Continuities And Changes In Monotheistic Religion

Dating back to Ancient History, religion can be viewed as fluid, constantly changing over time. Different regions converting to the ruler of their lands and or nomadic groups introducing their religion to a society who’s seeking anything different from what is already known to them. The major developments in religion and philosophy in the period 2000 BCE to 600 CE were that religions moved from mostly concrete, polytheistic and localized systems of belief to abstract, monotheistic and universal lifestyles. In both the Middle East and Europe, especially after about 500 BCE, during the time of the Golden Age, there was an increase in the use of logic, reason, and science to explain some of life’s most natural questions. Throughout this time,
Today we find that the more popular belief systems are those of monotheist background, but it wasn’t always this way. What was the driving force that inspired these changes to take ahold of ancient civilizations? What caused people to abandon their polytheistic systems of Gods and convert to a more monotheistic religion where there can be only one truth; one God? Monotheistic religion has been around for a long time. The first known of this category is Judaism, which can be traced backed between the 20th-4th century B.C. Initially, Judaism begins with the Hebrews who were freed from Babylonia with a sense of confidence in that there was only one God. The Hebrew society also were the first to have a religion that set out laws for living one’s life, as in the 10 Commandments. The Persians too had adopted a monotheistic religion known as Zoroastrian. Zoroastrian like Judaism and Christianity not only shared the belief of there being only one true God, but also provided basis as to how one should live. Zoroastrian focused on the responsibility and choice and consequences of right and wrong, good and evil. By 500 BCE, Christianity is starting to bud and surface as a belief system that’s slowly gaining interest in parts of the
The fading of the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire created confusion and blurred regional boundaries. Chaos ensued and internal splits within nations and communities worried the people even more. The same political decline encouraged people to turn to more spiritual institutions and rewards. The result was one of the world's key periods in which beliefs shifted and cultural allegiances took on new territorial patterns. This enabled religions like Christianity and Islam to win a growing minority in the Roman Empire and along the outskirts as well as in the Middle East and North Africa. Even religions still essentially regional, such as Daoism in China and Hinduism in India, worked to win new levels of active popular adherence. Just as the 5th century B.C. had clustered the origins of major philosophical systems for the educated elites in China and the Mediterranean, so the period A.D. 200-700 grouped fundamental changes in religious