuagint became the lens through which most Christians read the Hebrew Bible.

Now, long before the Greeks, Israel’s prophets had described a coming age of peace: a righteous king from David’s line, a ruler who ends war, and a day when nations “beat their swords into plowshares.” That hope was native to the Hebrew Bible. What the Greek world added was a genre. Greek culture prized apocalyptic literature, an ‘unveiling’ (Gr. apokalypsis) of secret knowledge about the end of history, and the Hellenized-Jewish writers of the era recited their ancient hope in this new idiom. The visions of Daniel and, later, the Christian Book of Revelation both belong to the Greek apocalyptic genre, both unveiling a final reckoning.

It is out of this marriage — the native hope of Israel and the apocalyptic visions of the Greeks — that a first-century expectation of a Jewish Messiah (Hebrew for anointed one) arose. Desires for a Israelite Messiah ran the gamut. Some hoped for a holy warrior. Others hoped for a healer. We will pick up this thread again when we introduce Jesus of Nazareth in Sec. 9.1.

The Roman Worldview

While the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Greeks each took their turn on the world stage, the Romans proved the greatest colonial power of the ancient world. Theirs was a hierarchical society, with clear distinctions between the élite, freemen, foreigners, and slaves, and a vision of ‘empire without end’ (imperium sine fine), as the Aeneid famously promised them. From Rome, the legions would conquer and exploit every territory they could keep, extracting tribute, labor, and taxes from local populations. Largely henotheists (we prefer our gods but don’t discount the existence of others), the Romans nonetheless expected cultural assimilation wherever they could impose it.

One of the principle ways the Romans maintained control over occupied territory was through ideology.

In any empire, one must hold power over a people’s economy, military, politics, and ideology (cf. Michael Mann). The first three are managed through labor, violence, and institutions. Ideology is harder. Symbols are difficult to control.

We return now to the time of Julius Caesar, who, returning from Gaul with an economy-disrupting flood of slaves and plunder, was honored with a triumph in Rome. Hail, Caesar! For one day, Julius Caesar was declared a living god, and the common people loved him for it! An Imperial Cult began to grow around him, legitimizing his rule. But it did not save him. Caesar was assassinated by senators who missed their power. After his death in 44 BCE, the Senate voted to declare Julius Caesar a god in perpetuity (his official deification followed in 42 BCE) to placate his supporters. Caesar then left behind his right-hand man, Marc Antony, and his adopted son, Octavian, and soon the two set their armies against each other for the throne. Antony’s claim was simple: he had been Caesar’s closest companion on every battlefield. Octavian had no armies and no experience. He had a name. Octavian was Julius Caesar’s adopted son. So, as Julius Caesar had been named a ‘god,’ Octavian began styling himself publicly as the “Son of God.” He had coins minted and everything.

After defeating Marc Antony, Octavian took the title Augustus Caesar and kept the title ‘Son of God.’ Throughout the empire, Augustus was heralded as the Lord and Savior of the world, on the theory that symbolic control over ideology could pacify restless territories. This bit of imperial propaganda survives on a coin from Augustus’s reign.

On the left, we see “Augustus,” and on the right, we see “Divi Filius,” which is Latin for “Son of God.”

Now, since the time of the Persians, Israel had developed a Savior narrative. One day, an anointed leader (messiah) would arrive to vanquish evil and redeem the world. From the Greeks, Israel had learned to write of their salvation in an apocalyptic register. However, Rome was quick to respond to such seditious teachings with torture and crucifixions. In an effort to maintain their power, the Romans kill Jesus of Nazareth in the 30s, Peter and Paul in the 60s, and, in 70 CE, the empire burns the Second Temple to ash.

Out of this catastrophe came two of the world’s most enduring religious traditions. A Jewish life centered on rabbis and Torah rose to succeed the practices of the Second Temple called Rabbinic Judaism (Section 8). And the followers of the crucified Nazarene became Christianity (Section 9). Six centuries after Jesus, a popular uprising of Arab believers, united with Jews and Christians, will begin the advent of Islam (Section 10) in Arabia and across the MENA.

Recommended Sources

The Cambridge History of Judaism
Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
Peter Green, The Hellenistic Age
Walter C. Kaiser Jr., A History of Israel: From the Bronze Age through the Jewish Wars

Last Section: Chinese Religion
This Section: The Biblical World
Next Section: Judaism

Pictured: Temple of Heaven, Beijing (2018)

Key Terms for this Section
The Dao · Wuwei · The Five Relationships · Ren & Li
The Mandate of Heaven · Neo-Confucianism · Qi · New Confucianism

6.1 | The Dao & Wuwei

China's Legendary Beginning

Last week the Buddhist dharma reached China.
However, it did not enter in an empty room.

Buddhism fell into conversation with two teachers already at work in the Chinese imagination, and from that meeting came what the Chinese call the Three Mountains of Wisdom: the Buddha alongside Laozi and Confucius. This week we visit the other two mountains.

A note on spelling: this course renders Chinese in pinyin — so you will read Dao not Tao, Laozi not Lao Tzu, Qi not Ch’i.

• 1046 BCE | The Zhou Dynasty. King Wu founds China’s earliest historically verified dynasty; the Yi Jing (Book of Changes) takes shape
• 500s BCE | The Axial Age. (late Zhou) Confucius teaches the restoration of social harmony; the Daodejing is compiled
• 206 BCE | The Han Dynasty. Emperor Wu adopts Confucianism; the Five Classics of Confucian thought are canonized in 136 BCE
• 100s CE | Buddhism Arrives. The dharma reaches China along the trade routes, carrying its promise of nirvana
• 960 | The Song Dynasty. Neo-Confucianism revitalizes Confucian teaching by absorbing Daoist and Buddhist ideas
• 1313 | The Four Books replace the Five Classics as Confucianism’s core curriculum

What follows is China’s own sacred narrative of its origins. The legendary history the culture tells about itself, not a chronicle of dated events.

In the Chinese account of the beginning, everything starts in a primordial chaos. From that formless state emerges Pangu, who separates the universe into the receptive and active forces known as yin and yang. As his body grows and disintegrates, it becomes the world: his breath the wind, his eyes the sun and moon, his limbs the mountains. Heaven and earth remain out of harmony, so Nüwa, a half-serpent being, mends the sky with five-colored stones, and alongside her husband Fuxi she fashions the first people from clay. Fuxi reigns as the first sovereign, credited with a gift that echoes through the whole of Chinese culture: the Eight Trigrams, stacked sets of broken (yin) and solid (yang) lines that became the basis of the ancient Yi Jing (the Book of Changes). A later sage-figure, Shennong, is said to have given humanity agriculture and the first herbal medicines (a thread we pick up in Lesson 6.4). These narratives are not verifiable history; they are the culture’s way of saying that heaven and earth, male and female, chaos and order are held in a single balance — the balance the tradition will come to call the Dao. It was in the middle years of the Zhou, around the 5th century BCE, that the eighty-one chapters of the Daodejing were compiled into the form we have today.

Embracing the Mystery

The Daodejing, the foundational text of Daoist thought, begins:

道可道 非常道
“Dao k’e dao fei ch’ang dao”

So what does this text mean? The Daodejing is an esoteric text, which is to say it does not lend itself to a clear and obvious reading. Sure, we can take each of these ideograms and, one by one, transliterate them. I can gesture toward 道 and call it “Dao,” but that’s just the phonetic sounds associated with this ideogram. None of these ideograms have a straightforward translation into English. The best we can do is to offer a variety of ways to understand each ideogram and then place those meanings together. For instance, 道 (Dao) can imply “way,” “path,” or even the Platonic concept of “logos.” While 可 (k’e) can mean “can,” “enable,” or “permit,” and 非 (fei) commonly negates something, like “not” or “opposed.” The Chinese 常 (ch’ang) can signify “constant,” “eternal,” or “absolute.”

Scholars have rendered this opening verse in different ways:

• A way that can be walked is not The Way.

• Words and names are not the Way.

• The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao.

My own translation is:

道可道 非常道 “The way that can be explained is not the Eternal Way.”
Dao Jing, Ch. 1, verse 1

While simple translation eludes us, it’s fair to point out that that’s part of the point. The Dao defies clear explanation. Rather than offering a rigid set of doctrines, the Daodejing encourages its readers to dwell in wonder, approaching wisdom as an experience. The Dao isn’t something you label and pick apart. It’s something you feel. So let’s embrace the mystery and find out what we can say about it as scholars.

The Daodejing is traditionally attributed to the ancient sage Laozi (Ch. the “Old Master”), though its dating is uncertain; it was probably compiled in the 500s BCE by multiple sages. It comes in two parts: the Dao Jing (the Book of the Way, chapters 1–37) and the De Jing (the Book of Power, chapters 38–81). It is, incredibly, the second-most-translated book of all time, behind only the Bible. One block of verse may serve us as an example of the tradition’s attempt to point at what it insists cannot be pointed at:

Look for it, and you cannot see it. It’s beyond form and color. Listen for it, and you cannot hear it. It’s beyond sound. Reach for it, and you cannot grasp it. It’s beyond shape. Above, it isn’t bright; below, it isn’t dark. Unbroken continuity, unnamed and unceasing. It returns to nothingness, the shape of no-thing. Dao Jing, Ch. 14

For my money, the closest popular analog to the Dao today may be the Force of the Star Wars films. The Force is “an energy field created by all living things” that “surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.” A fictive Jedi knight whose “ally is the Force” is, in effect, living in harmony with the Dao. There are other analogues as well. In India, the Dao has similarities with Brahman insofar as it is the ultimate reality beneath everyday appearances. In Greece the Dao can be compared favorably with the logos, the ordering, reasoning principle of world. In Jewish mysticism the Dao shows parallels with the Ayn Sof, the infinite, unknowable aspects of the Divine.

What sets the Dao apart is that it is a process, not a product. You can name a bowl of soup — “Hey, that’s clam chowder!” — while love is something you feel and can never quite pin down. The Dao is like love (a process), and unlike soup (a thing): constantly shaping reality, different at each encounter, glimpsed in nature the way you recognize the light in a friend’s eyes without being able to describe exactly what they feel. Such is the Dao.

Yin, Yang, & Wuwei

The two forces whose interplay is the Dao’s movement are yin and yang.

