Religions by size:
Religions Adherents (2004) % of total
1. Christianity 2,069,883,000 33.6
-Roman Catholic 1,092,853,000 18.7
-Protestant 391,143,000 6.9
-Orthodox 217,030,000 3.1
-Anglican 79,988,000 1.4
-Other Christians 406,074,000 3.5
2. Islam 1,254,222,000 18.3
3. Hinduism 837,262,000 13.5
4. Buddhism 338,621,000 6.0
5. Chinese folk & Universists 398,106,000 2.6
6. New-Religions 128,975,000 2.3
7. Tribal religion 99,150,000 1.8
8. Sikh 24,295,000 0.4
9. Judaism (Jews) 14,551,000 0.2
10. Shamanism 11,010,000 0.2
11. Confucianism 6,334,000 0.1
12. Baha'i 7,000,000 0.1
13. Jain 3,987,000 0.1
14. Shintoism 3,387,000 0.1
Other religions 20,419,000 0.4
Non-religious 924,078,000 16.3
Atheism 239,111,000 4.2
Total population 6,500,000,000 100%
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica & Adherents.com
The world population was assessed to be very close to 6.5 billion in December 2004. You will note that the total of the adherents is larger than the global population. This could be because of the duplication of followers of different religions. A rather strange phenomenon which has puzzled me while compiling this. According to these stats there are about 8.5 billion people in the world making up 133% of the population. How do they calculate these figures?
For us humans on planet Earth, there are many seemingly insurmountable obstacles in our path to evolution and peace. As we evolve, more people embrace the possibility of the newfound truths about our past. The most important questions we need to answer are, who we are, and where we come from. But these answers will not be presented to us on a platter with a treasure-hunter's kit and a map to get to the prize. Fortunately we have now started to uncover some very uncomfortable evidence, which does not seem to tell the same story that we have been told about our history. The biggest obstacles to our growth as a species, to find peace and harmony, are the many man-made religions. It will not be easy to convince devout Christians and Muslims to start considering new possibilities. It instantly turns the messenger into a false prophet who has been sent by the devil. The creators of humanity were the finest strategists ever. They managed to create the perfect environment for continued doubt and conflict. They created the most perfect propaganda tools ever: fear, punishment and reward. It is all so simple, isn't it? Hopefully this will not be the message that we teach the citizens of the new planets we are soon to start populating. But since we ourselves have no clear answers for our origins, what will we teach the newly cloned colonies of humans on other planets in the near future?
While religion plays a crucial role in shaping our communities, we live our lives reasonably sheltered from the diversity of other religions. We may drive past a mosque on our way to work every day, but how often do we actually take the trouble to find out more about the people who worship there? When Jehovah's Witnesses knock on our door to spread their message, how many of us actually take the time to listen to what they have to say? It is this kind of detachment that keeps us divided and wrapped up in feelings of superiority over other religions, because our god is always bigger and better than the other's. The study of religion is truly fascinating and it helps us understand the murky origins which they all share. Only once we have looked at the very sketchy roots of the most popular religions of the world, can we begin to understand that they are all built on the same shaky ground. We also begin to realise that all religions are man-made and therefore cannot be deemed to be divine, because man is fallible. It would be very laborious to try to educate the readers of this book about all global religion, and also unfair to reduce them to a page of editorial. But I have chosen to give you a quick overview of the twelve most popular religions on Earth, just to help you understand some of the similarities and shortcomings. It will help you formulate your own opinions about the religious dogma which has evolved over thousands of years to keep us seemingly happy, but totally enslaved and divided as a species. They are listed in order of size and historical influence on the global populace.
Christianity. Origin circa 30 AD.
