How It Evolved

Across the series · Question

Which religions believe in one God?

By Updated 13 min read

The short answer

Majority view

Judaism, Christianity and Islam each teach that only one God exists, and Sikhism's scripture, compiled in 1604, opens with 'One reality', a God without form yet present in everything; but none of them started from a finished doctrine. In Judaism, the first clear statement that no other god exists comes in Isaiah 40–55, c. 550–539 BCE, after centuries in which Yahweh was worshipped first as a chief god among gods and then as Israel's god alone. Christianity kept that one God and, between 180 and 381 CE, worked out the Trinity to say how Jesus and the Spirit share in him. Hinduism layers many gods, one impersonal reality and devotion to one supreme god. Buddhism treats the gods as real but mortal, and the Buddha as beyond them.

Where each tradition stands on one God, and when it got there
TraditionOne God?HowEarliest clear evidence
JudaismYesFrom a chief god among gods, to worship of Yahweh alone, to the claim that no other god existsIsaiah 40–55, c. 550–539 BCE[12][1]
ChristianityYes, as a TrinityKept Israel's one God; Father, Son and Spirit defined as one being in three personsCouncils of Nicaea, 325, and Constantinople, 381[27][28]
HinduismBoth, in layersMany Vedic gods; one impersonal reality in the Upanishads; one supreme god for devoteesHeliodorus pillar to Vāsudeva, the God of Gods, c. 110 BCE[32][36]
BuddhismNoThe gods are real but mortal and inside the round of rebirth; the Buddha has gone beyond themThe early Pali discourses[43][45]
SikhismYesOne formless, unborn creator, present in all things and called by Hindu and Muslim names alikeGuru Nānak (1469–1539); the Ādi Granth, 1604[54][57]
ZoroastrianismDebatedOne supreme wise creator, Ahura Mazdā, with lesser divine beingsThe Gāthā hymns, date disputed[74]
Columns of Hebrew text on the Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran Cave 1, copied around 150–100 BCE
Photographs by Ardon Bar Hama, author of original document is unknown. · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

The short version: Judaism, Christianity and Islam teach that only one God exists, and Sikhism’s scripture opens by naming one formless reality. Hinduism is harder to label, because it holds several theologies at once, and Buddhism accepts that gods exist while denying that any of them is ultimate. What the history adds is that none of these positions was there from the start. Each was argued for, at a datable time, out of something older. Majority This page compares Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism; Islam’s own history is told in the Islam series, and it appears here only briefly. For the separate question of which monotheism is oldest, see What is the oldest religion in the world?

What the words mean

Historians use a handful of terms, and most arguments about “one God” are really arguments about which of them applies.[1]​[2]

TermMeaning
PolytheismMany gods exist and are worshipped
HenotheismOne god is praised at a time as the greatest, without denying the others
MonolatryMany gods may exist, but this people must worship only one
MonotheismOnly one god exists
MonismOnly one reality exists; the many things, gods included, are that one reality

Two cautions. “Monotheism” is a word coined in the seventeenth century, and some scholars think it fits ancient texts badly.[3] And a monotheism can have a crowded heaven: Jewish, Christian and Muslim thought all place angels and other spiritual beings beneath the one God.[4] Majority

Judaism: from one god among many to the only God

The Hebrew Bible keeps every stage of this story side by side, because it was written and edited over the whole period (Judaism §4).[1]​[5]

A chief god among gods. Psalm 82 has God standing “in the assembly of El”, judging “in the midst of the gods”.[6] The older text of Deuteronomy 32:8–9, preserved at Qumran, has the Most High divide the nations among “the sons of God”, with Yahweh receiving Israel.[7] Around 800 BCE travellers at Kuntillet ʿAjrud blessed one another “by Yahweh of Samaria and by his asherah”.[8] No text of this period says that no other god exists (Judaism §2). Consensus

Yahweh alone. From the eighth century BCE, prophets and reformers demanded that Israel worship only Yahweh. “You shall have no other gods before me” forbids worship, not existence.[9] The Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4 probably meant, in its seventh-century setting, “Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone”, and King Josiah removed the vessels of Baal, Asherah and the host of heaven from the Temple (Judaism §3).[10]​[11] This is monolatry. Majority

No other god. After Jerusalem fell to Babylon, an anonymous prophet whose words survive in Isaiah 40–55 wrote: “I am Yahweh, and there is no other; besides me there is no god.”[12] Deuteronomy 4 says the same in prose.[13] This is the first unambiguous denial in the Bible that any other god exists, and it answered the crisis of the exile: if Yahweh controls all history, Babylon’s victory was his doing, not his defeat. Majority

Not everyone dates it so late. Yehezkel Kaufmann argued that Israel’s religion was different in kind from the start, and Jeffrey Tigay found that Hebrew personal names in inscriptions are built on Yahweh by a very wide margin.[14]​[15] Contested Jewish tradition holds that Abraham and Moses already knew the one God and that the Bible’s story of Israel turning to other gods is one of unfaithfulness, not of discovery. Consensus that this is the traditional view. The full case is set out in When did Judaism become monotheistic?

