نشریه پژوهش های ادیانی
پیاپی 3 (بهار و تابستان 1393)

This article examines three approaches regarding the legitimacy of religions. The first approach considers it meaningless to discuss religions legitimacy, maintaining no positive function for religion; while the second one does it only through two intra religious criteria including individual transfiguration or incarnation of God and revelatory origin of the teachings of a specific religion, criticized in the article as well. The third approach takes the most part of this paper, s discussion, criticizing interreligious criteria. At first, theories considering the founders of religions as the criterion of their legitimacy are mentioned and then it is discussed that what aspect of the founders, characters could be regarded as a criterion of religions legitimacy. The next criterion evaluated is that of religions, teachings to examine whether they are of positive function, rational, coherent, approvable, comprehensive and compatible with the reality. Finally we conclude that if someone does not believe in the divine source of religions, considering them totally humane issues, as a matter of fact, utilizes functionalist criteria to discuss the characters of religions, founders, while someone who believes in their divinity, naturally emphasizes on revelatory criteria and religious experience of the founders. However it should be noted that these criteria are not mutually exclusive to one another, in the other words any religion, being evaluated, that could response to more criteria is of more legitimacy

Comparative study of religion is a new branch of science, almost one-century-old, coming up with new approaches towards religious researches as in the field of comparative theology along with all of its subdivisions.
Based on these approaches, at first, this article briefly refers to the principle of symbolism both in Quran and the Bible and then it comparatively surveys the symbolic meaning of the number of seven, coming in the verse of seven heavens in the former and the Apocalypse of John in the latter. Since the Muslim scholars have had less inter-religious approaches in their studies, not so much cases of symbolic interpretations of this number could be found through their works as in those of their western counterparts. From a comparative point of view the conclusion is that the number of seven in both of the holy books conveys two meanings namely perfection and plurality.

The conceptual study of sin in the Hebrew Bible is very important, due to its extensive range of meaning, as it reflects central beliefs and values throughout the alternating periods of Judaism. To get a sense of this term in the Hebrew Bible, it should be studied during the era in which the book was written, in order to achieve its various semantic developments. Throughout the early periods of Judaism, sin was a totally worldly notion; to do anything that God is not satisfied with, an unknown dissatisfaction for human. From the empires era until the destruction of the Temple, the scale of sin was to transgress the commandments of Torah, as a result, any misdeed towards the others such as social corruption, injustice and exploitation of the common people was also considered as sin. After the destruction of the Temple, Torah does not merely emphasize on personal sin but also includes any action considered as sin by the intellect and community. In fact, it could be said that according to the Hebrew Bible, sin has had a gradual semantic evolution throughout the different periods of Judaism that is obtainable through a historical survey on the writing of this holy book

Claimed to be ascribed to Jesus Christ and Paul as the pastors of people, pastoral theology is a part of biblical theology assigned with conveying divine love and care to the people in need of. Due to its nonapological nature this theology normally does not encounter with the problem of evil in a logical or philosophical way. But the problem of evil has a pastoral form too, meaning that when evils are observed in personal life of the believers, they feel like unsafe sheep forsaken by their pastor who was supposed to supply them with security but they are disappointed with him anymore. In response to the problem of evil, pastoral theology has useful solutions based on Jesus Christ model such as reminding divine love and care, using the language of emotions, listening carefully, replacing wrong ideas about suffering with the right ones and emphasizing the anointing of the sick or the people at the point of death

This article is a critical survey on Near-Death Experiences (NDE), attempting to discover the details and various dimensions of them as proofs for non-body-dependent consciousness and the continuation of human being’s after death life.
The survey shows that although no particular type of the near death experiences can justify the 'Survival Theory', when a combination of them are surveyed in this respect, the survival theory seems more plausible. However, since experiencing biological death of the people having NDE is not provable, it is impossible to build up a theory merely based on this phenomenon about the eventual fate of the human being, s consciousness after irreversible full halt of his brain, s functions, urging one to accept a probable minimal version of the survival theory regarding the NDE observations, as a result. Therefore, the survival theory diminishes to a probable existence of non-body-dependent consciousness. It seems that a complex of evidences and supportive proofs about the NDEs can justify our choice of this very limited version of the survival theory

The theory of rational choice initially was developed by some classical economists and eco-social anthropologists. Furthermore many sociologists of religion define religious behaviors on the basis of secularization theory but due to some shortcomings, this theory could not deliver a comprehensive explanation of the problem. So it seems that the rational choice theory, as a new approach in the sociology of religion, functions like a supplement compensating for the weaknesses of secularization theory. This theory introduces a new form of secularization with a clarification of religious plurality in the modern world, a fact that increases the significance of presenting post-secularism theories on the position of religion. The theory of rational choice shows that the role of religion does not diminish in the society since it coordinates itself with the requirements of the modern society, utilizing benefit-based rational reasons in the arguments

The Persian literature enjoys a lot of priceless works containing abundant sources of philosophical and epistemological themes, originating in the rich culture of ancient Iran, indicating the Zoroastrian advanced heritage of culture and ethic, unfortunately forgotten behind the passing centuries.
One of the significant works of Persian didactic literature is Qaboos-Nameh by Onsor-ol-Maali containing a huge amount of ethical and philosophical themes originating in ancient Pahlavi texts. When composing Qaboos-Nameh, Onsor-al-maali undoubtedly had access to some of Pahlavi advice letters like the works of Azarbad Mehr Sepandan and BozorgMehr since there are a lot of similarities between their contents.
Onsor-al-maali, knowing Pahlavi language according to himself, has a lot of ethical advisory themes in his work in common with Pahlavi's advice letters, what this article critically examines