Yin is the receptive aspect: night, softness, stillness, the earth; in the Yi Jing it is the broken line.
Yang is the active aspect: day, hardness, motion, the sky; the solid line.

They are interconnected, mutually necessary, and never found without each other. Critically, just so there’s no misunderstanding, yin and yang are NOT good and evil. Both are essential and necessary. In Daoism, evil arises from an imbalance of yin or yang; good is when the two move in accordance with the Dao. The famous yin/yang symbol is a picture of balance, each half already carrying a seed of the other.

Closely tied to the Dao is De (once spelled “Te”), usually translated “virtue.” Joined together, “Daode” (道德) is the Chinese word for ethics. But De is not a checklist of rules. Rather, De is the quiet power that arises naturally in a person aligned with the Dao.

Proper, moral engagement with the Dao occurs when folks minimize overthinking and allow circumstances to unfold without forcing an outcome. A popular, though apocryphal anecdote illustrates this principle.

During the Space Race, American engineers realized that normal pens would not work in zero gravity because ink relies on downward flow. According to the story, NASA spent large sums of money and countless hours inventing a pressurized “space pen.” The Soviet cosmonauts, facing the same problem, simply brought pencils.

Real or contrived, the story makes a compelling point. Working organically, without a lot of unnecessary contrivances, often yields simpler, more elegant results than forcing a more complicated solution.

In Daoist teaching, this approach is called Wuwei. Literally “non-action,” Wuwei is not laziness or passivity. Rather, it describes action so closely aligned with the flow of life that it feels effortless. Daoist texts explain that by restraining our impulse to control every detail, we leave room for situations to develop organically. Just as the pencil in the old anecdote functioned without elaborate contraptions, Wuwei suggests that much of our best thinking and doing emerges when we step back and trust the larger currents at play.

At the heart of Wuwei is the cultivation of spontaneity. Rather than plotting out every step, Daoists encourage a quiet openness that allows one to see opportunities as they arise. The Daodejing explains that the Dao has no fixed plan — it can strike like lightning or roll in like soft fog. Attempting to harness it through detailed schemes is a fool’s errand. Athletes describe a similar state of being “in the zone,” where their actions feel fluid and unforced, and time seems to blur. Whether shooting a basketball or composing a poem, one experiences a sense of flow that emerges when over-analysis drops away.

Key Terms for this Lesson: The Dao · Wuwei

6.2 | Confucius: Bond & Virtue

The Rectification of the Names

Confucius lived in the turbulent centuries of the late Zhou, when the dynasty’s old order was fraying and rival states continually challenged one another across China. Into that disorder Confucius brought a single, steadying aim: to restore social harmony. Where the Daoist looked past our society to the rhythms of nature, Confucius focused straight at our society and asked why it had come apart.

His answer was that we had forgotten who we are to one another.

Confucius was born near Qufu in the small state of Lu, held minor offices, and taught any student willing to learn. Tradition says his fee could be as little as a bundle of dried meat. For years he wandered from court to court, seeking a ruler who would govern by his way. Spoiler: none did. In the end, Confucius died believing he had failed. But his students gathered his sayings into the Analects, and within a few centuries China gave him the title Kong Fuzi, “Master Kong,” Latinized by later translators as Confucius.

He remains the most influential teacher in 5000 years of Chinese history.

He was not alone in asking how to mend the age. The late Zhou became an era of wandering teachers, remembered as the Hundred Schools of Thought, when rival courts collected advisers the way they collected territory. The Legalists answered with law and punishment: make the penalties harsh enough, and order will follow. The Mohists answered with impartial care for everyone alike. The Daoists, (cf. Sec. 6.1) answered by stepping back from politics altogether. Confucius’s answer began somewhere more intimate: with the names we have for one another.

Confucius taught that we live in disharmony because we’ve forgotten our roles, or “names.” In what he called the Rectification of the Names, he argued that society holds together only when each person understands and honors the particular bonds they stand within. Get the names right — parent, child, ruler, subject, friend — and harmony follows. Confuse them, and the whole structure falls apart. From this insight he drew five essential relationships.

The Five Relationships

The Five Relationships are, for Confucius, the path back to a stable society. Each is a bond of reciprocal duty. Each side owes the other something, and each is distinct and cannot be confused with another.

Ruler | Subject
The ruler must protect and provide for all subjects equally, ensuring their well-being and security; in return, subjects serve with loyalty and contribute to society. A virtuous leader safeguards the interests of all citizens, while citizens follow the laws and add to the common good. (This bond will matter again in Sec. 6.3, where it grows into a whole political cosmology.)

Parent | Child
The foundational bond of society. Parents are entrusted to nurture, guide, and educate their children through both discipline and unconditional love. Children are supposed to respond with respect, obedience, and gratitude.

Spouse | Spouse
A bond of mutual love, respect, and support, in which each partner is tasked with provision, protection, and devotion, cherishing and honoring the other, forsaking all others.

Elder Sibling | Younger Sibling
A relationship of guidance and protection, the elder offering wisdom and the younger offering respect. But, unlike parents, elder siblings do not hold disciplinary authority. The bond is like a babysitter’s: care and protection, without the parent’s role.

Friend | Friend
A bond of equality and mutual understanding — companions on life’s journey who support and rely on one another, offering emotional support without the formal obligations of family or marriage.

The Five Virtues & a Confucian Life

If the Five Relationships are the structure,
the Five Virtues are the character that fills them.

Ren (仁), often translated empathy or benevolence, lies at the core of Confucian ethics. It is the internal feeling of love and compassion toward others, especially those in need. In his Analects, Confucius held that those who lose this sense of empathy have essentially lost their humanity. Ren is the inner virtue.

Li (礼), or propriety, is its outward expression. Li is found in proper social conduct, from great rites and ceremonies down to everyday courtesy. Confucianism prizes these social forms, even at the expense of personal gain, as the means of maintaining harmony and showing respect for others. If Ren is the feeling within, Li is the form it takes externally in the world. The two are a matched pair, inner virtue and outer form.

Xiao (孝), or filial piety, is the reverence a person owes their family, and above all their parents. Confucius stressed repaying our parents’ kindness with the utmost respect and care, and this reverence extends to grandparents and to one’s dead ancestors. One must never bring dishonor to one’s family. Xiao is the root from which the other bonds grow. The first virtue learned.

Two further virtues round out the set. Zhi (智), wisdom, is the capacity to discern right from wrong and so to act on the goodness one feels. And Yi (义), justice, is the art of balancing reciprocity with mercy, of letting go of personal vengeance and instead choosing the best outcome for the community as a whole.

The person these virtues build has a name. In the old aristocratic order, they were a junzi (literally a “lord’s son”). In Confucius’ teaching, a junzi is something you become: the common person made noble by their excellent character. Being a junzi is open to anyone who cultivates ren and li with enough patience.

A century after Confucius, the tradition’s second sage grounded those virtues in human nature itself.

Mencius (Mengzi, d. 289 BCE) argued that the virtues are not grafted onto us but grow from seeds native to the heart, and he offered a famous test: anyone who suddenly sees a child about to fall into a well feels alarm before any thought of reward, reputation, or blame. That flash of feeling, he taught, is the seed of ren, proof that goodness needs cultivating, not better bloodlines.

Confucianism’s ideals are lived and carried in the everyday rites of family life.

Chief among those ideals is ancestor veneration (jìng zǔ, 敬祖): families across China and the diaspora honor their forebears through offerings, incense, and memorial rites, a direct expression of Xiao that treats each generation as standing on the shoulders of those who came before. The same reverence shapes the milestones of a life. The hairpin ceremony (ji li) marked a girl’s coming of age, historically around fifteen, when a respected elder arranges her hair before the gathered family. The capping ceremony (guan li) marked a young man’s, around twenty, when an elder places a cap on his head to signal his readiness to serve family and society. While Modern China has largely moved past these rites, some families keep them as a living link to a deep Confucian heritage. In each, the message is the same one Confucianism returns to again and again: the family is the primary educator, shaping character from childhood and preparing the next generation to carry its obligations.

The reverence a child owes a parent, the loyalty a subject owes a ruler — Confucius claimed they scaled all the way up, from the household to the empire itself. In the next lesson we watch that scaling happen, as Daoist and Confucian ideas meet a third arriving teaching and together shape how China imagined power, heaven, and the right to rule.

Key Terms for this Lesson: The Five Relationships · Ren & Li

6.3 | Heaven, Earth, & the State

Dao & the Mandate of Heaven

Daoist thought has played a considerable role in shaping governance across China’s history, especially with their ideas involving cosmic order and legitimacy. Remember how we talked about the Dao guiding the balance of Heaven and Earth? Well, to understand how this relates to Chinese politics, it helps to keep in mind that “Heaven” (Ch. Tian) in ancient Chinese culture differs markedly from Biblical depictions. Rather than a distant divine realm, Heaven (Tian) in Chinese culture is woven together with Earth (Ch. Di) in a cosmic equilibrium. In ancient Chinese cosmology, Heaven and Earth reflect two halves of the natural world, each complementing the other within a grand, interlocking system. Early rulers looked to these cosmic forces for guidance, claiming that if the cosmos is in harmony, then society should aim for the same.

Accordingly, the Mandate of Heaven (Ch. 天命) emerged as a traditional Chinese political doctrine indicating the right for a leader to rule.

The Mandate suggests that a good leader governs with Heaven’s approval, which is proven by the prosperity and stability under that ruler’s domain. If unrest or calamities persist, it can be interpreted as a sign that the ruler has lost the mandate. From a Daoist perspective, a wise leader remains aligned with the Dao by promoting a fair distribution of resources, avoiding corruption, and responding thoughtfully to the needs of the people. If a leader strays from this path, natural and social disruptions may ensue, signaling a discord that legitimizes the rise of a new ruling house. Over centuries, many dynasties in China justified their ascension by claiming the previous rulers had abandoned virtue, thus forfeiting the Mandate of Heaven. Daoist wisdom further suggests that the sovereign must cultivate personal virtue to safeguard this cosmic approval, recognizing that any lapse could bring imbalance. In this worldview, moral conduct and political authority become inseparable, binding the ruler’s behavior to the cosmic framework of yin and yang.