Under Islam, Jewish thinkers turned this belief into systematic theology. Saadia’s Book of Beliefs and Opinions (933) adopted the method of the Muslim rationalist theologians, the Muʿtazila: the existence of a single, incorporeal creator can be proved by argument as well as accepted from scripture.[16]​[17] Consensus Around 1168 Maimonides put God’s existence, unity and incorporeality at the head of his Thirteen Principles, the first rabbinic attempt at a binding creed, disputed from the start.[18] Majority

Christianity: one God, and then the Trinity

The first Christians were Jews, and they kept Israel’s one God. What was new was where they put Jesus. Within about twenty years of the crucifixion, communities that held to that one God prayed to Jesus in Aramaic (“Maranatha”, “Our Lord, come!”), sang hymns about him, and applied to him scriptures about the Lord God (Christianity §3).[19]​[20]​[21] Consensus on these practices. Around 54 CE Paul split the Shema itself between God and Jesus: “for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things… and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”.[22] Some scholars read this as including Jesus within the identity of the one God, others as a high but subordinate place beside him.[23]​[24] Contested on the meaning.

The words for how three could be one came later (When did the Trinity become doctrine?):

  • c. 180: Theophilus of Antioch first calls God a trias, a triad: God, his Word and his Wisdom.[25] Consensus
  • c. 213: Tertullian uses the Latin trinitas and speaks of three persons of one substance.[26] Majority
  • 325: The Council of Nicaea declares the Son “of one substance” with the Father, using a word not found in the Bible (Christianity §6).[27] Consensus
  • 381: The Council of Constantinople declares the Holy Spirit fully divine. Its creed is the one most churches recite today.[28]​[29] Majority

Christians have always called this monotheism: one God in three persons, not three gods. Whether the councils stated what the New Testament already implied, or changed it, is a theological debate as much as a historical one.[29]​[30] Contested

Hinduism: many gods, one reality, one supreme god

Hinduism has no single creed. A single household can hold a Vedic prayer, the teaching that only one reality exists, and daily devotion to Kṛṣṇa or Durgā as the supreme god, without feeling a contradiction.[2] The layers have dates (Is Hinduism polytheistic or monotheistic?).

Many gods. The Rigveda (c. 1500–1200 BCE) is plainly polytheistic: Indra, Agni and Varuṇa are distinct persons with distinct roles (Hinduism §3).[31] Consensus Its hymns often praise whichever god they address as the greatest, the pattern Max Müller called henotheism, and a late hymn says: “That which is, is One; the seers speak of it in many ways.”[2]​[32] Majority

One reality. From about 700 BCE the early Upaniṣads identify the self with brahman, the ground of all reality (Hinduism §5).[33]​[34] This is monism, not monotheism: brahman is not a person who creates and commands, and the gods are demoted, not abolished.[35] Consensus

One supreme god. At Besnagar, c. 110 BCE, a Greek ambassador calling himself a Bhāgavata set up a pillar to “Vāsudeva, the God of Gods” (Hinduism §7).[36]​[37] Consensus Over the following centuries Viṣṇu became supreme for Vaiṣṇavas, Śiva for Śaivas and, from about 550 CE, the Goddess for Śāktas, with other deities absorbed as forms of the supreme one.[38] Within each tradition this looks a great deal like monotheism; across them, the supreme god differs. Majority

Medieval philosophers argued the question out. Śaṅkara’s Advaita held that brahman alone is ultimately real; Rāmānuja answered that the personal God is fully real.[39]​[40] Consensus In the nineteenth century Rammohan Roy derived a monotheism from the Upaniṣads and rejected image worship, and Dayānanda found an imageless monotheism in the Vedas. Historians note that both were answering missionary charges of polytheism.[41]​[42] Majority

Buddhism: gods without a supreme God

The Buddha of the early texts does not deny the gods. He outranks them (Buddhism §2). In one discourse the high god Brahmā begs the newly awakened Buddha to teach; in another, Sakka, the Indra of the Rigveda, declares himself his disciple.[43]​[44] A god’s life is long and pleasant but finite, and when its good karma runs out the god is reborn; liberation lies beyond rebirth, divine or human.[45] So the early Buddha is “not an atheist in the modern sense, and not a god”, but a human being who has gone beyond the gods. Consensus

