I was just watching a video about the “Five Major World Religions” (which this video defined as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism). Or there’s a Teaching Company course on the the “Great World Religions” which covers the same five. Or there’s Huston Smith’s The World Religions, which has chapters on Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Or World Religions in a Nutshell by Ray Comfort; it’s written from an explicitly Christian viewpoint but it also features Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism (and Atheism). All of these examples (and there could easily be others) identify Judaism as a “world religion”.
But is that really objectively accurate? The big four - Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam - each have over a billion adherents. Confucianism and Taoism are a little more confusing because many Chinese people follow multiple religions but they’re easily in the hundreds of millions and could reach the billion mark depending on how you counted.
But there are less than twenty million Jews in the world. Sikhism and Shinto have more adherents than Judaism but you rarely see them being called world religions. Is there any objective standard by which to make such a distinction?
Some might argue that Judaism should be included as a world religion because of its influence on Christianity and Islam. But the followers of these three religions all recognize them as distinct faiths. Judaism should be regarded as a world religion or not on the basis of its own characteristics.
Is the common inclusion of Judaism as a world religion just a reflection of western centrism? Do Western writers include Judaism as a world religion because it’s part of western culture? An East Asian scholar writing a survey of world religions might include Shinto or Jainism instead and drop Judaism as being a minor religion.
I’ve thought about this too, seeing how few jews there are relative to the rest of the world.
I wouldn’t call it a major world religion in and of itself, but considering the history of christianity and islam and how they have interacted with Jews (the holocaust, the constant fighting in the middle east over Israel) they are a major religion with regards to global effects.
Tribal religions have hundreds of millions of believers over the world. Various asian religious beliefs (shinto, Confucius, taoism etc.) also have hundreds of millions.
Judaism isn’t a major world religion. But it is a major foundation stone of Western culture.
Very few people follow Judaism today, but a lot of Very Big Things happened because it.
Compare to Ancient Greece: Very few (well, nobody ) people live by Socratic philosophy, or live in city-states like ancient Athens. But our political system grew out of them.
It’s also religion that, while small in numbers, is geographically widespread, so many countries have been exposed to Jewish traditions. Plus, the cultural aspects of the ethnicity have influenced many elements in Western culture.
Burundi or the DR Congo or Malaysia or Indonesia or Mongolia or Nigeria have large Jewish communities? I don’t think you can call it geographically wide spread. unless you mean exposed by way of Christianity and Islam.
Actually, now that I think of it, the only widespread global religions are Christianity and Islam. They are the only ones which have a major presence all over the globe, and Islam is fairly small in the Americas. Everything else is a regional religion, even otherwise large religions like Hindusim and Buddhism.
I don’t understand your point. There are notable Jewish populations on every continent. For a small in population religion it means that awareness of it was more widespread than perhaps other religions with a similarly small populations. That awareness may affect why Judaism is thought of among other religions with hugly larger populations.
Without question there is a Western POV being expressed but when you get down to 5th place it actually is arguable (source) … unless you want to lump all folk religions together or count “unaffiliated” as a religious group. Okay Sikhs may outnumber Jews for #5 by numbers.
AK84, “exposed to” and “having a commuity of” are not the same thing. I suspect more in Indonesia or Nigeria would say they have heard of Judaism than of the Sikh faith.
You would be wrong for Indonesia, especially for Sumatra. No idea about Nigeria, but certainly the. Commonwealth had great exposure to Sikhs generally.
This link may be informative. Jewish Population of the World
As you can see, most countries have tiny Jewish populations, but there are notable examples of larger populations over a wide array of geographical locations. This spread ( the diaspora) has even going on for centuries- enough time for some Jewish influence to trickle into many unusual places.
So basically, the Middle East and it’s neighbours and Europe and places settled by Europeans. The point I made above still stands.
And no source either. Just a reference to some article called world Jewish population. No census info or government statistics. Very dubious I must say.
Dubious? What secret point do you think I’m trying to sneak by you?
The question was why might Judaism be grouped with major religions. I said compared to other tiny religions its presence has been noted over geographically widespread areas (for centuries), making more people aware of it and its impact felt disproportionally to its population.
Calm down. I have simply doubted the reliability of the information in the link provided. I also have reservations with your claim that Judaism has been geographically wide spread, when from everything I have read, that is not the case, especially in Africa and the sub continent and the Far East. I am willing to be corrected on that.
Moreover the claim is fairly western pov’d anyway.
When discussing the “great” religions, I suspect that more emphasis is placed on effects that population.
The two really large, really widely distributed religions, Christianity and Islam, were not only founded with a strong Jewish influence, but have often shaped themselves in direct interaction with Judaism or Jews.
