Did all major religions come from Judaism?

Great Debates
1

Disclaimer: Rampant oversimplication of beliefs ahead. Proceed with caution.

So I was at this meeting in which the topic of Qaballah came up (We had just watched the movie Pi). One guy said he had been to a seminar on Qaballah out of curiosity, in which Qaballistic rabbis discussed the main ideas of the tradition and then lead a discussion on it. Apparently one of the important features of Qaballah is its heirarchy of consciousness. There exist diagrams enumerating these various levels of being through which a person can rise through his/her life by various means/rituals, culminating with an “ultimate consciousness” (ie: God) of some sort which is largely unreachable… This is mainly my recollection of an already 2nd hand account so bare with me…

After hearing this, the guy I was talking to thought the scheme sounded a lot like the ideas of consciousness/being in Hinduism and thereby Buddhism. He then asked the rabbi, given that these ideas seem so common, what makes the qaballistic view so special and why should anybody choose to believe it over the others? The rabbi then gave this long account which is really the heart of my post. I didn’t really know where else to try and verify this information, so here it goes, largely unchecked:

At some point in history (the dates of 1500BC or perhaps 1200BC come to mind), Abraham gave his possessions to his sons and they spread out around the land. To some (call them Alpha Team) he gave his material possessions: his land, his livestock, etc… To others (call them Bravo Team), however, it is not said what he gave. It was thereby postulated that Bravo Team was given, for whatever reason, some sort of important spiritual information given to him in his dealings with God. Supposedly, these teachings went on to form the basis of Qaballah. It is said that Alpha Team either went to the west or stayed in that area, while Bravo Team went east.

An interesting religious history lesson, but it gets more interesting. In Hindu tradition, around 1000BC, the Aryans arrived in India with their Vedas, the religious stories/teachings which formed the basis of Hinduism. So here’s where postulation comes in… You have a native population which holds various animalistic/polytheistic beliefs… You then have the arrival of some profound teachings from “the west” which are somewhat mixed with native religion through a combination of effected assimilation and natural convergence. Hinduism then grows and Buddhism splits off and blahblahblah… The interesting postulation comes when you consider that these Aryans with their Vedas are actually Bravo Team with the teachings they were given by Abraham. The timing seems to work out (admittedly my dates were probably all wrong, but the way it was told to me, they worked), and the teachings seems to have some crucial similiarities.

This possibility made me rethink a few things in my take on religion. If it were true, Hinduism, Buddhism, and of course Christianity and Islam would all have their roots in Judaism. Adherents.com isn’t loading for me at the moment, but I’m confident that these groups comprise at least 2/3, if not 3/4 of the world’s population.

After pondering this for a while, I decided it wouldn’t make a huge difference in my views if it were true, but I’m still very curious about it. What evidence is there that this is not the case? If it is true, how might it effect the world if they were all made aware? It seems that Christians and Muslims have no problem finding things to fight over even though they’re very aware of their common roots.

2

Well, more to the point I think, what evidence is there for the case?

Though I don’t rule out the possibility of cultural diffusion causing borrowings of some concepts from Judaism and vice versa over the millenia ( though really the more obvious synergies came much later with Christianity and Islam - Sufism, for example, appears to have been very significantly influenced by Hindu mysticism ), the Semitic-based paganism practiced broadly by the pre-Jew Jews, Chaldeans, Arabs, Phoenicians, etc. and the Indo-Aryan-based paganism practiced by the Hittites, Kassites, Persians, Medes, Indian Aryans ( whoever they were and however and whenever they arrived in India - that’s a hotly debated topic ), etc., appear to be separate belief systems. I know of no overwhelmingly strong parallels between the Vedas and the Old Testament. To the contrary, based on my limited knowledge they don’t seem very similar at all. At least other than the universals common to most religions and that I assume most likely reflect nothing more than shared human nature. For example the idea of striving to reach a perfect state of natural harmony/piousness seems to be widespread, even in faiths as far afield as Taoism ( i.e. Taoists speak of “a supreme state of being that{and} can only be reached through the greatest personal effort and self-discipline” ).