While the Mandate of Heaven addresses how power is gained or lost, Daoism also shaped imperial expectations for governance itself. The Emperor was not merely a political figure but a caretaker of cosmic harmony, obligated to observe signs in the natural world (eg. eclipses, unusual weather, and famines) and interpret them as feedback on his rule. Maintaining the realm’s stability depended on ensuring balanced relations among social classes, economic activities, and even the environment. If a ruler acted cruelly or neglected the welfare of the people, the cosmic balance might tilt, inviting disasters that showed Heaven’s displeasure. From this perspective, government policy was was an extension of the Dao, meant to harmonize the realm’s operations with the broader pattern of nature.

Within this framework, administrators and advisers were tasked with offering counsel that upheld moral integrity. A minister who reminded the Emperor to act gently and justly did so not only for political reasons but also to honor the cosmic order. Meanwhile, taxation and military campaigns had to be justified by appealing to the broader principle of maintaining stability for the people. Ambition and greed risked disturbing the delicate scale of yin and yang, so Daoist advisers often called for restraint, frugality, and benevolence. By the same token, complacency and passive governance could cause stagnation and invite decay, so a ruler had to stay alert and decisive.

Confucian Thought & the State

If Daoism gave the throne its cosmology, Confucianism gave it a bureaucracy.

Under the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), Emperor Wu adopted Confucianism as the guiding philosophy of the imperial government, and Confucian ethics became the training of every official. In 136 BCE the Five Classics were canonized as the core of that learning, and among them sat the Yi Jing, living its remarkable double life: the same Book of Changes whose trigrams reach back to Fuxi in Daoist legend now stood as the first of the Confucian classics. Mastery of these texts became the path into government through civil-service examinations, a system that would shape Chinese life for 2,000 years.

Then, in the 100s CE, a third current reached China along the trade routes: Buddhism, carrying its promise of nirvana. For a time, Confucianism took a backseat as Chinese Buddhism flourished. Then, under the Tang dynasty (618–907), Confucian learning revived and the examinations were restored. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam also arrived along the ancient Silk Road, establishing small communities in a multi-ethnic and pluralist society.

That habit, of holding several views at once is captured in the famous story of the vinegar tasters. Three masters taste from a single vat of vinegar. The Confucian frowns: it is sour, as life is sour, in need of correction and order. The Buddhist grimaces: it is bitter, as existence is bitter with suffering to escape. But Laozi smiles. To the Daoist the vinegar is neither good nor bad; it is simply what it is, and the sage’s task is to taste it as it comes and live in harmony with its nature. One vat, three tastes, three teachings.

The Vinegar Tasters. Edo Period Japan.

Neo-Confucianism

From that centuries-long conversation came a genuine synthesis.

Beginning in the Song dynasty (960–1279), a movement we call Neo-Confucianism revitalized classical Confucian teaching by absorbing what it found useful in Daoism and Buddhism. Its foremost figure was Zhu Xi (d. 1200), who recast the Daoist wuwei as spontaneous virtue: refine your character through study and reflection long enough, and right action begins to flow effortlessly. This synthesis (alongside other contributions) became the state ideology of the Song and the new basis of its civil service examinations. In 1313, the older Five Classics were formally replaced at the center of the curriculum by the Four Books, among them the famous Analects, the collected sayings of Confucius.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
Analects (Book 2, Ch. 15), Confucius

Take the wisdom teaching quoted above. Memorizing facts with understanding them is a waste of time. However, trying to reason without knowing the facts is dangerous and fruitless. These are the kinds of teachings that Chinese Civil Service workers had to study.

The examinations for texts like the Analects were the sole path to government office, which made mastery of the approved texts the only road to power. The same tradition that could counsel a ruler toward gentleness could also close every other door to advancement. A cold reminder that no tradition in this course is only its best self.

Heaven’s mandate, Confucius’ bonds, the Buddha’s promise, Zhu Xi’s synthesis... In China, these have not stayed in separate rooms. A single person, across a single life, might bury a parent with Confucian rites, seek the Buddhist temple in grief, and keep a Daoist eye on the balance of things. In the final lesson we follow those living practices into the present.

Optional Video: Scholar of Religion explains Neo-Confucianism (auto-generated CC).

Key Terms for this Lesson: The Mandate of Heaven · Neo-Confucianism

6.4 | Modern Chinese Practice

Qi & its Practices

Imagine a stone dropped into calm water. The splash is the meeting of two forces: yin, the receptive bend inward, and yang, the outward rush of energy. As the ripples spread and the water settles, a pattern of activity and stillness emerges. In Daoist thought, nature unfolds continuously like this in a mystical flow of Qi (氣). Qi (chi) is the vital energy that animates ying and yang (the opposing forces in all living and nonliving things), weaving them into a cosmic dance. Because qi can be balanced (or unbalanced), those observant of Daoist tradition attempt to practice working with qi in a variety of ways.

The best known is Tàijí (Tai Chi), a Daoist artform of slow, deliberate movement.

Practitioners align their breathing with each measured gesture, shifting weight from one leg to the other and turning gently at the waist (like water circling a stone) so that qi moves freely throughout their bodies. Often practiced outdoors in parks and gardens, Tàijí looks tranquil but trains real agility. Outside of Daoism, Tàijí is widely recognized for benefiting circulation and stress levels.

A related practice, Feng Shui, attends not to the body but to space: the idea that the placement of objects, furniture, and pathways can help or hinder the flow of qi through a home or workplace. An open, ordered room is said to welcome fresh currents of qi, while a crowded, disordered space can stifle them.

Communism & the New Confucianism

Modernity certainly brought challenges to China and its religious identity. The late Qing dynasty (1644–1912) faced Western challenges to Confucian authority, the Opium Wars, and the Taiping Rebellion. Then, during the recent Maoist era (1949–1976), China’s religious traditions became targets of the Communist state: Confucian temples were destroyed, scholars were persecuted, and the teaching was denounced as a relic of the old order. Here, the Chinese traditions we’ve studied appear as victims (much as Tibetan and Vietnamese Buddhism did last section) of a suppression campaign carried out by a modern government. After Mao’s death the pressure eased and a revival followed. In the twentieth century, thinkers such as Xiong Shili, Mou Zongsan, and Tu Weiming developed what became known as the New Confucianism, seeking to carry Confucian ethics into modern China alongside modern Western concepts and worldviews.

As a living movement, New Confucianism centers on moral self-cultivation, developing virtues like benevolence, propriety, and wisdom in daily life. Together with ethical leadership and cultural renewal, these virtues adapt classical Confucian values to the demands of modern life. Its advocates argue that these ideals can coexist with modern democratic life, and the movement gives particular attention to the well-being of all members of society, calling on those in positions of influence to lead as moral examples.

It is not the official ideology of the Chinese state, which remains Communist, but it has gained real traction among intellectuals seeking cultural grounding in a fast-changing society.

The Art of War

The greatest influence Daoist political thought has had on the modern world may be, perhaps surprisingly, in military strategy.

During the Warring States Period, continuous conflict across China propelled philosophers to consider how best to resolve warfare efficiently. The most enduring text of this era is The Art of War, attributed to Sunzi (Sun Tzu). Daoist threads of wisdom run through his teachings, beginning his text with the question, “Which ruler has the Dao?” Sunzi argued that moral integrity and a deep understanding of the Dao could make all the difference in war. In warfare, the goal was to triumph swiftly with minimal harm, a reflection of the Daoist ideal to act in harmony with nature rather than forcing outcomes through brute violence. He upheld qualities like wisdom, honor, compassion, courage, and discipline — Daoist principles that value balanced and ethical conduct.

Sunzi’s guidelines proved influential far beyond ancient China. Modern generals who have studied The Art of War note how it addresses planning, adaptability, and unity of command. The text instructs leaders to deceive opponents when necessary, maneuver decisively, and maintain clarity of purpose to avoid a protracted struggle. Some modern military figures like Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and Gen. Colin Powell drew upon Sunzi’s insights during the First Gulf War (1990-91), to ensure a speedy victory. American business and law schools also incorporate these teachings, reflecting the view that the balanced strategies of The Art of War can apply to competition in many spheres. By rooting conflict resolution in ethical principles, Sunzi’s legacy resonates with the broader Daoist commitments to maintaining balance, suggesting that even in the midst of discord, one should strive for actions that reflect the flexible, harmonious flow of the Dao.

Key Terms for this Lesson: Qi · New Confucianism

Recommended Sources

To be filled in…

Last Section: Buddhism
This Section: Chinese Religion
Next Section: The Biblical World

Pictured: Buddhist pagoda illuminated with fireworks, Myanmar (2016)

Key Terms for this Section
The Buddha · The Four Sights · The Three Fires · The Four Noble Truths
Theravada & Mahayana · Emperor Ashoka · The Three Jewels · Mindfulness

5.1 | The Prince & the Palace

A Tradition Born from Hindu Philosophy

In our survey of the Hindu yogas and margas, we marked the road of wisdom— the Jnana Marga — and noted that a new tradition would one day grow out of that soil. In this section, we meet the one who came from that tradition and started a worldwide movement.

• 600s BCE | The Ascetic Age
As the Upanishads emerge, attention turns to Maya, Samsara, and Moksha
• 500s BCE | The Age of the Buddha
As the Upanishads emerge, attention turns to Maya, Samsara, and Moksha
• 200s BCE | Buddhist India
Emperor Ashoka commands the Buddhist dharma to be proselytized across the world
• 100s CE | Buddhism enter East Asia
The Buddhist dharma is discussed with Confucianist and Daoist masters in China

Around 2,600 years ago, something shifted in India. With the writing of the Hindu Upanishads, India became restless with a philosophical preoccupation: samsara, the unending cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.

If existence itself was a wheel, then the goal of a life could no longer be to merely perform one’s dharma correctly, one had to be escape. Liberation became the age’s obsession. People wanted not only release from samsara, but from every prison that Maya holds inside it. The Upanishads had already pressed the deepest questions onto the tradition — the nature of reality, the self (atman), and its relation to God (Brahman). Now teachers took those concepts into new moral frontiers. Gurus wandered the roads promising an end to every kind of confinement — an end to ignorance, an end to poverty, an end even to the caste system itself.

History calls these seekers the shramanas, the “strivers.”

