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One cannot deny that the two religions present important similarities in their teachings, their ideas and their terminology. In view of their kinship, this is not surprising. Close relatives resemble one another. Religions do not appear in a religious or cultural vacuum, in a space free of a historical background. Each and every manifestation of God has taken up the prevailing social conditions, the existing doctrines, trends of thought and terminologies, and has sanctioned them, or thrown new light upon them, or changed, or rejected them. One cannot but agree with Goldziher's opinion: "Religion never confronts us in the form of a world of ideas detached from definite historical conditions; it lives in deeper and higher states and manifests itself in definite forms which differ from one another on account of the varying prevailing social conditions." Christianity, too, is inconceivable without the Jewish Faith. What the Church maintains to be her essential mystery is God's covenant which, in the history of Israel, was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. She feels herself "spiritually linked to the line of Abraham." Jesus is not the only figure to refer everywhere to Moses and the prophets; the apostle of the Gentiles, Paul, who "hellenized" the young Faith of God and implanted in it pagan beliefs derived from former syncretisms, based his whole argument on Jewish scripture. To the whole of ecclesiastical Christianity, which until the middle of the second century had no holy book of its own, the Book of the Jews was above all the decisive written authority. It is therefore astonishing to read what Rosenkranz writes: "Baha'ism is an Islamic movement, not only in its origin but also in its essence. This is proved for example by its concept of God, its belief in prophets, its veneration of the book...; it even shares with Islam, with all the objections which must be raised against it, the claim that it is a rational, scientific, social and anticlerical religion." "The one God it proclaims-- and all the word-plays and thought-plays which the Baha'is make about it cannot disguise this fact-- is the God of Islam: Allah. The Muslim teaching of the Tawhid, of the unity of Allah forms the basis of its concept of God." This peculiar statement reveals a regrettable lack of understanding of religious history and an obvious inability to acknowledge the analogies evident in the history of the Christian Faith. Moreover, it is not clear as to when the Baha'is ever tried to disguise with "word-plays" and "Thought-plays" the fact that the Islamic teaching of the unity of God and along with it the teaching of the equality of rank of His messengers are religious truths which were reaffirmed by Baha'u'llah and stated by him in great detail. They are unalterable constituents of the Baha'i Faith.
(114:2)
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