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Beliefs On Life After Death

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Death is an inevitable event, which all people will endure. It is a scary idea but it is a part of our reality as human beings, and we all know this information, but the long-standing question is what happens after the physical falls dead. The three monotheistic religions, which are: Judaism, Christianity and Islam have traditions and scriptures that give scholars some clue to what the afterlife might be like. Among these three religions, there are many similarities in the beliefs and traditions of life after death, but there are also some differences. In this paper, I will discuss those differences and similarities, specifically focusing on the general belief on death, the concept of resurrection, belief on life after death, through each …show more content…

In medieval Judaism there were varying concepts of Heaven and Hell, and the rabbis teaching of the concept of life in Heaven correlates with the Christian concept of the visible presence of God in the afterlife. According to MacGregor, “This rabbinic promise of heaven might be understood simply as the eternal enjoyment of God’s presence, with connotations in some ways similar to the Christian hope of the Beatific Vision” (133). In the more recent form of this religion it is taught through texts that there is a complex process after death where there is interaction between the body and soul. Unlike the Christian belief, in Judaism while there is a separation between the two, the soul remains around the body for sometime post separation. In the Judeo-Christian religion there is also evidence that they believe in life after death, Jaffer points out that scriptures in The Old Testament talks about loved ones being reunited but this reunion doesn’t happen for the wicked ones (7). These examples show how there are some clear referencing points to the similarities amongst the three monotheistic religions on their beliefs of what happens to the body after it physically …show more content…

In Christian traditions after death there are burials with the person in coffins and caskets. In the Muslim tradition the dead is buried with shrouds and have to be positioned facing a certain location, and they are also taught not to speak ill of the dead which is not a similarity observed among the other religions. However, Muslim scholars haven’t came to an agreement that one in the Islamic religion will be reunited with loved ones after death, as the other two traditions has. In the Roman Catholic Church, the seven sacraments must be preformed in order to be accepted by God, which leads to the actual Day of Judgment, in which God decides whether you will be accepted amongst him and his people or be descended into

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