Strivers in the Axial Age

These folks were the renouncers who left household life to test the limits of their liberation. Their growing world made such testing possible. By the 500s BCE Northern India was urbanizing with new cities, new trade routes, and ambitious kings. The old village order that Vedic ritual served was loosening its grip, and into that opening walked rival teachers with rival methods: fasting, trance, radical nonviolence, philosophical debate. This is known as the Axial Age, wherein Confucius and the Daoist masters were teaching in China, the prophets of Israel were writing Jewish scripture, and the first philosophers were arguing in Greece.

In the last section, we learned that the Jnana Marga had taught that liberation is won by knowing — renounce comfort, find a teacher, turn the mind inward until illusion gives way. The seekers of the Ascetic Age were that path’s children. The Seekers kept the tools of the jnanis: the forest retreat, the guru, the long discipline of meditation. But they pressed its central question harder than their parents had. The Upanishads had answered that beneath the shifting self lies the atman — permanent, untouched, one with Brahman. To know yourself truly is to find God. Out of this same line of inquiry, the Buddhists will draw the opposite conclusion: look inward long enough, he will teach, and you find no permanent self at all — only change, all the way down. And once the eternal atman goes, the older scaffolding goes with it: the authority of the Vedas, the mediation of priests, the claim of caste on identity.

Buddhism does not begin as a rejection of India’s questions. It begins as a new answer to them.

Optional Video: Religious Scholar explains Buddhism (auto-generated CC).

The Awakening

The following account is carried from the tradition’s own theologically-shaped story.

Siddhartha Gautama was a prince whose birthdate remains uncertain. The scholarly consensus agrees he lived, taught, and established a monastic community in India in the 500s BCE. His story begins with The Four Sights — a narrative that is as well-known in the East as the nativity of Jesus is in the West. Raised in a lavish palace by a father who ruled the Shakya clan (in present-day Nepal), Siddhartha experienced only comfort and opulence. Wine, women, and song were his for the asking. Yet he found himself longing for more than material indulgence, so, when he was about 29 years old, he ventured beyond the palace walls.

During his excursions, Siddhartha encounters The Four Sights: an elderly man, a sick man, and a corpse, each shattering his youthful assumptions about living forever without suffering or pain. Young Siddhartha realizes that aging, illness, and death affect everyone — even princes. The fourth sight was a Hindu ascetic — a Jnana yogi — who lived simply in pursuit of enlightenment. Confronted with such stark contrasts, Siddhartha saw that wealth and comfort could never end his craving.

Rejecting palace life, Siddhartha becomes a seeker. He embraces austerity in the hope of discovering a solution to life’s struggles. For six years, he adopted an extreme bodily discipline: meditating intensely and subsisting on minimal food. Until one day, while listening to the twang of a stringed instrument carried on the breeze, he was hit with a sudden realization.

If the strings are too tight, they’ll snap. If the strings are too loose, they won’t play.

Taking this as a metaphor for spiritual practice, Siddhartha abandons the extremes of Jnani asceticism. Although his companions initially rebuke him (more on them later), he remained steadfast in his insight that liberation comes through a Middle Way between indulgence and self-mortification.

Undeterred, Siddhartha sits beneath a tree (the Bodhi Tree) and vows not to rise until he attains enlightenment. Beset by three enchanting women (cf. the Three Fires) and confronted by a Great Demon, he emerges victorious. In that moment, Siddhartha awakens and becomes The Buddha (the “Awakened One”). Siddhartha had achieved nirvana — liberation from the prison (palace?) of desire, hatred, and ignorance. After 49 days of contemplation, he resolves to share his teaching with others. His former companions become the first sangha, which soon grew and spread his message beyond the forests of northern India and, eventually, across the world.

That is the origin story of Buddhism, in a form a child can remember.

Look closely and you can see the teaching folded inside the tale. The first three sights — age, sickness, death — are a compressed argument about impermanence: no wall is high enough, and no pleasure durable enough, to keep them out. The Fourth Sight answers the first three: a person who has stopped running. Even the lute string carries doctrine — the Middle Way is not a compromise between two good things, but a rejection of two ways to waste a life.

Key Terms for this Lesson: The Buddha · The Four Sights

5.2 | The Four Noble Truths

The Buddha as Physician

The awakened prince eventually found the five companions who had walked out on him. What he offered them was not a set of avatars to worship or doctrines to affirm. It was a way of seeing — an account of what is wrong with human life and what can be done about it. To grasp his point, it helps to borrow a frame the modern tradition often uses.

Imagine you are ill.

1. You finally agree to go to the doctor because you’re ready to acknowledge that you are suffering (Pali: dukkha)

2. The doctor diagnoses the origin (Pali: samudaya) of your suffering.

3. The doctor then gives you a prognosis: your suffering can end (Pali: nirodha).

4. Finally, you are given a prescription for treatment to remove your suffering, consisting of eight practices and lifestyle changes.

Beneath the “diagnosis” sits three observations that the Buddhist tradition calls the marks of existence. The first is that everything assembled comes apart — bodies, empires, and stars. The physicist will tell you that everything answers to entropy and is slowly falling apart. The Buddhist will tell you this universal entropy includes the self, our moods, our ideas, and our consciousness. Impermanence (Pali anicca) is the first mark of existence. The second is that whatever is impermanent cannot fully satisfy us — the tighter your grip, the more it chafes you. That chafing, that irritating, frustrating itch that can never be scratched away is dukkha, the first Noble Truth.

The third is that even the observer — the collection you call “the self” — is not exempt from the first two marks of existence. This stands in contrast to the self (the “atman”) that the Upanishads promised their Hindu readers. In Buddhist thought, finally, there is ‘no true self’ (Pali: anatta). The Buddha instead argued that the collection I call “me” is a brief, temporary arrangement of assembled parts — thoughts and flesh that is constantly changing, growing, dying — and will one day return to nonexistence.

Ok, what are the higher metaphysical truths beyond this? I must know!

So a monk named Malunkyaputta once pressed the Buddha on the great metaphysical riddles. Is the universe eternal? What becomes of an awakened one after death? He threatened to leave the sangha unless he got answers! The Buddha replied with a parable. Imagine a man struck by a poisoned arrow who refuses treatment until he learns who shot it, from what clan, with what kind of bow, and with feathers from which bird. He would die, the Buddha said, with his questions still unanswered. The point was not that the riddles are unworthy. It was that they do not stop the bleeding. On questions that do not bear on liberation, the Buddha kept a famous silence. Instead, the Buddha kept a laser focus on one universal problem: suffering, and its end.

Extinguishing the Three Fires

During his vigil under the Bodhi Tree, three fires appeared allegorically to the Buddha.

These ‘fires’ appeared as enchanting women (cf. his former life at the palace), meant to entice Siddhartha off the path of Enlightenment. Buddhism recounts these as The Three Fires who stand in for greed, ignorance, and hate, as these are three forces that entice the novice away from the path.

Greed fosters a craving for possessions and pleasures, binding people to a repetitive cycle of dissatisfaction. Ignorance is the willful refusal to see reality as it is, keeping the mind trapped in illusions about the self and the world. Hate manifests in hostility and anger toward discomfort or those who provoke it, fueling harm and destruction.

For the Buddha, the spiritual goal was to extinguish these Three Fires from one’s life. The Pali word for extinguish is nirvana. In this way, nirvana is the result of extinguishing greed (wanting too much), hate (wanting too little), and ignorance (mindful growth) from one’s life. The Buddhist tradition acknowledges this as the path to liberation.

Optional video: on Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths

The Four Noble Truths

Working backwards, as one who had achieved nirvana, the Buddha distilled his core understanding of suffering into The Four Noble Truths of liberation.

1. Dukkha (Pali: suffering). Life contains suffering. Contrary to popular claims, Dukkha does not mean “life is suffering.” The Buddha observed that life contains joy and pleasure and many other experiences. But recognizing suffering’s presence, whether from illness, heartbreak, or any limitation, is an essential catalyst for compassion and transformation.

2. Samudaya (Pali: cause). The origin of suffering is our desire and attachments. The relentless craving for fleeting ephemera (eg. possessions, relationships, achievements) creates ongoing discontent. This teaching highlights how clinging to impermanent things prevents lasting peace. By recognizing the futility of chasing what cannot endure, one begins loosening the chains of dissatisfaction.

3. Nirodha (Pali: cessation). The end of suffering is possible by relinquishing our pathetic grasping and self-centered cravings. When people move beyond greed, hate, and ignorance, they can approach nirvana — a liberation from the internal fires that bind them. Nirodha reveals that life does not have to be an endless cycle of frustration and loss; with insight, freedom can be attained.

4. The Buddha’s route to the cessation of suffering is the Eightfold Path.

The Eight-fold path includes Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. Each element develops moral integrity, mental discipline, and clarity of understanding. People who pursue this path aim to curb harmful impulses, cultivate compassion, and transform their relationships with the world around them.

Key Terms for this Lesson: The Three Fires · The Four Noble Truths

5.3 | The Dharma Across Asia

Theravada Buddhism (Elders) | Most Conservative

The dharma (teachings) begin in one river valley and end up on three-quarters of a continent. Southeast, into Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia (300s BCE), went the older, monastic form. East along the Silk Road, into China (100s) and onward to Korea (372) and Japan (538), went a more expansive form. And north, over the Himalayas into Tibet (600s), went a third.

The teaching’s first great patron was an emperor with blood on his hands. Emperor Ashoka conquered most of India. Yet, after the carnage, he turned away from violence and made the Buddha’s dharma the guiding principle of his empire. He had edicts carved on pillars and rock faces across his realm, urging nonviolence, compassion, and social harmony — public sermons in stone. Convinced the teaching could heal the world, Ashoka dispatched emissaries across the world. For its first five centuries the dharma was not written at all. Like the Diné traditions we studied in Section 3, early Buddhism was a living oral tradition. Monks and nuns memorized the Buddha’s discourses and preserved them by group recitation, until Ashoka’s era brought the first written compilations. Those texts eventually sorted themselves along the three great “vehicles” the tradition still travels.

Optional Video: History of Buddha & Emperor Ashoka (auto-generated CC).

