Why would God choose the Middle East to start Islam, Judaism, Christianity? Or just one of them, if you believe only one is the truth. Out of all other nations, & continents , Asia - China, etc, why M. East?
Why, it's simple, he has a personality disorder.(jk) Maybe he was just so full of ideas, he had to put them all out there.
Dude, first of all your initial premise has some problems. The faith systems from the Middle East seemed to have some legs and staying power. One could easily make the same arguement about India, Hinduism & Buddhism. Why India? The Middle East as the source for western religion does have it's inherent irony in that the people who live in these lands where western religion sprang from can't seem to all get along. Of course a great deal of western thought actually sprang from the Mediterranean regions of the old Greek and Roman worlds.
There is a very direct academic answer to your question. I know I will take flack for this, but Christianity comes directly from Judaism, and Islam is pretty darn similar. They all are based on Mesopotamian (what is now Iraq) and Aryan (what is now Iran) "religions." Even the Brahmins, who founded Hinduism which begat Buddhism, have their roots there. That's why it's called the cradle of civilization. And of course, folks from that area were much better at "spreading" their ideologies than say, the indigenous Americans, Celts, or Africans. They were willing to kill to get their God across. The Greeks and Romans, who constantly pillaged other cultures and absorbed their ideals and iconographies as their own helped to further the idea of a masculine bearded patriarch as god. Even the Greeks' polytheism was overshadowed by that dominating patriarch, Zeus, who does bear a striking resemblance to portrayals of the Christian God. My point is, it was not God's choice to have all the world's dominant religions find their origin in the Middle East. Several thousand years of wars and the rise and fall of ancient civilizations are responsible. It's all very complex, take an intro religion course if you get a chance.
By the same logic, one could argue that the 'cradle of civilization' is Oldivai Gorge in east Africa. Sorry, the roots of Judaism, and hence Christianity, are in the middle east for a far less sinister reason. The middle east was the crossroads of the ancient world. It was the hub through which all traffic from every major civilzation (eastern or western) passed. Right at Israel, the 'Fertile Crescent' (that part of Mesopotamia that was the 'cradle of civilzation) comes to its narrowest point. Every conquering army from three continents, every trading nation, every traveler or merchant would have access to information from this part of the world. Even in the Americas (where contrary to popular belief, religious wars at their height were widespread and cost more lives each year than the entire 200 year history of the Spanish Inquisition), trade routes brought different cultures into contact with ideas from the sea-faring Mediterranean nations. One might argue that this is why religions from this area of the world spread......or one could argue that a sovereign God chose this area of the world specifically so more people could have access to the news that He was spreading.
I don't find my explanation sinister at all, it's merely history, and history can be bloody. Granted, it is a tad simplified, and there is a lot I'm leaving out, namely Constantine. We were discussing the big 3 monotheistic religions however, so I left Christianity specific stuff out. Still, any historian worth their salt would agree with it, and it operates on the premise that a Christian God may or may not exist. It doesn't require God's existence, but it also does not negate God's existence. I think when discussing history, we must strive to neither require nor exclude the existence of God. I offer the same consideration to the ancient Greeks, etc. Their belief in their gods was quite important to them, so when looking at their culture, I try to neither exclude nor require the existence of Zeus and Athena etc. And Olduvai Gorge has nothing to do with this.
