Psychology

Popular Islamic and Christian prophets

Posted on April 21 @ 15:35 by Auke Slotegraaf - filed under Psychology

Currently, two of the most significant religions are Islam and Christianity. The claim is often made that there is a major clash of civilizations between the world of Islam and that of the (predominantly Christian) West.

The sacred texts of these religions - the Qur'aan and the New Testament respectively - frequently mention special holy men, or prophets. The main prophets of Islam are also mentioned in either Jewish or Christian texts.

Since both holy books contain about the same number of words, counting the number of times a prophet is mentioned by name can be taken as a proxy for the importance of that prophet.

An exception to this rule is the occurrence of "Muhammed" in the Qur'aan. Most Muslims view the Qur'aan as the direct revelation of God to Muhammed, his culminating prophet, yet his name appears only four times in the Qur'aan. ("Muhammed" is not found in the New Testament.) A parallel may be noted in that the authors of the four Gospels in the New Testament seldom mention themselves by name.

Two electronic resources are useful for comparing religious texts - http://www.concordance.com and http://www.hti/umich.edu/index-all.html.

Of the 24 most-frequently mentioned prophets in the Qur'aan, only four are not found in the New Testament. The 10 most frequently mentioned prophets in the Qur'aan, in order of popularity, are Moses, Abraham, Noah, Joseph, Isa (Jesus), Lot, Adam, Aaron, Solomon and David. in the New Testament, the sequence is Jesus (Isa), Moses & John the Baptist, Abraham, David, Elijah, Jacob, Isaac, Jonah and Solomon.

Many Muslims identify Jesus (Isa) as the ultimate prophet, with Muhammed as the culminating prophet. Yet, within the Qur'aan, Jesus is ranked fourth, in terms of name counts; Moses would appear to be most famous Islamic prophet.

References

Schumm, W. R. (2003) Psychological Reports, 93, 472-474.

Schumm, W. R. (2003) Psychological Reports, 93, 1291-1294.

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Keywords: Psychology, religion, Christianity, Islam