This is by far the largest of the world religions with almost twice as many followers as its closest rival, Islam. From the digging that I undertook during the writing of this book, I was amazed to discover that Christianity somehow made it against all odds. It was a struggling young philosophy in the days after the crucifixion of Jesus, with the disciples devoting their lives to the spreading of the word; but it certainly was not easy. They were often threatened, chased away or made to feel very unwelcome. You have to remember that the pretty clean image we have developed of Jesus and the disciples is very far from the truth. Those were difficult times for him and his relatively small group of followers. As Barbara Thiering puts it in Jesus of the Apocalypse, “He was a central figure in a major political movement which was working at overthrowing the pagan Roman empire.” She goes on to reveal a staggering bit of information that becomes another perfectly fitting piece in our Great Human Puzzle. Even at this point in time, the gods were as active as ever and Christianity was flying right in the face of the huge support for the many Hellenic gods from days gone by. She continues, “The enormous number of followers of the new, still underground religion, introduced from Judea long before the time of Jesus, were ready to believe in divine figures who were the subjects of visions and miracles. It was the world of Hellenism, where pagan religions had encouraged the idea of human beings as incarnations of gods.”
So while there is reference that the people of the day were still being manipulated by their Sumerian gods, Christianity was hanging on. They were persecuted, tortured, fed to lions in the Colosseum and generally abused in various ways. This was not a good time to be a Christian. This situation continued for nearly 300 years, when suddenly Flavius Valerius Constantinus - 272 - 337 AD - came to the rescue. Commonly known as Constantine the Great, he became known as the first ‘Christian Emperor’ of the Roman empire and began the Empire's unofficial sponsoring of Christianity, which was a major factor in the survival and spread of the religion. His reputation as the first ‘Christian Emperor’ was promulgated by Lactantius and Eusebius and gained ground in the succeeding generations. He founded the city of Constantinople as the new capital of the Eastern Empire which became the home of Christianity, filled with large numbers of churches and temples. He also proclaimed that Sunday would be the day of worship.
The First Council of Nicaea, which took place during the reign of the emperor Constantine in 325 AD, was the first ecumenical (worldwide) conference of bishops of the Christian Church. The participating bishops were given free travel and lodging. The council, which was also called a synod, dealt with the problems created by the Aryan controversy, concerning the nature and status of Jesus. The Aryans had their own views of who Jesus really was. We must remember that Jesus spent most of his growing life, since the age of 12 or 13 in the East, under the influence of several eastern religious philosophies and Aryanism was just one of them. Finally the Synod decided against the Aryans and voted in favour of Trinitarianism, which suddenly made Jesus part of the Father and the Holy Spirit. This was a whole new twist to the New Testament and the Holy Trinity was born. Another outcome of the council was an agreement by the bishops of all the Churches, to celebrate Easter on the same day. This was by far the most important celebration on the Church calendar, it was therefore important for all to celebrate the resurrection together. Constantine became such a strong voice of Christianity that on his deathbed he was ordained as the 13th Apostle.
These were the wild and wonderful early days of Christianity, when most of its foundations were laid. The editing of the Bible’s New Testament began to take shape, but it would take another 800 years before the final version
was decided upon. This long process is filled with controversy because many books were omitted while others were amended before they were included. A large number of books known as the Apocrypha (hidden writings) have been the subject of much controversy ever since they were deliberately excluded from the New Testament. It was during this period that one of the first recorded references to the Catholic Church emerged. This Catholic denomination of Christianity continued to expand into what it has become today. The largest and most powerful wing of the Christian Church. This is what St. Cyril of Jerusalem (315 -386 AD) had to say:
Why is the Church called Catholic?
“The Church is called Catholic or universal because it has spread throughout the entire world, from one end of the Earth to the other. Again, it is called Catholic because it teaches fully and unfailingly all the doctrines which ought to be brought to men's knowledge, whether concerned with visible or invisible things, with the realities of heaven or the things of Earth. Another reason for the name Catholic is that the Church brings under religious obedience all classes of men, rulers and subjects, learned and unlettered. Finally, it deserves the title Catholic because it heals and cures unrestrictedly every type of sin that can be committed in soul or in body, and because it possesses within itself every kind of virtue that can be named, whether exercised in actions or in words or in some kind of spiritual charism.”
