God in Abrahamic religions

Monotheism—the belief that there is only one deity—is a foundational tenet of the Abrahamic religions, which alike conceive God as the all-powerful and all-knowing deity from whom Abraham received a divine revelation, according to their respective narratives. The most prominent Abrahamic religions are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They—alongside Samaritanism, the Druze Faith, the Baháʼí Faith, and Rastafari movement—all share a common belief in the Abrahamic God. Likewise, the Abrahamic religions share similar features distinguishing them from other categories of religions:

In the Abrahamic tradition, God is one, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and the creator of the universe. God is typically referred to with masculine grammatical articles and pronouns only, and is further held to have the properties of holiness, justice, omnibenevolence, and omnipresence. Adherents of the Abrahamic religions believe God is also transcendent, meaning he is outside of both space and time and therefore not subject to anything within his creation, but at the same time a personal God: intimately involved, listening to individual prayer, and reacting to the actions of his creatures.

With regard to Christianity, religion scholars have differed on whether Mormonism belongs with mainstream Christian tradition as a whole (i.e., Nicene Christianity), with some asserting that it amounts to a distinct Abrahamic religion in itself due to noteworthy theological differences. Rastafarianism, the heterogenous movement that originated in Jamaica in the 1930s, is variously classified by religion scholars as either an international socio-religious movement, a distinct Abrahamic religion, or a new religious movement.

Judaism, the oldest Abrahamic religion, is based on a strict, exclusive monotheism, finding its origins in the sole veneration of Yahweh, the predecessor to the Abrahamic conception of God. The names of God used most often in the Hebrew Bible are the Tetragrammaton (Hebrew: יהוה, romanized: YHWH) and Elohim. Jews traditionally do not pronounce it, and instead refer to God as HaShem, literally "the Name". In prayer, the Tetragrammaton is substituted with the pronunciation Adonai, meaning "My Lord". This is referred to primarily in the Torah: "Hear O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD is One" (Deuteronomy 6:4).

God is conceived as unique and perfect, free from all faults, deficiencies, and defects, and further held to be omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and completely infinite in all of his attributes, who has no partner or equal, being the sole creator of everything in existence. In Judaism, God is never portrayed in any image. The idea of God as a duality or trinity is heretical in Judaism: it is considered akin to polytheism. The Torah specifically forbade ascribing partners to share his singular sovereignty, as he is considered to be the absolute one without a second, indivisible, and incomparable being, who is similar to nothing and nothing is comparable to him. Thus, God is unlike anything in or of the world as to be beyond all forms of human thought and expression.

God in Judaism is conceived as anthropomorphic, unique, benevolent, eternal, the creator of the universe, and the ultimate source of morality. Thus, the term God corresponds to an actual ontological reality, and is not merely a projection of the human psyche. Traditional interpretations of Judaism generally emphasize that God is personal yet also transcendent and able to intervene in the world, while some modern interpretations of Judaism emphasize that God is an impersonal force or ideal rather than a supernatural being concerned with the universe.

Christianity originated in 1st-century Judea from a sect of apocalyptic Jewish Christians within the realm of Second Temple Judaism, and thus shares most of its beliefs about God, including his omnipotence, omniscience, his role as creator of all things, his personality, immanence, transcendence and ultimate unity, with the innovation that Jesus of Nazareth is considered to be, in one way or another, the fulfillment of the ancient biblical prophecies about the Jewish Messiah, the completion of the Law of the prophets of Israel, the Son of God, and/or the incarnation of God himself as a human being.

Most Christian denominations believe Jesus to be the incarnated Son of God, which is the main theological divergence with respect to the exclusive monotheism of the other Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Samaritanism, the Baháʼí Faith, and Islam. Although personal salvation is implicitly stated in Judaism, personal salvation by grace and a recurring emphasis in orthodox theological beliefs is particularly emphasized in Christianity, often contrasting this with a perceived over-emphasis in law observance as stated in Jewish law, where it is contended that a belief in an intermediary between man and God or in the multiplicity of persons in the Godhead is against the Noahide laws, and thus not monotheistic.^{[better source needed]}