Pride
The first sin of the angels and the last sin of the saints — the inflation of self that every tradition treats as the secret root of every other vice.
"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."
"When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom."
"...God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble."
"For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father..."
"And do not turn your cheek [in contempt] toward people and do not walk through the earth exultantly. Indeed, Allah does not like everyone self-deluded and boastful."
"For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule."
See this theme as a comparative study.
- Tower of Babel
Humanity attempts to build a tower reaching heaven to make a name for themselves. God confuses their languages and scatters them.
- The Fall of Man
The first humans disobey a divine command in a garden setting. This act introduces sin and separation from the divine presence. 1 Enoch's Book of the Watchers, often read alongside the Edenic story, narrates a parallel cosmic corruption — the descent of fallen angels and their forbidden teachings — rather than re-telling the human Fall itself.
- Breaking the Idols
This parallel examines the motif of prophetic iconoclasm as a definitive rupture with ancestral polytheism. While the narrative of Abraham smashing idols in the Qur'an serves as a paradigmatic origin story for monotheistic rejection of images, the Hebrew Bible presents Moses destroying the Golden Calf and Hezekiah later dismantling the Nehushtan as acts of cultic purification within an established covenant. Christian tradition, particularly in Acts 17, shifts the focus from physical destruction to rhetorical deconstruction of idols in the Athenian Areopagus, reflecting a different missionary strategy. Scholars debate whether the Abraham narrative in the Qur'an is a midrashic elaboration of Genesis or an independent tradition emphasizing the prophet's logical refutation of idolatry.
Discussion
No one has written anything here yet. Some places to begin:
- Which verse landed hardest for you?
- What's a counter-text — a verse that complicates this theme?
- How does this theme show up in a tradition not represented here?
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