Open Origin Religions?

[Aractus]

I didn't say it was the first religion, I said it was the first one we know about to be based on a text, rather than simply having writings about it.

[Brian37]

I didn't say it was the first religion, I said it was the first one we know about to be based on a text, rather than simply having writings about it.

Good, then stop framing it like that. You give religions the excuse they want by saying stuff like that. Just skip that part and tell the truth. There is nothing original about any religion, they all stem from surrounding and prior ideas.

Humans don't exist in a vacuum. They communicate and take ideas from each other. That is the reality.

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What about Hinduism? It's a collection of different believes and is a name given to several religions. It has no known founder and no single authority.

Here is my oversimplified attempt at describing Hinduism:
Hinduism in Bali is so much different from the Hinduism in Mauritius. For a start, they are at different ends of the Indian Ocean but it's actually a mistake to think of Hinduism as being polytheistic. Hinduism is divided into different sects and each sect has their own deity. People pick their favoruite deity to worship.

Also, Sikhism may be another. In Sikhism there are several Gurus and each seems to a built upon the teachings of the previous Gurus. That's if my memory isn't failing.

Jainism could be another. It's so old, much older than Judaism I think, that, like Hinduism, there is no record of a founder. That doesn't mean to said it wasn't founded by a single person but odds are it wasn't.

Just the other day I got called a racist for pointing out to a Hindu that his religion was man made as well. That was despite pointing out people born in India and raised there that are now flat out atheists who reject the religion of the majority. 

Religion is all the same, it is group think based on our species flawed perceptions and gap filling. Nothing bigoted about stating facts anymore than saying the earth is not flat.

[Aractus]

I've told the truth the whole time you fucking moron. I said repeatedly: it's the first religion anywhere in the world that we know about that was based on a written text (i.e. the Pentateuch).

Stop making straw man arguments. I didn't say that Judaism didn't take from the surrounding Babylonian etc. religions, of course they did, but none of those were based on a written text.

The Pentateuch is the first text that we know about that forms the basis of a religion. And my comments were that it wasn't the work of a single author (i.e. Moses) - it was written down in collaboration. The Samaritans had their own version of the Pentateuch that formed the basis of their religion, and both they and the Palestinian Jews justified their differences from their texts. By the time of Jesus there were Rabbis that specialised in the reading, reciting and understanding of the 22 temple scrolls. You also had lawyers - the "scribes" that the New Testament talks about, that studied the scrolls (in particular the Pentateuch) to understand and apply the Law of Moses.

[Brian37]

I was not accusing you of lying so knock it of MORON

I was saying your tactic is flawed because that is the type of thing that allows theists to cling to old stories.

You don't have to stop doing it, it was not a demand no, I was merely saying it might be better to skip the "first" argument and go with "religion are always results of surrounding and prior ideas".

"first written" is what they jump on and go "See see see" and latch on to that out of desperation.

Merely advising not to give them fuel.

[Mr Greene]

From what I've heard, Moses is fictional, in fact just a copied character from an earlier religion.

Don't quote me on that though. Unless I'm right.

The basis of Moses is Sargon of Akkad who may have been a historical character, (The world's first Emperor). 

Judaism was to all intents and purposes formed by a bloke called Ezra circa 450 BCE. There were fragments of an earlier polytheistic religion incorporated into Judaism but that bears little similarity to the monotheistic claptrap we're familiar with. Link

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes, but they didn't base their religions on texts. The Egyptians and the Romans for instance wrote extensively about their deities, but their religion wasn't based on a text rather the text documented what the rulers were saying.

You think that this does not describe the history of judaism as a belief - as we can ascertain it? I think that your claim is myopic and factually incorrect. Course, if it weren't - if you were right....what? Nothing.

Do you think that there were no jews...before the OT was finally penned, or do you think there was a pre-existing oral tradition? How could a religion following what was an oral tradition (if there was one) be based upon a book ? How does that work?

[Aractus]

Firstly, I don't think it's relevant what the beliefs were before the Pentateuch was penned. Certainly there's no evidence that Judaism as we know it existed prior to it, but if it did so what? As of the 7-8th century BC it became the first religion that we know of to be based on a written text. Maybe not, maybe it became that way in the 2nd century BC, but certainly by the time of Jesus all the Jewish authorities used it as their authority, all of them studied it and used it as the basis of their beliefs. This was not the case with the Greek gods. The Greeks weren't reading their rules and understanding their beliefs and faiths from a text.

Now, in 2015, almost every religion is based on a text rather than being based around a ruler or a group of people who rule. But 2,000 years ago it was the only one like that.