A Pocket Essential Short Introduction to Religion

Buddha

Introduction

What is religion? At first, this appears to be a question with an easy answer. It is the worship of a divine being or beings in order to receive something in return, whether it be a good harvest, long life, healthy children, spiritual happiness, entry to heaven, the freedom from fear, or any of the myriad other things that people seek when they create a system of belief. It is not quite that simple, of course, because religion works for believers on many levels. It certainly encompasses spiritual elements, and has important personal aspects, but it also takes on social and political ones too. It is deeply engrained in our lives, even if we are not believers, because not believing also implies a deal of thought about how our lives are guided, why we are here and how we have come to exist. One thing is certain, however – the phenomenon of religion, of trying to explain the world to ourselves and our communities and to extract some benefit from the spiritual, has been an ever-present part of our existence from time immemorial. It can be found in every culture from prehistoric times to the twenty-first century. We see it from the cave paintings and burial behaviour of our ancestors right up to some of the bizarre new religions of today.

Religion has always provided believers with a means of understanding the world around them, but also of being able to ensure that powerful natural phenomena work in a community’s favour. The weather, the seasons and the fundamental events of life, such as birth, death, war and illness, were all explained away in religious terms and were often allocated deities for whom one or several of these events and phenomena was a responsibility. They lived in often fantastic realms that were beyond the one in which human beings live. Religion provided the context within which such inaccessible beings could be communicated with in order to seek their help with the problems of everyday life. Prayer has often been the method used and ritual is employed to evoke these spirits or to please them and demonstrate that we care for them. This can be clearly seen in the Japanese religion of Shinto where the spirits known as kami are engaged in a mutually beneficial relationship with people, one with benefits for each side. In other words, keep the kami happy and they will see that you have what you want for a fulfilled life. Of course, such worship is often done in a communal setting, thus welding together a particular society in a shared faith and giving it a collective identity that helps it survive in challenging times and encourages its members to work hard for each other. It is also, of course, a means by which the elite can keep the people beneath them in the hierarchy under their control.

Religion has survived persecution, war, suppression and the constraints that society has placed upon it because faith, by its very nature, is nothing if not resilient. And even in our materialistic world, where so much of what people used to invest with religious belief is now explained by science, religion persists. In fact, roughly three-quarters of the world’s population consider themselves to hold some sort of religious conviction, whether it be faith in God, or the conviction that alien beings are going to arrive on earth and somehow make everything alright. So, it can safely be said that we need religion, that it is an essential part of living on our planet.

It is estimated that there are around 4,200 religions in the world. These range from the major religions, such as Christianity and Islam, whose adherents number many millions, down to indigenous faith systems that are practised by the inhabitants of just one village or community. Over the millennia other religions, with their own distinct beliefs, rituals and mythology, have come and gone, or been assimilated by another larger faith or, as has often been the case, by the religion of a conquering or occupying power. Probably the oldest surviving of all these religions is Hinduism which grew out of the folk religions of India and first emerged in the compiling of the Vedas almost two and a half millennia ago. The magnificent Vedic tradition also contributed to the later emergence of Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. The Far East saw the rise of its own religious traditions, traditional folk religions blending into Daoism and Confucianism. Meanwhile, the ancient powers of Greece and Rome developed their own idiosyncratic religions with their pantheons of gods. East of the Mediterranean world, Zoroastrianism – to our knowledge, the world’s first major monotheistic faith – was established in Persia and Judaism, the earliest of the Abrahamic traditions, emerged, to be followed by Christianity and Islam. Religions continue to adapt to the challenges of the modern world and still newer ones have emerged, in all religious traditions, sometimes incorporating elements of what has gone before.

It would, of course, be impossible to cover every religion. However, in these pages, you will learn some of the fascinating histories of the world’s better-known faith systems as well as accounts of the lives of the men who founded them and sometimes gave everything for them. Sacred texts, beliefs, rituals and practices are also detailed.

At a time when cultures and civilisations are clashing in various parts of the modern world, it helps to gain an understanding of the faith that drives people to do incredible or sometimes evil things. A Pocket Essential Introduction to Religion provides a very good starting point for further study.

Prehistory

Prehistoric Speculation

Religious awareness probably developed around the time that humankind first emerged on Earth – around two or three million years ago – but, in the absence of evidence, this is difficult to prove. Various finds have suggested some kind of religious consciousness, such as burial places; the placing of offerings; carved idols; reliefs and paintings on rocks and in caves, possibly representing deities, spirits and cultic figures; and structures such as altars, temples and pillars that possibly have religious associations. But all of this can be little more than speculation.

