Monotheism: Ankhenaten proclaimed the religion of the one god, the sun god Aten. That would have been up to about 1334BC for a dozen years or so. “There is no God but Aten and Ankhenaten is his prophet”? He may have been a nutbar, or it may have been a ploy to destroy the entrenched power of the regular priesthood (or both). Anyway, it didn’t last beyond him, and future pharaohs, and the restored priesthood, took pains to destroy any legacy of it.
As for continuous organization - I would go with the Christian church hierarchy and all its direct derivatives and splinters.
Buddah died about 400BC, but I’m not knowledgeable about any organizations that resulted from his religion that may have endured since around then. (Monasteries? monastic orders?) It seems a more decentralized religion than Catholicism.
By moving from “organisational continuity” to “apostolic continuity”, you’re moving from a historical to a religious statement. I think it’s only fair to state that in my religious tradition, we do not recognise the apostolic continuity of the Roman Catholic church…which makes it difficult to use as evidence of organisational continuity.
But you do know there is a big church in the state of the Vatican, and it’s run by a long-standing organization?
Depends on OP criteria too. If your church broke away wholesale from the parent body, that would be continuity. If a few dozen people dropped out of the existing catholic parish and started meeting in Dietmar’s or Angus’s house, that’s not.
The Catholic Church has been formal since, lets say, about 150 or 200 ad. Depends how “formal” the criteria of the OP. Odds are the “bishop of Rome” before that was organized, probably a continuous club of like minded people since there were enought for a congregation. Whether it went through the splitters and people forming new clubs etc. before that we just don’t really know.
I think we need some sense of continuity: otherwise you could place an arbitrary link between today’s worshippers of Isis and the ones from Ancient Egypt.
Here’s a list of 10 Buddhist Temples: 10 Famous Buddhist Temples (with Map) - Touropia Two are noteworthy. The oldest one, Mahabodhi_Temple, was constructed c. 250 BCE. But Buddhism went virtually extinct in India for hundreds of years (according to wikipedia) and the temple was abandoned for extended periods of time.
The second is the White Horse Temple constructed in 68 CE in China. That could compete with the Catholic Church, though admittedly information on the organization of the temple was thin at wikipedia. They run a festival today though, so I assume some aspect of the institution is still active.
Sorry, I interpreted “oldest organization” as “oldest still going organization” just like “oldest man or woman” appears to mean “still alive”.
The oldest known and named organizations - the governments of upper and lower Egypt around the time of their unification - the earliest known person (recall that thread?) might be Narmer, who united upper and lower Egypt over 5000 years ago. His government would qualify as oldest known, specific and named organization; or the various smaller kingdoms that preceded him, depending on how specifically known in detail the organization has to be. I assume “There was a city, so there must have been a government” is not good enough.
I’m not as conversant on the contemporaneous Mesopotamian groups.
Probably can’t beat the Catholic church but for what its worth Madurai Aadheenam claims to be the most ancient Hindu organization at 1500 years old. Its a Shivaite Monastic Organisation that claims to have an unbroken string of 293 pontiffs.
There are several very old religions, but as one poster said we must distinguish the religion from any organisation within that religion. On the face of it, Hinduism is the most likely candidate for an embedded long-lived organisation, followed by Zoroastrianism and then Buddhism. What we need is records, and some evidence of organisational structure with continuity through time, as opposed to a whole bunch of people believing something.
If we are talking “extant”, then the Catholic church seems the most likely candidate for its well-documented continuity of organisational structure. But if you grant not-quite-extant, then surely the Chinese emperorship is clearly the longest lived institution in history?
Thank you all for your rplies,
one thought occurs to me, humanity has continuously occupied some cities in the Middle East for thousands of years and so I wonder if any forms of a city council of Elders might also qualify?
Peter
Agreed. There needs to be some degree of continuity, or else we’ll get into James Burke “Connections”-type bullshit where people start drawing dubious links back to hunter-gatherer commumities at the dawn of humanity.
From wiki, Byblos is thought to be, “the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.” There are some tablets from 1350 BCE (please send troops!) and flint tools from neolithic times. Not incidentally, it’s suppose to be a pretty nice tourist spot when Lebanon isn’t fighting a war.
On a more local level, we could give a nod to any of the titular church congregations in the City of Rome. Titular churches are supposed to have originated in private homes that belonged to wealthier Christians, and were used as places of worship before their religion was legalized. Close behind them would be the early basilicas of the fourth and fifth century. Many if not most have been rebuilt over the years, but presumably there would have remained some continuity of the organization. In this vein I can never help mentioning the church of SS. Cosma and Damian, in which the fifth century mosaic over the apse shows two figures wearing togas, at a time when the toga was still recognized as an option, at least, for well born males on formal occasions. FTR there has been some restoration work on the mosaic, but still.
“Apostolic continuity” means that every priest was trained by a priest who was trained by a priest, on and on, turtles all the way down, by someone who was trained by one of the original twelve Apostles who knew Jesus personally (or by St. Paul, who “knew” him via accepted revelation). This continuity extends beyond the RCC and into Orthodoxy and Protestant denominations as well. This is as opposed to, say, some modern teenager who picked up a book on Wicca and fancied herself part of a lineage that was broken centuries ago.
If you don’t recognize the continuity of the RCC, could you cite which Pope came to the job as an outsider from this direct line? Even the Antipopes were drawn from the College of Cardinals.
Religious organizations peter out at around 2000 years, and commercial organizations are younger. I think you’re going to have to go with a political organization.
The city of Byblos, now in Lebanon, is thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Although there were earlier settlements there, the current city dates back to at least the third millennium B.C. It must necessarily have had some level of organization during this time.