Later Buddhism made the Buddha cosmic. The Mahāvastu’s “supramundane” Buddha and the Mahāyāna sūtras present buddhas who are eternal and present in many worlds at once.[46] Consensus By about 153 CE the Buddha Amitābha had a cult at Mathurā, and in Japan Shinran (1173–1263) taught that birth in his Pure Land depends on Amida’s vow, not on one’s own effort.[47]​[48]​[49]​[50] Majority That devotion resembles devotion to a saving god, though Amitābha is a buddha, not a god. The familiar modern picture of Buddhism as rational and compatible with science took shape in the nineteenth century, in dialogue with Western science and Protestant Christianity.[51] Majority

Sikhism: one reality, without form and in everything

Guru Nānak (1469–1539) was a Punjabi poet whose hymns argue by name with the yogīs, Brahmins, qāzīs and Sufis of his province (Sikhism §1).[52]​[53] Majority The scripture his successors compiled opens with the Japjī, which Sikhs recite every morning, and the Japjī begins with the Mūl Mantar, the creed-like statement of God’s nature (Sikhism §2):[54]​[55]​[56] Consensus

ੴ ਸਤਿ ਨਾਮੁ ਕਰਤਾ ਪੁਰਖੁ ਨਿਰਭਉ ਨਿਰਵੈਰੁ ਅਕਾਲ ਮੂਰਤਿ ਅਜੂਨੀ ਸੈਭੰ ਗੁਰ ਪ੍ਰਸਾਦਿ ॥

ik oaṅkār sati nāmu karatā purakhu nirbhau niravairu akāl mūrati ajūnī saibhaṅ gur prasādi ||

“One reality. Truth by name. Creator. Without fear. Without enmity. Timeless in form. Unborn. Self-existent. Known by the Guru’s grace.”[54] Translations differ in detail: Pashaura Singh gives akāl mūrati as “immortal” and ajūnī as “never incarnated”, and whether sati nāmu is one compound or two is disputed (Hinduism §10). Consensus on the text.

Without form, and in everything. God in Guru Nānak’s hymns is nirguṇ, without attributes and without form, but also saguṇ, present in every created thing; is beyond birth and death; and takes no incarnations. He used Hindu and Muslim names for God freely (Rām, Hari, Gobind, Khudā, Allāh) while rejecting idols, pilgrimage, ritual purity and the authority of Brahmin and qāzī as ways to reach God.[57]​[56] Consensus Everything happens within the hukam, God’s order or command, and God is known through the nām, the divine Name, and the sabad, the Word that the Guru reveals.[57]​[58]​[59] Consensus Most scholars read ajūnī, “unborn”, as ruling out incarnation, though the word’s primary force is a denial of rebirth.[57] Majority

Sant and Sufi neighbours. A formless God was not new in northern India. The poets scholars since Vaudeville, Schomer and McLeod have called the Sants, from Nāmdev to Kabīr and Ravidās, are described as poets of a formless God (nirguṇa) who rejected images, caste and ritual (Sikhism §1).[60] Consensus on the usage; the line between “formless” and “embodied” poets is drawn more sharply in modern literary history than in the early manuscripts.[61] Majority W. H. McLeod argued in 1968 that Guru Nānak belonged to that tradition, which he described as drawn chiefly from Vaiṣṇava devotion and the Nāths’ yoga, with only a small Sufi element; J. S. Grewal stressed how much Guru Nānak set aside in each neighbouring tradition, though he preferred the Sufis’ language to the qāzīs’, and called him an originator rather than a synthesiser.[57]​[52] Majority on what each argued. Bhāī Gurdās, writing in the Gurus’ circle in the early seventeenth century, pictured Hindus and Muslims calling on “Rām and Rahīm: the Name is one, and they have lost their way on two roads”.[62] Consensus on the text. The scripture Guru Arjan completed in 1604 includes hymns by Kabīr, Nāmdev, Ravidās and the Sufi Shaikh Farīd, which the Gurus selected and in places answered in verses of their own.[56]​[63] Majority

The book attributed to the tenth Guru. The Dasam Granth, attributed to Guru Gobind Singh and compiled after his death, opens with the Jāp, a praise of the formless God in many names, but also retells the goddess’s battles. A prayer from its Chaṇḍī Charitra, sung as a Khālsā anthem, asks a boon of Śivā: in the poem the goddess, Chaṇḍī; for many Sikhs a name of God, “the auspicious one”. Both readings are argued (Sikhism §5).[64]​[65]​[66] Contested

