Greetings good dopers,
A friend of mine, an Afghan chap, has recently celebrated Nourouz, Zoarastrian New Year. Nassim claims that Zoarastriam is the oldest monotheistic religion which led me to wonder what is the proven,oldest human organization. I’ll accept political, religious (Og knows why), or commercial.
Ideas?
Peter
The Icelandic legislature was founded in AD 930.
Several European universities date at least as far back as the Middle Ages.
Roman Catholics believe that Jesus Christ founded the Roman Catholic Church, which would make it 2000 years old. Many Protestants vehemently disagree with this. Greek Orthodox would more or less say that Jesus founded the Orthodox Church and that the Roman Catholic Church was founded later by dissidents/breakaways. Welcome to the world of religion.
You could make an argument for the Jewish People being an organization for several thousand years, but the further you go back the less history and archaeology you find and the more it becomes colored by religious beliefs. Certainly you could show that the Jewish People have been around for two or three thousand years using research acceptable to secular academics.
I’m not even sure how you’d prove Zoroastrianism is the oldest monotheistic religion. The wiki article says Zoroaster started the philosophy “more than a thousand years BCE.” And that this lead to a formal religion in the 6th century BCE. The first Kingdom of Israel was established in the 11th century BCE so I’d think Judaism can be safely dated before Zoroastrianism.
How much of an “organization” is Judaism or Zoroastrianism? AFAIK there is no hierarchical structure or governing body, at least not since the destruction of the Temple. On the other hand, the Christian church (at least parts of it) has a recognizable continuance of structure and authority going back to at least the second century, or earlier. Both the Catholic and Orthodox branches can point to a succession of leaders going all the way back to the apostles. Maybe Zoroastrianism has something like this; I don’t know. But I think there is a difference between a *religion *and a religious organization. Christianity is religion; the Church is an organization. Judaism is a religion; the nation of Israel was (and is) an organization but of course has not had a continuous existence.
ETA: Speaking of Israel has made me wonder if there is perhaps a country or other self-governing people group who can trace their organization back to earlier than the Common Era.
Heck, there’s a restaurant in Salzburg, Austria that’s been around since 803.
Wikipedia has a list of the oldest companies in the world.
But was it monotheistic way back then?
China has been Chinese for 5000 years.
Early Judaism, as we know it at least, dates to roughly the same 6th century. Judaism certainly did not exist in the 11th century BCE. The people who would eventually become the Jews (and many other semitic peoples, IIRC), were polytheistic pastoralists living in the the highlands of Canaan.
I don’t know if we have a clear idea which came first. My Money is on Zoroastrianism.
Whatever the age of Zoroastrianism or Judaism, I don’t think you can call them “organizations,” as Skammer noted.
And regarding the Wikipedia list of oldest companies, many of which are hundreds of years old, I suspect that some of them went defunct one or more times and were revived later, perhaps much later.
Maybe not Judaism as a whole, but there is at least some proof that the “Cohens” of Judaism - who allege to be the descendents of the priesthood (which vanished in the 1st century AD with the destruction of the Temple) really are descended from that source.
In Judaism, the Cohens have some of the attributes of an “organisation”, including, as every Star Trek fan surely knows, a funky hand gesture borrowed by Nimoy as the “live long and prosper” Vulcan hand-sign.
If this is true, the Cohens are at least two millenia old, and can claim at least a few hundred years more - however old the organized Jewish priesthood is (it claims to go back as far as Aaron and Moses, but its non-mythological age is certainly less). That puts them in the running for oldest organization.
Was not there was a brief period of monotheism in ancient Egypt under Akhenaten, well before Zoroastrianism?
Wouldn’t henotheism be more accurate?
As a coherent organization (not just a religion), my bet would be the Catholic & Orthodox churches, which can be traced more-or-less directly back to the Apostles 2000 years ago.
No way in heck can it be traced much farther back to the 2nd century. Before that it was just a bunch of end of days cults.
Within a generation of Jesus’ death, the ‘cult’ at Antioch, which began to be called ‘Christians’ sent out and financially supported missionary journeys of Paul and Barnabas, who, at the end of their journeys, set up local leadership. And that doesn’t count as an 1st century organization?
Or how a council of apostles and elders heard out Peter and Paul and decided for the sake of the whole ‘bunch of end of days cultists’ that Gentiles didn’t have to be circumcised and follow all the Jewish laws. And that isn’t an organization?
Or how within weeks of Jesus’ death the apostles appointed a replacement for Judas? Or how they instituted a group of ministers (deacons) to tend to the regular service of the larger community? And that isn’t an organization?
Going by strict standards of continuity, it seems that Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan (西山温泉慶雲館) is the oldest organization with an unbroken existence still going.
Even if you discount their first century origins, the Bishoprics of Rome and Constantinople (and Alexandria?) have been going concerns for 1900 years. I’d say they’re the institutions to beat.
Worship of the Kaaba and the Hajj pilgrimage predate Islam, but since there aren’t any good records from before then, its too hard to tell how far back it goes and how similar it is to modern practice.
There are plenty of cities that pre-date the Christian era, but I can’t really think of any that have had any sort of continuous institutions for that long.
The Roman Catholic Church has an apostolic continuity that goes back to St. Peter in the First Century, and a nominal one as far back as St. Ignatius in the 2nd Century; while there have been gaps and Antipopes, as far a I can tell, every legitimate holder of the Papacy has known his predecessor.
The King’s School, Canterbury, England was founded in 597.