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The bulk of the human religious experience pre-dates written history, which is roughly 7,000 years old. [1] A lack of written records results in most of the knowledge of pre-historic religion being derived from archaeological records and other indirect sources, and from suppositions. Much pre-historic religion is subject to continued debate.
Early Hittite religion bore traits descended from Proto-Indo-European religion, but the later Hittite religions became more and more assimilated to Mesopotamian religion. Persian Zoroastrianism is a reformed form of the hypothesized ancient Iranian religion , which shares a common Proto-Aryan root with the Indian Vedic religion .
The HarperCollins Concise Guide to World Religion: The A-to-Z Encyclopedia of All the Major Religious Traditions (1999) covers 33 principal religions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Jainism, Judaism, Islam, Shinto, Shamanism, Taoism, South American religions, Baltic and Slavic religions, Confucianism, and the religions of Africa and Oceania.
[7] [8] The exilic period saw the development of the Israelite religion towards a monotheistic Judaism. The exile ended with the fall of Babylon to the Achaemenid Empire c. 538 BCE . Subsequently, the Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great issued a proclamation known as the Edict of Cyrus , which authorized and encouraged exiled Jews to return to Judah.
The religion was introduced in the region including modern-day Bahrain during the rule of Persian empires in the region starting from 250 B.C. It was mainly practiced in Bahrain by Persian settlers. Zoroastrianism was also practiced in the Persian-ruled area of modern-day Oman. The religion also existed in Persian-ruled area of modern Yemen.
One modern academic theory of religion, social constructionism, says that religion is a modern concept that suggests all spiritual practice and worship follows a model similar to the Abrahamic religions as an orientation system that helps to interpret reality and define human beings, [6] and thus believes that religion, as a concept, has been ...
Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia included pre-Islamic Arabian polytheism, ancient Semitic religions, and Abrahamic religions such as Christianity and Judaism. Other religions that may have existed in pre-Islamic Arabia are Samaritanism, Mandaeism, and Iranian religions like Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism.
Following the end of the Babylonian captivity and the subsequent establishment of Yehud Medinata in the 4th century BCE, Yahwism coalesced into what is known as Second Temple Judaism, [13] [14] from which the modern ethnic religions of Judaism and Samaritanism, as well as the Abrahamic religions of Christianity and Islam, would later emerge.