I’m certainly no expert on any of the above texts, so I welcome correction. But far as I can tell, if anything the diffusion seems a little more slanted in the other direction ( the significant impact of Zoroastrianism on early Christian cosmology, for example ).

Interesting speculation on your part, but barring a better argued case for the close relationship between Hinduism and Judaism, which I just can’t see, I’d have to dismiss it.

  • Tamerlane
3

Genesis 25:6 does relate that Abraham gave his sons (not Ishmael and Isaac) “gifts” and sent them east. Jewish tradition also comments that these “gifts” were mystical in nature. However, you have to do a lot more talking to prove that these “gifts” were the origins of many of the eastern religions.

Furthermore, there are other religions (voodoo comes to mind) which don’t have any Jewish connection (that I know of, anyway).

Zev Steinhardt

4

“All”? Of course not. Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto (among others) owe nothing to Judaism.

But the relationship between Judaism and the world’s two largest religions (Christianity and Islam) is obvious. It would be fair to say that all major MONOTHEISTIC religions come from Judaism.

But, of course, not all religions are monotheistic.

5

Kaje: In Hindu tradition, around 1000BC, the Aryans arrived in India with their Vedas, the religious stories/teachings which formed the basis of Hinduism.

The date is extremely uncertain, but 1000 BCE is probably late; the Aryans are generally thought to have entered northwest India sometime in the second millennium (though a number of revisionists now argue the “indigenous hypothesis”, that the Aryans originated in India). In any case, as Tamerlane points out, the various forms of Indo-European polytheism (including sky-gods such as Thor, Zeus, Indra, etc. etc.) all seem to have a common Indo-Aryan origin that long, long predates 1500 BCE.

Moreover, the ideas of consciousness, transcendence, and so forth that we now tend to associate with orthodox Hinduism and the heterodoxies such as Buddhism and Jainism seem to have largely developed later, in Sanskrit texts like the Upanishads and Aranyakas in the first millennium BCE. (Similarly, I believe that the Kabbalistic tradition in Judaism is usually considered to be quite late, certainly post-Abrahamic.) There certainly is a whole bunch of mutual borrowing and adaptation throughout the entire history of human religion, but I don’t think the historical record supports the idea that they all come from Judaism.

6

Timelines argue against such an assertion …

Kabbalah, which is best described as Jewish mysticism, may have some basis in ancient texts, but was mostly created in the 13th century when Moses De Leon wrote the Zohar. True, he claimed that it was wriiten by a 2nd century rabbi, Simeon bar Yochai, but few believe that, and even if so, you still have 1200 years of a head start for Hinduism’s mystic writings. The Zohar is a commentary on Torah, seeing in it less a body of Laws but a guide to the secret laws of the universe written in a kind of code. Kabbalah’s heyday was between 1500 and 1800, and it is more likely that Kabbalistic thinking was influenced by Eastern philosophies than the other way around.

I had been taught that early Hinduism owed its roots to the same myths that gave birth to the Greek pantheon. Tamerlane?

7

Timelines argue against such an assertion …

Kabbalah, which is best described as Jewish mysticism, may have some basis in ancient texts, but was mostly created in the 13th century when Moses De Leon wrote the Zohar. True, he claimed that it was wriiten by a 2nd century rabbi, Simeon bar Yochai, but few believe that, and even if so, you still have 1200 years of a head start for Hinduism’s mystic writings. The Zohar is a commentary on Torah, seeing in it less a body of Laws but a guide to the secret laws of the universe written in a kind of code. Kabbalah’s heyday was between 1500 and 1800, and it is more likely that Kabbalistic thinking was influenced by Eastern philosophies than the other way around.

