{ "title": "How Religions Evolved: the data behind the chart", "source": "https://howitevolved.com/chart/", "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/", "revised": "2026-10-23", "note": "Years are integers: negative is BCE, there is no year 0, and 1 means 1 CE. Every date is the first datable attestation the cited chapter gives, not the date an idea began.", "traditions": [ { "key": "judaism", "name": "Judaism", "span": "c. 1250 BCE – present", "today": { "count": 15700000, "text": "about 15.7 million Jews (2024)", "source": "DellaPergola, 2025 · Judaism §13" }, "chapters": [ { "n": 1, "title": "Out of Canaan", "start": -1250, "end": -1000, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/origins-of-israel/" }, { "n": 2, "title": "Yahweh Among the Gods", "start": -1000, "end": -750, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/yahweh-among-the-gods/" }, { "n": 3, "title": "The Prophets and the Yahweh-Alone Movement", "start": -760, "end": -586, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/prophets-and-josiahs-reform/" }, { "n": 4, "title": "Exile and the Birth of Monotheism", "start": -597, "end": -539, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/babylonian-exile/" }, { "n": 5, "title": "Persian Yehud and the Making of the Torah", "start": -539, "end": -332, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/persian-yehud-and-the-torah/" }, { "n": 6, "title": "Hellenism, the Maccabees and the Second Temple Sects", "start": -332, "end": 70, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/second-temple-judaism/" }, { "n": 7, "title": "Without a Temple: The Rabbis", "start": 70, "end": 640, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/rabbis-mishnah-talmud/" }, { "n": 8, "title": "Under Islam", "start": 632, "end": 1250, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/jews-under-islam/" }, { "n": 9, "title": "Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah", "start": 1000, "end": 1650, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/ashkenazi-sephardic-kabbalah/" }, { "n": 10, "title": "False Messiahs, Hasidism and Their Opponents", "start": 1648, "end": 1800, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/sabbatai-zevi-and-the-rise-of-hasidism/" }, { "n": 11, "title": "Emancipation and the Modern Movements", "start": 1750, "end": 1900, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/reform-orthodox-conservative-origins/" }, { "n": 12, "title": "Zionism, the Holocaust and the State of Israel", "start": 1881, "end": 1974, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/zionism-holocaust-and-israel/" }, { "n": 13, "title": "Judaism Today", "start": 1967, "end": 2026, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/judaism-today/" } ], "firsts": [ { "idea": "A people called Israel, named for El", "year": -1208, "date": "c. 1208 BCE", "source": "Merneptah Stele: \"Israel is laid waste, his seed is not\"", "note": "Israel appears as a people in Canaan, not yet a kingdom; its name contains El, the Canaanite high god, not Yahweh.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/origins-of-israel/" }, { "idea": "Yahweh as a god who comes from the southern deserts", "year": -1100, "date": "12th–10th c. BCE (debated)", "source": "Judges 5:4–5 (the Song of Deborah); Deuteronomy 33:2; Habakkuk 3:3", "note": "Some of the oldest poems in the Bible have Yahweh march out of Seir, Edom and Teman; the date of the poems is disputed.", "confidence": "contested", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/yahweh-among-the-gods/" }, { "idea": "Yahweh named as a god", "year": -840, "date": "c. 840 BCE", "source": "Mesha Stele: the king of Moab takes \"the vessels of Yahweh\" from Nebo", "note": "The earliest certain mention of Yahweh comes from Israel's enemy; an Egyptian \"Shasu of Yhw\" c. 1370 BCE may be related.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/yahweh-among-the-gods/" }, { "idea": "Asherah paired with Yahweh", "year": -800, "date": "c. 800 BCE", "source": "Kuntillet ʿAjrud: \"Yahweh of Samaria and his asherah\"; Khirbet el-Qom", "note": "Blessings invoke Yahweh and \"his asherah\"; whether that meant the goddess or a cult symbol of hers is debated.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/yahweh-among-the-gods/" }, { "idea": "Yahweh dominates personal names", "year": -780, "date": "early 8th c. BCE", "source": "Samaria ostraca; Hebrew inscriptions and seals", "note": "Names built on Yahweh outnumber those built on Baal, though a notable minority honour Baal.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/yahweh-among-the-gods/" }, { "idea": "Prophecy collected in books", "year": -755, "date": "c. 760–750 BCE", "source": "Amos; then Hosea, Isaiah and Micah", "note": "Prophecy was common across the Near East; what is new is that these prophets' sayings were collected and edited into books.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/prophets-and-josiahs-reform/" }, { "idea": "Yahweh alone: a demand for exclusive worship", "year": -740, "date": "c. 750–725 BCE", "source": "Hosea 13:4: \"you know no god but me\"", "note": "Worship of Yahweh only, without yet denying that other gods exist: monolatry, not monotheism.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/prophets-and-josiahs-reform/" }, { "idea": "One sanctuary and a book of the law", "year": -622, "date": "622 BCE", "source": "2 Kings 22–23; the core of Deuteronomy", "note": "Josiah's reform centralises sacrifice in Jerusalem and purges Baal and Asherah from the Temple; how far it reached is debated.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/prophets-and-josiahs-reform/" }, { "idea": "Sabbath and circumcision as signs of the covenant", "year": -550, "date": "6th c. BCE", "source": "Priestly texts: Genesis 17; Exodus 31:12–17", "note": "Without temple, king or land, portable practices become the marks of belonging; both existed earlier, but not as identity markers.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/babylonian-exile/" }, { "idea": "No god but Yahweh: explicit monotheism", "year": -545, "date": "c. 550–539 BCE", "source": "Isaiah 45:5–7; Deuteronomy 4:35, 39", "note": "The first statements that other gods do not exist at all come from the exile, after the fall of Jerusalem.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/babylonian-exile/" }, { "idea": "\"The satan\", an accuser in God's council", "year": -520, "date": "c. 520 BCE", "source": "Zechariah 3:1–2; Job 1–2", "note": "Still a role with a definite article, not a name: the accuser acts with God's permission.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/persian-yehud-and-the-torah/" }, { "idea": "Yehudim: \"Jews\" as the name of a dispersed people", "year": -450, "date": "5th c. BCE", "source": "Elephantine papyri; Esther", "note": "\"Judahite\" becomes the name of a people defined by descent and practice, living far from Judah.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/persian-yehud-and-the-torah/" }, { "idea": "The Torah as a finished, authoritative book", "year": -400, "date": "5th–4th c. BCE", "source": "Nehemiah 8; the shared Samaritan Torah; later the Septuagint", "note": "The Torah reaches roughly its final form and is read aloud to the people; the Elephantine Judeans of the 5th century show no trace of it.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/persian-yehud-and-the-torah/" }, { "idea": "Satan as a proper name", "year": -350, "date": "4th c. BCE", "source": "1 Chronicles 21:1 against 2 Samuel 24:1", "note": "An act the older text gives to Yahweh, inciting David's census, is moved to \"Satan\", now without the article.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/second-temple-judaism/" }, { "idea": "Fallen angels as the source of evil", "year": -250, "date": "3rd c. BCE", "source": "The Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36)", "note": "Two hundred angels descend and corrupt humanity: evil comes from them, not from Adam.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/second-temple-judaism/" }, { "idea": "A Jewish prayer house (synagogue)", "year": -230, "date": "246–221 BCE", "source": "Schedia inscription, dedicated for Ptolemy III", "note": "The earliest dated synagogue is in Egypt; buildings in Judea and Galilee follow in the 1st c. CE.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/second-temple-judaism/" }, { "idea": "Resurrection and judgment of the dead", "year": -165, "date": "c. 165 BCE", "source": "Daniel 12:2", "note": "The first clear biblical promise that the dead will rise; Daniel is also the first biblical book to name angels, Michael and Gabriel.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/second-temple-judaism/" }, { "idea": "Hanukkah", "year": -164, "date": "December 164 BCE", "source": "1 Maccabees 4:52–59", "note": "The rededication of the Temple, kept as an eight-day festival; the oil miracle is first recorded in the Talmud.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/second-temple-judaism/" }, { "idea": "\"Judaism\" as a word", "year": -120, "date": "late 2nd or 1st c. BCE", "source": "2 Maccabees 2:21, 8:1, 14:38 (Ioudaismos)", "note": "The Greek word first names the Jewish way of life in contrast to Hellenism.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/second-temple-judaism/" }, { "idea": "Satan as leader of the forces of evil", "year": -100, "date": "2nd–1st c. BCE", "source": "Jubilees (Mastema); Dead Sea Scrolls (Belial)", "note": "The accuser becomes the commander of \"the sons of darkness\", the figure the Gospels take for granted.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/second-temple-judaism/" }, { "idea": "An end-time Messiah", "year": -75, "date": "1st c. BCE", "source": "Community Rule (1QS 9:11); Psalms of Solomon 17", "note": "\"Anointed\" becomes the title of an expected end-time figure; expectations varied widely.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/second-temple-judaism/" }, { "idea": "Prayer in place of sacrifice", "year": 80, "date": "c. 70–90 CE", "source": "b. Berakhot 26b; the ʿAmidah attributed to Yavneh (b. Berakhot 28b)", "note": "After the Temple burned, daily prayer was modelled on its timetable; fixed wording came centuries later.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/rabbis-mishnah-talmud/" }, { "idea": "The Oral Torah written down: the Mishnah", "year": 200, "date": "c. 200 CE", "source": "The Mishnah, compiled under Rabbi Judah the Patriarch", "note": "Tradition the rabbis traced to Sinai is compiled in Hebrew, much of it about a Temple that no longer stood.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/rabbis-mishnah-talmud/" }, { "idea": "Jewish status through the mother", "year": 200, "date": "c. 200 CE", "source": "m. Kiddushin 3:12", "note": "In the Bible descent runs through the father; the matrilineal rule is first stated by the rabbis.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/rabbis-mishnah-talmud/" }, { "idea": "Scripture without the Oral Torah", "year": 765, "date": "c. 760s", "source": "Anan ben David's Book of Commandments", "note": "Karaism rejects rabbinic tradition; Anan's role as founder was enlarged by later accounts.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/jews-under-islam/" }, { "idea": "The Talmud as authority everywhere, and a written prayer order", "year": 868, "date": "c. 860–875", "source": "Seder Rav Amram; geonic responsa", "note": "The Babylonian geonim make the Talmud the law of Jews across the Islamic world and send the first complete prayer order to Spain.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/jews-under-islam/" }, { "idea": "A binding Jewish creed", "year": 1168, "date": "c. 1168", "source": "Maimonides, Commentary on the Mishnah, Sanhedrin 10: the Thirteen Principles", "note": "The first rabbinic attempt at binding dogma, disputed from the start, later sung as Yigdal and printed as Ani Maʾamin.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/jews-under-islam/" }, { "idea": "Kabbalah", "year": 1200, "date": "c. 1180–1230", "source": "Sefer ha-Bahir; Isaac the Blind in Provence; then the Zohar, c. 1280–1300", "note": "Jewish mysticism with the sefirot appears in Provence and Castile, not in antiquity as the Zohar claims.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/ashkenazi-sephardic-kabbalah/" }, { "idea": "Bar mitzvah as a ceremony", "year": 1400, "date": "late Middle Ages", "source": "Ashkenazi custom", "note": "A boy was legally adult at thirteen in Talmudic law; a public ceremony marking it is attested only late.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/ashkenazi-sephardic-kabbalah/" }, { "idea": "One code of law for Sephardim and Ashkenazim", "year": 1565, "date": "1565; 1571", "source": "Joseph Karo's Shulḥan ʿArukh with Moses Isserles's glosses", "note": "Printing lets one code, with Ashkenazi glosses, become the reference for both communities.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/ashkenazi-sephardic-kabbalah/" }, { "idea": "The tsaddik as mediator for his followers", "year": 1780, "date": "1770s–1780s", "source": "Noʿam Elimelekh (1788) and other early Hasidic books", "note": "Formulated by the Maggid's students, not by the Baal Shem Tov himself.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/sabbatai-zevi-and-the-rise-of-hasidism/" }, { "idea": "\"Orthodox\" as a name for Jews", "year": 1795, "date": "1795", "source": "Berlinische Monatsschrift", "note": "The label comes from outside, before Orthodoxy organised itself as a movement against Reform.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/reform-orthodox-conservative-origins/" }, { "idea": "Reform worship", "year": 1810, "date": "1810", "source": "Israel Jacobson's service at Seesen: German sermon, organ and choir", "note": "Reform begins with changes to worship; changes in doctrine follow.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/reform-orthodox-conservative-origins/" }, { "idea": "Settling the land as the start of redemption", "year": 1862, "date": "1862", "source": "Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, Derishat Tziyon", "note": "A rabbinic argument for settlement decades before Herzl's secular, political Zionism (1896–97).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/zionism-holocaust-and-israel/" }, { "idea": "Bat mitzvah", "year": 1922, "date": "18 March 1922", "source": "Mordecai Kaplan's daughter Judith, New York", "note": "The first public bat mitzvah in America.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/judaism-today/" }, { "idea": "A woman rabbi", "year": 1935, "date": "27 December 1935", "source": "Regina Jonas, ordained privately in Offenbach", "note": "Seminaries follow from 1972 (Reform), 1974 (Reconstructionist) and 1985 (Conservative); Orthodoxy remains divided.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/judaism-today/" }, { "idea": "Jewish status through the father (Reform)", "year": 1983, "date": "15 March 1983", "source": "Central Conference of American Rabbis resolution", "note": "American Reform accepts the child of one Jewish parent, father or mother, as presumptively Jewish.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/judaism-today/" } ], "tree": [ { "id": "israel", "kind": "trunk", "name": "Israelite religion: Yahweh among the gods", "parent": null, "start": -1208, "end": null, "date": "c. 1208 BCE", "note": "The Merneptah Stele names a people called Israel in Canaan; its name contains El, not Yahweh.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/origins-of-israel/" }, { "id": "samaritans", "kind": "offshoot", "name": "Samaritans", "parent": "israel", "start": -450, "end": null, "date": "temple on Gerizim, mid-5th c. BCE", "note": "A Yahweh temple on Mount Gerizim above Shechem; destroyed by John Hyrcanus c. 110 BCE. The community keeps its own Torah and survives today.