Oldest Religion? before christ ?

Thank you Vajradhara. Could you give a basic background on the cosmologies of these religions and how they differ.
 
Certainly from an historical POV ancient Hindic texts (Rig veda etc) are the same age as Zarathustra's Gathas. Even the language is much the same.

Kiwimac
 
After going through one of the discussion topics here, I came up with another question, what is the oldest religion ever?
Now the people who lived before Jesus Christ (to me the first messenger of od that bought an organised and a proper religion) how can they be blamed? they never had any religion? Their ideas of God were based upon trees, moon, son, stones etc. etc. They never taught any religion, what will God do to them ?
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We shouldn't worry about this, because we monotheists have faith in Gods divine universal order and see the positive in everything, if you have a large enough heart to ask such a question, then you have nothing to worry about. If humans behave like animals then they deserve the same faith as animas, everyone has a destiny and fait to be a born in the certain time in history, religion, background, ethinicity that suits them. It's all writen.

 
Kindest Regards, all, and especially Vaj!

the Tao does not depend on written texts to exist or not exist. the chinese view of Tao is not the same as Western views of their religions
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I can understand this, as I can understand that Animism does not require writing to exist or not exist. I am merely curious if Taoism has any familial connection to Animism?
 
What I wanna know. Since my grandmother was %100 Black Foot Indian, if indeed my assumption is correct that they practices shamanism. What form and where did their religion originate from and everything about it.
 
I couldn't possibly add anything to all these brilliant posts but I have a little insight relating to our ancestral religious mind.

Proto-Indo-European tribes lived during the Copper Age, roughly the 5th to 4th millennia BC. These tribes were nomadic and hunter/gatherers, herdsmen.

Once Indo-European Man evolved into an agricultural farmer, the need to incessantly move to where the food was, was over and finally Man could stay in one place . . . AND THINK!

In my opinion, this is when Mankind truly began to organize their religious/spiritual beliefs and set up ritual practices and the like.
 
Duh! (ice-cream cone into forehead... WALSTIB) Lets see here, that works for everyone who got out of the hunter-gatherer phase (maybe). But there is a huge corpus of techings which are to this day (well, at least into the 20th century, some have been eraticated by we WASPs...buzz, buzz, buzz) used in, say, the Austrailian Outback, in the Kalihari, at Sun Dances, ayawaska rituals, Amanita Muscaria rituals, all associated with hunter-gather groups.

The question is, are they religions? We WASPs tend to look down at shamanistic or nature-worship and, I, for one, believe that is rather ethno-centric (a good Native American Chrch ritual is hard to experience thinking it as "priimative").

Just a notion.
 
radarmark said:
Duh! (ice-cream cone into forehead... WALSTIB) Lets see here, that works for everyone who got out of the hunter-gatherer phase (maybe). But there is a huge corpus of techings which are to this day (well, at least into the 20th century, some have been eraticated by we WASPs...buzz, buzz, buzz) used in, say, the Austrailian Outback, in the Kalihari, at Sun Dances, ayawaska rituals, Amanita Muscaria rituals, all associated with hunter-gather groups.

The question is, are they religions? We WASPs tend to look down at shamanistic or nature-worship and, I, for one, believe that is rather ethno-centric (a good Native American Chrch ritual is hard to experience thinking it as "priimative").

Just a notion.
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If we take this definition of RELIGION:
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and moral values.
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Then I would suggest they (Shamanic/Nature-Worhiping) are indeed religions.
 
Quahom1 said:
Good Evening Nomanshake,

Hinduism is generally considered to be the oldest religion still being practiced today. This ancient religion was born when the Aryan peoples migrated to Northern India and first put their religious tradition into writing. The texts they created are the Vedas, which were written around 1,500 B.C.E. (before common era) and have greatly influenced Indian culture ever since.
Several other religions are almost as old as Hinduism. Judaism traces its roots back to the patriarch Abraham, who lived around 1,800 B.C.E. While the Jewish people are descended from Abraham, it was Moses who first recorded the Torah, the Jewish holy text, in 1,400 B.C.E. Most sources consider the date of the Torah as the beginning of Judaism.

I hope this helps.

v/r

Q
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I would like to agree with you. The only impediment is that I do not consider Judaism a religion but a way of life. Perhaps it was a religion when it rose as one, but even so, it was developed from the style of life of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and then codified by Moses later; but still, IMO, as rather a way of life than a religion per se.
Ben
 
An interesting extension to this. Recently I have come across pretty good evidence that Neanderthals had burial rituals. One of the old arguments (old enough for me to have drank the kool aid in high school) was that Cromagnon's ritualistic burials and artwork were the first awakenings of religion.