Drawing the line. In the late nineteenth century the reformers of the Singh Sabhā’s Tat Khālsā wing argued that Sikhs are not Hindus. Kāhn Singh Nābhā’s Ham Hindū Nahīṅ, “We are not Hindus” (1898), argued from the Guru Granth Sāhib and the codes that Sikh doctrine on caste, incarnation, images and ritual differed from Hindu doctrine on every point that mattered, and in 1905 the Hindu images were removed from the precincts of the Harmandir Sāhib (Sikhism §8).[67]​[68] Consensus; Political on the question. Macauliffe’s English translation of 1909 carried the reformers’ reading of the Gurus to English readers for most of the twentieth century.[69]​[68]​[70] Majority The Sikh Rahit Maryādā, the community’s code (approved 1945, published 1950), defines a Sikh as one who believes in the one God, the ten Gurus, the Guru Granth Sāhib and the teachings of the Gurus, and in the initiation of the tenth Guru, and owes allegiance to no other religion.[71]​[70] Consensus on the wording. Harjot Oberoi argues that the reformers replaced a plural world, in which many who revered the Gurus also revered goddesses and village spirits, with a single Khālsā identity; J. S. Grewal and Purnima Dhavan reply that the Khālsā norm was dominant long before, and the reformers enforced an existing boundary.[68]​[72]​[73] Contested

Zoroastrianism, briefly

Zoroastrianism worships one supreme god, Ahura Mazdā, the wise creator, alongside lesser divine beings. Whether that counts as monotheism, and how early its hymns are, are both debated.[74] Contested Whether its idea of a single good creator influenced Judean thought under Persian rule is also debated (Did Zoroastrianism influence Judaism?). Contested

A rough timeline

DateWhat happensConfidence
c. 1500–1200 BCEThe Rigveda’s many gods[31]Majority
c. 800 BCE“Yahweh of Samaria and his asherah” at Kuntillet ʿAjrud[8]Consensus
8th–7th c. BCEProphets and Josiah’s reform demand Yahweh alone[75]​[11]Majority
c. 700 BCEEarly Upaniṣads: the self is brahman[34]Majority
c. 550–539 BCEIsaiah 40–55: “besides me there is no god”[12]Majority
c. 400 BCEThe Buddha, a teacher beyond the gods, dies[76]​[77]Contested (date)
c. 110 BCEHeliodorus pillar: “Vāsudeva, the God of Gods”[36]Consensus
c. 54 CE1 Corinthians 8:6: one God and one Lord[22]Consensus
325 and 381 CENicaea and Constantinople define the Trinity[27]​[28]Consensus
933Saadia argues for a single incorporeal creator[16]Consensus
c. 1168Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles[18]Consensus
1469–1539Guru Nānak: one formless reality, by Hindu and Muslim names[57]Consensus
1604The Ādi Granth compiled; it opens with the Mūl Mantar[56]​[54]Consensus
1828Rammohan Roy’s Upanishadic monotheism[41]Consensus
1898Kāhn Singh Nābhā’s Ham Hindū Nahīṅ: Sikh doctrine on incarnation and images is not Hindu[67]Consensus
1950The Sikh Rahit Maryādā: a Sikh believes in the one God[71]Consensus

What scholars disagree about

When Judaism became monotheistic. Most date the step to the exile; Kaufmann’s school argues for an early start, and Nathan MacDonald argues that even Deuteronomy is about loyalty to a unique God rather than a philosophical denial of others.[1]​[14]​[3] Contested

Whether the Trinity was a development or a change. Most theologians see the councils stating what early worship already implied; others, from Adolf Harnack on, argue that Greek philosophy reshaped the faith.[29]​[30] Contested

Whether Hinduism was monotheistic all along. Nineteenth-century reformers said yes; historians note that the Rigveda of the historical record is not. Many Hindus describe their tradition as one divine reality worshipped through many forms, a self-understanding with deep roots in the texts, though the unity was argued for at different times rather than given at the start.[41]​[42]​[2] Majority

Whether Guru Nānak was a Sant or a founder. McLeod placed Guru Nānak within the Sant tradition of northern India as its greatest exponent; many Sikh scholars, the authors of Fundamental Issues in Sikh Studies (1992) among them, reply that this reduces the founder of a revelation to one voice among many. Most historians now say both: he shared the Sant idiom and its theology of the Name, and he named a successor, founded a community and began the line of Gurus who made his hymns a scripture.[57]​[78]​[53]​[63] Contested; Political