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/persian-yehud-and-the-torah/#samaria-and-mount-gerizim" }, { "id": "sadducees", "kind": "extinct", "name": "Sadducees", "parent": "israel", "start": -150, "end": 70, "date": "2nd c. BCE – 70 CE", "note": "The priestly party; rejected resurrection and the Pharisees' oral tradition. Disappears with the Temple.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/second-temple-judaism/#the-schools-pharisees-sadducees-essenes" }, { "id": "essenes", "kind": "extinct", "name": "Essenes and the Qumran community", "parent": "israel", "start": -100, "end": 68, "date": "c. 100 BCE – 68 CE", "note": "Settlement at Qumran from c. 100 BCE on Magness's dating; the Dead Sea Scrolls are its library and others'.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/second-temple-judaism/#the-schools-pharisees-sadducees-essenes" }, { "id": "pharisees", "kind": "mark", "name": "Pharisees, the rabbis' forerunners", "parent": "israel", "start": -150, "end": null, "date": "2nd c. BCE", "note": "The school of oral tradition and lay piety from which rabbinic Judaism later grew.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/second-temple-judaism/#the-schools-pharisees-sadducees-essenes" }, { "id": "rabbinic", "kind": "mark", "name": "Rabbinic Judaism: prayer, Mishnah, Talmud", "parent": "israel", "start": 90, "end": null, "date": "after 70 CE", "note": "With the Temple gone, the rabbis' Judaism of synagogue, study and law slowly becomes the mainstream; the Mishnah c. 200, the Talmuds c. 400 and 500–700.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/rabbis-mishnah-talmud/#yavneh-what-happened-and-what-did-not" }, { "id": "karaites", "kind": "branch", "name": "Karaites", "parent": "israel", "start": 765, "end": null, "date": "c. 760s", "note": "Anan ben David breaks with the rabbinic leadership in Baghdad: Scripture without the Oral Torah. A small community survives.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/jews-under-islam/#the-karaites-scripture-alone" }, { "id": "ashkenaz-sepharad", "kind": "mark", "name": "Ashkenaz and Sepharad: two Jewish worlds", "parent": "israel", "start": 1000, "end": null, "date": "c. 1000", "note": "Gershom of Mainz teaches in the Rhineland; Spain under Islam produces its own rite, poetry and philosophy.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/ashkenazi-sephardic-kabbalah/#two-jewish-worlds-what-ashkenaz-and-sepharad-mean" }, { "id": "sabbateans", "kind": "extinct", "name": "Sabbateans", "parent": "israel", "start": 1665, "end": 1760, "date": "1665", "note": "Sabbatai Zevi proclaimed Messiah at Gaza; converts to Islam in 1666. Secret followers persist: the Dönme of Salonica (1683) and the Frankists in Poland (1756).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/sabbatai-zevi-and-the-rise-of-hasidism/#the-underground-sabbateans-and-frankists" }, { "id": "hasidism", "kind": "branch", "name": "Hasidism", "parent": "israel", "start": 1746, "end": null, "date": "1740s–1760s", "note": "The Baal Shem Tov's circle at Międzybóż becomes a movement under the Maggid of Mezeritch (d. 1772); the tsaddik as mediator.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/sabbatai-zevi-and-the-rise-of-hasidism/#from-a-circle-to-a-movement" }, { "id": "mitnagdim", "kind": "mark", "name": "Mitnagdim: the Vilna Gaon bans the Hasidim", "parent": "israel", "start": 1772, "end": null, "date": "1772", "note": "First excommunication of the Hasidim in Vilna; the traditionalist mainstream defines itself against them.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/sabbatai-zevi-and-the-rise-of-hasidism/#the-opposition-the-vilna-gaon-and-the-mitnagdim" }, { "id": "chabad", "kind": "branch", "name": "Chabad-Lubavitch", "parent": "hasidism", "start": 1796, "end": null, "date": "1796", "note": "Shneur Zalman of Liadi's Tanya (1796); arrested by Russia in 1798 and 1800. After Schneerson's death in 1994 part of the movement proclaimed him Messiah.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/sabbatai-zevi-and-the-rise-of-hasidism/" }, { "id": "reform", "kind": "branch", "name": "Reform Judaism", "parent": "israel", "start": 1810, "end": null, "date": "1810 · 1818", "note": "Jacobson's service with organ and German sermon at Seesen (1810); the Hamburg Temple (1818) and the rabbinic ban that answered it.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/reform-orthodox-conservative-origins/#reform-from-changing-worship-to-changing-doctrine" }, { "id": "conservative", "kind": "branch", "name": "Conservative Judaism", "parent": "reform", "start": 1845, "end": null, "date": "1845 · 1886", "note": "Zacharias Frankel walks out of the Reform conference of 1845; the Jewish Theological Seminary opens in New York in 1886.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/reform-orthodox-conservative-origins/#the-middle-way-frankel-graetz-and-the-science-of-judaism" }, { "id": "orthodox", "kind": "mark", "name": "Orthodoxy becomes a movement", "parent": "israel", "start": 1876, "end": null, "date": "1795 (the name) · 1876", "note": "'Orthodox' is applied to Jews in 1795; Hirsch's congregation secedes in Frankfurt under Prussia's secession law of 1876.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/reform-orthodox-conservative-origins/#orthodoxy-tradition-becomes-a-movement" }, { "id": "zionism", "kind": "current", "name": "Zionism", "parent": "israel", "start": 1897, "end": null, "date": "1897", "note": "The First Zionist Congress at Basel, led mostly by secular Jews; most Orthodox and Reform rabbis opposed it at first.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/zionism-holocaust-and-israel/#herzl-and-political-zionism-a-secular-movement" }, { "id": "religious-zionism", "kind": "branch", "name": "Religious Zionism (Mizrachi)", "parent": "zionism", "start": 1902, "end": null, "date": "1902", "note": "Founded in Vilna by Rabbi Reines; Rav Kook reads the secular pioneers as unwitting agents of redemption; Gush Emunim follows in 1974.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/zionism-holocaust-and-israel/" }, { "id": "agudath", "kind": "mark", "name": "Agudath Israel: Haredi Orthodoxy organises", "parent": "israel", "start": 1912, "end": null, "date": "1912", "note": "The non-Zionist Orthodox organisation founded at Kattowitz; Neturei Karta breaks from it in 1938.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/zionism-holocaust-and-israel/" }, { "id": "humanistic", "kind": "branch", "name": "Humanistic Judaism", "parent": "reform", "start": 1963, "end": null, "date": "1963", "note": "Sherwin Wine's congregation near Detroit, with services that omit God.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/judaism-today/" } ] }, { "key": "christianity", "name": "Christianity", "span": "c. 30 CE – present", "today": { "count": 2300000000, "text": "about 2.3 billion Christians (2020)", "source": "Pew Research Center, 2025 · Christianity §13" }, "chapters": [ { "n": 1, "title": "The World of Jesus", "start": -63, "end": 30, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/world-of-jesus/" }, { "n": 2, "title": "The Historical Jesus", "start": -6, "end": 33, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/historical-jesus/" }, { "n": 3, "title": "Paul and the Gentile Mission", "start": 30, "end": 64, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/paul-the-apostle/" }, { "n": 4, "title": "After the Temple", "start": 70, "end": 150, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/when-were-the-gospels-written/" }, { "n": 5, "title": "Many Christianities", "start": 130, "end": 312, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/gnostics-heresy-new-testament-canon/" }, { "n": 6, "title": "Constantine, the Creeds and the Councils", "start": 312, "end": 451, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/constantine-council-of-nicaea/" }, { "n": 7, "title": "Beyond Rome", "start": 300, "end": 1400, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/church-of-the-east-ethiopia-india-china/" }, { "n": 8, "title": "The Medieval West", "start": 500, "end": 1300, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/great-schism-medieval-church/" }, { "n": 9, "title": "Reformations", "start": 1517, "end": 1648, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/martin-luther-reformation/" }, { "n": 10, "title": "Mission and Empire", "start": 1492, "end": 1900, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/missionaries-colonialism-christianity/" }, { "n": 11, "title": "Revival, Reason and Criticism", "start": 1650, "end": 1900, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/revivals-enlightenment-rapture/" }, { "n": 12, "title": "The Twentieth Century", "start": 1900, "end": 1990, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/pentecostalism-vatican-ii-20th-century-christianity/" }, { "n": 13, "title": "Christianity Today", "start": 1990, "end": 2026, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/how-many-christians-are-there/" } ], "firsts": [ { "idea": "A crucified Messiah raised from the dead", "year": 33, "date": "within a few years of c. 30–33 CE", "source": "1 Corinthians 15:3–8, a creed Paul says he \"received\"", "note": "The oldest datable statement of Christian belief: Christ died, was buried, was raised and appeared to Cephas, the Twelve, James and others. The belief is dated; the event is outside historical method.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/historical-jesus/" }, { "idea": "Gentile believers without circumcision", "year": 48, "date": "c. 48–49 CE", "source": "Galatians 2:1–10", "note": "The Jerusalem \"pillars\" agree that Paul's gentile converts need not be circumcised; the Antioch quarrel that follows shows how much was left unsettled.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/paul-the-apostle/" }, { "idea": "Jesus addressed in prayer as Lord", "year": 50, "date": "by c. 50 CE (formula older)", "source": "1 Corinthians 16:22: maranatha, \"Our Lord, come!\"", "note": "An Aramaic prayer left untranslated in a Greek letter, so it goes back to Aramaic-speaking followers. How early this amounts to worship of Jesus as divine is debated.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/paul-the-apostle/" }, { "idea": "The words over the bread and cup", "year": 54, "date": "c. 54 CE", "source": "1 Corinthians 11:23–26", "note": "Paul's account of the last meal, introduced as a tradition he had received, is older than any Gospel.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/historical-jesus/" }, { "idea": "A written Gospel", "year": 70, "date": "c. 66–74 CE", "source": "The Gospel of Mark", "note": "The first narrative of Jesus' life, written around the Roman destruction of the Temple; Matthew and Luke later used it.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/when-were-the-gospels-written/" }, { "idea": "The name \"Christians\"", "year": 85, "date": "Acts, c. 80–90 CE (event earlier)", "source": "Acts 11:26: \"in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians\"", "note": "Christianoi, \"Christ people\", is attached to Antioch by Acts; the movement was still a Jewish group when the name appeared.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/when-were-the-gospels-written/" }, { "idea": "\"Christianity\" set against \"Judaism\"", "year": 110, "date": "c. 110 CE", "source": "Ignatius of Antioch, To the Magnesians 10", "note": "The word Christianismos is first attested here, as the opposite of Ioudaismos.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/when-were-the-gospels-written/" }, { "idea": "One bishop over each city's church", "year": 110, "date": "c. 110 CE", "source": "Ignatius of Antioch, To the Smyrnaeans 8", "note": "Ignatius' letters are the first to insist on a single bishop at the head of each church and the first to speak of the \"catholic church\".", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/when-were-the-gospels-written/" }, { "idea": "A fixed list of scripture", "year": 144, "date": "c. 144 CE", "source": "Marcion's canon: one Gospel and ten letters of Paul", "note": "Marcion, in Rome, made the first fixed collection of Christian scripture, with no Old Testament; the church's own lists followed.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/gnostics-heresy-new-testament-canon/" }, { "idea": "A Sunday service of readings and Eucharist", "year": 153, "date": "c. 150–155 CE", "source": "Justin Martyr, First Apology 67", "note": "The first description of a Sunday gathering: the \"memoirs of the apostles\" and the prophets are read, then bread and wine are shared.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/gnostics-heresy-new-testament-canon/" }, { "idea": "Four Gospels, and only four", "year": 180, "date": "c. 180 CE", "source": "Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1 and 3.11.8", "note": "Irenaeus names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and argues there can be neither more nor fewer than four.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/how-we-know/" }, { "idea": "God called a trias", "year": 180, "date": "c. 180 CE", "source": "Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 2.15", "note": "The first use of the Greek word for a triad of God, his Word and his Wisdom; the doctrine was defined only in the fourth century.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/gnostics-heresy-new-testament-canon/" }, { "idea": "Trinitas: three persons, one substance", "year": 213, "date": "c. 213 CE", "source": "Tertullian, Against Praxeas", "note": "The Latin vocabulary of the later doctrine appears in an argument against Monarchians.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/gnostics-heresy-new-testament-canon/" }, { "idea": "The Son \"of one substance\" with the Father", "year": 325, "date": "325 CE", "source": "The Creed of Nicaea (homoousios)", "note": "Nicaea adopted a non-biblical word to exclude Arius; the post-Nicene struggle over it lasted another half century.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/constantine-council-of-nicaea/" }, { "idea": "Christ's birth on 25 December", "year": 336, "date": "336 CE (in the Chronograph of 354)", "source": "The Depositio martyrum of the Chronograph of 354", "note": "The first secure attestation of the date as a feast in Rome; an earlier mention in Hippolytus is disputed, and why the date was chosen is contested.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/constantine-council-of-nicaea/" }, { "idea": "The 27 books of the New Testament", "year": 367, "date": "367 CE", "source": "Athanasius, 39th Festal Letter", "note": "The first list of exactly the 27 books; no council of the whole church chose them.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/gnostics-heresy-new-testament-canon/" }, { "idea": "Nicene Christianity as the religion of the empire", "year": 380, "date": "380 CE", "source": "Theodosius I, Cunctos populos", "note": "Addressed to Constantinople and aimed at rival Christians, the edict was later read and codified as establishing Nicene Christianity across the empire.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/constantine-council-of-nicaea/" }, { "idea": "Mary as Theotokos, \"God-bearer\"", "year": 431, "date": "431 CE", "source": "Council of Ephesus", "note": "The council deposed Nestorius and affirmed the title Theotokos for Mary.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/constantine-council-of-nicaea/" }, { "idea": "Christ \"in two natures\"", "year": 451, "date": "451 CE", "source": "Definition of the Council of Chalcedon", "note": "The formula that split the East into Chalcedonian, Oriental Orthodox and Church of the East families.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/constantine-council-of-nicaea/" }, { "idea": "A Rule for monks", "year": 530, "date": "c. 530 CE", "source": "The Rule of Benedict", "note": "Benedict's Rule, drawing heavily on the anonymous Rule of the Master, became the standard of Western monasticism.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/great-schism-medieval-church/" }, { "idea": "Mary Magdalene as the repentant sinner", "year": 591, "date": "591 CE", "source": "Gregory the Great, Homily 33", "note": "Gregory merged her with the sinful woman of Luke 7 and Mary of Bethany and read her sins as sexual; the Roman calendar separated them again in 1969.