Since the most ancient times the people trusted in supernatural forces therefore in the world there is a huge set of various religions and beliefs. Some of them are absolutely young, and history of others contains the millennia. But what religion is the most ancient?
Instruction
1. To find out what belief is more ancient, it is necessary to decide on the term "religion" because primitive superstitions and paganism, for example, have roots in very distant past and, as a rule, do not participate in the choice of the oldest religion. Most often compare the main world religions which followers are not concentrated in any one state, and are distributed worldwide. Islam, Christianity and the Buddhism belong to such religions.
2. Islam – the most young among world religions. It arose at the beginning of the 7th century AD, to be exact in 610. On a legend to the prophet Muhammad the angel who dictated to it the beginning of the Quran was. The first public statement of Muhammad took place in 613, and by the time of his death in 632 AD on Arabian Peninsula the powerful Islamic State the Arab caliphate was formed. Aggressive campaigns of the caliphate led to further distribution of Moslem in the territory of the Middle East. Now Islam is practised by about 1.5 billion people on all planet.
3. Christianity – the religion which appeared on the basis of Judaism in the 1st century AD in the territory of Palestine which was a part of the Roman Empire. Origin of Judaism began approximately for two thousand years BC. Unlike Judaism, the Christianity extended among people of many races, and missionary activity of apostles, in particular the apostle Pavel, attracted on the party of faith in Christ of many followers within the Roman Empire. Today the Christianity is in the lead on number of believers and wins first place in the world on prevalence. The Christian communities are in all countries of Earth, and the total number of Christians exceeds 2.3 billion people.
4. The Buddhism which arose approximately in the 6th century BC in India is considered the oldest world religion. It is considered that it was based by Siddhartha Gautama who reached a spiritual enlightenment after long meditation. Having carried out to immovabilities of 49 days, he came to a conclusion that ignorance is the reason of human misfortunes and also got an idea of what needs to be made for elimination of this reason. After that its began to name Buddha. Buddha carried out the remained life on travel across India with sermons of the doctrine. After his death the religion continued to extend actively across the territory of India and Southeast Asia where and now the main number of Buddhists of various currents is concentrated. Total number of followers of the Buddhism reaches about 600 million people.
5. If to speak not about world religions, then the oldest monotheist belief will be the Judaism, and the most ancient of remained – Hinduism which first evidence of emergence is dated 5500th year BC.