What religions (other than Judaism) worshiped only one god?

Upvote:3

Sikhism ..... they believe in One God, the True Guru, or Teacher

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikhism

Upvote:4

Christianity and Islam

The obvious candidates are Christianity and Islam, both of which are clearly monotheistic. However, both of those religions can be said to have "learned" their monotheism from the Jews.

For Christianity, we have Jesus, who grew up as a Jew in Israel, and was brought up montheistic.

Islam, for its part, recognizes both Moses and Jesus as prophets of God (Allah).

For true parallel development, I would nominate the religions of the Indian sub-continent. Though, in all honesty, I'm not quite comfortable calling them religions at all.

Hinduism

Calling Hinduism a religion is a little misleading, as it is a set of schools of philosophies and practices. Some of these believe that all spirits are part of Bhrama, which is close to the Western concept of God. Trying to use the terminology of Western theology, they would have one God, and many saints and prophets.

Of course, other schoold of Hinduism are fully polytheistic, having many and various gods. However, there are some who see all of these gods as avatars or incarnations of the same single God, basically having a properly monotheistic religion.

Buddhism

Once again, there are many schools of Buddhism. I think there are at least some schools which can be fairly defined as monotheistic, and others which are basically atheistic.

Mostly, Buddhism teaches that there is a divinity (which can be thought of as God in Western terms) of which everyone is a part. It also has various Buddhas, who are indeed worshipped. However, there is no dogma that requires this, and becoming a Buddha is something to aspire to become through enlightenment. I would equate the worship of Buddhas in Chinese Buddhist culture more to the worship of Saints in Christianity than to believing them to be gods. It is clear that Buddha was indeed a person, not divine.

In other schools of Buddhism (perhaps the Japanese Zen Buddhism is a good example), there isn't really a divinity as such, merely the universe in its entirety as a singularity. This is, in my opinion, quite close to the oxymoron of an atheistic religion.

Others

Unfortunately, I do not know enough about other religions and belief system in the world to make any further actual knowledgable comments.

However, I do think that the Australian aboriginal beliefs of Dreamtime are an interesting candidate for this. Perhaps someone with a better understanding can add something in a comment or a separate answer.

Upvote:6

Zoroastrism is probably the only monotheistic neighbor of Judaism that i know of, and since it originated from the 7th century BC it is about 2 centuries older then Judaism. I don't know whether it was henotheistic though.

Upvote:6

Atenism appeared (although briefly) before either Judaism or Zoroastrianism.

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