And while it may be comfortable to dismiss Judaism’s effect on the basis that it is only carried to remote portions of the world through European exploration and dominance, that really is not a serious argument against Jewish influence. Even if it is carried by European expansion, it is still reaching those areas.
Given the power exerted by Europe over the rest of the world and the influence of Judaism over European thought, it is hard to simply dismiss Judaism as a “great” religion.
However widespread Sikhs are throughout the world, (carried along by the British Empire), they do not yet seem to have left a mark on philosophy or theology outside their own communities.
Hinduism has a separate problem noted in a recent thread, in that so many sects of Hinduism are so different from each other, that some people question whether there is even a single religion that can genuinely carry the title of “Hindu religion.”
Buddhism does get recognized as a “great” religion, but Confucianism with its particular take on ancestor worship has rarely caught on as a major movement outside China.
:rolleyes:have you looked at the cites? They go to the same site that IvoryTowerDenizen linked to
I am not talking about “great” religions. Great is an imprecise (and loaded) term. I am talking about religions which are widespread. I do not think that Judaism comes under that head, unless either adopt a rather liberal interpretation of “widespread” and or you specify it as coming through Christianity and Islam, which would be a fair position. Fact of the matter is that Judaism never really established roots east of the Indus and South of the Sahara (in the later Zimbabwe and South Africa became exceptions in the 19th century).
Which leads to the elephant in the room. Even if we accept the numbers presented as true, most of them are tiny (and I shall ignore those countries where long established communities were uprooted in the last century). Even in countries where you have small but attested and lengthy presence, like say India or China, the numbers are very small and the geographical spread limited(usually to small groups in one or two port cities) that you cannot say that the religion was widespread or known, the later with the caveat that for the later, you can say knowledge filtered through Christianity and or Islam.
As it is knowledge until the last few centuries, the knowledge that most Westerners had of Hindusim or Buddhism was vide Muslims and you will never call either widespread in what is now the west.
Hmm. Sikh population of Indonesia is 10 to 15,000, out of over 250 million - less than 0.006%. OTOH it is 87% Islam and 9% Christian. You really don’t think that those Muslims and Christians have been exposed to the idea of Judaism? Be real, most in Indonesia have never met a Jew or a Sikh, but the history of Islam and of Christianity are both filled with the ideas of Judaism, its influence, and interactions with Jews, who each consider an older (if wrong-headed from their POV) brother.
And since you want another cite for IvoryTower’s stats - here:
The populations currently are small, and were never huge, but there have been Jewish communities in China going back to the Silk Road days, in India, and still over 100K in sub-Saharan Africa. Here’s a list that shows how many were where in 1900. Small numbers scattered widely. Europe had the most with almost 9 million, America next with 1.5 million but Asia had 350K, Africa had 372K, and even Australia had 15K. There were many parts of the world that had over 1% of their population as Jews. That chart is interesting because you can see the shift over the next decades. Europe went from about 2.2% of its population being Jewish to 0.5%. Now only Canada, the United States, and of course Israel, exceed that 1% mark.
tomndebb and DSeid have answered better than I could. I’m not sure why your default is to discount the original source for the data. It’s a book published by Springer press, well known for publishing work in academic and scientific circles. Obviously any publisher can get something wrong, but they are not a publishing house I’d associate with shady work. Here is the cite for it: http://www.springer.com/social+sciences/population+studies/book/978-94-007-5203-0
If you want to go by numbers alone, and ignore the concept of exposure to the ideas of, then again, that fifth spot goes to the Sikhs with more absolute numbers. But you are qualifying by widespread …
I just cited how historically Jews have been over 1% of the population in much of the world and of some impact even with smaller numbers in much of the rest of the world. Sikhs? Even today they only exceed 1% of the population in one country - India. In the rest of the world less. And those small numbers outside of India only have occurred since the Sikh Diaspora beginning in 1849.
There’s Ethiopia, which is generally considered sub-Saharan, which actually had a Jewish state at one point, and had a fairly large Jewish community until the Communist takeover and then most of them left for Israel.
African Christian Ethiopia invaded once invaded the Arab-Jewish Yemen. The world is a strange place a times:D. Well, at least here, the Horn has been considered distinct from sub Saharan Africa. But, it’s a fascinating history in its own right.
DSeid if you had bothered to read my posts, you would know that I accept that the idea of Jewish influence could be accepted, provided that we consider it filtered through the other Abrahamic religions.
Do please tell me what you mean by “exposure to the ideas of”?
) people live by Socratic philosophy, or live in city-states like ancient Athens. But our political system grew out of them.