When Pope John Paul II finished celebrating an open-air Mass with a crowd
of thousands in Bethlehem's Manger Square, something happened that National
Public Radio's Linda Gradstein said felt quite strange.  Just as the pope
sat down, the Muslim call to prayer pierced the air.  Gradstein said the
pope sat quietly, his hands folded.
        As the pope continues his historic visit to the Holy Land, he traverses a
land of great significance to Christians, Jews and Muslims.  Kenneth
Woodward explores this idea in a March 27 Newsweek piece called "The Other
Jesus."  Woodward says while John Paul is fulfilling a lifelong ambition of
walking, preaching and praying in the land where Jesus lived, the world's
other great religions have their own visions of this "legendary figure."
        To Christians, of course, Jesus is the Son of God, and he is an historic,
not legendary figure.  During Lent Christians solemnly reflect on Jesus'
crucifixion and burial.  John Paul II has said, "Christ is absolutely
original and absolutely unique.  If He were only a wise man like Socrates,
if He were a prophet like Muhammad, if He were enlightened like the Buddha,
without doubt He would not be what He is."
        It is no small feat for the pope to journey to Jerusalem, the city of
peace, hoping to erect bridges among the three monotheistic faiths.
Christianity, Islam and Judaism believe in one God who has revealed his
will through sacred Scriptures.  They each look to an end times when God's
justice and power will triumph.  And they each recognize Abraham as a
father in faith.  But they differ on Jesus.  
        The Muslims regard Jesus as a prophet and messenger of Allah.  While some
Christians deny Jesus' birth to a virgin, Muslims find the story in the
Qur'an, affirming its truth.  What they believe about Jesus comes from the
Qur'an - not the New Testament, which they consider tainted with human error.
        Woodward's Newsweek piece points out that although Muhammad supersedes
Jesus as the last and greatest of the prophets, Muhammad still must die.
Jesus, on the other hand, asked God to save him from the crucifixion, and
God answered his prayer by taking him directly up to heaven.  At the end of
the world, Jesus will descend as a Muslim (in the sense that he will unite
all believers in total submission to the one God), defeat the antichrist
and set the record straight that the crucifixion was a myth.  
        Many Jews, Woodward writes, accept Jesus as a Jewish teacher.  But "most
Jews will never read the Christian Bible," Woodward writes.  "And, of
course, Jews do not accept the Christ of faith.  'They see Jesus as an
admirable Jew,' says theologian John Cobb, 'but they don't believe that any
Jew could be God.'"     
        That's right, says Jacob Neusner, research professor of religion and
theology at Bard College.  "As a faithful Jew, what I do is simply reaffirm
the Torah of Sinai over and against the teachings of Jesus. … I think
Christianity, beginning with Jesus, took a wrong turn in abandoning the
Torah.  By the truth of the Torah, much that Jesus said is wrong. … Jesus
and his disciples took one path, we another.  I do not believe God would
want it any other way."
        Hindus and Buddhists also have their ideas of Jesus.  A strong Hindu
tradition says that the teenage Jesus journeyed to Southeast Asia and
returned home to become a guru to the Jews.  Many Buddhists see Jesus and
Buddha as "brothers" who taught "universal love." Woodward writes: "But
there is at least one unbridgeable difference: A Christian can never become
Christ, while the aim of ever serious Buddhist is to achieve Buddhahood
himself."
        Woodward concludes his Newsweek piece by saying, "Clearly, the cross is
what separates the Christ of Christianity from every other Jesus.  In
Judaism there is not precedent for a Messiah who dies, much less (one who
dies) as a criminal as Jesus did.  In Islam, the story of Jesus' death is
rejected as an affront to Allah himself."
        As the pope travels throughout Israel, a land where Jews and Muslims far
outnumber Christians, everything about him speaks of the cross -- his
vestments, his mitre (his hat) and his crosier (his staff).  
        To him, the cross is the symbol of Christianity.  Without it, there would
be no Christianity.  It is a immense undertaking for the pope to try and
bridge unity among the world religions without compromising the crux of his
message.

Don Follis is a University of Illinois campus minister.  His column appears
on Fridays.  Reprinted with permission from the Champaign-Urbana
News-Gazette, copyright 2000.