Monotheistic Religion

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• This is the guy that christianity is based on, this guy Jesus. Jesus was born a Jewish, where he was later baptised and shown that he was the messiah. But before that story, lets talk about this story. So before all that Judea was being ruled by the romans, then this guy called Herod came along, where he is a roman that practices Judaism, he helped by rebuilding the temple of Solomon. They still didn't trust him though, and eventually Herod died and the jews got angry. The romans sent soldiers and seized land from the Jews. Now during Herod's reign is when Jesus was born and the whole baptist thing. I'm only going to list out important events here, so first is when he created a huge mess in the temple because they are selling things in there and he thinks that that is not right. Next is when this event called "the last supper" came, which is right before Judas betray him and get him captured which lead to the crucifixion. Then he was brought back to life and the christian followers thinks that he is the son of god, then his followers just flourished.

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• Yes christianity had a rocky start, first there were basically no followers as it is a relatively new religion. Then there was more followers along the way. First the romans weren't exactly annoyed about the Christianity god, but then the christians refused to worship the roman god AND would not admit that the roman emperor a god. Eventually they gained a lot of followers and the Romans got scared and made christianity illegal, and whoever still wanted to practice christianity was going to be executed in weird ways i.e. crucified, burned, bitten by animals. That backfired lol, the christians was admired by how courageously they faced death, like how they sang hymns when being killed by animals, so a lot of people got into the religion, even the slaves thought that they can be more happy if they became christians. Then a lot of people became christians, A LOT OF PEOPLE. Later on this roman emperor called Constantine adopted the religion of christianity and made it legal, at last christianity became the main religion of Rome.

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• Luke, Mathew John and Mark is four of Jesus's disciples that wrote the 4 gospels, the gospels are accounts of Jesus's life, it also includes some teaching with the events of his life.

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• The teachings of the christian bible/new testament is basically a reformed Judaism teaching, the only major difference is that it is more heavily emphasize on showing mercy and loving others. One of the examples is the Parable(its fables that Jesus tells to teach his teachings) where its about a man who got robbed, then one of his neighbors walked over and walked away, then a samartarian guy walked over and helped him and took care of him, and the moral of the story is to be show mercy to everyone. 

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• There is a thing called missionary in Christianity which Judaism doesn't have. its where there is people trying to convert others to a certain religion. The reason Judaism doesn't have missionary is because people who are Jews are descendants of Abraham, so anyone who is not originally Jewish would not be considered a Jewish since they wouldn't be Abraham's descendant. Christianity however is not bound by that rule, so there are people trying to convert religions. A famous missionary is Paul, who was first trying to kill all christians, then he saw Jesus himself and started to become a missionary.

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• Even though after a while Christians started wearing the cross as a sacred object, but really its just a gimmick, the cross is really just something that a lot of christians have been crucified but since Jesus is the messiah, when he was crucified, it was a huge thing. So in conclusion there isn't really anything important about the cross.

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• Abraham is the father of the Jews, all Jewish followers considers Abraham as one of their ancestors. Abraham's original name was Abram, where one day god visited Abram and told him to leave his county and go to Canaan, if he does so god would make Abram the father of a great nation. Next god made another deal or covenant with Abram where he promised if Abram's descendants devoted themselves to god, god would protect and favor his descendants, by this god also gave Abram a new name: Abraham, to mark this covenant. God later gave him one last test, where Abraham would have to sacrifice his son Issac to prove his devotion and allegiance to god, which he almost did until god send an angel to tell Abraham that he has proved his allegiance and that god would "make your descendants as many as the stars of heaven". God kept his promise as the Jews or Hebrews(at that time) increased to 12 tribes which was the descendants of Jacob or Israel. Abraham introduced the idea of monotheism which helped form Judaism and made Canaan the promised land for the Jewish people.

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• They said that he is the greatest leader of the Hebrews, he is the prophet Moses. Moses was the person who freed the enslaved Hebrews from Egypt and gave them the 10 commandments which is rules from god to live by. The event that made him so famous was "The Exodus" which was followed by his 10 plagues. It was about 1250 BCE when most Hebrews was living in Egypt, at first the pharaoh was fine with it until they became more and more powerful, the pharaoh feared that the Hebrews would overthrow him, the pharaoh enslaved all of them. Apparently Moses heard the cries of the Jewish people and god told Moses to go free them, the pharaoh did not agree at first until Moses called on the 10 plagues which included turning rivers red and killing first born children.  Stories said that he split the red sea by lifting his rod and led the jewish people over. He is also famous for the 10 commandments, which is 10 rules for the Jewish people to live by. He set the bar for the leadership things for the Jewish people.

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• David is the man who basically united the Jewish kingdom. His reign jumpstarted when he went into battle fearlessly against the giant goliath with only a slingshot, then he threw one rock and defeated Goliath. God later rewarded David by making him king, during his reign he defeated a lot of formidable enemies, and united the Jewish. He also introduced Jerusalem as the capital and holy city and the ark of covenant, which is to keep the 10 commandments in. 

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• Solomon didn't really do anything, he just kind of became king and built a great temple in Jerusalem to house the ark of covenant, and thats really it.

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• The torah is basically stories and the history of Judaism in a scroll form. First the torah was passed down by telling them, later it was written down. Historians uses the torah to learn about the ancient hebrew history.

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• The Jewish diaspora was when the Jews was scattered around the roman empire because the romans destroyed Jerusalem and its temple. After a while the Jews was banned from practicing Judaism so they revolted against the romans. In 168BCE they pushed the greeks out of jerusalem and reclaimed their holy city

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• The Jewish teachings are really some simple moral teachings, like one of them are about showing mercy "love your neighbors as yourself". Most teachings are rooted from the 10 commandments which include things like: "don't murder" or "don't steal". They also believe in their sense of justice where they have a sense of right and wrong. The last thing is the importance of study, where there are rabbis who are religious teachers that tell stories from the torah, until they decided to just write it down and pass it down.