Why did Christianity and Islam get more popular than Judaism?

Whatsup bud?

Whatsup bud?

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Judaism is the original, the oldest Abrahamic religion so why are the others 1 and 2 in world religions while it barely makes it in the top 10? Any historians or religious folk have an answer that doesn't involve merchants or shekels?
 
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Whatsup bud? said:
Judaism is the original, the oldest Abrahamic religion so why are the others 1 and 2 in world religions while it barely makes it in the top 10? Any historians or religious folk have an answer that doesn't involve merchants or shekels?
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Simple.

Judaism is a very ethnocentric religion that does accept converts but doesn't actively seek them out.

Christianity and Islam are far more universalist by comparison and they actively preach and seek converts.
 
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In the case of Christianity Romans saw the potential of how a people can rally behind one deity as did the Jews against Rome and put up considerable resistance as a result; making it eventually politically prudent to use it to unite a very diverse empire.

Islam is just a customized form of Nestorianism and Muhammad used it to similar ends. The Arabs were scattered tribes, and he pulled them all under one banner for political ends.

Judaism does have political ends, and was from time to time taken up and modified for various political ends but within Israel and tended to remain very inward looking.

Judaism could never spread because it's not possible to convert fully. You can join the religion certainly, but you can never be a real, ethnic Jew and unless it was a gentile man with a Jewish woman your children couldn't be either (the traditional forms of Judaism state that you must have a Jewish mother to be Jewish).

Islam and Christianity just took the biggest entry restriction off. Even before Christianity, in Rome Judaism was viewed with a reasonable degree of respect to the extent there are records of Pagan Romans employing Jewish exorcists and teachers to instruct them to become "God Fearers" (that is, non Jewish devotees of Yahweh).

This phenomenon did also exist in the East, and there is a school of thought that theorises that Muhammad was a gentile God Fearer due to the far stronger Jewish influence in the earlier teachings within the Koran, or at very least he was familiar with the teachings of the ones that were active in Arabia at the time. I personally think he would have been more likely to have encountered Nestorianism as being the more powerful force that said.
 
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Fagatron said:
In the case of Christianity Romans saw the potential of how a people can rally behind one deity as did the Jews against Rome and put up considerable resistance as a result; making it eventually politically prudent to use it to unite a very diverse empire.

Islam is just a customized form of Nestorianism and Muhammad used it to similar ends. The Arabs were scattered tribes, and he pulled them all under one banner for political ends.

Judaism does have political ends, and was from time to time taken up and modified for various political ends but within Israel.

Judaism could never spread because it's not possible to convert fully. You can join the religion certainly, but you can never be a real, ethnic Jew and unless it was a gentile man with a Jewish woman your children couldn't be either (the traditional forms of Judaism state that you must have a Jewish mother to be Jewish).

Islam and Christianity just took the biggest entry restriction off. Even before Christianity, in Rome Judaism was viewed with a reasonable degree of respect to the extent there are records of Pagan Romans employing Jewish exorcists and sometimes teachers to instruct them to become "God Fearers" (that is, non Jewish devotees of Yahweh).
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Doesn't hinduism have similar rules about ethnicity and religion?
 
Whatsup bud? said:
Doesn't hinduism have similar rules about ethnicity and religion?
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Hinduism is pretty much what happens when one of the polytheistic Indo-European pagan traditions survives into the modern era.

Had Christianity not violently stamped out paganism in Southern Europe and politically snuffed it out in Northern Europe, chances are that the ancient Greek, Roman, and Germanic religions would have eventually resembled something similar to Hinduism.
 
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Whatsup bud? said:
Doesn't hinduism have similar rules about ethnicity and religion?
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Hinduism isn't my specialism but it's a bit different from Judaism. It's more like the term "Neo pagan" in that it covers a lot of different shit. There are monotheistic, polytheistic and even atheistic forms of worship and philosophy. Hinduism is a broad brush that covers basically "every native Indian religion that isn't Sikhism, Buddhism and sometimes Jainism".

On the whole, Hinduism doesn't explicitly rule against outsider converts. Monotheistic traditions generally accept something along the premise that "all religions pray to the one" and aren't bothered if you want to do it the way they do. Polytheists might find it strange you would want to pray to deities tied to their history and not the native Gods of your own land but wouldn't object to it, and the philosophical/atheistic traditions tend to write in a universal style anyway; especially since Westerners have started taking parts of it up.

They would definetly think you're a bit odd, in the same way someone with an Irish name going to a Protestant a church might get a raised eyebrow and asked why they converted; but on the whole they generally don't care.

There are several temples around the world similar to but less successful than the Hare Krishna movement that mostly minister to foreign converts. They're rare, but not controversial in the same way it is in Judaism.

This doesn't mean there isn't racism in Hindu families. Many families even outside India still follow the caste system and expect people to remain in it. Though originally religious in origin, this tends to be something separate from religion now and most of the Indian publicaly recognised religious authorities condemn this.

This is very condensed, and results can vary for large Hindu communities outside of India in the Non-Western world like in Nepal or Bali.
 
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Judaism is much more popular. But it's also more exclusive.

Why else do these other religions use our holy book, our holy land and continue to pay each other with our money?
 
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draggs said:
Because Judaism isnt a proselytizing religion
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This is it in a nutshell. Christianity and Islam both have explicit calls to spread the faith and be worldwide religions baked into them, whereas Judaism stresses Jewish "otherness" and tries to keep itself as a more tribal religion than its offshoots.

That's not to say that there isn't a means to convert to Judaism, there is, but it isn't easy and they certainly aren't trying to convert the world, whereas the other two are relatively easy to convert to, and are really enthusiastic about it. Hell, Judaism has the Noahchide laws that are for the gentiles to follow that are good enough for a non jew to not be damned that they would rather a gentile follow rather than a full blown conversion.
 
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Why would Judaism have become popular, historically?

It doesn't offer its adherents an afterlife. (or at least, it's highly debatable)
It doesn't offer miracles and material rewards for worshipping. Shekel jokes aside, the Jews were dispossessed exiles for most of recorded history.
The scriptures (of which there are many) are all in some obscure language no one but ethnic Jews speak.
It doesn't proselytize very much.
Its ritualistic aspects are largely based around locations and artifacts that don't exist anymore and can't be replaced.
Adopting Judaism's strict regulations on diet, dress, not associating with idolaters, and so on would cause problems for you socially.

If you're a regular joe worshipping Mithras or Adonis or Jupiter or whoever, why exactly would you switch to this foreigners' religion? You probably wouldn't even be able to learn the first thing about its teachings without going out of your way to talk to one of those guys who keep to themselves and wear funny hats.
 
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