According to Wikianswers, well, Wikianswers seems to contradict itself.
Just because it didn’t last long I don’t see how that invalidates Atenism. At least we have firm evidence for that and it predates monotheistic Judaism by half a millennium. Do we have any real evidence that Zoroastrianism dates to 1700-2000 BCE?
And furthermore, its deities are no doubt very old, but when did it become monotheism, i.e. dumped the other gods and goddesses?
Apparently according to Wiki there is no written evidence for Zoroastrianism earlier then 5th century BCE.
OP, you need to define, what sort of monotheism?
I’d argue the earliest form of Monism is spelled out in the Rig Veda’s from around 1100 BC which makes early Vedic the first monotheistic religion.
For Deism, yeah I’d say Judaism gets it at 700 BCE.
The first paragraph hints towards it:
Monotheism (from Greek μόνος, monos, “single”, and θεός, theos, “god”) is the belief in the existence of one and only one god.[1] Monotheism is characteristic of numerous religions, including the Baha’i Faith, Christianity, Druzism, Hinduism,[2] Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.
So for monotheism, I would use that definition and say that the main point of the religion would be in a single deity ignoring the Satan/Angra Mainyu as lesser deities.
Well if you accept Vedic / Hinduism as a Monotheistic religion (and I would argue that it is) then thats your answer. The latest date for composition of the Rig Veda is 1000BC with other estimates putting it as early as 1700 BC.
No! It can’t be!
The plain anwer is that we don’t know. There is evidence that some early cultures were monotheistic, but they tended to form pantheons over time as they came into contact with more people. The ancient Chinese, for instance, seem to have been monotheistic and retain some elements of this even today.
I think it would be:
Akhenaten, pharaoh of Egypt from about 1353 to 1336 BCE, also introduced a monotheistic religion, but it did not last beyond his death.
Since Zoroastrianism wasn’t monotheistic (ahura mazda and ahiriman are the principle deities) and ancient judaism was henotheistic.
But this is similar to date estimates for the Zoroastrian Old Avestan gathas. From Wikipedia:
Early Hinduism and early Zoroasterianism presumably shared a common source. What deductions have been gleaned?
Judaism was apparently first Henotheistic, as opposed to strictly Monotheistic. But generally, we’d say that henotheism is a form of monotheism. The early Jews seemingly worshiped only one deity, but seemed to accept that other nations had other deities. Atemism seems to have been henotheistic also , or just monolatry
There are other varieties of Monotheism, including Monism, Deism, etc.
Depending on your definition of Monotheism, and your acceptance of certain dates, all three (Zoroastrianism, Judaism, & Atenism) all have a claim. No doubt Judaism is the oldest surviving Monotheiistic faith.
It’s quite hard to define Hinduism as a monotheistic religion on the basis of the Rig Veda, because nobody really knows what it originally said. The basic ideas have been passed down by oral tradition, but there’s a pretty good chance it changed substantially between 1500 BC and the first written manuscripts (which probably appeared in the 6th century AD).
In the Gatas, Zoroaster (probably) identified Angra Mainyu as something approximating evil, rather than an evil being, so Zoroastrian was arguably originally monotheistic and later not.
Considering there are modern Zoroastrian communities still surviving in Iran and Mumbai (Parsis), I think there is considerable doubt about that.
Based on current demographic trends, the Parsee community is likely to die out (even in India and Iran) in the next century.