Common misconceptions

  • “The Ten Commandments teach monotheism.” “You shall have no other gods before me” forbids worshipping other gods; it is the classic statement of monolatry.[9] Majority
  • “Constantine invented the Trinity at Nicaea.” The creed of 325 defined the Son’s relation to the Father and gave the Spirit one line; the full doctrine came at Constantinople in 381, after his death.[27]​[28] Consensus
  • “Hindus worship 330 million gods, so Hinduism is simply polytheistic.” The Vedas count 33 gods, and the popular 330 million comes from reading the Sanskrit koṭi as “ten million”; Hindu theology also includes monism and devotion to one supreme god (Why are there so many Hindu gods?).[2] Majority
  • “Buddhists do not believe in gods.” The early texts take the gods for granted; they deny only that the gods are ultimate or free from rebirth.[43]​[45] Consensus
  • “Monotheism means there are no other spiritual beings.” Jewish monotheism from the Persian period on included angels and the satan, all subordinate to God.[4] Majority
  • “Sikhism took its one God from Islam and its devotion from Hinduism.” Specialists, McLeod included, do not describe Sikhism as a blend of the two, and Sikhs reject the description; McLeod traced the Sant tradition Guru Nānak shared chiefly to Vaiṣṇava devotion and Nāth yoga, with only a small Sufi element (Is Sikhism a mix of Hinduism and Islam?).[57]​[52] Consensus; Political

Why it matters

“One God” is often treated as a fixed line between religions. The history shows a set of positions reached at different times by different routes: in Judah after a kingdom fell, among the first Christians as they tried to fit Jesus into Israel’s faith, among Hindu philosophers and devotees arguing over the same Upaniṣads, in a Buddhism that never needed a creator at all, and in a Punjab where a poet sang of one formless reality by Hindu and Muslim names alike. The series on Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism trace each route in detail.