Theravada Buddhism, often called the “Teaching of the Elders,” traces its lineage back to the earliest transmissions of the Buddha’s teaching. Predominant in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, and Laos, Theravada upholds itself as the unaltered guardian of the original Buddhist doctrine. About 40% of Buddhists worldwide follow Theravada, which emphasizes maintaining rigorous monastic discipline as the surest path to nirvana. Monks dedicate themselves to meditation, the study of the Pali Canon, and adherence to strict ethical precepts. Historically, only men could be ordained, reflecting a traditional view that women must accumulate merit over multiple lives before achieving full liberation.

Daily life in Theravadan societies often revolves around monastic communities. Lay supporters offer food, clothing, and funds to sustain the sangha. These gifts generate spiritual merit that, according to Theravada teaching, can improve a person’s circumstances in future lifetimes. Although laypeople might not expect to reach nirvana in this life, their service nurtures wholesome qualities like generosity, strengthening bonds within the community. Monks reciprocate by providing moral guidance, performing blessings, and preserving the original Buddhist teachings recorded in the Pali Canon. For Theravada followers, devout observance of the canon and the preservation of monastic ideals ensure that the Buddha’s words remain intact, even as Buddhism spreads across diverse cultures.

The blessed One who awoke himself is worthy, accomplished in both knowledge and conduct. The Pali Canon

Just as the rock is not shaken by the storm, so the wise are not affected by praise or blame. The Dhammapada

Mahayana Buddhism (Greater Wheel) | Most Popular

Practiced in eastern regions like China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, Mahayana Buddhism accounts for the majority of Buddhists worldwide.

Its hallmark is an inclusive belief that all people can attain enlightenment, not just those in monastic life. Mahayana stresses compassion as integral to wisdom and highlights the role of Bodhisattvas — enlightened beings who choose to remain in samsara to help others achieve liberation. This belief in universal salvation sets Mahayana apart from the more austere outlook of Theravada.

A broad range of texts referred to as “sutras” informs Mahayana thought. Some well-known examples include the Lotus Sutra and the Heart Sutra, which reinterpret core doctrines, insisting that the Buddha’s nature can manifest in countless forms. Many communities focus on a local Bodhisattva, like Amitabha of Pure Land Buddhism. Practitioners recite Amitabha’s name and focus on rebirth in the Pure Land — a realm to the West, free from life’s negative influences — where one can advance toward perfect enlightenment. In places like China and Japan, artistic and architectural projects reflecting Pure Land devotion have flourished for centuries.

The Dharma spoken by the Buddha is like a great cloud, whose rain touches all people, each one bearing fruit. The Lotus Sutra

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. The Heart Sutra

Another influential branch of Mahayana is Zen Buddhism (Chan in China, Seon in Korea). Zen underscores direct insight into the nature of the mind, often through silent meditation called zazen. Practitioners engage with koans (ie. paradoxical riddles) like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” to break habitual patterns of thought. Zen teachings emphasize living fully in the present and seeing beyond conceptual labels, a style evident in the spare aesthetics of Japanese rock gardens and traditional tea ceremonies. Over the generations, Mahayana Buddhism’s adaptability and wide-ranging practices have enabled it to resonate with people from different cultural and social backgrounds, fostering communities that balance devotion, study, and everyday mindfulness.

All things are like a dream: a phantom, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning. Meditate on them like this. The Diamond Sutra

Vajrayana Buddhism (Diamond) | The Tibetan Tradition

Vajrayana Buddhism (ie. Tibetan Buddhism) comprises about 5% of the global Buddhist population. Despite these smaller numbers, it attracts significant worldwide interest. The 14th Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, has become a notable figure in discussions of global ethics and interfaith dialogue. This tradition shares Mahayana’s core emphasis on compassion and the Bodhisattva ideal but incorporates additional practices derived from tantric rituals, mantras, and symbolic visualization. Vajrayana is called the “Diamond Vehicle” to suggest its transformative power — like a diamond, it is said to cut through illusions swiftly.

In Tibet and Himalayan regions like Bhutan and parts of Nepal, Tibetan Buddhism has shaped local culture for centuries. Monastic institutions serve as both centers of learning and community support, teaching advanced forms of meditation and philosophy that blend textual scholarship with esoteric ceremonies. Teachers called lamas guide students through initiation rites and empowerments, introducing them to mandalas, spiritual visualizations, and mantra recitation. These methods aim to harness human energies and direct them toward enlightenment, accelerating spiritual progress when used responsibly.

Tibetan Buddhism also displays a distinctive system of lineage transmission, exemplified by reincarnated lamas (tulkus). This tradition hinges on the recognition of spiritually advanced people who choose to be reborn to continue serving their communities. Within Tibetan culture, the Dalai Lama, Panchen Lama, and others are seen as upholding and renewing these lineages. Political realities, particularly in the context of Communist China, have complicated the preservation of Tibetan Buddhism. Yet Vajrayana remains a living force in the Himalayan world, enriched by centuries of devotion and folk tradition. Even beyond its native homeland, Tibetan Buddhism is cherished for its vibrant iconography, profound contemplative techniques, and message of compassion for all beings.

Optional Video: Religious Scholar explains Tibetan Buddhism (auto-generated CC).

Key Terms for this Lesson: Theravada & Mahayana · Emperor Ashoka

5.4 | Modern Buddhist Practice

The Three Jewels

Tradition holds that the Buddha, moved by how hard life would be for those he left behind, gave his followers three things he had never had himself. These are the Three Jewels: the life of the Buddha to contemplate (cf. Sec. 5.1), the Dharma (his teaching), and the Sangha (the worldwide community of Buddhists). To become a Buddhist, a person says with conviction: “I take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.” The rest of Sec. 5.4 is what those three jewels look like when they are lived.

The Dharma shapes how communities pursue ethics, mental discipline, and wisdom. The Buddha encouraged people to investigate his ideas rather than accept them uncritically, and that investigative spirit still runs through the tradition. Its ethical ground are the Five Precepts: to refrain from killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, and intoxication. Its method is meditation, practiced differently in each vehicle. Theravada attends to the breath, Zen sits in silent zazen, and the Tibetans work with visualization and mantra. Each of these aim toward the same end: steadying the mind so that impermanent thoughts and feelings can be watched without being obeyed. And its horizon is wisdom: the slow recognition that clinging to a permanent self, in a world where nothing is permanent, is the very engine of suffering.

The third jewel is the one you see out in the world.
In Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Burma, sanghas anchor daily life: monks give counsel and lead chanting, while laypeople offer meals, robes, and support — a reciprocity in which each side deepens the other’s practice. Buddha’s Birthday celebrates his birth, awakening, and death at a single festival. Full-moon and new-moon days renew vows and precepts. And the Robe Offering binds monastics and laity in mutual generosity.

Optional Video: Scholar of Religion explains Buddhist meditation (auto-generated CC).

Buddhism & the Modern State

In more modern times, Buddhism has come up against threats from Communist leaders. When the Communist government came to power in China in 1949, it took control of Tibet and moved to bring Tibetan Buddhism under state authority. In 1959 the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, left Tibet for India, where a Tibetan government-in-exile has resided since. In 1995 he identified a young boy as the Panchen Lama, the tradition’s second-ranking figure; Chinese authorities detained the child, and the question of the lineage’s continuity remains unresolved. Vietnam saw its own collision. In 1963 the government of Ngo Dinh Diem placed restrictions on Buddhist observance in the south; that June, a monk named Thich Quang Duc set himself on fire at a Saigon intersection, and photographs of the act circulated worldwide. The Diem government fell to a military coup months later.

The same century that shows Buddhism suffering under states also shows it wielded by them. In Myanmar in the 2010s, nationalist movements led in part by Buddhist monks fueled violence against the Muslim Rohingya minority; a military campaign beginning in 2017 drove more than 700,000 Rohingya across the border into Bangladesh, where over a million now live in refugee camps. In Sri Lanka, currents of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism have likewise set the majority tradition against religious minorities. The point is not to single Buddhism out, but to hold it to the same standard as every tradition in this series: a tradition large enough to be persecuted is also large enough to persecute, and both belong on the record.

Optional Video: Scholar of Religion explains Sino-Tibetan Relations (auto-generated CC).

Buddhism in America

Buddhism has come to America in waves. It first came with immigrants: Chinese and Japanese laborers building American railroads and working the fields of the Old West. Then came the Vietnamese, Thai, and Cambodian communities after the 1965 reform of immigration law. American Buddhism had a kind of revival through converts and readers of Japanese Zen Buddhism (eg. D.T. Suzuki’s books made Zen a household word in the 1950s). American convert Alan Watts carried it further, and the 14th Dalai Lama became one of the most recognized moral voices on Earth. Buddhist thought had another surge in the 1980s.

A scientist named Jon Kabat-Zinn founded a stress-reduction program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, adapting Buddhist meditation into a secular, 8-week course he called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. Mindfulness — with much of the ‘religious’ lingo lifted out of it — has since become a fixture of American mental health, corporate wellness, and popular phone apps. Today roughly 4.4 million Americans (about 1.3% of the country) identify as Buddhist, and countless more borrow the practices without the label. Western audiences have embraced the tradition while making it their own — which, in fact, has been happening since the dharma first left India two thousand years ago.

Key Terms for this Lesson: The Three Jewels · Mindfulness

Recommended Sources

Tenzin Gyatso (the 14th Dalai Lama), Freedom in Exile
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Thích Nhất Hạnh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire
Jan Willis, Dreaming of Me: An African American Woman’s Spiritual Journey
Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught

Last Section: Hinduism & Sikhism
This Section: Buddhism
Next Section: Chinese Religion

Pictured: Kids taking part in the Holi Festival in India (2022)

Key Terms for this Section
The Vedas · Brahman & the Avatars · Maya & Samsara · Karma & Moksha
Bhakti Marga · The Bhagavad Gita · Sikhism · The Khalsa

4.1 | God in India

Hindu India

This week our course crosses into the East.

Leaving behind the American plains of the last section, we come to the Indian subcontinent: two great river systems — the Indus to the northwest, the Ganges spilling east across the northern plain — walled off from the rest of Asia by the Himalayas, the highest mountains on Earth. In the far northwest, where five rivers braid together, lies the Punjab (cf. Sec. 4.4).

