Introduction
Although all religious people would desire to achieve a society where every individual is respected equally, regardless of religious affiliation, this situation seems unreal. Even inside the religious community, people will always find the causes of misunderstanding and discord. Therefore, the misconceptions and wrong prejudices should be addressed to avoid inappropriately unfair attitudes to particular individuals and groups of people.
Discussion
Firstly, there is a misunderstanding that regards the content of the Hebrew Bible. Some people claim that The Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament are the two different names used for describing the same book, implying that their content is similar. This misunderstanding is offensive because it disregards the Jewish Hebrew Bible as religious writing. In reality, the content of these books has different structures and order, which is why they cannot be referred to as the same book as the order changes the sense.
Secondly, there is another misconception that may not cause the discord but still can affect the rightness of people’s perception of The Hebrew Bible. Some people believe that the author of the Psalms is King David. However, this conclusion was made based on the word ‘ledavid’ in many sentences in Psalms and is wrong because this word does not have an accurate translation. Moreover, some of the psalms are anonymous, and some refer to other authors, for example, Asaph (Hill & Walton, 2011, p. 341, Psalm 50). Therefore, not all the words from Psalms should be perceived as the phrases of King David.
Conclusion
To conclude, although the world has started its path towards tolerance and mutual respect for all people, there can still be conflicts based on minor reasons. Therefore, the misunderstandings of the minor religions, such as Judaism, should be dealt with by the wider spreading of the information about these religions, including the disposal of stereotypes. Hence, their attitude toward people would be more positive, and they would be more likely to approach religions that are new to them positively.
Reference
Hill, A. E. & Walton, J. H. (2011). A survey of the Old Testament. Zondervan.