8

Perhaps I should rephrase what I’m really trying to get at in this thread, which might be more suited for GQ if it weren’t religious. What I should have said was, since much of my post was based on unreliable recollection and speculation, what evidence is there for or against this argument? Can anybody verify the “historical” items I mentioned? Can anybody directly deny them? Does anybody else have something to offer in this matter?

I hope I didn’t come off as a crackpot advocating some ham-handed theory… Was pure speculation about which I have formed no opinion and was hoping the posters here could shine more light on both the jewish and hindu portions of the theory.

Astorian said:

Either you disagree with the scenario I proposed (fair) but chose not to say why, or were simply responding to my topic without reading my post.

zev_steinhardt said:

I realize there are many religions which don’t have a Jewish connection, which was why I specified “major”, though perhaps I should have been less sweeping. What I was referring to with the word “major” were those I listed earlier (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, and perhaps others which branched from those which I’m not aware of). Now that adherents.com is loading for me, I can refer to their statistics which estimate that 76% of the world’s population identify with one of these religions, 14% classified as “nonreligious” (yay), and the remaining 10% consisting of a variety of smaller religions.

So yes, there are many other religions which I’m sure have nothing to do with Judaism, but I (perhaps unfairly) did not include them under the banner of “major religions”.

Also, though it really doesn’t matter, perhaps I should mention that I am not and was not born Jewish, but am merely curious about this possibility.

9

Kaje: What I should have said was, since much of my post was based on unreliable recollection and speculation, what evidence is there for or against this argument?

? What are you looking for that the previous responses to your OP did not provide? It seems to me that they indicate pretty much general agreement that this theory is untenable. Naturally, it’s impossible to be 100% certain about every aspect of ancient chronology or philosophical influences in religious texts, but the basic argument is that Jewish Kabbalism could not have influenced Hindu and Buddhist philosophical traditions because it developed much later than they did.

There is also not a shred of evidence that second/first millennium BCE Indians had any contact whatsoever with any offspring of a Jewish livestock farmer in the Middle East. In other words, your so-called “Bravo Team” of Abrahamic missionaries is, as far as actual historical data goes, nothing but a myth derived from some Kabbalist’s overheated imagination.

10

Should we be trying to provide evidence that this possibility isn’t true, or that it is true. Rampant speculation and tendencies to eschew the need for evidence to prove claims leads to problems. See the witch hunts of the renaissance. (Dead Woman > 100,000)

11

There is a town in southern Turkey called Sanliurfa. It was near here that Crassus’ army was destroyed and it was a crossroads for many Roman vs Persian/Parthian armies. Farther back, the town was called Edessa, renamed by the Macedonians for one of their home towns.

Going much farther back middle of second millenium BC), this was the area of the Hurrites, an invasive people who spoke neither an Indo-European nor a Semitic language.

Sanliurfa has an association with the prophet Abraham. There are pools that are associated with him (they were shown on one of Michael Wood’s documentaries). The town of Harran just to the south is mentioned in the Bible (I think). Some even believe that the Ur that Abraham came from is not Sumerian Ur but this Urfa. Legend has is that he fought with a royal named Nimrod over religous matters in this area.

Going back to the Hurrites, they were involved in numerous fights with their northern neighbors, the Hittites until they were finally conquered by them. However, before then, the Hurrites had allied themselves with the Egyptians against the Hittites. As a means of defying the creeping Hittite cultural and religous imperialism in the area, the Hurrites adopted the religion of their Egyptian allies.

In the period 1350-1334 BC, the religion of Egypt was the unique monotheism of Amenhotep IV better know as Akhenaton.

So here is a city, with legendary connections with Abraham and a connection with the first monotheistic religion from Egypt. Maybe old Akhenaton should be put first on the list of patriarchs, with Abraham as his most successful adherent. All major monotheistic religions came from Akhenaton.

By the way, I have read that selling a birthright for a “mess of porridge” is a jarring anecdote to Hebrew scholars but does have antecedents among the Hurrites.