If religious thinking did exist, its beliefs and mythology would have been transmitted orally as well as through ritual, but it is possible that many people would have been too preoccupied with just surviving to have much to do with religious belief. What beliefs did exist would have been a good deal more simplistic in pre-literate than in literate times and pre-literate religion would almost certainly have focused on the activities of people at the time – fishing, hunting, gathering food or early types of agriculture. They would be practised in limited tribal societies in which family groupings or kin-groups were hugely important and nature would have had a great deal of influence, just as it did on prehistoric people’s daily lives.

During the Paleolithic period – the Old Stone Age – people were hunters, food-gatherers or fishermen. By the Neolithic – the New Stone Age – hunters had, on the whole, become farmers and pastoral nomadism developed from this. Two and a half million years ago, early humankind was using tools such as choppers, scrapers and other stone implements they had made themselves. Work was divided between the sexes and food was shared. But still we do not know what their religious convictions were, or if, indeed, they possessed any.

One of the early representatives of Homo erectus was Peking Man, a group of fossil specimens found during excavations at Zhoukoudian near modern-day Beijing between 1923 and 1927. The skulls that were discovered were broken at the foramen magnum, one of the openings at the base of the skull. This allowed access to the brain which, it is presumed, was removed and eaten for what were probably ritual, magical or religious purposes. In today’s primitive societies, such behaviour is practised so that the consumer of the material somehow assumes the energy or strength of the person being consumed and one might presume this was the case back then. Again, however, all of this is mere speculation.

It is with Neanderthal Man that more concrete evidence of religious practices comes to light. Neanderthals, a sub-species of the genus Homo, became extinct around 40,000 years ago. They carried out ceremonies in which they buried their dead and it would appear that they believed in life after death. In one instance, in a cave at Monte Circeo in Italy, a Neanderthal skull was discovered surrounded by a circle of stones and ‘skull burials’ were common throughout the Paleolithic period. What appear to be sacred objects have also been found, items such as round fossils and iron pyrites.

Neanderthal people were replaced by a new species, our ancestor, Homo sapiens, and by the end of the Lower Paleolithic period, around 300,000 years ago, they had already spread across the world. Probably around 60,000 years ago, Siberian peoples first crossed into the Americas. More than 30,000 years ago Australia was peopled by humans from Indonesia. These movements suggest that the hunting religions that developed in Australia and America, in all likelihood date back to those times.

It is in the Upper Paleolithic period – roughly between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago – that we see greater examples of religious belief. Burials by hunting people in that era make it clear that they believed in life after death. In southeast France skeletons have been found that are stained with iron oxide and adorned with bracelets. They are even furnished with flint knives and quartzite tools. Property that was special to the dead was buried with them so that they would have use of it in the next life. This can be seen at burial sites from Italy to Russia.

Prehistoric Religious Art

The famous ‘Venus’ figurines date from around that time. These idols, the most famous of which is the ‘Venus of Willendorf’, found by a worker in Willendorf in Austria in 1908, are sculpted from ivory, stone and bone and have been found from France to eastern Siberia. The bodies of the figures are distorted, especially those parts associated with fertility and child-bearing. Some have suggested that they are no more than representations of women of the time. It seems likely, however, from the focus on fertility and sexual functions, that these figures are representations of deities of fertility and fruitfulness. It is, of course, odd that female gods should be so prominent in a society that was based on hunting, undertaken by men. But female birth deities were common, for example in north Eurasian cultures, providing protection during pregnancy and childbirth. Siberian peoples believed in a mother of the animals whom she brought into being and protected.

Cave paintings are probably the best-known remnant of prehistoric art. Appearing in the Upper Paleolithic period, from about 15,000 BC to 11,000 BC, they are most commonly found in southern France and the north of Spain. 80 per cent of these illustrations are of animals, mainly horses and bison, although reindeer began to be represented late in the period, as the glaciers moved southwards. Could they have been executed in order to secure a bountiful hunt? The representation of an animal might have been a means of ensuring that such a creature was killed in the hunt. We are unsure why the paintings and engravings were done in caves. It was possibly a result of the belief that animals came from under the ground, or once, perhaps, lived in the caves. Scenes showing human figures clothed in animal skins may depict ritualistic performers or even mythical beings.