• 1500s BCE | The Vedic Age. Aryans compose hymns honoring the sky, earth, fire, and other forces thought to sustain cosmic order. During this period, we see a shift from Dyaus-Pitr (cf. Sec. 2.2) to the ever-expanding (Sanskrit: brh) nature of reality, nominalized to Brahman

• 600s BCE | The Ascetic Age. As the Upanishads emerge, attention turns to Maya, Samsara, and Moksha (cf. Sec. 4.2) During this period, Siddhartha Gautama founds Buddhism, advocating for self-discipline as the path to spiritual liberation (cf. Sec. 5)

• 400s BCE - 700s CE | Buddhist India. Emperor Ashoka commands the Buddhist dharma to be proselytized across all of India and the world. During this period, Hindu Epics like the Mahabharata and Ramayana are written (cf. Sec. 4.3)

• 1520s - 1700s | Islamic India. The Mughal Empire, founded in the 1520s, fused Persian and Indian folkways in architecture and the arts. India’s colonial period will end when they win their independence from Britain in 1947 (cf. Sec. 4.3). During this period, the Taj Mahal is built. The label “Hindu” comes to prominence as a way for Muslims to distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims.

Now that we have our bearings, you’ll recall in Sec. 2.4 that the designation of “Hindu” is a modern one (I recommend Pennington’s 2005, Was Hinduism Invented?). In fact, the religious category of “Hinduism” arose as a matter of colonial identification. That is, when Muslim imperials showed up in the 1500s, they came to identify the locals of India with the Indus River Valley. They derived the word “Hindu” from “Indus.” Later, when the British Empire arrived in the 1700s, they continued the tradition. Thus, the first designation of “Hinduism” as a religion came from Britons like Sir William Jones (founder of the Royal Asiatic Society) in the 1780s.

Today, a billion people live inside a “religious tradition” that only came to call itself a religion after the United States declared its independence from Britain! Without a single founder, text, or creed, Hindu tradition has flourished for thousands of years. So where did it begin? Around 4,500 years ago, a branch of the proto-Indo-Europeans split east and west. Some settled the Iranian plateau and gave rise to Persian culture. Others pressed northeast, arriving in Northern India.

From Northern India, the nobles (Sanskrit: arya), set forth the duties (Sa. dharma) of their ancient society.

As the concept of writing travelled east from Mesopotamia, the Aryans (nobles) began writing their ideas for society down. Fun fact: neighboring Persia (a Greek name) was called Aryanam — meaning Land of the Aryans — the source of the modern name Iran. This oral tradition spoke of devas (cognate of Dyeus, the Sky-Father in Sec. 2.2) and increasingly of Brahman.

1200s-700s BCE | The Vedas & the Upanishads

By the 1200s BCE, the Aryans had compiled a collection of four priestly texts called the Vedas — the Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, and Atharva Veda. The Vedas are the world’s oldest scripture in continuous use. More than mere ritual instruction, the Vedas represent India’s first reflections on the mystery of existence.

The truth is one; the wise call it by many names.
Rig Veda

Carrying out Vedic ceremonies requires a keen understanding and ritual discipline. The mantras and hymns specify offerings and invocations meant to sustain a harmonious bond between worshippers and the sacred. Fire, the primary conduit to the divine, is a consecrated meeting point of mortal and eternal. By carefully tending this fire and chanting Vedic verses, Hindu priests invoke blessings for prosperity, well-being, and cosmic alignment. These practices weave spiritual devotion into everyday life, bridging the earthly and the transcendent.

Respect for the Vedas transcends cultural and linguistic differences, anchoring Hindus across regions in a shared sacred heritage. The Vedas offer not only liturgical guidance but also moral insight, prompting reflection on the enduring mysteries of existence and humanity’s place within the larger cosmic order.

Additionally, by the 700s BCE, Hindu thought took an inward turn.

A new body of texts, the Upanishads (the culminating layer of Vedic literature) shifted attention from the mechanics of ritual toward the inner self. Their central question is the relationship between atman, the innermost self, and Brahman, the ultimate reality. Their radical answer, which this section unpacks, is that the two are one. This was an age of seekers and ascetics; from the same soil grew two movements that broke from the Vedic priesthood entirely — those of Siddhartha Gautama and of Mahavira, whom we take up as Buddhism in Section 5. For now, hear the Upanishads in their own voice:

There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond all of us, beyond the heavens, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in our hearts. Chandogya Upanishad

Written in Sanskrit, these texts are traditionally taught as direct revelations from God, conceived of in Hindu thought as Brahman—the all-encompassing spiritual reality. It’s also the place where most Western misreading of Hindu thought begins.

Optional Video: An ancient Vedic hymn (no CC).

God in India

One of the great tasks of scholarship is to dig through years of bias, which can accumulate over centuries of theological debate and one-upmanship, to arrive at a fresh perspective on a complex concept. Such is the case of the concept of God — a Germanic word (org. Gott) — Whom the ancient Hebrews referred to as El (אֵל), the Greek-speaking Christians as Theos (θεός), and Arabic speakers as Allah (ٱللَّٰه). In Indian Sanskrit, the name of God Almighty is Brahman (ब्रह्मन्), from the root bṛh- meaning to grow. In both East (ie. Hindu thought) and West (ie. Judaism, Christianity, Islam), God is understood to be the Almighty Creator and Lawgiver. Much is the same in our outlooks — cosmologically, morally, etc.

The most important distinction between Eastern and Western conceptions of God is that the Western traditions generally share a panentheistic view: that God is imminent in the creation but also transcends it. By contrast, the classical Hindu wisdom tradition promotes a pantheistic stance, teaching that God is the creation. In the Hindu view, God is not merely present in the rain. God is the rain, God is the people under the rain, God is their democratic beliefs, their love, their sorrows, etc. God is all those things. In the oft-repeated words of the Vedic text: “All is Brahman.”

This takes us to our second point: the Hindu Avatars. In Hindu texts, God is described as having many avatars. Puzzled by the concept, the earliest Western translators erroneously rendered “avatars” as “gods.” Here’s why that doesn’t work (and why you probably understand avatars better than the early translators did!).

Today, in computer games, an on-screen character is called an avatar (yes, it’s the same ancient Sanskrit word). Now, if an avatar “dies,” the player controlling the avatar is fine. Like, if I’m playing a Mario NES game and I jump Mario into a hole, my avatar may die — I might even say “hey, I died!” — but I assure you, I’m fine. Likewise, in Hindu texts, avatars are manifestations of the One God, Brahman. They come into the world to teach moral lessons. But it’s critical to keep in mind that Brahman controls the avatars; they have no existence without Him. The avatar concept doesn’t imply multiple independent gods but rather distinct forms of the same Divine Reality.

In the Vedas, Brahman’s avatars are diverse expressions of one God, guiding humanity through different narratives. The primary avatars are Vishnu, Shiva, and Shakti. Vishnu is God’s avatar who sustains. Shiva is God’s avatar who destroys and transforms. And Shakti is the avatar of God who creates. These three avatars — the Creator, the Sustainer, and the Destroyer — all represent the pantheistic cosmic order of Hindu thought.

So, when exploring Hindu texts, it may be useful to reframe the story as someone playing a video game...

Imagine there is a room in which a gamer is playing a video game. The gamer is Vishnu, who is playing a video game called “Earth,” in which his avatar, Krishna, is trying to convince the game’s NPCs that the game isn’t real life. Why would he do this? Because it turns out that the room itself, the gamer, and the game are all Brahman.

Optional Video: a short history of India

Key Terms for this Lesson: The Vedas · Brahman & the Avatars

4.2 | Hindu Cosmology & Practice

The World: Prison & Release

So if all is Brahman — if the coffee, the coffeeshop, and the customer are one reality — then why does the world feel like a crowd of separate things?
Hindu thought answers with a single word: illusion.

The emancipatory promise of Hinduism is that understanding the deep nature of reality will free you. Put simply, the Hindu tradition says that everything is interconnected and holy because ‘All is Brahman.’ The trouble is, we mere mortals have a rather difficult time understanding this as we are imprisoned by the illusion of reality. How?

Well, if all is Brahman, then the physical world (as we perceive it) is not reality at all but is instead a kind of illusory projection of Brahman. This illusory world is called Maya (माया). That is to say, the things that fill your daily life — from digital videos to paychecks — are not distinct entities in a distinct and physical “world.” Rather, they are all part of Brahman.

And so are you.
And so am I.
And so is everything.

Hindu thought reframes a guy ordering a coffee from a barista as Brahman experiencing Himself. What follows from this Hindu teaching is that the world we think we perceive is actually a prison of falseness (ie. Maya). Within this framework of Hindu cosmology, the ultimate goal is to transcend this illusory realm, breaking free from the confines of Maya.

But escaping Maya is difficult. Even death cannot escape it.
This is due to samsara — the Hindu cycle of reincarnation. In Hindu thought, existence is defined by the continual process of birth, death, and rebirth (cf. Vishnu, Shiva, and Shakti). While Westerners sometimes fetishize the notion of reincarnation, within Hindu culture, samsara is recognized as a profound existential challenge. Instead of perpetuating this cyclical existence, the ultimate goal of Hinduism is to seek liberation from samsara. In India, one transcends our worldly limitations by seeking reunification with the ultimate reality, Brahman.

Karma — meaning action in Sanskrit — is the cosmic relationship of one’s moral actions and their consequences. Given the foundational claim that “all is Brahman,” there is no cosmic judge presiding over one’s actions at the end of it all. In Hinduism, you are Brahman, and your actions are Brahman because all is Brahman. So, your karma operates as a kind of Newtonian system of cause and effect — much like the ripples in a pond after a stone is thrown in. Good deeds produce positive karma in the universe, leading to a favorable state in the next life, while negative actions yield unfavorable consequences. This perspective shifts the focus from seeking the approval of a Divine judge to recognizing the repercussions inherent in one’s choices.

Yet, according to Hinduism, there is a way out of samsara. Moksha is the ultimate goal of Hindu thought. It is the liberation from samsara (ie. the unending cycle of reincarnation). Those who attain moksha achieve a state of spiritual freedom where they are released from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Moksha represents a profound union with the ultimate reality, Brahman — akin to a raindrop merging back into a vast sea. While there are various interpretations and teachings on moksha within Hinduism, the core aspiration is realizing a state of blissful unity with God. This desire for reunion is exemplified in the many stories of Brahman sending His avatars into the world, offering humanity guidance on the path to spiritual liberation.