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/great-schism-medieval-church/" }, { "idea": "Christianity in Tang China", "year": 781, "date": "635 CE arrival; stele 781", "source": "The Xi'an Stele", "note": "Alopen of the Church of the East reached Chang'an in 635; the stele erected in 781 tells the community's story.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/church-of-the-east-ethiopia-india-china/" }, { "idea": "The filioque sung in Rome's creed", "year": 1014, "date": "c. 1014 CE", "source": "Roman liturgical practice under Henry II", "note": "Long used in Spain and the Frankish church, the addition \"and the Son\" entered the creed at Rome in the early eleventh century.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/great-schism-medieval-church/" }, { "idea": "Mutual excommunications of the papal legates and the patriarch", "year": 1054, "date": "16 July 1054", "source": "The bull laid on the altar of Hagia Sophia", "note": "One event in a long drift; the sack of Constantinople in 1204 made the break real, and the excommunications were lifted in 1965.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/great-schism-medieval-church/" }, { "idea": "Transubstantiation and annual confession", "year": 1215, "date": "1215 CE", "source": "Fourth Lateran Council, canons 1 and 21", "note": "The council defined the change of bread and wine and required every adult to confess and receive communion at least once a year.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/great-schism-medieval-church/" }, { "idea": "Purgatory set out in a council", "year": 1274, "date": "1274 CE", "source": "Profession of faith accepted at the Second Council of Lyon", "note": "Prayers for the dead are early; the noun purgatorium appears in the late twelfth century, and Lyon II gave the first conciliar statement.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/great-schism-medieval-church/" }, { "idea": "Justification by faith alone; Scripture as supreme authority", "year": 1520, "date": "1517–1520", "source": "Luther's Ninety-five Theses and treatises of 1520", "note": "Luther's programme: sinners are justified by faith, Scripture stands above popes and councils, and all baptised believers are priests.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/martin-luther-reformation/" }, { "idea": "Adult baptism of believers", "year": 1525, "date": "January 1525", "source": "First adult baptisms in Zurich", "note": "The Anabaptist movement begins, rejecting infant baptism.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/martin-luther-reformation/" }, { "idea": "Indigenous Americans declared rational and free", "year": 1537, "date": "1537", "source": "Paul III, Sublimis Deus", "note": "The bull declared that the peoples of the Americas were truly human and could not be deprived of liberty or property.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/missionaries-colonialism-christianity/" }, { "idea": "The canon fixed as dogma, with the deuterocanonical books", "year": 1546, "date": "April 1546", "source": "Council of Trent, Session IV", "note": "Trent defined the list of biblical books as a matter of faith for the first time.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/martin-luther-reformation/" }, { "idea": "The heart \"strangely warmed\": evangelical conversion", "year": 1738, "date": "24 May 1738", "source": "John Wesley's journal, Aldersgate Street", "note": "The experience at the root of Methodism and of the evangelical religion of the heart.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/revivals-enlightenment-rapture/" }, { "idea": "A historical Jesus written against the Gospels", "year": 1774, "date": "1774–1778", "source": "Reimarus' fragments, published by Lessing", "note": "The first attempt to reconstruct the historical Jesus in opposition to the Gospel accounts.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/revivals-enlightenment-rapture/" }, { "idea": "A pre-tribulation Rapture", "year": 1832, "date": "early 1830s", "source": "John Nelson Darby among the Brethren", "note": "Darby developed the teaching that believers will be caught up before a final tribulation; the Scofield Reference Bible spread it from 1909.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/revivals-enlightenment-rapture/" }, { "idea": "Mary's Immaculate Conception defined", "year": 1854, "date": "1854", "source": "Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus", "note": "Defined as dogma for Catholics, long after it had become a widespread belief.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/revivals-enlightenment-rapture/" }, { "idea": "Papal infallibility", "year": 1870, "date": "18 July 1870", "source": "First Vatican Council, Pastor aeternus", "note": "The council defined that the pope speaking ex cathedra on faith and morals is infallible.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/revivals-enlightenment-rapture/" }, { "idea": "Speaking in tongues as Spirit baptism", "year": 1901, "date": "1 January 1901", "source": "Agnes Ozman at Parham's Bethel Bible School, Topeka", "note": "One of several starting points of Pentecostalism; the Azusa Street revival followed from 1906.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/pentecostalism-vatican-ii-20th-century-christianity/" }, { "idea": "A woman ordained priest in the Anglican Communion", "year": 1944, "date": "1944", "source": "Florence Li Tim-Oi, Hong Kong", "note": "Ordained in a wartime emergency; the Church of England ordained women priests from 1994.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/pentecostalism-vatican-ii-20th-century-christianity/" }, { "idea": "The Mass in the vernacular", "year": 1963, "date": "1963", "source": "Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium 36", "note": "The council allowed the use of the vernacular to be extended; the reformed Mass of 1969–1970 then replaced Latin almost everywhere.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/pentecostalism-vatican-ii-20th-century-christianity/" }, { "idea": "Collective Jewish guilt for the crucifixion rejected", "year": 1965, "date": "28 October 1965", "source": "Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate 4", "note": "The council rejected charging the Jews, then or now, with Christ's death.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/pentecostalism-vatican-ii-20th-century-christianity/" } ], "tree": [ { "id": "jesus", "kind": "trunk", "name": "The Jesus movement, a Jewish sect", "parent": null, "start": 30, "end": null, "date": "c. 30 CE", "note": "Jesus of Nazareth crucified under Pilate, probably in 30 or 33; his followers proclaim him raised.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/historical-jesus/" }, { "id": "gentile", "kind": "mark", "name": "Gentile churches without the Law", "parent": "jesus", "start": 49, "end": null, "date": "c. 48–49", "note": "The Jerusalem 'pillars' agree to Paul's gentile mission; believers need not be circumcised.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/paul-the-apostle/" }, { "id": "ebionites", "kind": "extinct", "name": "Ebionites: Jewish believers who kept the Law", "parent": "jesus", "start": 135, "end": 400, "date": "described c. 180", "note": "Irenaeus describes them around 180; Jewish believers persisted for centuries after the parting of the ways.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/when-were-the-gospels-written/" }, { "id": "valentinians", "kind": "extinct", "name": "Valentinians and the 'Gnostics'", "parent": "jesus", "start": 136, "end": 400, "date": "c. 136", "note": "Valentinus teaches in Rome from c. 136; whether 'Gnosticism' was one movement is disputed.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/gnostics-heresy-new-testament-canon/#gnosticism-as-a-label" }, { "id": "marcionites", "kind": "extinct", "name": "Marcionites", "parent": "jesus", "start": 144, "end": 400, "date": "c. 144", "note": "Marcion breaks with the Roman church with the first fixed list of Christian scripture; a 'synagogue of the Marcionites' is still inscribed in Syria in 318–319.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/gnostics-heresy-new-testament-canon/" }, { "id": "montanists", "kind": "extinct", "name": "New Prophecy (Montanists)", "parent": "jesus", "start": 165, "end": 350, "date": "c. 157–172", "note": "Montanus, Priscilla and Maximilla prophesy in Phrygia.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/gnostics-heresy-new-testament-canon/#the-new-prophecy-montanus-priscilla-and-maximilla" }, { "id": "beyond-rome", "kind": "mark", "name": "Christian kingdoms beyond Rome: Armenia, Georgia, Aksum", "parent": "jesus", "start": 320, "end": null, "date": "c. 314–340s", "note": "Gregory the Illuminator consecrated c. 314; Ezana of Aksum and the Georgian court convert in the 330s.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/church-of-the-east-ethiopia-india-china/#armenia" }, { "id": "imperial", "kind": "mark", "name": "The imperial church: Nicaea and the creeds", "parent": "jesus", "start": 325, "end": null, "date": "312–381", "note": "Constantine's conversion; the Council of Nicaea (325); Nicene Christianity required by Theodosius (380).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/constantine-council-of-nicaea/" }, { "id": "donatists", "kind": "extinct", "name": "Donatists", "parent": "jesus", "start": 313, "end": 600, "date": "313", "note": "The North African schism over clergy who had lapsed in persecution, heard at Rome and Arles at Constantine's request.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/constantine-council-of-nicaea/" }, { "id": "church-of-the-east", "kind": "branch", "name": "Church of the East", "parent": "jesus", "start": 424, "end": null, "date": "410 · 424", "note": "The Persian church organises under its own catholicos (410) and rejects appeals to 'the Western fathers' (424). It reaches China in 635 and India's Thomas Christians.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/church-of-the-east-ethiopia-india-china/#the-church-of-the-east" }, { "id": "thomas-christians", "kind": "mark", "name": "Thomas Christians of Kerala", "parent": "church-of-the-east", "start": 849, "end": null, "date": "copper plates, 849", "note": "The Tharisapalli plates grant land to a church at Quilon; brought under Portuguese Latin control at Diamper in 1599.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/church-of-the-east-ethiopia-india-china/#india-the-thomas-christians" }, { "id": "oriental-orthodox", "kind": "branch", "name": "Oriental Orthodox churches", "parent": "jesus", "start": 451, "end": null, "date": "451", "note": "The churches of Egypt, Syria, Armenia (Dvin, 554) and Ethiopia reject the Council of Chalcedon's 'two natures'.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/constantine-council-of-nicaea/#three-families-of-churches" }, { "id": "orthodox", "kind": "branch", "name": "Eastern Orthodox churches", "parent": "jesus", "start": 1054, "end": null, "date": "1054", "note": "Mutual excommunications in Hagia Sophia on 16 July 1054; the estrangement was already centuries old and the Fourth Crusade's sack of Constantinople (1204) made it final.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/great-schism-medieval-church/" }, { "id": "rus", "kind": "mark", "name": "Baptism of Rus'", "parent": "jesus", "start": 988, "end": null, "date": "c. 988", "note": "Vladimir of Kiev is baptised; the year is disputed. The Russian church stands on the Orthodox side after 1054.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/great-schism-medieval-church/" }, { "id": "latin", "kind": "mark", "name": "The Latin (Catholic) church", "parent": "jesus", "start": 1075, "end": null, "date": "1054 · 1075", "note": "Gregory VII's Dictatus papae claims the pope may depose emperors; the papal monarchy of the high Middle Ages.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/great-schism-medieval-church/" }, { "id": "cathars", "kind": "extinct", "name": "Cathars", "parent": "jesus", "start": 1160, "end": 1320, "date": "12th–14th c.", "note": "Crushed by the Albigensian Crusade (1209–29) and the inquisitions; whether 'Catharism' was one coherent religion or an inquisitors' construction is disputed.", "confidence": "contested", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/great-schism-medieval-church/#the-cathars" }, { "id": "friars", "kind": "mark", "name": "The friars: Dominicans and Franciscans", "parent": "jesus", "start": 1216, "end": null, "date": "1216 · 1223", "note": "Orders of preaching and poverty for the new towns; Dominican friars staff the inquisitions from 1231.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/great-schism-medieval-church/#friars-and-the-new-towns" }, { "id": "hussites", "kind": "branch", "name": "Hussites", "parent": "jesus", "start": 1415, "end": null, "date": "1415", "note": "Jan Hus burned at the Council of Constance; the Bohemian Brethren who followed re-emerge as the Moravians.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/martin-luther-reformation/" }, { "id": "moravians", "kind": "mark", "name": "Moravians at Herrnhut", "parent": "hussites", "start": 1727, "end": null, "date": "1722–1727", "note": "Refugees settle on Zinzendorf's estate; the first Moravian missionaries sail in 1732.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/revivals-enlightenment-rapture/" }, { "id": "lutheran", "kind": "branch", "name": "Lutheran", "parent": "jesus", "start": 1517, "end": null, "date": "1517", "note": "Luther's Ninety-five Theses (31 October 1517); the Augsburg Confession (1530); princes choose at Augsburg (1555).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/martin-luther-reformation/" }, { "id": "reformed", "kind": "branch", "name": "Reformed (Zwingli, Calvin)", "parent": "lutheran", "start": 1522, "end": null, "date": "1522 · 1536", "note": "Zwingli's reform begins in Zurich (1522); Luther and Zwingli fail to agree at Marburg (1529); Calvin's Institutes (1536).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/martin-luther-reformation/" }, { "id": "anabaptists", "kind": "branch", "name": "Anabaptists (Mennonites, Amish)", "parent": "reformed", "start": 1525, "end": null, "date": "January 1525", "note": "First adult baptisms in Zurich; radical Anabaptists hold Münster in 1534–35; the pacifist majority survives as the Mennonites.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/martin-luther-reformation/#the-anabaptists" }, { "id": "anglican", "kind": "branch", "name": "Anglican (Church of England)", "parent": "jesus", "start": 1534, "end": null, "date": "1534", "note": "The Act of Supremacy makes Henry VIII 'supreme head' of the Church of England; the Elizabethan settlement (1559–63).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/martin-luther-reformation/" }, { "id": "trent", "kind": "mark", "name": "Catholic reform: Trent and the Jesuits", "parent": "jesus", "start": 1545, "end": null, "date": "1540 · 1545–1563", "note": "The Society of Jesus approved (1540); the Council of Trent answers the reformers point by point.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/martin-luther-reformation/#the-jesuits" }, { "id": "evangelical", "kind": "current", "name": "Evangelical revivals", "parent": "anglican", "start": 1738, "end": null, "date": "1734–1741", "note": "Edwards at Northampton (1734–35), Wesley's heart 'strangely warmed' (1738), Whitefield's tours; a religion of conversion that crosses the Protestant churches.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/revivals-enlightenment-rapture/" }, { "id": "methodist", "kind": "branch", "name": "Methodist", "parent": "evangelical", "start": 1784, "end": null, "date": "1784", "note": "Wesley ordains ministers for America; the Methodist Episcopal Church is founded in Baltimore. The African Methodist Episcopal Church follows in 1816.