References

  1. ^ a b c Mark S. Smith The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts. Oxford University Press, 2001. How the divine council of Ugarit shrank into the one God of the Bible.
  2. ^ a b c d e Gavin Flood An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge University Press, 1996. open library The standard university textbook, and the most balanced single overview.
  3. ^ a b Nathan MacDonald Deuteronomy and the Meaning of "Monotheism". Mohr Siebeck, 2003. Argues that 'monotheism' is a modern category that misreads Deuteronomy's claims.
  4. ^ a b Peter Hayman Monotheism — A Misused Word in Jewish Studies?. Journal of Jewish Studies 42, pp. 1–15, 1991. doi Argues that Jewish ideas of God stayed 'monarchistic', a king ruling a court of powerful heavenly beings, until the medieval philosophers.
  5. ^ Thomas Römer The Invention of God. Harvard University Press (trans. Raymond Geuss), 2015. Readable account from Yahweh's southern origins to biblical monotheism.
  6. ^ Psalm 82 — Psalms (Hebrew Bible). c. 8th–6th c. BCE (debated). Hebrew. God stands "in the assembly of El" and judges among the gods, sentencing them to die like mortals: the divine council in session. read the text
  7. ^ Deuteronomy 32:8–9 (MT, 4QDeutj, LXX) — Song of Moses (Hebrew Bible). c. 8th–6th c. BCE (debated). Hebrew. The Most High divides the nations "according to the number of the sons of God" (Qumran, Septuagint) or "the sons of Israel" (Masoretic text); Yahweh's portion is Israel. Trace of the divine council. read the text
  8. ^ a b Kuntillet ʿAjrud, Pithos A — Kuntillet ʿAjrud inscriptions (Meshel 2012). c. 800 BCE. Hebrew. Blessing written on a storage jar at a Sinai way-station: 'I bless you by Yahweh of Samaria and by his Asherah.' A second jar names 'Yahweh of Teman and his Asherah'. about
  9. ^ a b Exodus 20:2–3 (cf. Deuteronomy 5:6–7) — Exodus (Hebrew Bible). uncertain; Torah complete by the Persian period. Hebrew. 'I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt … You shall have no other gods before me': a ban on worshipping other gods, not a denial that they exist. read the text
  10. ^ Deuteronomy 6:4–5 — Deuteronomy (Hebrew Bible). core 7th c. BCE. Hebrew. The Shema: "Hear, O Israel: Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone" (or "Yahweh is one"), with the command to love Yahweh with all the heart: exclusive loyalty in the language of treaty. read the text
  11. ^ a b 2 Kings 23:4–7 — Kings (Hebrew Bible). c. late 7th–6th c. BCE. Hebrew. Josiah removes from the Temple the vessels made for Baal, Asherah and the host of heaven, burns the asherah, and destroys the houses where women wove for Asherah. read the text
  12. ^ a b Isa 45:1–7 — Isaiah (Hebrew Bible). c. 550–539 BCE. Hebrew. Yahweh calls Cyrus his 'anointed' and declares 'I am Yahweh and there is no other; besides me there is no god ... I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil': the Bible's first explicit monotheism. read the text
  13. ^ Deut 4:35, 39 — Deuteronomy (Hebrew Bible). c. 6th c. BCE. Hebrew. 'Yahweh is God; there is no other besides him': an exilic framing of Deuteronomy that also says the heavenly bodies were allotted to the other nations (4:19). read the text
  14. ^ a b Yehezkel Kaufmann The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile. University of Chicago Press (trans. Moshe Greenberg), 1960. The classic argument that Israelite religion was monotheistic from the start.
  15. ^ Jeffrey H. Tigay You Shall Have No Other Gods: Israelite Religion in the Light of Hebrew Inscriptions. Scholars Press, 1986. Personal names in Hebrew inscriptions: Yahweh dominates by a wide margin.
  16. ^ a b Saadia Gaon, Book of Beliefs and Opinions — Kitāb al-Amānāt wa-l-Iʿtiqādāt (Hebrew: Emunot ve-Deʿot). 933 CE. Judeo-Arabic. The first systematic Jewish theology, using the methods of Muslim kalām. III.7: "our nation is a nation only by virtue of its laws", against the claim that the Torah had been abrogated. read the text
  17. ^ Samuel Rosenblatt, trans. Saadia Gaon: The Book of Beliefs and Opinions. Yale University Press, 1948. The complete English translation, from the Arabic.
  18. ^ a b Maimonides, Commentary on Mishnah Sanhedrin 10 (Introduction to Perek Ḥeleq) — Commentary on the Mishnah. c. 1168 CE. Judeo-Arabic. The Thirteen Principles of faith; the eighth holds that the whole Torah now in our hands was given to Moses from heaven. about
  19. ^ 1 Corinthians 16:22 — Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians. c. 54 CE. Greek. Paul closes with the Aramaic prayer maranatha, 'Our Lord, come!', preserved untranslated in a Greek letter. read the text
  20. ^ Philippians 2:6–11 — Paul, Letter to the Philippians. c. 50s CE. Greek. A hymn, probably pre-Pauline: Christ Jesus 'in the form of God' empties himself, is exalted, and every knee bows at his name. read the text
  21. ^ Isaiah 45:22–23 — Isaiah (Hebrew Bible). 8th–6th c. BCE. Hebrew. 'To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear', applied to Jesus in Philippians 2:10–11. read the text
  22. ^ a b 1 Corinthians 8:4–6 — Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians. c. 54 CE. Greek. 'For us there is one God, the Father… and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.' read the text
  23. ^ Richard Bauckham Jesus and the God of Israel. Eerdmans, 2008. Argues that the earliest Christians included Jesus within the identity of Israel's one God.
  24. ^ Bart D. Ehrman How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. HarperOne, 2014. A developmental account of early Christology and the resurrection visions.
  25. ^ Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 2.15 — Ad Autolycum. c. 180 CE. Greek. The three days before the luminaries are 'types of the Trinity (trias), of God, and His Word, and His wisdom'. read the text