Optional Video explaining samsara and karma (auto-generated CC).

Hindu Yogas & Margas

So how does one break free? Hindu practice recognizes many paths, led by two kinds of theological practitioners.

A yogi teaches a physical practice toward union (yoga) with Brahman.
A guru teaches a philosophical path (marga) toward moksha,
thus joining with Brahman.

Hindu tradition names three great yogas.

Raja Yoga (Sa. the “Royal Union”) seeks union with Brahman through meditation and mastery of the mind. The goal of Raja Yoga is mental health and a deep sense of inner peace. Hatha Yoga (Sa. the “Union of Force”) pursues that union through body and breath, the postures of the studio yoga now practiced across the West. When an American talks about doing yoga, they generally mean Hatha Yoga. Tantra Yoga (Sa. the “Weaving Union”) turns to the esoteric. White Tantra is a solitary practice focused on self-cultivation. Red Tantra involves intimate partnership with another. Both tantric forms of Hinduism emphasize attenuating oneself to mystical energy (Sanskrit: prana) in an effort to gain transcendence.

There are also three historic margas, or philosophical paths.

The first is Karma Marga (Sa. the “Path of Karma”). This Hindu path focuses on one’s dharma (fulfilling one’s duty), and is bound up with the traditional social order known as the caste system.

The caste system is ancient. The Rig Veda names four broad classes: the Brahmins (priests and scholars), Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), Vaishyas (merchants and farmers), and Shudras (laborers). Over the millennia, those divisions grew more elaborate. Under modern British rule, those social classes were codified in law, with official rules and separate electorates hardening social divisions that had once been more fluid. Modern India’s constitution bans caste discrimination outright, though reactions vary widely today. Some Indians treat caste as a relic of the past, but the majority of Indians still weigh it in questions of marriage and community. The debate remains a live one in the nation’s politics and public life.

The second path arose with the Upanishads. Jnana Marga (Sa. the “Path of Wisdom”) is the way of the ascetic: who renounces marriage, possessions, even his name, for a life of study and meditation. It is a demanding road with few travelers. Buddhism will evolve out of the Jnana Marga tradition — a story we take up in Section 5. And the final, modern path is Bhakti Marga (Sa. the “Path of Devotion”). This is the path most Hindus actually walk. Open across caste and gender as the others are not, bhakti asks not for renunciation or arcane knowledge but for love — devotion to a chosen form of God (ie. avatar).

Puja & Pilgrimage

For most Hindus, acts of devotion (ie. the Bhakti Marga) are daily and concrete. At home, puja (Sa. worship) is offered to the family’s chosen avatar of God: a small altar bears an image of an avatar (eg. Ganesh, Rama, Krishna, etc.) where the family offers sweets, flowers, and incense, often with simple chants. The auspicious day for worship is a Thursday (cf. Muslim practice on Friday, Jews on Saturday, Christians on Sunday, etc.). Away from home, Hindu pilgrimage draws adherents to sacred rivers and towns. The most important pilgrimage site is the Ganges River, whose waters are holy to Hindu practitioners. On the calendar, there are great Hindu festivals, like Diwali, the festival of lights, and Holi, the festival of color. In this way, Bhakti is not a doctrine to be argued but a devotion to be practiced — in the kitchen, on the riverbank, or in the streets of modern India.

Today, in an Indian city, you might see a jnana yogi meditating in public, deep in his ascetic discipline. You may also see a bhakti commuter drop alms in his bowl on the way to work. Here, the renouncer and the householder feed one another in a spiritual symbiosis unique and thriving in India.

Optional Video explaining how to have a Puja at home (auto-generated CC).

Key Terms for this Lesson: Maya & Samsara · Karma & Moksha · Bhakti Marga

4.3 | Hindu Epics & Modern History

400s-200s BCE | Hindu Epics & Songs

In the 400s BCE, Sanskrit poets composed The Mahabharata, which stands as one of the two greatest epics in the Hindu tradition. Its vast narrative integrates legendary tales, moral puzzles, and reflections on divine intervention. Here, we encounter dramatic accounts of how different families contend with questions of righteousness, destiny, and duty. The text also describes complex rituals and divine manifestations, adding layers to the Hindu understanding of God’s presence in the world. With a total length exceeding the Bible, the Iliad, and the Odyssey combined, The Mahabharata’s richness covers many facets of dharma and human struggle.

There are two forces: fate and human effort — all men depend on and are bound by these. There is nothing else. The Mahabharata

Optional Video: An explanation of the Mahabharata (auto-generated CC).

The most famous passage of the Mahabharata is the Bhagavad Gita, literally the “Song of the Lord.” On the eve of battle, the warrior prince Arjuna freezes: the enemy ranks are full of his own family, and he cannot bring himself to fight. His charioteer is the avatar Krishna, and the dialogue that follows is among the most beloved in world literature. Krishna’s counsel is subtle: do your duty, but without attachment to its fruits. Act rightly, and let go of your expectations.

It was from Krishna’s revelation of his own cosmic, terrible majesty that the twentieth century borrowed its most haunting line. Watching the first atomic bomb detonate, the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer recalled the Gita:

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Optional Video: An explanation of the Bhagavad Gita (auto-generated CC).

The second epic, the Ramayana, dates to the 200s BCE and is twice the length of the New Testament. It follows Prince Rama and his devoted wife, Sita, through exile and trial, and it holds up the ideals of loyalty, courage, and just kingship. Rama is the model ruler, even-handed with prince and peasant alike, while his wife Sita is the model of faithfulness. Retold for centuries in dance, drama, and theater, the Ramayana has carried Hindu identity across the whole of the Indian diaspora.

Mughal India

These epics fed a popular movement in India.
During the medieval period, a wave of heartfelt devotion (the Bhakti Marga we met in Sec. 4.2) swept across Hindu India, embracing the avatars as living presences who descend to restore cosmic harmony. It did not rise alone. Islam had reached India by the 700s, and Islamic mysticism grew through the Sufi orders — who likewise sought an esoteric union with God. Bhaktis and Sufis alike transcended the established hierarchies of their day through poetry, music, and shared devotion. The Mughal court, at its height, gave that pluralism room to breathe.

The Mughal Empire was founded in 1526, when a Muslim ruler (descended from the line of Genghis Khan) defeated the Hindu ruler of Delhi. Early on, the Mughals valued India’s pluralist religious landscape (Bhakti, Buddhist, Muslim, etc.). Akbar the Great (d. 1605) abolished the jizya (a special tax on non-Muslims), invited scholars of every faith to debate at his court, and appointed Hindus to high office. His successor Jahangir (d. 1627) continued these policies, welcoming non-Muslim theologians and supporting the upkeep of Hindu temples. It is no accident that Sikhism (cf. Sec. 4.4) flourished in the Punjab during exactly these years. After Jahangir, however, the empire fragmented into rival kingdoms of divergent temperament: some rulers advanced Hindu practice, and others imposed strict religious regulation.

British India

The Mughal decline opened the door to a new power. The British East India Company (the world’s first corporation) had arrived for trade in 1608, when India was the second most powerful economy on Earth. But as commerce deepened, so did the Company’s political grip over a fragmenting subcontinent. As a matter of practicality, the British let Christian missionaries preach where the Company operated. Before long, corporate and missionary interests moved into alignment and the Christian mission in India became a de facto arm of the Company.

After the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, Britain annexed India as a Crown colony. The missionary enterprise increasingly viewed the native Indian people with an imperial paternalism — the notion that India was Britain’s child in need of proper raising. European soldiers and missionaries would often cast Indians as “heathens,” steeped in superstition and in need of salvation. This attitude persuaded them that their occupation was for India’s own good. Officially, the British government claimed a policy of religious neutrality. Unofficially, missionary schools, charities, and institutions worked to stifle Hindu identity and practice. By 1900, India had fallen from the 2nd largest economy in the world to the 9th. The largest was now the little island nation of Britain. This was the cost of imperialism to India.

And the damage ran deeper than economics. The British introduced separate electorates by religious community and governed by a deliberate policy of “divide and rule,” inflaming Hindu–Muslim tensions rather than easing them. Many Indians, seeking advancement, took on the dress, language, and faith of their rulers (today, there are about 35% more Christians in India than there are Sikhs). At the same time, British Christians founded hospitals and universities that serve India still, and many campaigned for the rights and education of Indian women, including an end to the practice of widow self-immolation (Sanskrit: sati). Like so many political narratives, there isn’t just one side to the story.

Optional Video that explains Britains role in India (auto-generated CC).

By the twentieth century, Indians were increasingly demanding self-rule with an Indian head of state. Their conviction was that Indian problems deserved Indian solutions. In 1947, after a largely peaceful independence movement led by Mahatma Gandhi, India became a sovereign nation. But independence came at a price: the Muslim-majority northwest broke away to form its own state: the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, in a Partition that redrew the map of the Punjab and left, to this day, one of the most tense borders in the world.

Key Terms for this Lesson: The Bhagavad Gita

4.4 | The Sikh Tradition

The Punjab and Guru Nanak

Returning now to the Punjab, in the northwest of the subcontinent, we see five Himalayan rivers water a fertile, hard-fought plain.
The Persian panj-ab literally means five waters. Today, this area marks the border between Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan.

By the 1000s, Islam (then over 300 years old) had taken firm root in the Punjab. Some Punjabis took pride in their centuries of Islamic heritage, while others resented what they saw as a foreign Arab and Persianate culture. The Punjab, in short, was never one monolithic story or people. Some have seen it as rightfully Muslim land, others as part of traditional Hindu India — and today there are politically separate Indian and Pakistani Punjabs in two different countries.

But there was once a vision of a united Punjabi culture.

