Testament a similar distinction between murdering and killing is implied as well – the argument being that Jews also believed it was occasionally necessary to kill for purposes of self defense and tribal preservation.
With that in mind perhaps history is less a function of time and place than of mind. The Crusades, the current conflict in the Middle East, the war on terror merely a series of plays in the theater of life, staged not by the actors, as Shakespeare maintained, but by a calcium, protein, myelin, water and information containing vessel known as the human brain, during times when the discriminatory aspect of mind took center stage.
A Thousand Years Later…
While the conflict among Christians, Jews and Moslems has continued in modern times we also have an increasingly contentious dispute between proponents of evolution and people of faith. Once again, the question could be asked as to whether this is a real or anthropocentric distinction, and whether, as with The Old and New Testaments and the Qur’an, the similarities outweigh the differences.
I would like to suggest such a possibility, and do so by drawing comparisons between the Decalogue, Al-Israa and the theory of natural selection.
One integrative idea is that the biological mandate revolving around the survival of both the individual and the group, seems to be in agreement with the laws inherent in these religious texts. In order to understand how merely requires a narrowing down and re-categorizating of the commandments into two main bio-moral laws. One espousing altruistic (social, survival enhancing) behaviors or restraints, the other devoted to creating a hierarchical,