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/revivals-enlightenment-rapture/#wesley-and-methodism" }, { "id": "latter-day-saints", "kind": "offshoot", "name": "Latter-day Saints (Mormons)", "parent": "evangelical", "start": 1830, "end": null, "date": "1830", "note": "The Book of Mormon published and Joseph Smith's church organised in the 'burned-over district' of New York.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/revivals-enlightenment-rapture/#new-churches-from-the-american-frontier" }, { "id": "oxford-movement", "kind": "mark", "name": "The Oxford Movement", "parent": "anglican", "start": 1833, "end": null, "date": "1833", "note": "Keble's 'National Apostasy' sermon; Anglo-Catholic revival; Newman becomes a Catholic in 1845.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/revivals-enlightenment-rapture/" }, { "id": "adventists", "kind": "branch", "name": "Seventh-day Adventists", "parent": "evangelical", "start": 1863, "end": null, "date": "1844 · 1863", "note": "The Millerites' 'Great Disappointment' of 22 October 1844; the church organised in 1863.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/revivals-enlightenment-rapture/#new-churches-from-the-american-frontier" }, { "id": "jehovahs-witnesses", "kind": "offshoot", "name": "Jehovah's Witnesses", "parent": "adventists", "start": 1879, "end": null, "date": "1879", "note": "Charles Taze Russell's Zion's Watch Tower, from the same Adventist expectation.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/revivals-enlightenment-rapture/#new-churches-from-the-american-frontier" }, { "id": "vatican-i", "kind": "mark", "name": "Papal infallibility defined", "parent": "jesus", "start": 1870, "end": null, "date": "1854 · 1870", "note": "The Immaculate Conception (1854) and the First Vatican Council (1870): the papacy's answer to the modern state.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/revivals-enlightenment-rapture/" }, { "id": "pentecostal", "kind": "branch", "name": "Pentecostal", "parent": "methodist", "start": 1906, "end": null, "date": "1901 · 1906", "note": "Speaking in tongues at Parham's school in Topeka (1901); the Azusa Street revival under William Seymour (1906); the Assemblies of God (1914). Hundreds of millions today.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/pentecostalism-vatican-ii-20th-century-christianity/#pentecostalism-a-new-kind-of-christianity" }, { "id": "fundamentalism", "kind": "mark", "name": "Fundamentalism", "parent": "evangelical", "start": 1912, "end": null, "date": "1910–1915", "note": "The Fundamentals distributed free; the Scopes trial (1925).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/pentecostalism-vatican-ii-20th-century-christianity/#the-fundamentals" }, { "id": "african-initiated", "kind": "branch", "name": "African-initiated churches", "parent": "pentecostal", "start": 1921, "end": null, "date": "1892 · 1921", "note": "The Ethiopian Church in Pretoria (1892); Kimbangu's healing ministry in Congo (1921); the Aladura churches of Nigeria; the Zion Christian Church (1924).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/pentecostalism-vatican-ii-20th-century-christianity/" }, { "id": "wcc", "kind": "mark", "name": "World Council of Churches", "parent": "lutheran", "start": 1948, "end": null, "date": "1948", "note": "Founded in Amsterdam; the ecumenical movement that began at Edinburgh in 1910.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/pentecostalism-vatican-ii-20th-century-christianity/#the-ecumenical-movement" }, { "id": "vatican-ii", "kind": "mark", "name": "Second Vatican Council", "parent": "jesus", "start": 1964, "end": null, "date": "1962–1965", "note": "Mass in the vernacular, religious freedom affirmed, collective Jewish guilt rejected.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/pentecostalism-vatican-ii-20th-century-christianity/" }, { "id": "liberation", "kind": "mark", "name": "Liberation theology", "parent": "jesus", "start": 1971, "end": null, "date": "1968 · 1971", "note": "The bishops at Medellín (1968); Gutiérrez's A Theology of Liberation (1971); two Vatican instructions against it (1984, 1986).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/pentecostalism-vatican-ii-20th-century-christianity/#liberation-theology" }, { "id": "gafcon", "kind": "mark", "name": "GAFCON: the Anglican Communion divides", "parent": "anglican", "start": 2008, "end": null, "date": "2008 · 2023", "note": "Conservative Anglicans meet in Jerusalem (2008); in 2023 they reject the Archbishop of Canterbury's leadership.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/how-many-christians-are-there/#the-anglican-communion" }, { "id": "ukraine", "kind": "mark", "name": "Moscow breaks with Constantinople over Ukraine", "parent": "orthodox", "start": 2018, "end": null, "date": "2018–2019", "note": "The Orthodox Church of Ukraine receives autocephaly (January 2019); Moscow had broken communion in October 2018.", "confidence": "political", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/christianity/how-many-christians-are-there/#orthodoxy-and-ukraine-political" } ] }, { "key": "islam", "name": "Islam", "span": "c. 300 CE – present", "today": { "count": 2000000000, "text": "about 2 billion Muslims (2020)", "source": "Pew Research Center, 2025 · Islam §13" }, "chapters": [ { "n": 1, "title": "Late Antique Arabia", "start": 300, "end": 610, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/pre-islamic-arabia/" }, { "n": 2, "title": "Muhammad", "start": 570, "end": 632, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/historical-muhammad/" }, { "n": 3, "title": "The Qur'an", "start": 610, "end": 700, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/when-was-the-quran-written/" }, { "n": 4, "title": "The Conquests and the First Caliphs", "start": 632, "end": 661, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/early-muslim-conquests-rashidun-caliphs/" }, { "n": 5, "title": "The Umayyads", "start": 661, "end": 750, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/umayyad-caliphate-dome-of-the-rock/" }, { "n": 6, "title": "The Abbasids: Law, Hadith and Theology", "start": 750, "end": 1000, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/abbasid-caliphate-sharia-sunni-shia/" }, { "n": 7, "title": "The Mystics: Sufism", "start": 700, "end": 1300, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/sufism-history-sufi-orders/" }, { "n": 8, "title": "Turks, Crusaders and Mongols", "start": 1000, "end": 1400, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/seljuks-crusades-mongols-islam/" }, { "n": 9, "title": "The Great Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals", "start": 1400, "end": 1800, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/ottoman-safavid-mughal-empires/" }, { "n": 10, "title": "Reform, Revival and Empire", "start": 1700, "end": 1920, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/wahhabism-islamic-modernism-reform/" }, { "n": 11, "title": "The Twentieth Century", "start": 1920, "end": 1979, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/caliphate-abolition-islamism-twentieth-century/" }, { "n": 12, "title": "Revolution and Revival", "start": 1979, "end": 2001, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/iranian-revolution-islamic-revival/" }, { "n": 13, "title": "Islam Today", "start": 2001, "end": 2026, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/how-many-muslims-are-there/" } ], "firsts": [ { "idea": "A community of believers bound by pact", "year": 624, "date": "622–627", "source": "The \"Constitution of Medina\", preserved in the sīra", "note": "Pacts organising Medina's clans, Muhammad's followers and its Jews into one community (umma); most scholars accept the document as early.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/historical-muhammad/" }, { "idea": "A Muslim calendar counted from the hijra", "year": 643, "date": "643 (first dated use); adopted c. 638 by tradition", "source": "PERF 558, a Greek–Arabic receipt from Egypt", "note": "Twenty-one years after the emigration to Medina, Arab commanders date an official receipt by the Hijri year.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/how-we-know/" }, { "idea": "Arabic written with dots to tell letters apart", "year": 643, "date": "643", "source": "PERF 558", "note": "The oldest dated Arabic papyrus already uses the dots that early Qur'an copies use only sparingly.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/when-was-the-quran-written/" }, { "idea": "A standard written Qur'an", "year": 650, "date": "c. 650 (r. 644–656)", "source": "Collection reports in al-Bukhārī; the shared spelling of early manuscripts", "note": "Tradition credits ʿUthmān with a standard codex; one written archetype behind the early copies supports a date around his reign.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/when-was-the-quran-written/" }, { "idea": "Leaders called \"commander of the believers\"", "year": 677, "date": "662–663; 677–678", "source": "Hammat Gader and Ṭāʾif dam inscriptions of Muʿāwiya", "note": "The caliph's title in public inscriptions, a generation after the conquests; neither names Muhammad.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/umayyad-caliphate-dome-of-the-rock/" }, { "idea": "Muhammad named on a dated Muslim document", "year": 685, "date": "685–686", "source": "A silver drachm of Bīshāpūr, Iran", "note": "\"In the name of God, Muhammad is the messenger of God\", struck for a governor loyal to Ibn al-Zubayr.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/how-we-know/" }, { "idea": "\"Islām\" proclaimed on a public monument", "year": 691, "date": "691–692", "source": "Dome of the Rock inscriptions", "note": "Qur'anic verses in public, including \"the religion with God is islām\" and a rejection of the Trinity.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/umayyad-caliphate-dome-of-the-rock/" }, { "idea": "The caliph as \"God's deputy\" on coins", "year": 693, "date": "693–697 (74–77 AH)", "source": "\"Standing caliph\" gold coins", "note": "Coins with the caliph's standing figure and the title khalīfat Allāh, before the aniconic reform.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/umayyad-caliphate-dome-of-the-rock/" }, { "idea": "Coins without images", "year": 696, "date": "696–697 (77 AH)", "source": "ʿAbd al-Malik's reformed dinar", "note": "Figures removed; the creed and Qur'anic verses fill both faces.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/umayyad-caliphate-dome-of-the-rock/" }, { "idea": "Arabic as the language of government", "year": 697, "date": "c. 697–700", "source": "Umayyad registers of Iraq and Syria", "note": "Arabic replaces Persian and Greek in the administration.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/umayyad-caliphate-dome-of-the-rock/" }, { "idea": "Hadith of the Prophet as the second source of law", "year": 815, "date": "before 820", "source": "al-Shāfiʿī, Risāla", "note": "Al-Shāfiʿī's theory makes reports from the Prophet, beside the Qur'an, binding in law.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/abbasid-caliphate-sharia-sunni-shia/" }, { "idea": "The created Qur'an as state doctrine", "year": 833, "date": "833–c. 848", "source": "The miḥna of al-Maʾmūn and his successors", "note": "Judges and scholars had to affirm that the Qur'an was created; Ibn Ḥanbal refused.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/abbasid-caliphate-sharia-sunni-shia/" }, { "idea": "A collection of only \"sound\" hadith", "year": 846, "date": "c. 846", "source": "al-Bukhārī, al-Ṣaḥīḥ", "note": "Later revered by Sunnis as the most authoritative book after the Qur'an.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/abbasid-caliphate-sharia-sunni-shia/" }, { "idea": "\"Ṣūfī\" as the name of a circle", "year": 850, "date": "9th c.", "source": "Baghdad's mystics", "note": "The word names a recognizable group in ninth-century Baghdad.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/sufism-history-sufi-orders/" }, { "idea": "The hidden twelfth imam", "year": 874, "date": "874; complete occultation 941", "source": "Twelver tradition", "note": "The eleventh imam dies and his son's occultation begins; after 941 no agent speaks for him.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/abbasid-caliphate-sharia-sunni-shia/" }, { "idea": "Organized schools of law", "year": 925, "date": "c. 900–950", "source": "Biographical and legal literature", "note": "The Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfiʿī and Ḥanbalī traditions become self-reproducing schools.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/abbasid-caliphate-sharia-sunni-shia/" }, { "idea": "Seven canonical readings of the Qur'an", "year": 936, "date": "before 936", "source": "Ibn Mujāhid, Kitāb al-Sabʿa", "note": "Seven readers chosen as authoritative; others became \"irregular\".", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/when-was-the-quran-written/" }, { "idea": "Public mourning for al-Ḥusayn on ʿĀshūrāʾ", "year": 963, "date": "963", "source": "Reports from Buyid Baghdad", "note": "The first public ʿĀshūrāʾ mourning in Baghdad, under a Shia dynasty.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/abbasid-caliphate-sharia-sunni-shia/" }, { "idea": "A Sufi handbook for Sunni readers", "year": 1045, "date": "1045–1046", "source": "al-Qushayrī, Risāla", "note": "The most widely read Sufi manual, arguing the path fits Sunni law and theology.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/sufism-history-sufi-orders/" }, { "idea": "The state-endowed madrasa", "year": 1066, "date": "1065–1067", "source": "The Niẓāmiyya of Baghdad", "note": "Niẓām al-Mulk's college, endowed for Shāfiʿī law and Ashʿarī theology.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/seljuks-crusades-mongols-islam/" }, { "idea": "Preaching jihad against the Crusaders", "year": 1105, "date": "1105", "source": "al-Sulamī, Book of Jihad", "note": "Preached in Damascus six years after the fall of Jerusalem.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/seljuks-crusades-mongols-islam/" }, { "idea": "Sufi orders with founders and chains of masters", "year": 1166, "date": "12th–13th c.", "source": "Qādiriyya, Suhrawardiyya, Chishtiyya, Shādhiliyya, Mevleviyya", "note": "Organized orders take shape around named masters, lodges and initiation.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/sufism-history-sufi-orders/" }, { "idea": "A caliph without power, in Cairo", "year": 1261, "date": "1261", "source": "The Mamluk court", "note": "After Baghdad's fall, an Abbasid is proclaimed caliph under Mamluk protection.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/seljuks-crusades-mongols-islam/" }, { "idea": "Twelver Shiism as a state religion", "year": 1501, "date": "1501", "source": "Shah Ismāʿīl's proclamation in Tabriz", "note": "The Safavids make Iran Shia within about a century.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/ottoman-safavid-mughal-empires/" }, { "idea": "Akbar's Dīn-i Ilāhī", "year": 1582, "date": "c. 1582", "source": "Mughal court sources", "note": "A circle of discipleship around the emperor; whether it was a religion is debated.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/ottoman-safavid-mughal-empires/" }, { "idea": "A pact of preacher and prince", "year": 1744, "date": "1744", "source": "Pact of Dirʿiyya", "note": "Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd join religious reform to a state.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/wahhabism-islamic-modernism-reform/" }, { "idea": "The Ottoman sultan recognised as caliph by treaty", "year": 1774, "date": "1774", "source": "Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca", "note": "Russia recognises the sultan's religious authority over the Crimean Tatars as caliph.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/ottoman-safavid-mughal-empires/" }, { "idea": "Guarantees for all subjects, of whatever religion", "year": 1839, "date": "1839", "source": "Edict of Gülhane", "note": "Gülhane promises every subject security of life, honour and property; the edict of 1856 promises non-Muslims legal equality.