The Bible:
The Bible is a very complex and controversial book, but it remains the most sacred book of the Christian faith. It is regarded to be the ‘Word of God’, inspired by the Holy Spirit. It has been translated into 275 languages and possibly more, but the origins of the Bible remain very unsettling, with too many people having had too much influence over the final version. But as you will see, there really is no ‘one’ final version of the Bible as various groups have made their own changes and presented their copy as the ultimate word of God. The Old and New Testaments feel as if they should not be part of the same religious philosophy. The one preaches “an eye for an eye” and exalts the ‘god of vengeance’ while the New Testament speaks of the ‘prince of peace’ and ‘god of Love’ and teaches us to love our enemy, instead of destroying them. It is great fodder for many sub-cults and sects within the Christian faith.
The original documents of the New Testament: all the books are written in Greek, with the quotations from the Old Testament taken from the Septuagint. There are 4,500 manuscripts in Greek, 67 papyrus, 2,578 parchment and 1,600 lectionaries mainly in the Codex of the Vatican, London, Paris, Cambridge and Washington.
The Old Testament: These books were written mostly in Hebrew and Aramaic, some in Greek. None of the ‘original documents’ are in existence, but what we have today are mainly the Greek Bible and the Hebrew Bible. But then there are the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are still a point of great controversy and concern for some, because they once again raise the question, which of the books should be included in the Old Testament?
The Greek Bible: the Septuagint originates from the 3rd century before Christ. It is the Greek translation done in Alexandria by a group of 72 rabbis, 6 from each one of the 12 tribes, and hence the name, Septuagint, was given to the translation. It has 46 books just like the actual Catholic Bible, and it was the common version of the Bible among the Jews during days of Christ and even after Christ. It was the version used and quoted by the Evangelists and Apostles when they wrote the New Testament. It was translated to Syriac, Coptic, and Latin (The Vulgate of St. Jerome) in the 4th century AD.
The ‘Hebrew Bible’ or Masoretic Text: Written in the 6th to 10th centuries after Christ, by a group of scholars from Babylon and Palestine, introducing vowels and accent signs to the Hebrew scripts. And of course, they also used the Septuagint to produce it. It has 39 books, like the Protestant Bibles.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are very important, because they are written in Hebrew, dating from the 3rd century BC, while the oldest Hebrew Bible, the Masoretic, dates from 700 years after Christ. With the discovery of the ‘Scrolls’ it suddenly pushed back the curtain some 1,000 years on the earliest Hebrew documents. In the Scrolls, every book of the Bible is represented with a remarkable similarity to the later scriptures in Greek and Hebrew. This was a very important, yet controversial discovery surrounding the Old Testament.
The Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Bibles:
There are a total of 73 books in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, but only 66 books in the Protestant Bibles. The Old Testament is the same as the Jewish Tanakh. The Catholic Bibles have 46 books, as the Bible of the Jewish of Alexandria, who wrote the Septuagint, the version quoted by the Apostles in the Gospels and Epistles. The Protestant Bibles have 39 books, as does the Bible of the Jews from Palestine.
They do not have the following:
4 Historic Books: Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees. (and additions to Esther)
2 Wisdom Books: Wisdom of Solomon, and Ecclesiasticus of Ben Sirach. 1 Prophetic Book: Baruch, and parts of Daniel - The Prayer of Azariah, the Song of the Three Young Men, Bel and the Dragon, and Susana.
The New Testament has 27 books in all the Bibles. The ‘Four Gospels’ are essentially the heart of the Bible. Some religious authors see the name of Christ on every page of the Old Testament and claim that it “prefigures and characterises” the Christ of the Gospels and His Church. But my research has shown that the first time the word/name Christ ever appears in the Bible, is in Matthew 1:1 of the New Testament. There is however a constant reminder of the ‘Saviour’ which is mentioned the first time in Deuteronomy 32:15, the fifth book of the Bible; Messiah is mentioned in Matthew 1:1 for the first time; and Jesus also in Matthew 1:1. Jesus was, and still is, a man’s name. ‘Christ’ means the “chosen one”, which became associated with the name ‘Jesus’ after his ‘supposed’ resurrection. But the inexplicable absence of the name of Christ in the early books of the Bible, is filled with suspicious undertones. Because the Old Testament talks generically about a number of prophets or saviours, but only one suddenly emerged, which happened to have been Jesus Christ. I find this highly suspicious. Could not even one of the prophets of the Old Testament have named Jesus? I suggest that the ‘gods’ were preparing mankind for a saviour but they were not quite sure which ‘one’ of the prophets they had lined up, was going to strike a chord with the people of the time.
