ON WHICH AXIS OF THE DIVINE UNITY DOES THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS SUBSIST AS A SCHOLARLY FIELD?

Abstract

The History of Religions is defined as “a religious science that analyses all religions, religious movements, sects and orders with their history, doctrines, sacred book/texts, rituals, sanctuaries, clergies, hierarchies, sufferers, communities through objective methods within the process beginning with Adam as the first prophet/human being up to now”. When the semantic field of the terms and themes, history, clergy, belief models, the distortion of the sacred books of the polytheist Arab and the pagan Egyptian/Pharoah religions as well as Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Mandean belief, Hanīfs, the People of the Book, the prophets Moses, Jesus, Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Them), sacrifice, and myths are men-tioned in Qur’an as the last revealed Book being the principal source for the field themes, they constitute also the field research for the History of Religions along with their comparative aspects. Although Christianity, which is explained in details in Holy Qur’an, is the most populous religion in the world unto which the most extensive analysis was made in addition to being the most effective one in view of its political and military history with a view to theology and Crusades in the field of the History of Religions, Judaism is another religion along similar lines despite its few adherents. Another aspect that Christianity gives rise to intensive researches in this field is its phenomenological characteristic belonging to this religion as a leading subject in the colonial and missionary activities of the developed European countries as well as the efforts therewith pertaining to investigate its religious movements, which indicate the importance of the History of Religions as a whole.