That vision belonged to a 15th-century guru (Sa. teacher) named Guru Nanak, who found religious truth in both Hindu and Islamic thought. Around 1499 he began to teach a new, pluralistic path called Sikhism (Sa. “one who learns”). Nanak’s teaching emphasized the oneness of God and the equality of all human beings, regardless of caste. His message drew in many who were weary of the us-versus-them divisions that had long marked Punjabi life. From Hindu tradition Nanak kept karma and reincarnation, but he rejected its priests, its idols, and its asceticism. From Islam he took belief in one Almighty God, and where Islamic custom forbade alcohol he agreed. But where it prescribed fasting and pilgrimage to Mecca he did not — for if God is everywhere and equally so, then no single place or ritual can hold a monopoly on the divine.

So what does this revelation ask of its followers? Nanak’s answer was strikingly practical. Sikhs still summarize it as three pillars. Naam japna: keep God in constant remembrance (Sikhs call God Waheguru meaning “Wonderful Teacher”), and their scripture opens with the declaration Ik Onkar, “There is one God.” Kirat karni: earn your living honestly, by your own labor; the tradition honors farmers and laborers (eschewing ascetics who don’t work). And, Vand chakna: share what you earn with those in need. Prayer, work, and generosity. A faith built not on withdrawal from the world but on disciplined engagement with it.

Today, about 25 million people identify as Sikhs, roughly the same population as Texas. It is the 9th largest religion in the world.

Optional Video: Religion Scholars explain Sikhism (auto-generated CC).

The Gurus & the Khalsa

Nanak was the first of ten Sikh gurus. His teaching was passed down in a line of successors. The fifth teacher, Guru Arjan, gathered the community’s sacred writings into a single scripture (and died in Mughal custody in 1606). The tenth, Guru Gobind Singh, took up leadership after his own father, Guru Tegh Bahadur, was executed in 1675, and it was he who would remake the community entirely. When Gobind Singh died, the line of human Gurus closed: authority passed to the scripture itself, the Guru Granth Sahib, which Sikhs honor as their final and permanent Guru.

The Guru Granth Sahib is unlike any other scripture this course will meet. It is almost entirely poetry: around 1,430 pages of hymns composed to be sung, arranged by their musical settings. And alongside the Gurus’ own compositions stand hymns by Hindu devotional poets and Muslim Sufis. To Sikhs this is not borrowing; it arises from their founding conviction that truth belongs to God alone, and may be spoken by anyone. Treated as a living Guru, the scripture is ceremonially opened each morning, rests beneath a canopy, and holds the seat of honor in every Sikh gathering.

In 1699, Guru Gobind Singh founded the Khalsa, the community of initiated Sikhs. Those who joined took new shared surnames, Singh (“lion”) for men and Kaur (“princess”) for women, dissolving the old caste surnames in a single stroke of equality. The Khalsa also took on outward marks of commitment. Two of them are the reason Sikhs are the most visible religious minority in America: uncut hair, kept beneath a turban (called a kesh), and the kirpan, a small ceremonial sword. These belong to a set of five articles of the faith, worn together and known collectively as the Five Ks.

The five K articles each carry a meaning. Kesh, the uncut hair, accepts the body as God made it. The kangha, a small wooden comb, keeps that hair ordered (ie. discipline, not neglect). The kara, a steel bracelet, circles the wrist the way the tradition pictures God: one unbroken ring, without beginning or end, worn on the hand that acts. The kachera, simple cotton breeches, signify self-restraint and readiness. And the kirpan obliges its bearer to defend the weak; a sword carried not to threaten but to protect. Worn together, the Five Ks make the commitment visible, daily, and shared.

Gurdwara Life

The heart of Sikh practice is the gurdwara, the house of worship that is also the home of the Guru Granth Sahib. Worshippers cover their heads and remove their shoes before entering. Inside, the community sings hymns drawn from the scripture. But the gurdwara’s most striking feature sits off to one side, in the kitchen. Every gurdwara runs a langar: a free communal meal, cooked and served by volunteers, open to anyone at all, of any faith, any background, any caste, who sits together on the floor as equals to eat. This is not a charity program bolted onto the religion; it is the religion. The langar takes Nanak’s founding insight — the oneness of God, and the equality of all people — and makes it something that feeds all people.

Sikhs began arriving in the United States from the Punjab in the early 1900s, working in America’s fields and mills. In 1912, they built the country’s first gurdwara in Stockton, California. Today, there are roughly half a million American Sikhs. Sadly, their visibility has also made them targets of mistaken identity. Their turbans are sometimes read as a mark of threat. On the morning of August 5, 2012, that danger turned lethal: a gunman entered the gurdwaraLinks to an external site. in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and opened fire, killing six worshippers; a seventh later died of his wounds. The congregation had been preparing langar when the shooting began. In the days that followed, the community reopened the building, resumed the langar, and fed the very neighbors and first responders who had come in the aftermath.

Optional Video: Sikh officer serving in the US military (auto-generated CC).

Key Terms for this Lesson: Sikhism · The Khalsa

Recommended Sources

Gavin Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism
Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History
Brian Pennington, Was Hinduism Invented?
The Bhagavad Gita, trans. Laurie L. Patton
Eleanor Nesbitt, Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction

Last Section: Diné • The Navajo Tradition
This Section: Hinduism & Sikhism
Next Section: Buddhism

Pictured: Students at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, PA (ca. 1900)

Key Terms for this Section
Diné · Diné Bikéyah · Hocho/Hozho · Walking in Beauty · The Blessingway
The Old Paper · The Long Walk · Native American Church

3.1 | The People & the Land

The Diné

The American Indian nation known in English as the Navajo resides in the southwestern region of the United States. With over 300,000 members, two-thirds of whom live in Arizona and New Mexico, the Navajo are the second largest American Indian nation in North America (the Cherokee are the largest) and maintain the largest contiguous reservation of land. Although this course will primarily use the term “Navajo,” this people self-identifies as the Diné, meaning “the People” in their own language. Diné is a complex philosophical term, built from the Navajo words for “up” and “down” — an interplay between the grounded and the transcendent — a people rooted in the earth even as they reach toward higher goals and spiritual insights.

As to “religion,” many Navajo view the Western concept as too narrow to capture the full reality of their way of life. Ceremonies, social customs, and daily activities are woven into one integrated whole: farming, weaving, and caring for livestock may all carry spiritual dimensions, with no separate “religious sphere” cordoned off from the rest of life. When some Navajo leaders speak of a “Navajo Religion” in official or legal contexts, they do so as an external label, adopted to fit the categories of U.S. law.

Note: as a non-proselytizing community, their ceremonies, ritual objects, and totems are intended solely for the Navajo community and are not casually shared with outsiders.

Optional Video: Cultural video explaining Navajoland (auto-generated CC).

A Place-Based Tradition

Navajo traditions are profoundly tied to the land.

In their sacred oral traditions, the Navajo trace the origin of all humanity to their particular homeland, known in the Navajo language as Diné Bikéyah (The Land of the People). In English, this area is frequently called Navajoland or the Navajo Nation. This land includes four sacred mountains, which Navajo tradition treats as alive — Blanca to the east, Mount Taylor to the south, the San Francisco Peaks to the west, and Mount Hesperus to the north.

In Navajo culture, these mountains are revered as powerful totems that guide and protect.

Like other significant religious sites around the world (eg. the Western Wall in Jerusalem, St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, or the Ka’ba in Mecca) these mountains are considered sacred. To treat these peaks as ordinary, profane features of the landscape is viewed by the Navajo as taboo. (cf. Sec. 1’s totem and taboo.) This reverence is tied to the mountains serving as sources of jish — medicine bundles containing sacred earth, used in Navajo ceremonies and symbolizing the spiritual power believed to flow from these places.

The number four is a powerful Navajo totem. There are four sacred mountains, four sacred colors (black, white, yellow, and blue/turquoise), four sacred plants (corn, beans, squash, and tobacco), and four cardinal directions — elements that anchor the Navajo sense of place and ritual and recur throughout Navajo storytelling, art, and ceremonial life.

Because the tradition is place-based, being on or near Diné Bikéyah is more than physical geography: it means participating in a cosmic order where each mountain, color, and plant has its own spirit or significance. The cultural identity of the Navajo cannot be easily separated from the land they inhabit.

In terms of historical context, anthropologists link the Navajo language to a broader linguistic family extending from present-day Alaska through western Canada into the Southwest. The Diné likely began migrating from the north some 500 to 900 years ago. In their new homeland they learned from neighbors like the Pueblo — adopting techniques for farming, building, and weaving — while developing their own unique identity and customs. Before contact with early modern Europe, the Diné enjoyed a largely pastoral life: herding, hunting, and gathering, sustained by close ties to the land. As such, they had little need for the administrative writing of centralized empires — a fact that will shape in Lesson 3.3, when we ask why the Diné have no written scripture.

Spanish Contact, 1492–1680

European contact with the Americas began in 1492 with Christopher Columbus, whose arrival is often described as a discovery, though American indigenous people largely experienced it as a plague of illness, followed by subjugation. In the 1500s, the head of the Roman Catholic Church was Rodrigo Borgia (styled as Pope Alexander VI), who commanded the monarchs under his sway to conquer and colonize lands overseas, to bring the other side of the world under Spanish and Portuguese authority. Following these directives, Spain led the earliest imperial efforts westward, establishing colonies and claiming resources in what came to be called the “New World.”

By the late 1500s, the Spanish Empire had turned its attention to an area they named Nuevo México. When the Franciscan missionaries arrived, they encouraged (and in many cases coerced) indigenous peoples to adopt Christianity and abandon their longstanding cultural heritage. Among the indigenous nations affected were the Navajo, who took up arms in their resistance to forced assimilation. Some Navajo were enslaved or killed, and their cultural practices were largely suppressed.

Census records show that in 1600, around 80,000 indigenous people lived in the New Mexico region.
By 1680, only 17,000 remained.

In that year, several indigenous communities including the Navajo united in what became known as the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. This uprising expelled the Spanish from the region, however briefly. The 1680 Revolt is referred to by contemporary Navajo as the “first American Revolution.” However, Spanish forces returned about twelve years later with increased military strength and reclaimed control over the region. When Mexico later won its independence from Spain, the Mexican government inherited oversight of the Navajo but offered little to improve their conditions. By around 1820, the Navajo population had been reduced again to approximately 10,000. Following the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848, the United States assumed legal rights to New Mexico, a shift that brought further challenges for the Navajo.

Through all of it, the land stayed at the center of Diné life.
What holds life in balance on Navajoland is the next lesson’s question.