Can we validly infer a religion from burial and art rituals? Does anyone know of work with so-called "primitive peoples" that would support this thesis?
 
Quahom1 said:
Hinduism is generally considered to be the oldest religion still being practiced today. This ancient religion was born when the Aryan peoples migrated to Northern India and first put their religious tradition into writing. The texts they created are the Vedas, which were written around 1,500 B.C.E. (before common era) and have greatly influenced Indian culture ever since.
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Hinduism as well as the incoming religion of Vedas too were shamanistic. There were thousands of village Gods and Goddesses, and fire sacrifices. These coalesced, progressed, and formed modern hindu religion. I will differ from those who say that Vedas are from 1,500 BCE, because the astronomical references point to something like 4,000 BCE at least. The indigenous religion also was just as old. There is no record of any abrupt change. But then, people always say, 'Hinduism is not a religion, it is a way of life' and dismiss us. Easy.
 
I just recently saw a special on the Neanderthals that indicated they weren't as primitive as we thought, that thier method of chipping flint was actually quite advanced and detailed, and they are rethinking their level of intelligence.

While that doesn't indicate religion...there may be more of that to be found...it was PBS and I didn't catch the whole thing... I do however believe that for all time man probably blamed others for his foibles and isn't that the essence and beginning in all religions?
 
Quahom1 said:
Good Evening Nomanshake,

Hinduism is generally considered to be the oldest religion still being practiced today. This ancient religion was born when the Aryan peoples migrated to Northern India and first put their religious tradition into writing. The texts they created are the Vedas, which were written around 1,500 B.C.E. (before common era) and have greatly influenced Indian culture ever since.
Several other religions are almost as old as Hinduism. Judaism traces its roots back to the patriarch Abraham, who lived around 1,800 B.C.E. While the Jewish people are descended from Abraham, it was Moses who first recorded the Torah, the Jewish holy text, in 1,400 B.C.E. Most sources consider the date of the Torah as the beginning of Judaism.

I hope this helps.

v/r

Q
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Hinduism may not have been the oldest religion still practiced today. It may have been Zoroastrianism, the first monotheistic religion still practiced today. Zarathushtra exalted Ahura Mazda and the Ahurian people and rejected the Daevas. In the Rig Veda, the oldest of the Indic compositions, there is evidence that the Vedic people had already begun to reject the Ahuras (the Zoroastrian Ahurians). That would mean that Zarathushtra's composition had to have been composed before the Rig Vedas were composed. In any case both Hinduism and Zoroastriansim stem from a common Indo-Iranian origin and there languages are almost identical. Both preserve elements of the hypothetical Indo-Iranian religion, but ultimately we don't know what that was. Given that the rest of the religions of the Greater Aryan stock were polytheistic or pantheistic the Indo-Iranian religion may have been polytheistic, but there are theories that have also proposed that monotheism preceded polytheistic belief systems. That there was originally one god that was represented an abstraction, maybe "life", that was worshipped on mountains, by rivers, in caves etc... and that gradually this god became supplanted by more personalized concrete gods e.g. a sky god, a river god etc...

And no Jewish scripture dates back to 1800 or 1400 BCE.
 
The non-existence of 3900 year old Jewish scripture, the possible existence of 3900 year old Zoroastrian scripture (of which there is absolutely no physical evidence, the oldest copies of the Gathas are younger than the Quran) and the unlikely possibility of the Sanatana Dharma does not predate Zoroastrianism has nothing to do with the thesis of "oldest religion".

Unless one is claiming only large, organized religions count. Sorry, the shamanistic religions are much much older.

P.S. skinker, if that is true, provide a reference other than your own words.
 
Correction Ezra finalized I think it was the Hoiness Code which was one of the books of the Torah (Pentateuch). And speaking of the Dead Sea Scrolls they were very much so influenced by Zarathushtra's notion of a battle between light and darkness, immortality of the soul (not a genuine Jewish belief) and other beliefs, and one of the scrolls, Zostrianos, even takes its name from Zarathushtra.
 
Some considerations below ... draw inferences regarding religion as you wish.

