I think we all understand that there are both messages of peace and violence in each book. My question is specifically focused on magnitude and scope of the difference.
Do the teachings of the Koran advocate, glamorize, encourage the use of violence, significantly more so than the Bible? Or are they both about the same?
Is there a scene in the Koran where the entire population of the earth is destroyed, save for a boatload of animals and one family?
This question doesn’t make sense, because the Bible isn’t a book. It’s a set of books, written at different times by different people and given (historically, by Christians) varying levels of authority and historical credibility.
There’s certainly a lot of violence in the Old Testament to equal or surpass the Quran. In the New Testament, not so much. (And no, the Apocalypse of St. John doesn’t count. God and His angels wreaking havoc on the world is a very different think from encouraging humans to do it ourselves.)
Do natural disasters or acts of God (in this case literally) count as “violence”? In any case, while there are certainly plenty of depictions of violence in the Bible, the OP asked about the message: the extent to which each “advocate, glamorize, encourage the use of violence.”
It’s not a bad question IMHO, but it’s tough to answer because it involves interpretation. (Also, I don’t know nearly enough about the Koran to attempt answering it myself.)
The OP is obviously asking about whether the two books “advocate, glamorize, encourage the use of violence” by followers at the same level, not by the deity character of book.
It’s a good question. I sometimes wonder if the people who justify violence and terrorism via verses from Koran would simply use similarly violent verses from the Bible if they happened to follow that Abrahamic religion instead of the other. If one has significantly more than the other, then perhaps not. I have no idea, and I hope there are some good answers coming in the thread.
According to the historian Philp Jenkins, The Bible wins. OT, of course.
But the thing is, are there any contemporary religious leaders who urge their followers to take that advice today?
This is the important issue. Not what the text says, but how it is used by the leaders who rely on it.
Anytime you try to understand a famous text, you should never just read it word-for-word. You always need additional context.
This is vital…not just for religious documents, but for any text.
Examples:
The American Declaration of Independence declares that “all men are created equal”. Sounds simple, right? But the men who wrote it owned other men as slaves.
Only by reading the document in context, and knowing a couple centuries of history, and seeing * how the document was used*, can we decide whether the document really meant what the words declare.
The Constitution of the USSR , just like the American constitution, had clearly written guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion. But we all know that what life was like under communism.We have to look at how the document was used (in America) or not used (in the USSR), before we can decide whether it really meant what the words declare.
So the OP asks a very simple, black-and-white question---- but one which has no simple, black-and-white answer.
You can copy/paste quotes and words side by side— from the Koran vs the Bible, or from the US vs Soviet constitutions, or from any other famous texts.
But the answer will not come from comparing the words…it comes from comparing how those words are used over the course of history.
“The judge said ‘Monster Island’ was just a name!” “Yes, it’s actually a peninsula!”
I totally disagree. The topic is the topic: “Do the teachings of the Koran advocate, glamorize, encourage the use of violence, significantly more so than the Bible?” For this, we have to stick to what the Koran and the Bible actually say. If one book advocates violence more than the other, then the fact that the followers of the second book choose to act more on the violent teachings of the second book doesn’t change the original fact.
I think I disagree with your disagreement, Czarcasm. The three western holy books (The Torah, The Bible and The Koran) are so completely intertwined with their earlier versions that application and interpretation are a vital part of how they’re conveyed.
So you would read both the US constitution and the USSR constitution as equals?
Sure, you can copy/past the words side-by-side. But that’s a very oversimplified way to answer a question, especially in the GD forum
(from the USSR’s constitution :
Article 50: " citizens of the USSR are guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly, meetings, street processions and demonstrations."
Article 52: "Citizens of the USSR are guaranteed freedom of conscience, that is, the right to profess or not to profess any religion, and to conduct religious worship. )
Just like in America, right? Who needs the First Amendment? Gee, I wish I’d been born in the USSR. The USSR constitution is even more specific than the 1st ammendment–specifying that the government will build public square for demonstrations to be held, etc…)
But doesn’t your interpretation make the OP itself pretty much meaningless?
They question “What do they advocate?” is different from the question “How were they interpreted?”
Or at least I think those are two separate questions.
I don’t think so. The OP asks about the messages in two of the three (though, as I said, separating them is a herculean task). But all three have enormously contradictory passages. It is possible to read each one (I’ve done so) and get completely opposed messages. In such a case it’s up to the reader to make the call.
Well, the Ku Klux Klan advocates a nice, simple idea: separation of the races. No need to ask how they interpret that, right?
Sometimes, you can’t ask a simple question without putting it into wider context.
(True Story: a Chinese diplomat once handed a nicely wrapped gift to a visiting Israeli diplomat. A copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
It was an innocent mistake, by a naive and uneducated Chinese bureaucrat. But it shows how you need historical context to make sense of a text.)
Does anyone disagree with John Mace’s Jenkins reference and conclusion? I’ve read the Bible but not the Quran and so am looking to this thread to help settle the issue, a little anyway.
Also, isn’t the Torah the same as the Pentateuch, and so therefore the Torah is in and part of the Bible’s OT?
What I am trying to get at is this: The title of this thread is Is the Koran significantly more violent than the Bible?, and I was hoping to see comparisons between the two, and not another degradation into Are the followers of the Koran significantly more violent than the followers of the Bible? John Mace gives a link that actually compares the two books in post #7, but no one else refers to it, and no one else even refers to comparing the books in like manner. By the way, that same link goes on to describe the difference in the Koran between jihad , which is legal warfare with the proper rules of engagement, and irjaf, which is illegal terrorism.
I did, just before you posted this.
His reference may be fine…but notice that Jenkin’s conclusion begins with the words :“By the standards of its time…”
That means that you must take historical context into consideration. And I would suggest that you should not only use Jenkin’s definition (“the standards of its time”), but also the standards of our time.
Yes. The Torah is simply the first 5 books of the old testament.