One of the most fascinating and yet disturbing things about the books of the Bible and their many relatives who did not make it into the Bible, is that a bunch of men sitting around a boardroom table, some 350 years after the death of Christ, decided on the fate of all the writings. The books that made it are called Canonical, which could be translated to mean ‘according to the Christian set of laws’ or possibly even ‘inspired by God’. They sat with a pile of books which mostly had the same authors, and yet some were deemed to be canonical and others not. This is very puzzling to me, but it obviously made a great deal of sense to the decision makers way back then, because some of those writings contained things which did not really fit their structured image of what the Christian Church should represent.
Some facts about the Deutero-canonical and Apocryphal Books:
Deutero-canonical (second canon), was the term used in 1566 by the Roman Catholic Church, meaning that their canonicity was recognised only after a period of time. They are included in the Greek Septuagint scriptures of the third century BC, but they are not included in the Hebrew Masoretic scriptures from the 7th century AD. Some fragments of these books have also been discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Strangely enough, they are included in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, but they are usually not included in the Protestant Bibles. The Deutero-canon include the following books and parts of books:
- Historical: Tobit, Judith, First and Second Maccabees, Additions to Esther
- Wisdom: Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus).
- Prophets: Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah (in Baruch), and parts of Daniel:
The Prayer of Azariah
, the Song of the Three Young Men, Bel and the Dragon, and Susana.
The Apocrypha (hidden things/writings):
This is a collection of books written mostly by authors of other books of the Bible, but the Apocrypha were not included in any of the Bibles. They deal with Christian and Biblical themes, some from the times of the Old Testament, others from the times of the New Testament.
Apocrypha of the Old Testament times:
There are over 25 books; this is a list of some: Acts of Adam, Apocalypse of Adam, Abraham, Testament of Adam, Book of Enoch, Enoch II (Book of the Secrets of Enoch), Book of Noah, Apocalypse of Barach (I), Apocalypse of Barach (II), Apocalypse of Daniel, Apocalypse of Elijah, Apocalypse of Enoch, Apocalypse of Ezra (Esdras), Apocalypse of Solomon, Odes of Solomon, Testament of Isaac, Martyrdom of Isaiah, Apocalypse of Zephaniah, Paralipomena of Jeremiah, Apocryphon of Ezekiel, Ascension of Isaiah, Assumption of Moses, Baruch III, Baruch IV, Chronicles of the Kings of Israel, Acts of Solomon, Chronicles of the Kings of Judah, Maccabee III, Maccabee IV.
Apocrypha of the New Testament -Christian Apocrypha:
There are over 40 books this is a list of some: 14 Gospels, by Thomas, James, Peter, Bartholomew... 15 Acts, by Andrew, Peter, Matthew, John, Thomas, Paul... 6 Revelations, by Paul, Thomas, John, Virgin Mary, Stephen, Peter... Acts of John, Acts of Paul, Acts of Paul and Thecla, Acts of Peter, Apocalypse of James (I), Apocalypse of James (II), Apocalypse of Peter, Apocalypse of Philip, Apocalypse of Stephan, Apocalypse of Thomas, Apocryphon of John, Epistle of Pontius Pilate, Gospel of Nicodemus, Gospel of Perfection, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Peter, Revelation of Peter, Protevangelium of James, Gospel of the Birth of Mary, Gospel of the Hebrews, Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Truth, History of Joseph, Letter of Paul to the Alexandrians, Testament of the Lord, Wisdom of Jesus.
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