  26. ^ Tertullian, Against Praxeas 2 — Adversus Praxean. c. 213 CE. Latin. Against monarchianism: the Trinity (trinitas), three persons of one substance. read the text
  27. ^ a b c Creed of Nicaea (325) — Council of Nicaea. 325 CE. Greek. The original Nicene creed: the Son 'from the substance of the Father… of one substance (homoousios) with the Father', with anathemas against Arius' formulas. read the text
  28. ^ a b c Creed of Constantinople (381) — Council of Constantinople. 381 CE (first recorded 451). Greek. The expanded creed, with the Holy Spirit 'the Lord and giver of life… worshipped and glorified' with Father and Son, now recited as the Nicene Creed. read the text
  29. ^ a b c J. N. D. Kelly Early Christian Creeds. Longman, 3rd ed., 1972. The standard history of the creeds, including the link between the creed and the council of 381.
  30. ^ a b Lewis Ayres Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford University Press, 2004. Replaces the two-party story with a range of trajectories that converged slowly.
  31. ^ a b Stephanie W. Jamison & Joel P. Brereton, trans. The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India. Oxford University Press, 3 vols., 2014. The standard complete English translation. Supersedes Griffith entirely.
  32. ^ RV 1.164.46 — Rigveda. c. 1100 BCE. Vedic Sanskrit. ekaṃ sad viprā bahudhā vadanti — "the One that is, the seers call by many names." Ancestor of every later Hindu claim that the gods are one. read the text
  33. ^ CU 6.8.7 — Chāndogya Upaniṣad. c. 700 BCE. Sanskrit. tat tvam asi — "that you are." The doctrinal core of Vedānta and the most influential sentence in Indian philosophy. read the text
  34. ^ a b Patrick Olivelle, trans. The Early Upaniṣads: Annotated Text and Translation. Oxford University Press, 1998. full text The scholarly standard. Its introduction is the best short account of the period.
  35. ^ Kena 3 — Kena Upaniṣad. c. 500 BCE. Sanskrit. Agni cannot burn a blade of grass without brahman. The Vedic pantheon formally subordinated to an impersonal absolute. read the text
  36. ^ a b Heliodorus pillar — Besnagar (Vidiśā). c. 110 BCE. Prakrit in Brāhmī. A Greek ambassador calls himself a Bhāgavata and Vāsudeva the God of Gods. The oldest hard evidence for bhakti, and datable by Antialkidas's coinage. about
  37. ^ Richard Salomon Indian Epigraphy. Oxford University Press, 1998. open library The standard handbook for inscriptions and their dating.
  38. ^ Thomas B. Coburn Devī-Māhātmya: The Crystallization of the Goddess Tradition. Motilal Banarsidass, 1984.
  39. ^ Wilhelm Halbfass Tradition and Reflection: Explorations in Indian Thought. SUNY Press, 1991. full text On Śaṅkara and his Mīmāṃsā opponents.
  40. ^ Śrībhāṣya — Rāmānuja. c. 1100 CE. Sanskrit. The world and souls are the body of God. A theistic answer to Śaṅkara, giving Tamil devotion a Vedāntic defence. about
  41. ^ a b c Kenneth W. Jones Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India. Cambridge University Press, 1989. doi The survey that maps Brahmo, Arya Samaj, Prarthana and the rest against each other.
  42. ^ a b Richard King Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and "The Mystic East". Routledge, 1999. full text
  43. ^ a b MN 26 — Ariyapariyesanā Sutta (Majjhima Nikāya). c. 400–200 BCE. Pali. The Buddha's own short account of leaving home: while young and black-haired, against the wishes of his weeping parents, he shaved his head and went forth. No palace, no secret flight at night. read the text
  44. ^ DN 21 — Sakkapañha Sutta (Dīgha Nikāya). c. 400–200 BCE. Pali. Sakka, king of the gods (the Vedic Indra), questions the Buddha and declares himself the Buddha's disciple and a stream-enterer. read the text
  45. ^ a b AN 4.33 — Sīha Sutta (Aṅguttara Nikāya). c. 400–200 BCE. Pali. Long-lived gods who hear the Buddha's teaching realise with dismay that they too are impermanent: the gods are inside saṃsāra. read the text
  46. ^ Mahāvastu — Lokottaravāda Vinaya. c. 2nd c. BCE–4th c. CE. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. A sprawling biography of the Buddha embedded in a monastic code, built up over centuries. One of the first texts to tell the life at length, with many Jātaka stories. about
  47. ^ Govindnagar Amitābha pedestal — Mathurā Museum. Year 26 of Huviṣka, c. 153 CE. Sanskritised Prakrit in Brāhmī. A broken image base found at Mathurā in 1977, dated in Huviṣka's reign and naming the image as the Buddha Amitābha. The only Indian inscription naming a Mahāyāna Buddha before the fifth century.
  48. ^ Gregory Schopen "The Inscription on the Kuṣān Image of Amitābha and the Character of the Early Mahāyāna in India". Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 10: 99–137, 1987. Publishes the Govindnagar pedestal and draws out how isolated it is.
  49. ^ Tannishō 3 — Tannishō (sayings of Shinran, compiled by Yuien). late 13th c. CE. Medieval Japanese. "Even the good person attains birth in the Pure Land, how much more so the evil person" (trans. Taitetsu Unno): birth depends on Amida's vow, not on one's own goodness.
  50. ^ Taitetsu Unno, trans. Tannisho: A Shin Buddhist Classic. Buddhist Study Center Press, rev. ed., 1996. A widely used English translation of the Tannishō; the source of the wording quoted for section 3.
  51. ^ David L. McMahan The Making of Buddhist Modernism. Oxford University Press, 2008. The standard account of modern Buddhism as detraditionalised, demythologised and psychologised.
  52. ^ a b c J. S. Grewal Guru Nanak in History. Panjab University, Chandigarh, 1969. Nānak set against the politics and the religious groups of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Punjab.
