Are the commands and exhortations of the Lord Jesus directed to his disciples only or are they directed to all mankind? The question arises from an examination of traditional Jewish teaching, around the time of Jesus's life in Palestine, that Jewish Law applies only to Jews. Seeing that there is no way of knowing what God requires of humans unless he reveals his requirements, and seeing that God's revealing of any requirements he has made has been carried out by Jesus the Christ and, further, that the best evidence for his teachings are the accounts of his teaching in the New Testament, this article examines it and concludes that his Law applies only to his disciples.

The Philosopher of Rey, Mohammad-e Zakariya-ye Razi and his Ismaili adversaries, Abu Hatam-e Razi and Naser-e Khosrow, share a political understanding of religion according to which religion is a theologico-political system of domination. However, they are at odds over the political philosophy appraisal of religion qua a system of authority. The paper explicates the latter disagreement in part based on Razi's and his opponents' conflicting ideas about the nature of the faculty of Reason and its distribution among men. Consequently, the paper underlines a democratic implication of Razi's thesis on the makeup of the human intellect.