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/wahhabism-islamic-modernism-reform/" }, { "idea": "A messiah after Muhammad: the Bāb", "year": 1844, "date": "1844", "source": "The Bāb's announcement in Shiraz", "note": "The beginning of the Bābī movement, from which the Bahāʾī faith grew.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/wahhabism-islamic-modernism-reform/" }, { "idea": "Islamic law written as a civil code", "year": 1869, "date": "1869–1876", "source": "The Ottoman Mecelle", "note": "Ḥanafī civil law codified in articles.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/wahhabism-islamic-modernism-reform/" }, { "idea": "The Ahmadiyya", "year": 1889, "date": "1889", "source": "Mirza Ghulam Ahmad's first oath of allegiance, Ludhiana", "note": "A movement whose Muslim status other Muslims came to dispute.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/wahhabism-islamic-modernism-reform/" }, { "idea": "\"Salafiyya\" as a movement's name", "year": 1920, "date": "20th c.", "source": "History of the term (Lauzière)", "note": "The label for ʿAbduh and al-Afghānī is largely a later construction.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/wahhabism-islamic-modernism-reform/" }, { "idea": "A printed standard Qur'an", "year": 1924, "date": "1924", "source": "The Cairo edition", "note": "The reading of Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim becomes the world standard.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/when-was-the-quran-written/" }, { "idea": "No caliph at all", "year": 1924, "date": "3 March 1924", "source": "Turkey's Law No. 431", "note": "The Ottoman caliphate abolished.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/caliphate-abolition-islamism-twentieth-century/" }, { "idea": "Islam without a caliphate", "year": 1925, "date": "1925", "source": "ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Rāziq, Islam and the Foundations of Governance", "note": "An al-Azhar scholar argues Islam requires no caliphate; he is stripped of his rank.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/caliphate-abolition-islamism-twentieth-century/" }, { "idea": "Islamism: a movement for an Islamic state", "year": 1928, "date": "1928", "source": "Ḥasan al-Bannā's Muslim Brotherhood", "note": "Followed by Mawdūdī's Jamāʿat-i Islāmī (1941) and Quṭb's Milestones (1964).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/caliphate-abolition-islamism-twentieth-century/" }, { "idea": "A state defines who is a Muslim", "year": 1974, "date": "7 September 1974", "source": "Pakistan's Second Amendment", "note": "A parliament declares the Ahmadiyya non-Muslim.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/caliphate-abolition-islamism-twentieth-century/" }, { "idea": "Rule by the jurist", "year": 1979, "date": "1970 lectures; 1979 constitution", "source": "Khomeini's lectures in Najaf; Iran's constitution", "note": "A Shia clerical state, new in Shia history.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/iranian-revolution-islamic-revival/" }, { "idea": "Women reading the Qur'an for equality", "year": 1992, "date": "1992", "source": "Amina Wadud, Qur'an and Woman", "note": "A reading of the Qur'an's verses on gender from the text, not later law.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/iranian-revolution-islamic-revival/" }, { "idea": "Mutual recognition of the schools", "year": 2005, "date": "2004–2005", "source": "The Amman Message", "note": "Eight schools of law recognised as Muslim, and declaring their followers apostates forbidden.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/how-many-muslims-are-there/" }, { "idea": "Scholars answer a self-declared caliph", "year": 2014, "date": "2014", "source": "Open Letter to al-Baghdadi", "note": "More than 120 scholars reject the \"Islamic State\" on classical grounds.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/how-many-muslims-are-there/" } ], "tree": [ { "id": "muhammad", "kind": "trunk", "name": "Muhammad's community", "parent": null, "start": 610, "end": null, "date": "c. 610 (first revelation, by tradition)", "note": "Recitations in Mecca from c. 610; the community at Medina from 622; Muhammad dies in 632.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/historical-muhammad/" }, { "id": "shia", "kind": "branch", "name": "Shia: the party of ʿAlī", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 656, "end": null, "date": "656–661", "note": "The first civil war leaves the parties that later became Sunni, Shia and Khārijite; al-Ḥusayn killed at Karbalāʾ (680). Separate communities form over the 9th–10th centuries.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/early-muslim-conquests-rashidun-caliphs/#the-seed-of-sunni-and-shia" }, { "id": "kharijites", "kind": "branch", "name": "Khārijites, surviving as the Ibāḍīs", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 657, "end": null, "date": "657", "note": "'Judgment belongs to God alone': those who left ʿAlī after the arbitration at Ṣiffīn; ʿAlī is killed by one in 661. The moderate Ibāḍī wing survives in Oman and North Africa.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/early-muslim-conquests-rashidun-caliphs/#ṣiffīn-the-arbitration-and-the-khārijites" }, { "id": "umayyad", "kind": "mark", "name": "The Umayyad state gives Islam a public face", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 691, "end": null, "date": "661 · 691–697", "note": "The Dome of the Rock (691–692); coins without images (696–697); Arabic as the language of government.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/umayyad-caliphate-dome-of-the-rock/" }, { "id": "zaydis", "kind": "branch", "name": "Zaydīs", "parent": "shia", "start": 740, "end": null, "date": "740", "note": "Zayd ibn ʿAlī rises in Kufa and is killed; Zaydī imams rule in northern Yemen from the 890s.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/abbasid-caliphate-sharia-sunni-shia/#zaydīs" }, { "id": "ismailis", "kind": "branch", "name": "Ismāʿīlīs", "parent": "shia", "start": 765, "end": null, "date": "765 · 909", "note": "The succession to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq divides the Shia; the Ismāʿīlī Fatimids proclaim a rival caliphate (909) and rule Egypt from 969 to 1171.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/abbasid-caliphate-sharia-sunni-shia/#ismāʿīlīs-and-the-fatimids" }, { "id": "law-schools", "kind": "mark", "name": "Sunni Islam: the four law schools", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 925, "end": null, "date": "d. 767, 795, 820, 855 · organised c. 900–950", "note": "Abū Ḥanīfa, Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī and Ibn Ḥanbal; their followers become self-reproducing schools in the 10th century.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/abbasid-caliphate-sharia-sunni-shia/#four-jurists" }, { "id": "twelvers", "kind": "branch", "name": "Twelvers", "parent": "shia", "start": 874, "end": null, "date": "874 · 941", "note": "The eleventh imam dies; his son is held to be hidden (874); the complete occultation (941). Public mourning for al-Ḥusayn in Baghdad (963).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/abbasid-caliphate-sharia-sunni-shia/#the-occultation" }, { "id": "sufism", "kind": "current", "name": "Sufism", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 850, "end": null, "date": "9th c.", "note": "'Ṣūfī' names a circle in Baghdad: al-Muḥāsibī, al-Junayd (d. 910); al-Ḥallāj executed (922); al-Ghazālī makes Sufism respectable for Sunni jurists (1095).", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/sufism-history-sufi-orders/" }, { "id": "ashari", "kind": "mark", "name": "Ashʿarī theology", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 935, "end": null, "date": "833–848 · 935", "note": "The miḥna imposes the Muʿtazilī doctrine of a created Qur'an (833–c. 848) and fails; al-Ashʿarī (d. 935–936) founds the theology that defeated it.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/abbasid-caliphate-sharia-sunni-shia/#the-muʿtazila" }, { "id": "sufi-orders", "kind": "mark", "name": "The Sufi orders", "parent": "sufism", "start": 1166, "end": null, "date": "12th–13th c.", "note": "Qādiriyya (al-Jīlānī, d. 1166), Suhrawardiyya (d. 1168), Chishtiyya in India (d. 1236), Shādhiliyya (d. 1258), Mevleviyya after Rūmī (1273).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/sufism-history-sufi-orders/#the-first-orders" }, { "id": "madrasa", "kind": "mark", "name": "Seljuks, Crusaders, Mongols: the madrasa age", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 1066, "end": null, "date": "1055 · 1066 · 1258", "note": "The Seljuks take Baghdad (1055); the Niẕāmiyya madrasa (1065–67); the Mongols sack Baghdad and kill the caliph (1258).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/seljuks-crusades-mongols-islam/" }, { "id": "ibn-taymiyya", "kind": "mark", "name": "Ibn Taymiyya", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 1328, "end": null, "date": "d. 1328", "note": "Dies in prison in Damascus; marginal in his time, taken up by reformers and Salafis from the 19th century.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/seljuks-crusades-mongols-islam/" }, { "id": "safavid", "kind": "mark", "name": "Twelver Shiism as a state religion", "parent": "twelvers", "start": 1501, "end": null, "date": "1501", "note": "Shah Ismāʿīl takes Tabriz and declares Twelver Shiism the religion of his state; Iran becomes its home.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/ottoman-safavid-mughal-empires/#a-dervish-order-becomes-a-dynasty" }, { "id": "empires", "kind": "mark", "name": "Ottomans and Mughals", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 1517, "end": null, "date": "1453 · 1517 · 1526", "note": "Mehmed II takes Constantinople (1453); Selim I becomes protector of Mecca and Medina (1517); Bābur founds the Mughal dynasty (1526).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/ottoman-safavid-mughal-empires/" }, { "id": "wahhabi", "kind": "branch", "name": "Wahhābī movement, later called Salafī", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 1744, "end": null, "date": "1744", "note": "The pact of Dirʿiyya between Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd; Saudi forces take Mecca and Medina (1803–05); the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (1932).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/wahhabism-islamic-modernism-reform/#the-name" }, { "id": "babi-bahai", "kind": "offshoot", "name": "Bābīs and the Bahāʾī Faith", "parent": "twelvers", "start": 1844, "end": null, "date": "1844", "note": "The Bāb announces his mission in Shiraz; the Bahāʾī Faith that grew from his movement is a separate religion.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/wahhabism-islamic-modernism-reform/#the-bāb-and-the-bahāʾī-faith" }, { "id": "deobandi", "kind": "branch", "name": "Deobandi", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 1866, "end": null, "date": "1866", "note": "The seminary at Deoband: hadith study, Ḥanafī law and the reform of shrine customs. The Taliban come from its South Asian network.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/wahhabism-islamic-modernism-reform/#three-answers-deoband-aligarh-and-bareilly" }, { "id": "aligarh", "kind": "mark", "name": "Islamic modernism: Aligarh, ʿAbduh", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 1884, "end": null, "date": "1875 · 1884", "note": "Sayyid Aḥmad Khān's college at Aligarh (1875); al-Afghānī and ʿAbduh's al-ʿUrwa al-wuthqā (1884); Rashīd Riḍā's al-Manār (1898).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/wahhabism-islamic-modernism-reform/" }, { "id": "barelwi", "kind": "branch", "name": "Barelwī", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 1880, "end": null, "date": "1880s", "note": "Aḥmad Riḍā Khān (1856–1921) defends devotion to the Prophet, his birthday and the saints against the Deobandis.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/wahhabism-islamic-modernism-reform/#three-answers-deoband-aligarh-and-bareilly" }, { "id": "ahmadiyya", "kind": "branch", "name": "Ahmadiyya", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 1889, "end": null, "date": "1889", "note": "Mirza Ghulam Ahmad takes the first oath of allegiance at Ludhiana. Ahmadis call themselves Muslims; Pakistan declared them non-Muslim in 1974.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/wahhabism-islamic-modernism-reform/#the-ahmadiyya" }, { "id": "caliphate-ends", "kind": "mark", "name": "The caliphate abolished", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 1924, "end": null, "date": "3 March 1924", "note": "Turkey abolishes the office; ʿAbd al-Rāziq argues Islam needs no caliphate (1925).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/caliphate-abolition-islamism-twentieth-century/" }, { "id": "islamism", "kind": "branch", "name": "Islamism: the Muslim Brotherhood", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 1928, "end": null, "date": "1928", "note": "Ḥasan al-Bannā founds the Brotherhood in Ismailia; Mawdūdī's Jamāʿat-i Islāmī (1941); Quṭb's Milestones (1964); Hamas (1987).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/caliphate-abolition-islamism-twentieth-century/#the-muslim-brotherhood" }, { "id": "nation-of-islam", "kind": "offshoot", "name": "Nation of Islam", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 1930, "end": null, "date": "1930", "note": "Wallace Fard Muhammad begins the movement in Detroit; Malcolm X leaves it in 1964; W. D. Mohammed leads most of it towards Sunni Islam from 1975.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/caliphate-abolition-islamism-twentieth-century/#a-new-religion-in-islamic-dress" }, { "id": "khomeini", "kind": "mark", "name": "Rule by the jurist: the Islamic Republic", "parent": "twelvers", "start": 1979, "end": null, "date": "1970 · 1979", "note": "Khomeini's Najaf lectures (1970); the Shah falls and Iran's constitution makes the jurist its leader (1979); Hezbollah (1982).", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/iranian-revolution-islamic-revival/" }, { "id": "jihadism", "kind": "branch", "name": "Jihadism: al-Qaeda and the 'Islamic State'", "parent": "islamism", "start": 1988, "end": null, "date": "1988 · 2014", "note": "Al-Qaeda formed at Peshawar (1988), joining the Wahhābī creed to the Brotherhood's activism; the 'Islamic State' proclaims a caliphate (2014) and more than 120 scholars answer it.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/iranian-revolution-islamic-revival/#al-qaeda" }, { "id": "amman", "kind": "mark", "name": "The Amman Message: the schools recognise each other", "parent": "muhammad", "start": 2005, "end": null, "date": "2004–2005", "note": "About 200 scholars recognise eight schools of law, Sunni, Shia and Ibāḍī, as Muslim.