It is, as ever, difficult to be certain and many images do not really support the assumptions above but it does seem as if, in the Upper Paleolithic period in Europe, there could have been a type of religion or magical belief centred around fertility and animals. There are examples of reindeer skeletons buried in Siberia, the hope being that the animal would be restored to life either in this world or in another life after death.

Religion in Neolithic Times

The Neolithic period – roughly from 10,000 to 3,000 BC – brought the birth of agriculture which allowed the rapidly increasing population of the world – numbering at the time probably around 10 million – to create settlements. Villages were established, and crafts such as pottery developed. In the west Mediterranean, cemeteries have been found on the outskirts of villages whose graves contain gifts and offerings, including female figurines, perhaps intended as servants or to provide comfort in the afterlife. They may even have symbolised goddesses, there to provide protection. Through time, these graves began to vary, according to social status, as some members of the society benefited from the production of surplus products that stability brought and achieved not just wealth but also rank. Bodies began to be buried and coffins began to be used. Eventually cremation was occasionally practised, speaking of a more sophisticated or even more spiritual perception of the afterlife.

The discovery of full-figured female figurines carved from terracotta, bone or clay, suggests that fertility cults existed. They also emphasise the more prominent position of women in this new agrarian society where they had an important role to play. The mother goddess’s functions were also reflected in this change. She was now a goddess of earth and vegetation. There were many other types of fertility goddesses, and snakes were often to be found wrapped around the figure’s body. In many parts of the world, the snake was at the time a fertility symbol.

Large buildings for the purpose of worship began to replace the random places selected by the people of the earlier nomadic hunting culture. Sacred, ritualistic objects such as altars, vases emblazoned with ritualistic imagery and sculptures and temples have been found, for instance, in Ukraine and the surrounding region.

Eastern Asia mirrors developments in the Neolithic period in Europe and Western Asia, but Southeast Asia is more complex and it is more difficult to be precise. Meanwhile, in America, agrarian rituals seem to have not been very different to those of the hunters. The Neolithic period prevailed in certain areas of agricultural America until Columbus arrived in 1492 and even after that.

Monuments

It is thought that most of the monuments made up of large stones – megaliths – that began to appear towards the end of the Neolithic Age were for the purpose of burial. These dolmens – single-chamber megalithic tombs – consisted of large flat stones that were supported on large upright stones.

But, as can be found at Carnac in Brittany, there were also sites where massive stones were placed in alignment. We are ignorant of their purpose, but one theory suggests that they signified ritual procession routes. At Tarxien in southeastern Malta, the Hal Tarxien stone structures seem to have been temples and inside have been found sculptures carved out of chalk that depict human features and gowns. These may be representative of priests and/or the gods and goddesses they worshipped.

Of course, there are other megalithic structures that appear to possess merely an astronomical function, guiding agriculturalists on when to plant their seeds, for instance. The circle of sarsen stones at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain in England lines up with the sunrise at midsummer but Stonehenge also seems to have been a place of worship. This type of structure has been found around the world, described by astronomers and experts on prehistory as observatories and megalithic calendars. Nonetheless, this type of astronomy was almost certainly undertaken within a religious context. Soon, around 3,000 BC, great civilisations would be emerging in the river plains in Egypt and Mesopotamia as well as in other areas of the Middle East and Western Asia. The religion that developed there would be distinguished by sacred kings, a religious hierarchy of priests, ritual sacrifice and grand temples. Gods and goddesses would be the subjects of veneration and the afterlife would be delineated.

Religions of Antiquity

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Ancient Egypt

‘Man, know thyself, and you are going to know the Gods.’

Inscription from Luxor Temple, Egypt

The Religion of Ancient Egypt

The fabulous Ancient Egyptian civilisation existed in the lower reaches of the Nile Valley from about 3100 BC until 30 BC, when it became a province of the Roman Empire under Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus (r. 27 BC-14 AD). It is defined by several important periods – the Old Kingdom (c. 2700-2200 BC), the time of powerful pharaohs who left a legacy of mighty pyramids; the Middle Kingdom (c. 2000-1800 BC), also dubbed the Period of Reunification; and the New Kingdom (c. 1550-1225 BC), a time when Egypt was a pre-eminent power in the region. At other times, outside these periods of strength, Egypt was plagued with internal fighting, weak rulers or suffered foreign occupation. During these times, religious customs and beliefs changed, but because there are so many consistencies, it is still possible to discuss what can be termed ‘the religion of Egypt’.

Early Egyptian religion can only be explained by referring to objects that have been found before writing first appeared in around 3100 BC. These objects – items such as