  53. ^ a b Gurinder Singh Mann The Making of Sikh Scripture. Oxford University Press, New York, 2001. The manuscripts from the Goindvāl pothīs to the Damdamā recension.
  54. ^ a b c Mūl Mantar — Guru Granth Sāhib. 1604 CE (compiled). Punjabi in Gurmukhi. "Unborn, self-existent" — ajūnī is a direct rejection of the avatāra doctrine. A scripture that also canonizes Kabīr, Ravidās and a Sufi. about
  55. ^ Guru Granth Sāhib, ang 1 — Guru Nānak, Japu (Japjī). before 1539 CE (composed); 1604 CE (compiled). Punjabi in Gurmukhi. The first pauṛīs of the Japjī: cleansing, silence and cleverness do not make one true; the way is to walk in the hukam, outside which nothing stands. read the text
  56. ^ a b c d Pashaura Singh The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and Authority. Oxford University Press, 2000. doi The formation of the Sikh canon, from the 1604 Ādi Granth to its installation as Guru.
  57. ^ a b c d e f g W. H. McLeod Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1968. The critical study of Nānak's life and theology, separating the janamsākhī tradition from the hymns.
  58. ^ Christopher Shackle and Arvind-pal Singh Mandair, trans. Teachings of the Sikh Gurus: Selections from the Sikh Scriptures. Routledge, 2005.
  59. ^ Eleanor Nesbitt Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 2016.
  60. ^ Karine Schomer & W. H. McLeod, eds. The Sants: Studies in a Devotional Tradition of India. Motilal Banarsidass, 1987. The foundational volume — and the source of the narrow Anglophone use of "Sant" that §10 flags as a convention.
  61. ^ John Stratton Hawley A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Harvard University Press, 2015. full text Argues that "the bhakti movement" is itself a modern construction. Important and unsettling.
  62. ^ Bhāī Gurdās, Vār 1.21 — Vārāṅ. early 17th c. CE. Punjabi in Gurmukhi. Hindus of four varṇas and Muslims of four schools of law quarrel over one God: "they call on Rām and Rahīm; the Name is one." The Gurus' circle's picture of the world before Nānak. read the text
  63. ^ a b Pashaura Singh The Bhagats of the Guru Granth Sahib: Sikh Self-Definition and the Bhagat Bani. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2003. Farīd, Kabīr, the Sants and the Vaiṣṇava bhagats inside the scripture, and the Gurus' replies to them.
  64. ^ Dasam Granth — The Book of the Tenth Guru. compiled early 18th c. CE. Braj, Punjabi and Persian in Gurmukhi. Compositions attributed to Gobind Singh and his court: the Jāp, Akāl Ustat, Bachitar Nāṭak, Chaṇḍī Charitra, Chaubīs Avatār, Charitropākhyān and the Zafarnāmā. Who wrote which parts is the field's most heated textual argument.
  65. ^ Robin Rinehart Debating the Dasam Granth. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011.
  66. ^ Chaṇḍī Charitra (Ukti Bilās) 231 — Dasam Granth. late 17th c. CE. Braj in Gurmukhi. "Deh sivā bar mohi ihai": a prayer for the courage never to turn from righteous deeds. Whether Śivā is the goddess or God is itself debated.
  67. ^ a b Ham Hindū Nahīṅ — Kāhn Singh Nābhā. 1898 CE. Punjabi in Gurmukhi. 'We are not Hindus': a dialogue between a Hindu and a Sikh arguing from scripture that Sikh doctrine on caste, incarnation, images and ritual makes the Sikhs a separate religion. The Tat Khālsā's manifesto. about
  68. ^ a b c Harjot Oberoi The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition. University of Chicago Press, 1994. The "Sanātan" Sikhism of the early nineteenth century and the Singh Sabhā's sharper boundaries.
  69. ^ Max Arthur Macauliffe The Sikh Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 6 vols., 1909. Written with Sikh scholars of the Singh Sabhā; the tradition's account in English.
  70. ^ a b W. H. McLeod Who Is a Sikh? The Problem of Sikh Identity. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989.
  71. ^ a b Sikh Rahit Maryādā — Code of conduct of the Shiromaṇī Gurdwārā Prabandhak Committee. approved 1945 CE; published 1950 CE. Punjabi. The code most Sikh institutions follow: who is a Sikh, the amrit ceremony, the Five Ks and the four cardinal prohibitions. about
  72. ^ J. S. Grewal Contesting Interpretations of the Sikh Tradition. Manohar, New Delhi, 1998. Includes Grewal's critique of Oberoi's 'Sanātan' thesis.
  73. ^ Purnima Dhavan When Sparrows Became Hawks: The Making of the Sikh Warrior Tradition, 1699–1799. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011.
  74. ^ Mary Boyce Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. open library Argues for an early date for Zarathustra; most scholars now place him later, and the range is wide.
  75. ^ Hosea 13:4 — Hosea (Hebrew Bible). c. 750–725 BCE. Hebrew. "You know no god but me, and besides me there is no saviour": the demand for exclusive worship, tied to the Exodus. Monolatry, not a denial that other gods exist. read the text
  76. ^ Heinz Bechert, ed. The Dating of the Historical Buddha. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 3 vols., 1991. The symposium that unsettled the traditional dates — and reached no consensus.
  77. ^ L. S. Cousins "The Dating of the Historical Buddha: A Review Article". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 6, 1996. doi Where the c. 400 BCE working default comes from.
  78. ^ Kharak Singh, G. S. Mansukhani and Jasbir Singh Mann, eds. Fundamental Issues in Sikh Studies. Institute of Sikh Studies, Chandigarh, 1992. Essays against McLeod's school, from its Sikh critics.

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@misc{howitevolved2026whichreligionsbeliev,
  author = {Paudel, Amrit},
  title = {Which religions believe in one God?},
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