The god of Islam is the Satan, and that is simple to see from the actual events surrounding Mohamed. The revelations supposedly from God allowing him to do things which we would not considered very kosher were clearly not coming from the Creator, but from Satan. And it is not news that Satan comes to people and makes them think they are getting revelation from the Creator.
Christianity is not idolatry
We have the original defense of the Trinity from Boethius. Later people tried to defend it by means of Plato and Plotinus. And after about a thousand years they gave up on that, and went to Aristotle.
(The Protestant way of defending this is to ignore the question.) So we have basically two kinds of defense. The Neo Platonic way is simple. It is the same as what we call sepherot. The Aristotelian [Aquinas] way is also rather straightforward-- aspects or modes of God. Whether any of these defenses works is not the issue. But what is the issue is the fact that they believe they are worshiping the God of Israel, the Creator. [This site http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/12/incarnation-approached-subjectively-the-mystical-birth-of-god-in-the-soul.html seems to have a Martin Buber kind of approach. In any case, Catholics nowadays try to defend it by means of Aristotle, because the Platonic approach had too many problems. So Aquinas went over to Aristotle and that is how things have been since then. See the blog of Edward Feser. ]
As we see in Abyee Sanhedrin 62 that one who bows to a house of idols, but thinks it is a synagogue is not idolatry because his heart is towards heaven.
So in any case it is not idolatry. And that is that. So Merry Christmas and good will unto men, and peace on Earth.
This is not like the Rambam. However it is not a principle of faith that the Rambam can never be wrong. The Rambam can be wrong, but we believe he is 99% of the time not wrong. But in a least four cases I know he is wrong. One is the mouse that is half dirt and half alive. Spontaneous generation. (Look at that Halacha and you will see he means literal spontaneous generation, not evolution.)
The Menorah we know was like Rashi. The reason the rings were invented was that Venus gets brighter and dimmer and that could not be explained by the spheres--contrary to the Guide. And in Pirkei Avot there is one place where the Rambam explains a Mishna based on a mistaken text in Onkles.
So while in actual decisions based on the Gemara it is certain he could not make a mistake. But that is because that was his forte. But in other areas he was not infallible. (And according to the Rambam the authority in halacha is the Oral Law, not the Rambam. That we see by his order of decision making concerning a beit din or a judge that makes a mistake. The first thing is that any decision not like דינים המפורשים בש''ס (things stated openly in the Talmud) are simply thrown out of court without a second's thought.)
Appendix:
1) Not that it has anything to do with the issue of this blog but still I think in the background people wonder what the Torah has to say about Jesus? The hagadah in Sanhedrin did come up recently in my studies. I just happened to be there in Sanhedrin. And I think on and off I have seen things on this subject but never put them in my blog because it did not seem relevant to any Jewish audience.
So I forgot most of what I saw.
Now let me make clear even if Jesus would be everything Christians would say, it would not mean we could worship him or any human being or pray to him or even to praise him.
That being said let me at least mention that the Jesus mentioned in the Talmud is not Jesus son of Miriam because we have a good idea of the time period Jesus lived in. We know when Peter was crucified and the other disciples also. We even know when the brother of Jesus was killed. All these events were right around the time of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The Jesus the Talmud refers to it says openly was a disciple of Yehoshua ben Prachia who lived at towards the beginning of the Second Temple period. [see Pirkei Avot] The minimum separation in time here is two hundred years.
They can't be the same person.
Besides that I have seen few positive references. One from Isaac Luria. That was in those days I was learning Kabalah. So I might be forgetting exactly where I saw it. I think it was in the book of Chaim Vital on the Torah at the end of the book of Genesis. Plus it is well known the very positive things that The mystic Avraham Abulafia had to say about this subject. Professor Moshe Idel brings him in several places. Plus there is Yaakov Emden. And that is that. All these people clearly thought very highly of Jesus. But no one thinks it is proper to pray to him or any human being. And that is why this issue is so charged with emotion. This is because some people think if Jesus was as great as they say we should all worship him. But that is wrong. We only should worship God alone, and great people and even great tzadikim we should respect and learn from.
