What is the oldest religion?

Answer 1

"no religion" is the oldest, its also the newest

Answer 2

Aryan Religion (Vedic Religion) - A pre-cursor to present day Hinduism) is the oldest surviving religion.

From Wikipedia:
Hinduism is considered to be the oldest living religion in the world and arguably one of the most tolerant one.

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

From Yahoo:
http://ask.yahoo.com/20011106.html

Answer 3

Hinduism is generally considered to be the oldest religion still being practiced today. This ancient religion was born when the Aryan peoples migrated to Northern India and first put their religious tradition into writing. The texts they created are the Vedas, which were written around 1,500 B.C.E. (before common era) and have greatly influenced Indian culture ever since.
Several other religions are almost as old as Hinduism. Judaism traces its roots back to the patriarch Abraham, who lived around 1,800 B.C.E. While the Jewish people are descended from Abraham, it was Moses who first recorded the Torah, the Jewish holy text, in 1,400 B.C.E. Most sources consider the date of the Torah as the beginning of Judaism.

Zoroastrianism is sometimes called the world's oldest prophetic religion. It's certainly one of the earliest religions founded by one person. Scholars are not certain when the founding prophet Zarathustra actually lived. Some believe Zarathustra lived in the 6th century B.C.E., while others trace his writings to the 14th or 13th centuries B.C.E.

India has been a veritable cradle for world religions -- in addition to Hinduism, both Jainism and Buddhism originated in India. The first of Jainism's sacred lords, called a Tirthankara, lived in the 8th century B.C.E. The last of these lords was Mahavir, who lived in the 5th century B.C.E. and was a key figure in spreading the religion. The philosophical teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha, spread around Asia after his death in 483 B.C.E.

Oddly enough, the two religions that dominate the world today are relative newcomers to the spiritual scene. Christianity began with the teachings of Jesus Christ around 30 C.E., and Islam started in 610 C.E. with the prophet Muhammad's revelation.

Answer 4

Hinduism is the oldest religion..it started with the arrival of humans

but unfortunately westerner dont accept this fact due to prejudice

Answer 5

There is a religion that has been around longer than any other form of worship. It is the religion taught in the Holy Bible. The Bible began to be written some 35 centuries ago, and some of the ‘histories’ preserved in its early chapters date back more than a thousand years beyond that. It contains the oldest records available on the origins of religion. That alone is reason to give the religion of the Bible serious consideration.

The Encyclopedia Americana says concerning the Bible: “Its light ‘has gone out into all the world.’ It is now viewed as an ethical and religious treasure whose inexhaustible teaching promises to be even more valuable as the hope of a world civilization increases.” But if a book is really a believable guide to the true religion, would you not expect it to have the widest circulation, to be accessible to all truth seekers?

Such is the case with the Bible. It has been translated into 1,928 languages, in whole or in part, and it is the most widely circulated book in history. Further, it has proved to be historically and scientifically sound. Archaeology and history testify to the accurate fulfillment of Bible prophecies. It is free from all forms of spiritism and mysticism and the occult. All of this is consistent with the Bible’s own claim that it is divinely inspired.—2 Timothy 3:16.

Christianity was not a totally new religion. Its roots lay deep in the religion of the Israelites, nourished by the written Law of Jehovah God. Even before Israel became a nation, worship of Jehovah was practiced by their forefathers Noah, Abraham, and Moses and was actually a continuation of the oldest religion in existence, the true worship of the Creator as initially practiced in Eden. But the national and religious leaders of Israel allowed false religion with Babylonish overtones to seep into their worship and thus pollute it. As the World Bible notes: “The Jewish congregation at the time of the birth of Jesus was fouled with hypocrisies and cluttered with a formalism that obscured the underlying spiritual truths uttered by the great Hebrew prophets.”

Compared to the human complexities tacked onto the Jewish faith, Jesus’ teachings were marked by simplicity. Paul, one of Christianity’s most energetic first-century missionaries, showed this when he spoke of Christianity’s main qualities: “There remain faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13) Other religions speak of “faith, hope, and love” too, and yet Christianity is different.

Jesus emphasized the need to “exercise faith in God,” the One he described as the Creator. (John 14:1; Matthew 19:4; Mark 13:19)
And since Christ spoke about “the only true God,” he clearly did not believe in a multitude of true gods and goddesses as the religions of ancient Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome taught, or as Hinduism still teaches.—John 17:3.

The divine purpose, Jesus explained, was that he give ‘his soul as a ransom in exchange for many,’ to “save what was lost,” so that “everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life.” (Mark 10:45; Luke 19:10; John 3:16; compare Romans 5:17-19.) Belief in a sacrificial death to accomplish atonement from sin differs from Shinto, which refuses to acknowledge that original or inherent sin exists.

Jesus taught that there is just one true faith. He advised: “Go in through the narrow gate; because broad and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are the ones going in through it; whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are the ones finding it.” (Matthew 7:13, 14)

Answer 6

Nobody knows for sure, but the oldest *documented* one is simple sun-god worship, around which many names were given to the various sun gods. Documented evidence of the Egyptian sun-god Ra pre-dates judaism by thousands of years. Many historians think that the Amun-Ra cult in Egypt (when Tutankhamun's father "threw out" all gods except one, the sun god Amun-Ra) was the origin of all other monotheistic religions, including judaism and christianity.

Answer 7

Animism--the thought that a rock isn't just a rock. It's projecting human thoughts onto nonhuman things, a perfectly natural thing to do when nothing else makes sense.

Answer 8

Judaism is the oldest according to biblical scripture.

Answer 9

Paganism

Answer 10

No religion.

Answer 11

Some form of paganism or animism, nature-worship type stuff.