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/how-many-muslims-are-there/" } ] }, { "key": "hinduism", "name": "Hinduism", "span": "7000 BCE – present", "today": { "count": 1200000000, "text": "about 1.2 billion Hindus (2020)", "source": "Pew Research Center, 2025 · Hinduism §12" }, "chapters": [ { "n": 1, "title": "Before the Vedas", "start": -7000, "end": -3300, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/pre-vedic-religion/" }, { "n": 2, "title": "The Indus Civilization", "start": -3300, "end": -1300, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/indus-valley-religion/" }, { "n": 3, "title": "The Oral Rigveda", "start": -1500, "end": -1200, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/rigveda-early-vedic-religion/" }, { "n": 4, "title": "Late Vedic", "start": -1200, "end": -900, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/later-vedic-period/" }, { "n": 5, "title": "The Upanishadic Turn", "start": -900, "end": -500, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/upanishads-karma-rebirth/" }, { "n": 6, "title": "The Shramana Challenge", "start": -600, "end": -200, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/shramana-buddhism-jainism/" }, { "n": 7, "title": "Epic and Classical Synthesis", "start": -200, "end": 300, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/bhagavad-gita-epics-bhakti/" }, { "n": 8, "title": "Puranic Hinduism", "start": 300, "end": 650, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/puranic-hinduism-gupta-age/" }, { "n": 9, "title": "Bhakti and the Regional Turn", "start": 650, "end": 1200, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/tamil-bhakti-advaita-vedanta/" }, { "n": 10, "title": "Encounter with Islam", "start": 1200, "end": 1750, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/medieval-hinduism-islam-bhakti/" }, { "n": 11, "title": "The Invention of \"Hinduism\"", "start": 1750, "end": 1947, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/invention-of-hinduism/" }, { "n": 12, "title": "Modern and Contemporary", "start": 1947, "end": 2026, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/modern-hinduism-since-1947/" } ], "firsts": [ { "idea": "Ṛta — cosmic and moral order", "year": -1400, "date": "c. 1400 BCE", "source": "Rigveda, Family Books (Maṇḍalas 2–7)", "note": "The Vedic word for order. Not yet dharma, and not yet ethical in the later sense.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/rigveda-early-vedic-religion/" }, { "idea": "Iron", "year": -1200, "date": "c. 1200 BCE", "source": "Atharvaveda (śyāma / kṛṣṇa ayas); finds at Malhar", "note": "The Rigveda has only undifferentiated ayas — copper and bronze.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/later-vedic-period/" }, { "idea": "Cosmic doubt stated in scripture", "year": -1100, "date": "c. 1100 BCE", "source": "RV 10.129 (Nāsadīya Sūkta)", "note": "The creation hymn ends by doubting whether even God knows the answer.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/rigveda-early-vedic-religion/" }, { "idea": "The four varṇas", "year": -1100, "date": "c. 1100 BCE", "source": "RV 10.90.12 (Puruṣa Sūkta)", "note": "The only four-varṇa passage in 1,028 hymns, and it is in the latest layer.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/rigveda-early-vedic-religion/" }, { "idea": "Rice", "year": -1100, "date": "c. 1100 BCE", "source": "Yajurveda saṃhitās (vrīhi)", "note": "Absent from the Rigveda entirely. The surest marker separating early from late Vedic.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/later-vedic-period/" }, { "idea": "\"Namaḥ Śivāya\"", "year": -1000, "date": "c. 1000 BCE", "source": "Taittirīya Saṃhitā 4.5.8 (Śatarudrīya)", "note": "First appears as flattery of a dangerous god — śiva is still an adjective, \"auspicious\".", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/later-vedic-period/" }, { "idea": "Ritual compels the cosmos (bandhu)", "year": -900, "date": "c. 900 BCE", "source": "The Brāhmaṇas; Agnicayana", "note": "Power moves from the deity to the technician. The brahmin becomes indispensable.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/later-vedic-period/" }, { "idea": "Karma as moral causation", "year": -700, "date": "c. 700 BCE", "source": "Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.2.13", "note": "Taught in private, away from the assembly — which is why we can tell it was new.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/upanishads-karma-rebirth/" }, { "idea": "Rebirth — saṃsāra", "year": -700, "date": "c. 700 BCE", "source": "BU 3.2.13; Chāndogya 5.3–10 (Pañcāgni-vidyā)", "note": "The Upaniṣads credit the doctrine to a kṣatriya king, not to brahmins.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/upanishads-karma-rebirth/" }, { "idea": "Mokṣa — liberation as the goal", "year": -700, "date": "c. 700 BCE", "source": "The older Upaniṣads", "note": "Replaces long life, sons and cattle as what religion is ultimately for.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/upanishads-karma-rebirth/" }, { "idea": "Ātman = Brahman", "year": -700, "date": "c. 700 BCE", "source": "Chāndogya 6.8.7 — tat tvam asi", "note": "Relocates the sacred from the ritual arena into the person.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/upanishads-karma-rebirth/" }, { "idea": "Ahiṃsā as a supreme value", "year": -500, "date": "c. 500 BCE", "source": "Ācārāṅga Sūtra 1.4.1; Chāndogya 3.17.4 lists it earlier as one virtue", "note": "Enters a tradition whose central rite had been animal sacrifice.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/shramana-buddhism-jainism/" }, { "idea": "Renunciation as an institution", "year": -500, "date": "c. 500 BCE", "source": "Śramaṇa orders; the āśrama scheme in the Dharmasūtras", "note": "Absorbed by requiring everyone to renounce — last.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/shramana-buddhism-jainism/" }, { "idea": "Writing", "year": -250, "date": "c. 250 BCE", "source": "Ashokan edicts, Brāhmī and Kharoṣṭhī", "note": "The Vedas had already been transmitted orally for roughly a thousand years.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/shramana-buddhism-jainism/" }, { "idea": "Vegetarianism as prestige", "year": -250, "date": "c. 250 BCE", "source": "Ashoka, Rock Edict 1", "note": "A king publicly prohibits sacrificial slaughter in his own capital.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/shramana-buddhism-jainism/" }, { "idea": "Bhakti — devotion, attested", "year": -110, "date": "c. 110 BCE", "source": "Heliodorus pillar, Besnagar", "note": "A Greek ambassador calls himself a Bhāgavata and Vāsudeva the God of Gods.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/bhagavad-gita-epics-bhakti/" }, { "idea": "Avatāra — God takes birth", "year": -50, "date": "c. 200 BCE – 200 CE", "source": "Bhagavad Gītā 4.7–8", "note": "Nothing in the Vedas or Upaniṣads has a god descending into history.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/bhagavad-gita-epics-bhakti/" }, { "idea": "Cult image — mūrti worship", "year": 50, "date": "c. 100 BCE – 200 CE", "source": "Gudimallam liṅga; Kuṣāṇa coins showing Śiva; Mathurā sculpture", "note": "The visual vocabulary comes largely from yakṣa and nāga cults, not the Veda.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/bhagavad-gita-epics-bhakti/" }, { "idea": "Caste as a comprehensive legal order", "year": 150, "date": "c. 200 BCE – 300 CE", "source": "Manusmṛti", "note": "Graded punishment, impurity rules, and the disabilities of the caṇḍāla.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/bhagavad-gita-epics-bhakti/" }, { "idea": "Women declared unfit for independence", "year": 150, "date": "c. 200 BCE – 300 CE", "source": "Manusmṛti 9.3", "note": "Many centuries after Gārgī argued in open assembly.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/bhagavad-gita-epics-bhakti/" }, { "idea": "The stone temple", "year": 400, "date": "c. 400 CE", "source": "Sanchi Temple 17; Udayagiri; Deogarh", "note": "A permanent residence for a god who can be seen. Darśana becomes central.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/puranic-hinduism-gupta-age/" }, { "idea": "Tantra, attested in text", "year": 500, "date": "c. 450–550 CE", "source": "Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā", "note": "Supplies the ritual grammar of ordinary temple pūjā to this day.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/puranic-hinduism-gupta-age/" }, { "idea": "The supreme Goddess", "year": 575, "date": "c. 550–600 CE", "source": "Devī Māhātmya, in the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa", "note": "The first text making a female deity the source of the male gods' power.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/puranic-hinduism-gupta-age/" }, { "idea": "Advaita as a system", "year": 725, "date": "c. 700–750 CE", "source": "Śaṅkara, Brahmasūtrabhāṣya", "note": "One school among many at the time; its supremacy is a modern development.", "confidence": "contested", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/tamil-bhakti-advaita-vedanta/" }, { "idea": "Vernacular scripture (Tamil)", "year": 750, "date": "c. 6th–9th c. CE", "source": "Ālvārs and Nāyanārs; the \"Tamil Veda\"", "note": "Devotional poetry in a spoken language achieves liturgical status.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/tamil-bhakti-advaita-vedanta/" }, { "idea": "Hindu as a religious self-description", "year": 1400, "date": "c. 1200–1500 CE", "source": "Sant poetry contrasting hindū and turk", "note": "Identity forms in contrast to Islam — but there is still no \"-ism\".", "confidence": "contested", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/medieval-hinduism-islam-bhakti/" }, { "idea": "Vernacular scripture (north)", "year": 1574, "date": "1574 CE", "source": "Tulsīdās, Rāmcaritmānas (Awadhi)", "note": "For hundreds of millions this, not Vālmīki, is the Rāmāyaṇa.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/medieval-hinduism-islam-bhakti/" }, { "idea": "\"Hinduism\" as a world religion", "year": 1800, "date": "c. 1800 CE", "source": "Orientalists, missionaries, census officials and reformers together", "note": "One canon, one essence, one census box — the category, not the tradition.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/invention-of-hinduism/" }, { "idea": "All paths lead to the same truth", "year": 1893, "date": "1893 CE", "source": "Vivekananda; Neo-Vedānta", "note": "Would have puzzled Rāmānuja and Madhva, who argued the others were wrong.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/invention-of-hinduism/" }, { "idea": "Hindutva", "year": 1923, "date": "1923 CE", "source": "Savarkar, Essentials of Hindutva", "note": "Defined territorially and ethnically, not theologically. Savarkar was an atheist.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/invention-of-hinduism/" }, { "idea": "Codified Hindu law", "year": 1955, "date": "1955–56 CE", "source": "The Hindu Code Bills", "note": "A secular parliament imposes monogamy, divorce and daughters' inheritance.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/modern-hinduism-since-1947/" } ], "tree": [ { "id": "indus", "kind": "extinct", "name": "Indus religion (undeciphered)", "parent": null, "start": -2600, "end": -1700, "date": "c. 2600–1900 BCE", "note": "Planned cities, seals and figurines but no readable text. Whether anything passed from it into later Hinduism is contested; the line is drawn apart from the Vedic trunk for that reason.", "confidence": "contested", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/indus-valley-religion/" }, { "id": "vedic", "kind": "trunk", "name": "Vedic religion", "parent": null, "start": -1500, "end": null, "date": "c. 1500–1200 BCE (Rigveda composed)", "note": "The Family Books of the Rigveda, composed and transmitted orally in the Punjab; a religion of fire sacrifice to Indra, Agni and Soma.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/rigveda-early-vedic-religion/" }, { "id": "four-vedas", "kind": "mark", "name": "The Rigveda fixed; four Vedas; the Brāhmaṇas", "parent": "vedic", "start": -1100, "end": null, "date": "c. 1100–800 BCE", "note": "The Saṃhitās compiled in the Kuru realm; śrauta ritual systematised in the Brāhmaṇas.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/later-vedic-period/" }, { "id": "upanishads", "kind": "mark", "name": "The Upanishadic turn: karma, rebirth, liberation", "parent": "vedic", "start": -700, "end": null, "date": "c. 700–500 BCE", "note": "Bṛhadāraṇyaka and Chāndogya, the oldest Upaniṣads, taught in the eastern kingdoms.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/upanishads-karma-rebirth/" }, { "id": "shramana", "kind": "branch", "name": "Śramaṇa renouncers", "parent": "vedic", "start": -550, "end": null, "date": "c. 600–500 BCE", "note": "Wandering renunciant movements of the Ganga plain, outside the Vedic ritual order: the world the Buddha, Mahāvīra and the Ājīvikas shared.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/shramana-buddhism-jainism/" }, { "id": "jainism", "kind": "offshoot", "name": "Jainism", "parent": "shramana", "start": -500, "end": null, "date": "Mahāvīra, 5th c. BCE", "note": "Mahāvīra, the 24th tīrthaṅkara, reforms an existing tradition; the Pali canon has him die before the Buddha. A separate religion, not yet a series of its own.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/shramana-buddhism-jainism/" }, { "id": "ajivikas", "kind": "extinct", "name": "Ājīvikas", "parent": "shramana", "start": -500, "end": -200, "date": "5th c. BCE", "note": "Makkhali Gosāla's determinists, one of the six heterodox teachers; Ashoka's Pillar Edict 7 still names them as a body (c. 250 BCE).", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/shramana-buddhism-jainism/" }, { "id": "brahmanical", "kind": "mark", "name": "Dharma, epic and the Brahmanical synthesis", "parent": "vedic", "start": -200, "end": null, "date": "c. 300 BCE – 300 CE", "note": "Dharmasūtras, Manusmṛti, the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa; caste as a comprehensive legal order.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/bhagavad-gita-epics-bhakti/" }, { "id": "vaishnava", "kind": "branch", "name": "Vaiṣṇava traditions", "parent": "vedic", "start": -110, "end": null, "date": "c. 110 BCE (Heliodorus pillar)", "note": "A Greek ambassador declares himself a Bhāgavata at Besnagar: the first dated devotion to Viṣṇu-Vāsudeva. The Bhagavad Gītā c. 200 BCE – 200 CE.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/bhagavad-gita-epics-bhakti/" }, { "id": "shaiva", "kind": "branch", "name": "Śaiva traditions", "parent": "vedic", "start": 380, "end": null, "date": "c. 100 BCE – 200 CE (Gudimallam liṅga) · 380 CE", "note": "The Gudimallam liṅga is the earliest surviving Śiva liṅga; the Mathurā pillar of 380 CE records a Pāśupata guru-lineage ten generations deep.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/puranic-hinduism-gupta-age/" }, { "id": "temple", "kind": "mark", "name": "Purāṇic Hinduism: temples, images, Tantra", "parent": "vedic", "start": 450, "end": null, "date": "c. 400–600 CE", "note": "The first surviving stone temples (c. 400–425); the Viṣṇu Purāṇa; the earliest Śaiva Tantra (c. 450–550).", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/puranic-hinduism-gupta-age/" }, { "id": "shakta", "kind": "branch", "name": "Śākta: the supreme Goddess", "parent": "shaiva", "start": 575, "end": null, "date": "c. 550–600 CE", "note": "The Devī Māhātmya, inside the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa, makes the Goddess supreme.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/puranic-hinduism-gupta-age/" }, { "id": "tamil-bhakti", "kind": "mark", "name": "Tamil bhakti: Āḻvārs and Nāyanārs", "parent": "vaishnava", "start": 700, "end": null, "date": "c. 6th–9th c.", "note": "Twelve Vaiṣṇava Āḻvārs and sixty-three Śaiva Nāyanārs compose in Tamil; Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār, a woman, is the earliest Nāyanār.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/tamil-bhakti-advaita-vedanta/" }, { "id": "advaita", "kind": "branch", "name": "Advaita Vedānta", "parent": "vedic", "start": 725, "end": null, "date": "Śaṅkara, c. 700–750", "note": "Śaṅkara's commentaries; the traditional dates 788–820 are later. Non-dualism becomes the prestige philosophy of the Brahmanical mainstream.", "confidence": "contested", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/tamil-bhakti-advaita-vedanta/" }, { "id": "kashmir-shaiva", "kind": "mark", "name": "Kashmir Śaivism", "parent": "shaiva", "start": 850, "end": null, "date": "c. 850 · c. 1000", "note": "Vasugupta's Śiva Sūtras; Abhinavagupta's Tantrāloka (c. 975–1025).", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/tamil-bhakti-advaita-vedanta/" }, { "id": "vishishtadvaita", "kind": "branch", "name": "Śrīvaiṣṇava Viśiṣṭādvaita (Rāmānuja)", "parent": "vaishnava", "start": 1100, "end": null, "date": "Rāmānuja, c. 1077–1157", "note": "Qualified non-dualism, at Śrīraṅgam; the familiar dates 1017–1137 are hagiography.", "confidence": "contested", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/tamil-bhakti-advaita-vedanta/" }, { "id": "virashaiva", "kind": "branch", "name": "Vīraśaiva / Liṅgāyat", "parent": "shaiva", "start": 1150, "end": null, "date": "Basava, 12th c.", "note": "Basava's movement in Karnataka (c. 1106–1167 or 1131–1196); vernacular vacanas against caste and temple. Many Liṅgāyats today seek recognition as a separate religion.", "confidence": "contested", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/tamil-bhakti-advaita-vedanta/" }, { "id": "dvaita", "kind": "branch", "name": "Dvaita (Madhva)", "parent": "vaishnava", "start": 1250, "end": null, "date": "Madhva, 1238–1317", "note": "Dualist Vedānta, the third great school.