Christianity is not idolatry
We have the original defense of the Trinity from Boethius. Later people tried to defend it by means of Plato and Plotinus. And after about a thousand years they gave up on that, and went to Aristotle.
(The Protestant way of defending this is to ignore the question.) So we have basically two kinds of defense. The Neo Platonic way is simple. It is the same as what we call sepherot. The Aristotelian [Aquinas] way is also rather straightforward-- aspects or modes of God. Whether any of these defenses works is not the issue. But what is the issue is the fact that they believe they are worshiping the God of Israel, the Creator. [This site http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/12/incarnation-approached-subjectively-the-mystical-birth-of-god-in-the-soul.html seems to have a Martin Buber kind of approach. In any case, Catholics nowadays try to defend it by means of Aristotle, because the Platonic approach had too many problems. So Aquinas went over to Aristotle and that is how things have been since then. See the blog of Edward Feser. ]
As we see in Abyee Sanhedrin 62 that one who bows to a house of idols, but thinks it is a synagogue is not idolatry because his heart is towards heaven.
So in any case it is not idolatry. And that is that. So Merry Christmas and good will unto men, and peace on Earth.
This is not like the Rambam. However it is not a principle of faith that the Rambam can never be wrong. The Rambam can be wrong, but we believe he is 99% of the time not wrong. But in a least four cases I know he is wrong. One is the mouse that is half dirt and half alive. Spontaneous generation. (Look at that Halacha and you will see he means literal spontaneous generation, not evolution.)
The Menorah we know was like Rashi. The reason the rings were invented was that Venus gets brighter and dimmer and that could not be explained by the spheres--contrary to the Guide. And in Pirkei Avot there is one place where the Rambam explains a Mishna based on a mistaken text in Onkles.
So while in actual decisions based on the Gemara it is certain he could not make a mistake. But that is because that was his forte. But in other areas he was not infallible. (And according to the Rambam the authority in halacha is the Oral Law, not the Rambam. That we see by his order of decision making concerning a beit din or a judge that makes a mistake. The first thing is that any decision not like דינים המפורשים בש''ס (things stated openly in the Talmud) are simply thrown out of court without a second's thought.)
Appendix:
1) Not that it has anything to do with the issue of this blog but still I think in the background people wonder what the Torah has to say about Jesus? The hagadah in Sanhedrin did come up recently in my studies. I just happened to be there in Sanhedrin. And I think on and off I have seen things on this subject but never put them in my blog because it did not seem relevant to any Jewish audience.
So I forgot most of what I saw.
Now let me make clear even if Jesus would be everything Christians would say, it would not mean we could worship him or any human being or pray to him or even to praise him.
That being said let me at least mention that the Jesus mentioned in the Talmud is not Jesus son of Miriam because we have a good idea of the time period Jesus lived in. We know when Peter was crucified and the other disciples also. We even know when the brother of Jesus was killed. All these events were right around the time of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The Jesus the Talmud refers to it says openly was a disciple of Yehoshua ben Prachia who lived at towards the beginning of the Second Temple period. [see Pirkei Avot] The minimum separation in time here is two hundred years.
They can't be the same person.
Besides that I have seen few positive references. One from Isaac Luria. That was in those days I was learning Kabalah. So I might be forgetting exactly where I saw it. I think it was in the book of Chaim Vital on the Torah at the end of the book of Genesis. Plus it is well known the very positive things that The mystic Avraham Abulafia had to say about this subject. Professor Moshe Idel brings him in several places. Plus there is Yaakov Emden. And that is that. All these people clearly thought very highly of Jesus. But no one thinks it is proper to pray to him or any human being. And that is why this issue is so charged with emotion. This is because some people think if Jesus was as great as they say we should all worship him. But that is wrong. We only should worship God alone, and great people and even great tzadikim we should respect and learn from.