Atlantis~Egypt.jpg
 
skinker said:
That's Gnostic Gospels, not Dead Sea Scrolls for Zostrianos.
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That's true. I was under the false impression that they were the same thing. But I did find this :"An interesting example of continuity between the *Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi documents is the tractate Melchizedek (IX, 1), wherein the figure of *Melchizedek is presented as a redeemer-holy-war figure, just as in the fragmentary scroll discovered in cave 11 at Qumran (11 Q Melch.). Other features of Melchizedek's role as presented in the Nag Hammadi tractate are reminiscent of Jewish traditions found in the Enoch literature, esp. 2 (Slavonic) Enoch."
 
skinker said:
My Celestial Torah Christianity is as least as old as you can see from this image of Aquarian baptism of a pharaoh.
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Do you know the date of Mohenjodaro/Harappa civilization and the image of the ascetic on seals (probably Shiva). Ceremonial bath was common. The Gods were/are bathed twice every day. Shiva lingas are bathed all the time. So much so, that Krishna in his form of Jagannatha (Lord of the Universe) gets cold every year and has to go to his aunts place and take medicines every year assisted by a local doctor of indigenous medicine, and there is no God in the temple to worship during that period. That journey is known as Rath-Yatra. Kings were bathed on coronation. People are bathed ceremonially at the sacred thread ceremony, marriage, and on death.

"The Indus Valley Civilization (also known as Harappan culture) has its earliest roots in cultures such as that of Mehrgarh, approximately 6000 BCE. The two greatest cities, Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, emerged circa 2600 BCE along the Indus River valley in Punjab and Sindh." Wikipedia

images

Lord Jgannatha going to his aunts place.
exile said:
Hinduism may not have been the oldest religion still practiced today. It may have been Zoroastrianism, the first monotheistic religion still practiced today.
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See my post about the sixteen homelands of Aryans. Zoroaster's people visited/stayed in India in the land of seven rivers, Punjab. It is mentioned as the fifteenth homeland of Aryans. They went to the sixteenth homeland where probably Zoroaster was born only later. So, if the jews got their religion from zoroastrians, probably, the zoroastrians got their religion from India. It is mentioned in Vendidad.

No Vedas do not reject Asuras. It is the puranas which do that.

A 'my .... is longer than yours' discussion. :)
 
Aupmanyav said:
Do you know the date of Mohenjodaro/Harappa civilization and the image of the ascetic on seals (probably Shiva). Ceremonial bath was common. The Gods were/are bathed twice every day. Shiva lingas are bathed all the time. So much so, that Krishna in his form of Jagannatha (Lord of the Universe) gets cold every year and has to go to his aunts place and take medicines every year assisted by a local doctor of indigenous medicine, and there is no God in the temple to worship during that period. That journey is known as Rath-Yatra. Kings were bathed on coronation. People are bathed ceremonially at the sacred thread ceremony, marriage, and on death.

"The Indus Valley Civilization (also known as Harappan culture) has its earliest roots in cultures such as that of Mehrgarh, approximately 6000 BCE. The two greatest cities, Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, emerged circa 2600 BCE along the Indus River valley in Punjab and Sindh." Wikipedia

images

Lord Jgannatha going to his aunts place.See my post about the sixteen homelands of Aryans. Zoroaster's people visited/stayed in India in the land of seven rivers, Punjab. It is mentioned as the fifteenth homeland of Aryans. They went to the sixteenth homeland where probably Zoroaster was born only later. So, if the jews got their religion from zoroastrians, probably, the zoroastrians got their religion from India. It is mentioned in Vendidad.

No Vedas do not reject Asuras. It is the puranas which do that.

A 'my .... is longer than yours' discussion. :)
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Could you kindly provide me with a link to your discussion about the 16 homelands of the Aryans?

My understanding is that these 15 "good" lands mentioned in the Vendidad were allied to Aryana the homeland of the Aryans. The Indic peoples pushed on further south into the Punjab which correlates to Hepta-Hindu one of these 16 good lands. It was in the Punjab that the Rig Veda was composed.

There is no question that the Vedas and the Avesta were composed around the same time. However is it not a fact that already the Rig Vedas do begin to reject the Asuras (corresponding to the Ahurian "masters of the land" of the Avesta)?

As with a bolt, Bṛhaspati, fiercely flaming, pierce thou Vṛkadvaras’, the Asura's, heroes. Even as in time of old with might thou slewest, so slay even now our enemy, O Indra. – RV 2.30.4

Ye have destroyed, thou, Indra, and thou Viṣṇu, Śambara's nine-and-ninety fenced castles. Ye Twain smote down a hundred times a thousand resistless heroes [ásurasya vīrā́n] of the royal Varcin. - RV 7.99.5

Furthermore the Zarathushtrians did not derive their religion from the Vedic people. Both the Zarathushtrians and the Vedic people derived their respective religions from a common ancestor, the hypothetical Indo-Iranians.
 
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