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/medieval-hinduism-islam-bhakti/" }, { "id": "varkari", "kind": "branch", "name": "Vārkarī (Marathi bhakti)", "parent": "vaishnava", "start": 1290, "end": null, "date": "1290", "note": "Jñāneśvar's Marathi Gītā commentary; Nāmdev, Eknāth, Tukārām and the pilgrimage to Pandharpur.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/medieval-hinduism-islam-bhakti/" }, { "id": "sant", "kind": "branch", "name": "Sant tradition (nirguṇa bhakti)", "parent": "vedic", "start": 1440, "end": null, "date": "Kabīr, 15th c.", "note": "God without form, image or incarnation; Kabīr's dates are unsettled (c. 1398–1448 or c. 1440–1518). Sant and Sufi idioms interpenetrate.", "confidence": "contested", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/medieval-hinduism-islam-bhakti/" }, { "id": "sikhism", "kind": "offshoot", "name": "Sikhism", "parent": "sant", "start": 1469, "end": null, "date": "Guru Nānak, 1469–1539", "note": "Nānak shares the Sant idiom but builds an institution: a line of Gurus, the Ādi Granth (1604) and, in 1708, the scripture itself as eternal Guru. A separate religion; a series is planned.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/medieval-hinduism-islam-bhakti/" }, { "id": "pushtimarg", "kind": "branch", "name": "Puṣṭimārga (Vallabha)", "parent": "vaishnava", "start": 1500, "end": null, "date": "Vallabha, 1479–1531", "note": "Śuddhādvaita and the worship of Kṛṣṇa as Śrīnāthjī.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/medieval-hinduism-islam-bhakti/" }, { "id": "gaudiya", "kind": "branch", "name": "Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism (Caitanya)", "parent": "vaishnava", "start": 1510, "end": null, "date": "Caitanya, 1486–1534", "note": "Ecstatic Kṛṣṇa devotion in Bengal.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/medieval-hinduism-islam-bhakti/" }, { "id": "ramcharitmanas", "kind": "mark", "name": "Tulsīdās begins the Rāmcaritmānas", "parent": "vaishnava", "start": 1574, "end": null, "date": "1574", "note": "Vernacular scripture in the north; a date the poet states in the text itself.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/medieval-hinduism-islam-bhakti/" }, { "id": "brahmo", "kind": "branch", "name": "Brahmo Samāj", "parent": "vedic", "start": 1828, "end": null, "date": "1828", "note": "Rammohan Roy derives a monotheism from the Upaniṣads, rejects image worship and campaigns against sati (abolished 1829).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/invention-of-hinduism/" }, { "id": "arya-samaj", "kind": "branch", "name": "Ārya Samāj", "parent": "vedic", "start": 1875, "end": null, "date": "1875", "note": "Dayānanda's 'back to the Vedas': no images, no Purāṇas, no caste by birth; the Satyārth Prakāś.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/invention-of-hinduism/" }, { "id": "neo-vedanta", "kind": "branch", "name": "Neo-Vedānta: Ramakrishna Mission", "parent": "advaita", "start": 1897, "end": null, "date": "1893 · 1897", "note": "Vivekananda at Chicago (1893): all paths lead to one truth, a modern teaching; the Mission founded in 1897.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/invention-of-hinduism/" }, { "id": "hindutva", "kind": "current", "name": "Hindutva: RSS, VHP, BJP", "parent": "vedic", "start": 1925, "end": null, "date": "1923 · 1925", "note": "Savarkar's Essentials of Hindutva (1923); the RSS founded (1925); the VHP (1964); the BJP (1980); Babri Masjid demolished (1992); the Rām Mandir consecrated (2024).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/invention-of-hinduism/" }, { "id": "hindu-code", "kind": "mark", "name": "The Constitution and the Hindu Code", "parent": "vedic", "start": 1955, "end": null, "date": "1950 · 1955–56", "note": "Untouchability abolished (1950); a secular parliament rewrites Hindu marriage and inheritance law.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/modern-hinduism-since-1947/" }, { "id": "iskcon", "kind": "branch", "name": "ISKCON", "parent": "gaudiya", "start": 1966, "end": null, "date": "1966", "note": "Founded in New York by Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda; Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism goes global.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/modern-hinduism-since-1947/" } ] }, { "key": "buddhism", "name": "Buddhism", "span": "c. 600 BCE – present", "today": { "count": 324000000, "text": "about 324 million Buddhists (2020)", "source": "Pew Research Center, 2025 · Buddhism §13" }, "chapters": [ { "n": 1, "title": "The World the Buddha Entered", "start": -600, "end": -400, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhism-origins-shramana/" }, { "n": 2, "title": "The Buddha", "start": -480, "end": -380, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/historical-buddha/" }, { "n": 3, "title": "The Early Saṅgha, the Councils and the First Split", "start": -400, "end": -250, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhist-councils-schools-nuns/" }, { "n": 4, "title": "Ashoka and the Making of a Pan-Indian Religion", "start": -268, "end": -50, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/ashoka-buddhism-stupas/" }, { "n": 5, "title": "Writing It Down", "start": -100, "end": 300, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/pali-canon-gandhara-buddha-images/" }, { "n": 6, "title": "The Mahāyāna Turn", "start": -50, "end": 500, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/mahayana-buddhism-origins/" }, { "n": 7, "title": "Into China", "start": 50, "end": 850, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhism-in-china-silk-road/" }, { "n": 8, "title": "Tantra and the Last Age of Indian Buddhism", "start": 600, "end": 1300, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/tantra-vajrayana-decline-india/" }, { "n": 9, "title": "Tibet: The Second Home", "start": 640, "end": 1950, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/tibetan-buddhism-history/" }, { "n": 10, "title": "Theravāda and Southeast Asia", "start": 400, "end": 1800, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/theravada-southeast-asia/" }, { "n": 11, "title": "Japan and the Kamakura Reformations", "start": 538, "end": 1872, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/japanese-buddhism-zen-pure-land/" }, { "n": 12, "title": "Colonial Encounter and Buddhist Modernism", "start": 1800, "end": 1956, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhist-modernism-colonial/" }, { "n": 13, "title": "Global and Contemporary Buddhism", "start": 1950, "end": 2026, "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/modern-buddhism-mindfulness/" } ], "firsts": [ { "idea": "Renunciation as a recognised way of life", "year": -500, "date": "c. 5th c. BCE", "source": "Pali discourses on the śramaṇa field; DN 2 (the six rival teachers)", "note": "The Buddha joined an existing world of wandering renunciants; leaving home was not his invention.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhism-origins-shramana/" }, { "idea": "Karma redefined as intention", "year": -400, "date": "c. 4th c. BCE", "source": "AN 6.63: \"It is intention that I call deeds\"", "note": "Karma stops meaning ritual action and becomes a matter of the mind, open to anyone regardless of birth.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhism-origins-shramana/" }, { "idea": "A fortnightly code of monastic rules (pātimokkha)", "year": -400, "date": "c. 5th–4th c. BCE", "source": "Vinaya of all schools; Mahāvagga 2 (the uposatha)", "note": "Every school's list agrees on the serious offences and differs mainly in minor rules, which is why schools could split over discipline without splitting over doctrine.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhist-councils-schools-nuns/" }, { "idea": "An order of nuns", "year": -400, "date": "c. 5th–4th c. BCE", "source": "Vinayas of all schools; AN 8.51", "note": "The order is early; the eight 'heavy rules' and the prediction of decline in its founding story are probably later additions.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhist-councils-schools-nuns/" }, { "idea": "Not-self (anattā) and dependent origination", "year": -350, "date": "c. 4th–3rd c. BCE", "source": "Core shared by the Pali Nikāyas and the Chinese Āgamas", "note": "Present in every early school's canon, so probably older than the first splits; how the Buddha himself worded it is less certain.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/historical-buddha/" }, { "idea": "The four noble truths as a set formula", "year": -350, "date": "c. 4th–3rd c. BCE", "source": "SN 56.11 and its parallels (the first sermon)", "note": "Shared by all early schools, but K. R. Norman argued from its grammar that the formula in the first sermon is a later insertion.", "confidence": "contested", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/historical-buddha/" }, { "idea": "Monastic schools and schism", "year": -275, "date": "c. 300–250 BCE", "source": "Sthavira–Mahāsāṃghika split; Ashoka's schism edicts", "note": "The first split was probably over monastic discipline, not doctrine; its cause and date are disputed.", "confidence": "contested", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhist-councils-schools-nuns/" }, { "idea": "Relics enshrined in stupas", "year": -250, "date": "c. 3rd–2nd c. BCE", "source": "DN 16 (eight shares of relics); Piprahwa vase inscription", "note": "Relic worship is as old as the canon's account of the Buddha's death; Ashoka made it empire-wide.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/ashoka-buddhism-stupas/" }, { "idea": "A line of past Buddhas", "year": -249, "date": "c. 249 BCE", "source": "Nigali Sagar pillar (stupa of Konākamana enlarged)", "note": "An emperor is already building for an earlier Buddha, the belief the four-sights story later depends on (enlarged c. 255, recorded c. 249).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/historical-buddha/" }, { "idea": "The Buddha shown by symbols, not in human form", "year": -100, "date": "c. 125–75 BCE", "source": "Bharhut railing reliefs, with labels", "note": "Seats, trees, footprints and wheels mark his presence; whether this was a deliberate rule is argued over.", "confidence": "contested", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/ashoka-buddhism-stupas/" }, { "idea": "Scripture written down", "year": -50, "date": "c. 1st c. BCE", "source": "Gāndhārī birch-bark scrolls; Dīpavaṃsa 20.20–21 on Sri Lanka", "note": "Two or more centuries of oral transmission end; even then recitation stays central to monastic training.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/how-we-know/" }, { "idea": "Abhidharma: systematic scholastic analysis", "year": 50, "date": "c. 1st c. CE", "source": "Abhidharma texts among the Gāndhārī scrolls", "note": "Each school builds its own system, which is why Abhidharma, unlike the discourses, does not match across schools.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/pali-canon-gandhara-buddha-images/" }, { "idea": "The bodhisattva path recommended to others", "year": 75, "date": "c. 1st c. CE", "source": "Split collection Aṣṭasāhasrikā (radiocarbon c. 47–147 CE)", "note": "The oldest Mahāyāna manuscript is nearly as old as the oldest physical Buddhist texts of any kind.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/mahayana-buddhism-origins/" }, { "idea": "Emptiness (śūnyatā) of all things", "year": 75, "date": "c. 1st c. CE", "source": "Perfection of Wisdom sūtras; later Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250)", "note": "Nāgārjuna identifies emptiness with dependent origination, turning a sūtra theme into a philosophy.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/mahayana-buddhism-origins/" }, { "idea": "A complete life of the Buddha", "year": 100, "date": "c. 1st–2nd c. CE", "source": "Aśvaghoṣa, Buddhacarita", "note": "The palace, the four sights and the midnight departure appear as one connected story some five centuries after the Buddha.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/historical-buddha/" }, { "idea": "The Buddha in human form", "year": 130, "date": "c. 127–150 CE", "source": "Kaniṣka's gold coins labelled ΒΟΔΔΟ", "note": "The oldest image explicitly named as the Buddha; figures at Gandhāra and Mathurā may be somewhat earlier.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/pali-canon-gandhara-buddha-images/" }, { "idea": "Amitābha and a Pure Land", "year": 153, "date": "c. 153 CE", "source": "Govindnagar pedestal, Mathurā; Lokakṣema's 179 CE translation naming Amitābha", "note": "Amitābha does not reappear in Indian inscriptions for centuries; his cult found its audience in East Asia.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/mahayana-buddhism-origins/" }, { "idea": "One vehicle and skilful means", "year": 286, "date": "by 286 CE", "source": "Lotus Sūtra (Dharmarakṣa's Chinese translation)", "note": "The earlier paths are recast as provisional; all three carts in the burning house become one.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/mahayana-buddhism-origins/" }, { "idea": "Mind-only (Yogācāra)", "year": 380, "date": "c. 4th–5th c. CE", "source": "Asaṅga and Vasubandhu; Viṃśatikā", "note": "Experience is explained as representation only, a second great Mahāyāna philosophy beside Madhyamaka.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/mahayana-buddhism-origins/" }, { "idea": "Buddha-nature in every being", "year": 421, "date": "421 CE", "source": "Dharmakṣema's Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra; Tathāgatagarbha texts", "note": "A minority teaching in India that became a basic assumption of Chinese Buddhism and of Chan.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhism-in-china-silk-road/" }, { "idea": "Monastic vegetarianism", "year": 518, "date": "510s–520s", "source": "Emperor Wu of Liang's decree against meat and wine", "note": "The early Vinaya allowed meat under conditions; Chinese monasticism made abstention the rule.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhism-in-china-silk-road/" }, { "idea": "Esoteric ritual: mantra, maṇḍala, initiation", "year": 670, "date": "before 674", "source": "Mahāvairocana Sūtra; Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgraha (late 7th c.)", "note": "Tantric Buddhism develops inside the great monasteries, not on their margins.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/tantra-vajrayana-decline-india/" }, { "idea": "A Chan lineage of patriarchs", "year": 732, "date": "732", "source": "Shenhui's attack on the \"Northern school\" at Huatai", "note": "The genealogy back through Bodhidharma to the Buddha is assembled in Tang China; the 547 Bodhidharma knows nothing of it.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhism-in-china-silk-road/" }, { "idea": "Printed scripture", "year": 868, "date": "868", "source": "Dunhuang Diamond Sūtra", "note": "The oldest complete dated printed book, made to spread merit by spreading the text.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhism-in-china-silk-road/" }, { "idea": "The Kālacakra and its end-time war", "year": 1030, "date": "c. 1025–1040", "source": "Kālacakra Tantra and the Vimalaprabhā", "note": "The last major Indian tantra, with a detailed and hostile account of Islam.