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The list of religious populations article provides a comprehensive overview of the distribution and size of religious groups around the world. This article aims to present statistical information on the number of adherents to various religions, including major faiths such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and others, as well as smaller religious communities.
Ugaritic mythology – The Levant region was inhabited by people who themselves referred to the land as "ca-na-na-um" as early as the mid-third millennium BCE; Ancient semitic religions – The term ancient Semitic religion encompasses the polytheistic religions of the Semitic speaking peoples of the ancient Near East and Northeast Africa.
Second Temple Judaism (Hellenistic Judaism) Jewish–Roman wars (Great Revolt, Diaspora, Bar Kokhba) Rabbinic period and Middle Ages; Rabbinic Judaism; History of the Jews in the Byzantine Empire; Christianity and Judaism (Jews and Christmas) Hinduism and Judaism; Islamic–Jewish relations; Middle Ages; Golden Age; Modern era; Haskalah ...
The diaspora countries, by contrast, have low Jewish birth rates, an increasingly elderly age composition, and a negative balance of people leaving Judaism versus converting to Judaism. [14] Immigration trends also favor Israel ahead of diaspora countries. The Jewish state has a positive immigration balance (called aliyah in Hebrew).
This growth in actual numbers was somewhat offset by conversion away from Judaism. While Halakha (Jewish law) says that a Jew who converts is still a Jew, in the climate of persecution that prevailed in much of Europe in this period, conversion tended to be accompanied by a repudiation of Jewish identity, and converts to Christianity generally ...
[17] [18] Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly interrelated, [19] [20] as Judaism is their ethnic religion, [21] [22] though it is not practiced by all ethnic Jews. [ 23 ] [ 24 ] [ 25 ] Despite this, religious Jews regard converts to Judaism as members of the Jewish nation, pursuant to the long-standing conversion process .
At the core of Judaism is the belief in a single, omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent God, who created the universe and continues to govern it. In 2007, the world Jewish population was estimated to be 13.2 million people—41 percent in Israel and the other 59 percent in the diaspora .
An additional 5.7% (roughly 554,000 people) are classified as "others". This diverse group comprises those with Jewish ancestry but not recognized as Jewish by religious law, non-Jewish family members of Jewish immigrants, Christians other than Arabs and Armenians, and residents without a distinct ethnic or religious categorization. [2] [1]