Holy Land: The Rise of Three Faiths By National Geographic, adapted by Newsela staff on 09.26.17 Word Count 1,667 Level 1190L The Old City of Jerusalem contains some of the holiest sites in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Temple Mount compound, including the Western Wall, sacred to Judaism, and the Dome of the Rock, a seventh-century Islamic shrine with a gold dome, are seen here. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a Christian pilgrimage site, is also located in Jerusalem's Old City. Photo by: Wikimedia. This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 1 The religions of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad are the three main ancient monotheistic faiths. Their visions and cultures often conflict, sometimes violently. Yet they are connected by history and a shared reverence for the Holy Land, and each traces its origins to a shared ancient patriarch who is the basis of the sacred literature of all three religions. This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 2 That founding father was Abram, a shepherd and the son of an idol maker. According to all three religions, he packed his tents and his family and left his ancestral homeland in upper Mesopotamia, in obedience to the command of God. Abram and his wife, Sarai, set out for the land of Canaan. There, according to the Hebrew Scriptures, God first appeared to Abram and promised that his descendants would inherit the land around him. Out of gratitude, Abram erected an altar — an act of veneration he may have learned from his forebears' worship of Nanna, the great moon god of Ur, and his son Utu, the sun god. Sarai remained childless and in despair, she offered Abram her handmaid, Hagar, who bore him a son. They named him Ishmael, whom, according to Islamic tradition, became the father of the Arab people. According to the Jewish faith, God appeared to Abram again, saying the promise would be fulfilled through a son to be born to Sarai. God changed Abram's name to Abraham, which means father of many nations, and Sarai's to Sarah, meaning "princess," and a year later, Sarah gave birth to Isaac. As a test of Abraham's faith, God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac but stopped him at the last moment. God's message to Moses God's covenant with Abraham was passed to Isaac and to his son, Jacob, whose 12 sons would found the 12 tribes of Israel. Seeking refuge from famine, Jacob and his clan migrated to Egypt, where they were enslaved by the pharaoh after a few generations. A young Hebrew slave named Moses was adopted into the pharaoh's household and became a prince of Egypt before he killed a guard and fled to the wilderness. There God called to Moses from a burning bush and told him to lead his people to the Promised Land. Moses led his people out of Egypt and into the Sinai, where he received the Ten Commandments and the other laws of the Torah. After wandering for 40 years, the Israelites crossed the Jordan River into the land God had promised to their fathers. Roughly 300 years later, the independent-minded Israelite tribes began to unite, according to the Bible. The reigns of King David and his son Solomon marked the glory years of ancient Israel, roughly 1000 B.C. to 930 B.C. During Solomon's reign, vast wealth poured into the kingdom, funding massive construction projects. The grandest of Solomon's building was the temple in Jerusalem that became the focal point of the Israelite religion. The temple was built on Mount Moriah — the site where Abraham was said to have offered Isaac to God. When Solomon's reign ended, the nation descended into religious and political turmoil and split into rival northern and southern kingdoms. Israel, the northern kingdom, came to an end with an Assyrian conquest in 720 B.C. This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 3 The Romans conquer the Holy Land The southern kingdom, Judah, survived until the Babylonian king Nebuchadrezzar sacked Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and carried the people into captivity. It was a period that saw the rise of prophets — men of God who chastised the people for their faithlessness and who warned of hardships that would befall unless they repented. After the Persians overthrew the Babylonians in 539 B.C., many Jews returned home. Their religious leaders set about instituting reforms that emphasized the role of the Torah in Jewish life and rooted out cultural influences that had encroached on Jewish traditions during captivity. From the middle of the fourth century B.C. onward, the Holy Land came under the control of a succession of military rulers. The Romans conquered it in 63 B.C. and held it for centuries. In A.D. 66, Jewish groups revolted against the Roman rulers in Jerusalem, which destroyed both the city and the Second Temple. Jerusalem was in ruins and the Jews were scattered. It was against this backdrop that a charismatic young rabbi began proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand. The young rabbi's name was Jesus of Nazareth. He was said to be a gifted teacher and healer and able to raise people from the dead. Soon, wherever he went, crowds gathered to hear his teachings and to witness his amazing deeds. The resurrection of Jesus Christ Some were convinced he was God's "anointed one," while others walked away disappointed — he was not at all what they imagined Israel's Messiah would be. Love was the greatest of all the biblical commandments, said Jesus, and he spoke reassuringly to the poor, the powerless and the peacemakers. He challenged Jewish law and its dietary restrictions, and in the process, he was hated by many. Less than three years later, Jesus was arrested in Jerusalem on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover by authorities and executed on a Roman cross. His small band of disciples scattered, but as the New Testament describes it, their faith was restored when they encountered the resurrected Christ a few weeks later. Suddenly, they began preaching boldly in the streets of Jerusalem. Within a few years their message began creating turmoil within Judaism, as religious leaders rejected their assertion that the crucified Jesus was the Messiah. Those who proclaimed it were shouted down and driven out as heretics. Yet the preachers would not be silenced, and the ranks of believers continued to grow. Despite the growing divisions, most early believers remained observant Jews. By the time of the violent Jewish revolt, followers of Jesus had dispersed to Syria and beyond. The movement was changing from a Jewish sect to a separate and distinct religion. This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 4 Constantine converted to Christianity The seeds of that transformation were sown by the missionary work of the Apostle Paul, who started preaching a universal message that salvation through Jesus Christ was available to all. Over the next two decades Paul and others carried that message to Rome and through the ancient world. Communities of Christianoi, or Christ's people, as they became known, began to appear in cities all across the eastern Mediterranean. They faced periods of violent persecution under Roman emperors for refusing to worship the Roman gods, and many Christians, including Paul, were martyred. The hostile climate changed dramatically early around A.D. 300, when the emperor Constantine outlawed harassment of Christians, eventually becoming a convert himself. Christianity became the official religion of Rome. What had begun as a grassroots movement of messianic Jewish peasants in the Galilee was on its way to becoming a world religion and dominant cultural force. The rise of Islam in the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity came unexpectedly in the middle of the seventh century. It was a period of growing discord within Christianity, which by then had divided into competing sects. The Byzantine Empire, which had grown out of Constantine's melding of church and state, found itself besieged both by foreign invaders and internal dissension. It had fought its regional nemesis, the Persians, to a stalemate. With communities of Jews and Christians and pagan clans scattered across the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East, conditions were ripe for a new unifying vision to arise and fill the void. Prophet Muhammad's vision In A.D. 610, the man who came to be known as the Prophet Muhammad had a vision of the angel Gabriel announcing that he was to be the "messenger of God." Over the next 22 years the messages Muhammad received — dictated in Arabic, verse by verse — would become the Koran, the sacred scripture of Islam. Muhammad had grown up in Mecca, an important commercial city that was also a center of polytheistic paganism, where people worshiped patron gods and goddesses. Included in their pantheon was one they called Allah, the High God, who many believed was the deity worshiped by Christians and Jews. Like the first Christians, Muhammad and his early followers did not at first see themselves as starting a new religion. They believed that God had spoken through other prophets — from Abraham and Moses to David, Solomon and Jesus. However, their revelations had become This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 5 corrupted over time, and Muhammad had been sent to restore them. When Christians and Jews failed to embrace Muhammad's teachings, his followers came to view Islam as a separate and superior faith.