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/tantra-vajrayana-decline-india/" }, { "idea": "Exclusive nembutsu: reliance on Amida's vow", "year": 1175, "date": "1175", "source": "Hōnen's exclusive nembutsu; Shinran after him", "note": "Hōnen makes reciting Amida's name the one sufficient practice; Shinran later grounds birth in the Pure Land in faith alone, and a married clergy follows.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/japanese-buddhism-zen-pure-land/" }, { "idea": "Recognised reincarnate lamas (tulku)", "year": 1250, "date": "13th c.", "source": "Karma Pakshi recognised as Düsum Khyenpa's rebirth", "note": "Succession by rebirth becomes a Tibetan institution; the Dalai Lamas follow the pattern.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/tibetan-buddhism-history/" }, { "idea": "The title Dalai Lama", "year": 1578, "date": "1578", "source": "Altan Khan's title for Sonam Gyatso", "note": "A Mongol title, applied retroactively to two predecessors; political rule follows in 1642.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/tibetan-buddhism-history/" }, { "idea": "\"Buddhism\" as a single world religion", "year": 1801, "date": "1801", "source": "\"Boudhism\" in Asiatic Researches", "note": "The word and the category are European; Buddhists spoke of the Buddha's teaching or dispensation.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhist-modernism-colonial/" }, { "idea": "Meditation as a practice for lay people", "year": 1910, "date": "c. 1900–1923", "source": "Ledi Sayadaw's manuals in colonial Burma", "note": "Insight meditation moves from the monastery to the laity, the root of the Western insight movement.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhist-modernism-colonial/" }, { "idea": "Navayāna: Buddhism as social liberation", "year": 1956, "date": "1956", "source": "Ambedkar's conversion at Nagpur and his 22 vows", "note": "A Buddhism that rejects caste and reinterprets karma and rebirth, embraced by hundreds of thousands in a day.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhist-modernism-colonial/" }, { "idea": "Secular mindfulness", "year": 1979, "date": "1979", "source": "Kabat-Zinn's Stress Reduction Clinic (MBSR)", "note": "Buddhist-derived attention training repackaged for medicine, detached from ethics and rebirth.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/modern-buddhism-mindfulness/" } ], "tree": [ { "id": "buddha", "kind": "trunk", "name": "The Buddha's saṅgha", "parent": null, "start": -445, "end": null, "date": "c. 445 BCE (awakening) · d. c. 400 BCE", "note": "Median chronology: death around 400 BCE, give or take twenty years. Tradition says 543 or 486 BCE; the date is contested.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/historical-buddha/" }, { "id": "councils", "kind": "mark", "name": "The Second Council", "parent": "buddha", "start": -300, "end": null, "date": "c. 300 BCE", "note": "At Vesālī, 'a hundred years after' the Buddha, condemns ten practices including accepting money.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhist-councils-schools-nuns/" }, { "id": "mahasamghika", "kind": "extinct", "name": "Mahāsāṃghikas", "parent": "buddha", "start": -275, "end": 700, "date": "c. 300–250 BCE", "note": "The first schism: the 'great community' against the Sthaviras (elders). Named in inscriptions for centuries; Yijing (c. 690) still finds their monks. None survives.", "confidence": "contested", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhist-councils-schools-nuns/#the-first-schism-elders-and-the-great-community" }, { "id": "ashoka", "kind": "mark", "name": "Ashoka: a pan-Indian religion", "parent": "buddha", "start": -258, "end": null, "date": "c. 268–232 BCE", "note": "The emperor becomes a lay follower, inscribes his dhamma across India and orders dissident monks expelled.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/ashoka-buddhism-stupas/" }, { "id": "theravada", "kind": "branch", "name": "Theravāda (Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia)", "parent": "buddha", "start": -250, "end": null, "date": "c. 250 BCE (Mahinda's mission, by the chronicles)", "note": "The Sri Lankan Mahāvihāra lineage, heir of the Sthaviras. The chronicles date Mahinda's mission to Ashoka's reign; the name 'Theravāda' for a living tradition is modern.", "confidence": "contested", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/theravada-southeast-asia/#is-theravāda-a-modern-invention" }, { "id": "canon-written", "kind": "mark", "name": "Abhayagiri founded; the canon written down", "parent": "theravada", "start": -89, "end": null, "date": "1st c. BCE", "note": "Vaṭṭagāmaṇi Abhaya's reign in Sri Lanka: a rival monastery, and the Pali canon committed to writing at Aluvihāra according to later tradition.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/pali-canon-gandhara-buddha-images/" }, { "id": "sarvastivada", "kind": "extinct", "name": "Sarvāstivāda", "parent": "buddha", "start": 127, "end": 1000, "date": "named 127 CE · Vibhāṣā 2nd c.", "note": "The great scholastic school of Gandhāra and Kashmir, named on Kaniṣka's casket; its Abhidharma and the Mūlasarvāstivāda monastic code live on in Tibet.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/pali-canon-gandhara-buddha-images/#abhidharma-the-schools-build-systems" }, { "id": "mahayana", "kind": "branch", "name": "Mahāyāna", "parent": "buddha", "start": -50, "end": null, "date": "c. 1st c. BCE – 1st c. CE", "note": "The first Mahāyāna sūtras, among them the Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines (oldest manuscript c. 47–147 CE); the bodhisattva path for all. A movement inside the monasteries, not a separate order.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/mahayana-buddhism-origins/#what-mahāyāna-meant" }, { "id": "madhyamaka", "kind": "mark", "name": "Madhyamaka (Nāgārjuna); Yogācāra", "parent": "mahayana", "start": 200, "end": null, "date": "c. 150–250 · 4th–5th c.", "note": "Emptiness as dependent origination; then Asaṅga and Vasubandhu's mind-only.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/mahayana-buddhism-origins/#7-nāgārjuna-emptiness-is-dependent-origination" }, { "id": "china", "kind": "mark", "name": "Into China", "parent": "mahayana", "start": 179, "end": null, "date": "65 · 148 · 179", "note": "A prince of Chu honours the Buddha (65); An Shigao translates at Luoyang (148); Lokakṣema's dated Perfection of Wisdom (179).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhism-in-china-silk-road/" }, { "id": "pure-land", "kind": "branch", "name": "Pure Land", "parent": "mahayana", "start": 153, "end": null, "date": "153 · 179", "note": "An image of the Buddha Amitābha dated 153 at Mathurā; Lokakṣema's translation naming him (179); Tanluan and Shandao in China; Hōnen's exclusive nembutsu (1175).", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/mahayana-buddhism-origins/" }, { "id": "chan", "kind": "branch", "name": "Chan / Zen", "parent": "mahayana", "start": 547, "end": null, "date": "547 · 732", "note": "Earliest mention of Bodhidharma (547); Shenhui attacks the 'Northern school' (732); the Jingde Record fixes the genealogy (1004).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhism-in-china-silk-road/#chan-a-lineage-built-after-the-fact" }, { "id": "tiantai", "kind": "branch", "name": "Tiantai / Tendai", "parent": "mahayana", "start": 590, "end": null, "date": "Zhiyi, 538–597 · 806", "note": "Zhiyi organises the whole canon as stages of the Buddha's teaching, the Lotus Sūtra supreme; Saichō brings it to Japan (Tendai recognised 806).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhism-in-china-silk-road/#how-buddhism-became-chinese" }, { "id": "vajrayana", "kind": "branch", "name": "Vajrayāna (tantra)", "parent": "mahayana", "start": 670, "end": null, "date": "before 674", "note": "The Mahāvairocana Sūtra; mantra, maṇḍala and initiation; the Pāla monasteries of Bengal and Bihar.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/tantra-vajrayana-decline-india/" }, { "id": "tibet", "kind": "branch", "name": "Tibetan Buddhism", "parent": "vajrayana", "start": 779, "end": null, "date": "779", "note": "Samye consecrated and the first Tibetan monks ordained; Buddhism the religion of the realm under Trisong Detsen.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/tibetan-buddhism-history/" }, { "id": "shingon", "kind": "branch", "name": "Shingon (Japan)", "parent": "vajrayana", "start": 806, "end": null, "date": "806", "note": "Kūkai returns from China with esoteric teaching.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/japanese-buddhism-zen-pure-land/" }, { "id": "nara", "kind": "mark", "name": "Japan: state Buddhism at Nara", "parent": "mahayana", "start": 741, "end": null, "date": "538/552 · 741 · 752", "note": "Buddhism reaches the Yamato court from Baekje; a state temple in every province (741); the Great Buddha of Tōdaiji (752).", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/japanese-buddhism-zen-pure-land/" }, { "id": "nyingma", "kind": "mark", "name": "Nyingma organised; Kadam, Sakya, Kagyu", "parent": "tibet", "start": 1073, "end": null, "date": "1042 · 1073 · 11th–12th c.", "note": "Atiśa arrives (1042); Sakya monastery founded (1073); the Kagyu descend from Marpa (1012–1097); Nyingma, the 'old' school, organises in the 11th–12th c.", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/tibetan-buddhism-history/" }, { "id": "pagan", "kind": "mark", "name": "Burma, Siam and Cambodia turn Theravāda", "parent": "theravada", "start": 1113, "end": null, "date": "1113 · 1292 · 1309", "note": "The Myazedi inscription at Pagan (1113); Sukhothai (1292, traditional); the first Pali inscription in Cambodia (1309).", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/theravada-southeast-asia/" }, { "id": "mahavihara-unified", "kind": "mark", "name": "Sri Lanka's orders unified under the Mahāvihāra", "parent": "theravada", "start": 1165, "end": null, "date": "c. 1165", "note": "Parākramabāhu I; the nuns' order had already vanished after 1017.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/theravada-southeast-asia/#3-a-king-unifies-the-saṅgha" }, { "id": "jodo", "kind": "branch", "name": "Jōdo and Jōdo Shinshū (Hōnen, Shinran)", "parent": "pure-land", "start": 1175, "end": null, "date": "1175 · 1207", "note": "Hōnen turns to the exclusive nembutsu (1175); banned and exiled with Shinran (1207); Shinran's followers become Jōdo Shinshū, today Japan's largest traditional school.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/japanese-buddhism-zen-pure-land/#6-shinran-how-much-more-so-an-evil-person" }, { "id": "rinzai", "kind": "branch", "name": "Rinzai Zen", "parent": "chan", "start": 1191, "end": null, "date": "1191", "note": "Eisai returns from China with Linji Chan.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/japanese-buddhism-zen-pure-land/" }, { "id": "soto", "kind": "branch", "name": "Sōtō Zen", "parent": "chan", "start": 1227, "end": null, "date": "1227", "note": "Dōgen returns from China; the Shōbōgenzō; Eiheiji founded (1244).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/japanese-buddhism-zen-pure-land/" }, { "id": "nichiren", "kind": "branch", "name": "Nichiren", "parent": "tiantai", "start": 1260, "end": null, "date": "1260", "note": "Nichiren, a Tendai monk, submits the Risshō ankoku ron; the Lotus Sūtra alone.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/japanese-buddhism-zen-pure-land/" }, { "id": "tulku", "kind": "mark", "name": "Reincarnate lamas; the Geluk school", "parent": "tibet", "start": 1409, "end": null, "date": "13th c. · 1409", "note": "Karma Pakshi recognised as a rebirth (13th c.); Tsongkhapa founds Ganden (1409); the title Dalai Lama (1578); the Fifth Dalai Lama rules Tibet (1642).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/tibetan-buddhism-history/#lamas-and-mongols-how-monks-came-to-rule" }, { "id": "siam-nikaya", "kind": "mark", "name": "Ordination restored and reformed", "parent": "theravada", "start": 1753, "end": null, "date": "1753 · 1833", "note": "Siamese monks restore higher ordination in Kandy (the Siam Nikāya, 1753); Mongkut founds the reforming Dhammayut order (c. 1833).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/theravada-southeast-asia/" }, { "id": "modernism", "kind": "mark", "name": "Buddhist modernism", "parent": "theravada", "start": 1880, "end": null, "date": "1873 · 1880 · 1891", "note": "The Pānadura debate (1873); Olcott takes the precepts at Galle (1880); Dharmapāla's Maha Bodhi Society (1891); the Parliament of Religions (1893).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhist-modernism-colonial/" }, { "id": "vipassana", "kind": "mark", "name": "Meditation for lay people", "parent": "theravada", "start": 1910, "end": null, "date": "c. 1900–1923 · 1949", "note": "Ledi Sayadaw's manuals in colonial Burma; Mahasi Sayadaw teaches in Rangoon (1949); Goenka's courses (1969); secular mindfulness (1979).", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhist-modernism-colonial/" }, { "id": "soka-gakkai", "kind": "branch", "name": "Sōka Gakkai", "parent": "nichiren", "start": 1930, "end": null, "date": "1930", "note": "Founded as a lay society within Nichiren Shōshū; grows after 1945.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/modern-buddhism-mindfulness/" }, { "id": "humanistic", "kind": "mark", "name": "Humanistic Buddhism", "parent": "mahayana", "start": 1925, "end": null, "date": "1920s · 1966–67", "note": "Taixu calls for a 'Buddhism for human life'; Tzu Chi (1966) and Fo Guang Shan (1967) in Taiwan.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhist-modernism-colonial/" }, { "id": "navayana", "kind": "branch", "name": "Navayāna (Ambedkar)", "parent": "buddha", "start": 1956, "end": null, "date": "14 October 1956", "note": "Ambedkar and hundreds of thousands of Dalits take the refuges at Nagpur, with 22 vows renouncing the Hindu gods; Buddhism as social liberation.", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhist-modernism-colonial/#5-ambedkars-vows-1956" }, { "id": "exile", "kind": "mark", "name": "The Dalai Lama in exile", "parent": "tibet", "start": 1959, "end": null, "date": "1950 · 1959", "note": "The People's Liberation Army enters Tibet (1950); the 14th Dalai Lama flees to India (1959); rival Panchen Lamas (1995).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/modern-buddhism-mindfulness/" }, { "id": "west", "kind": "mark", "name": "Zen and engaged Buddhism in the West", "parent": "chan", "start": 1962, "end": null, "date": "1962 · 1966", "note": "San Francisco Zen Center incorporated (1962); Thích Nhất Hạnh's Order of Interbeing (1966).", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/modern-buddhism-mindfulness/" } ] } ], "links": [ { "from": "judaism:israel", "to": "christianity:jesus", "year": 30, "kind": "within", "label": "Christianity begins as a movement inside Judaism", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/judaism/second-temple-judaism/#the-jesus-movement" }, { "from": "judaism:israel", "to": "islam:muhammad", "year": 380, "kind": "context", "label": "Jewish and Christian Arabia: Ḥimyar's kings turn to one god (c. 380) and to Judaism or something close to it", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/pre-islamic-arabia/" }, { "from": "christianity:jesus", "to": "islam:muhammad", "year": 610, "kind": "context", "label": "Muhammad preaches the God of Abraham in a world of Christian and Jewish empires", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/islam/pre-islamic-arabia/" }, { "from": "hinduism:shramana", "to": "buddhism:buddha", "year": -445, "kind": "within", "label": "The Buddha, one renouncer among the śramaṇas; karma and rebirth accepted, the Vedas and a permanent self rejected", "confidence": "majority", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/buddhism/buddhism-origins-shramana/" }, { "from": "hinduism:vedic", "to": "buddhism:navayana", "year": 1956, "kind": "exit", "label": "Ambedkar leads Dalits out of Hinduism into Buddhism", "confidence": "consensus", "url": "https://howitevolved.com/hinduism/modern-hinduism-since-1947/" } ] }