Comparative Religion Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Comparative Religion - Essay Example A history of Judaism from the viewpoint of the phenomenology of religion has yet to be written. The ways in which classic patterns of myth, symbol, and archetype survive the great transformations wrought by biblical religion and reappear, mutatis mutandis, in rabbinic and later Judaism are yet to be fully traced. Judaism closely interlinked with Sufism, early Muslim religious trend. (Neusner Jacob, 3-10) Sufism is based on a revelation that is not for esoterists only, it is necessarily linked with an exoterism together with which it forms a religion. That religion, like Buddhism and Christianity and unlike Hinduism and Judaism, is a world religion. But unlike the other two world religions, Islam is based, like Judaism, on a revealed message rather than on the messenger himself. That message is, moreover, the last revelation of this cycle of time, which means that its inner aspect, in addition to the universality that every esoterism possesses by its very nature. (Annamarie Schimmel, 177-178) The connection between pronouncing the name of God and hitbodedut, in the sense of seclusion in a special place, is already present in Sufism. The similarity of Rabbi Abraham Abulafia's approach to this subject to the Sufi system is well known, and one need not assume that this is mere chance.