What was the first monotheistic religion to spread in the Middle East?

Answer 1

Judaism was the first of the Abrahamic religions to develop and was the first major monotheistic religion in the world. Christianity came around 33AD and Islam came some 600 years after Christianity.

Answer 2

1) According to careful research, the original tradition, which was widespread, was monotheistic. However, it died out completely in a relatively brief span of time. This belief does not refer to a specific people, region, or named religion, since it was not centralized or organized.
2a) The first continuous monotheistic tradition and religion as we know it, was and is Judaism, the tradition founded by Abraham. It began 3800 years ago in the Middle East, and its founding principle is that God is One. This was well before the Egyptian king Akhenaten, who in any case (according to tradition) was influenced by Israelite beliefs.

2b) Some might claim that monotheistic Judaism started later, as (for example) King Josiah made reforms in the late First Temple period. However, this is the view of secular academe, and flies in the face of tradition. Judaism had already been monotheistic for eight centuries by the time of Josiah. All he did was to eradicate the traces of the idolatrous influences of those Jews who had strayed from their own religion. This had happened repeatedly (such as with Jehoshaphat [2 Chronicles 17:6], and Samuel before him [1 Samuel 7:3-4]); and those who strayed into pagan practices never encompassed the entire people.

3) Zoroastrianism, which might be suggested as another early contender, is not such a clear matter. There is no consensus on when Zoroaster lived. Moreover, the Zoroastrians believed in two gods, not one. The Jewish Sages who redacted the Talmud in the early centuries of the Common Era lived in Babylonia, witnessed the practices of the Zoroastrians, and recorded this fact (Talmud, Sanhedrin 39a). In addition, in Zoroastrianism:

• there is worship through intermediaries, who are themselves "worthy of worship"
• evil and good each has its own creator
• some of its adherents believe in a self-creating universe
• some modern scholars see it as a form of pantheism.

Answer 3

Zoroastrianism spread from southern Russia into eastern Iran, then to western Iran, shortly before the Jewish Babylonian Exile. After the sixth-century-BCE Persian conquest of of Babylon, it became the dominant religion of Babylon, but did not spread widely in the western areas of the Persian Empire.

At the same time, Jewish religion was becoming monolatrous and eventually, probably early in the Babylonian Exile, monotheistic. After the Return to Jerusalem, many of the Jews remained in Babylon, adding to the diaspora that already existed in Egypt. Judaism soon become a minority religion throughout the entire Middle East. Both Zoroastrianism and Judaism could be regarded as contenders for the first monotheistic religion to spread in the Middle East.

Another contender would certainly be Christianity. Although its spread was much later than Zoroastrianism or Judaism, it did become the dominant religion throughout the entire Middle East except the Arabian Peninsular, where it nevertheless had a visible presence by the time of Muhammad.

Answer 4

Judaism