Is Zoroastrianism the oldest living religion in the world?AnswerNo. The prophet Zoroaster was the founder of that religion. He lived during the 6th century B.C. The jewish religion existed almost a thousand years previous to this.
Scholars such as Mary Boyce (Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices) say that Zoroastrianism developed in the Indo-Iranian culture of southern Russia. Boyce says that linguistics and content mean that a reasoned conjecture is that Zoroaster lived around 1700 to 1500 BCE, while others place him somewhat earlier.
However, Zoroastrianism did not come to the attention of the wider world until contact with the Jews, during the Babylonian Exile. Because of this, it became accepted wisdom that Zoroastrianism was only founded shortly before the Exile, a view now largely discredited among scholars.
However, the sister religion, Hinduism, is at least as old as Zoroastrianism. Surviving animistic and shamanistic religions are probably even older than either Zoroastrianism or Hinduism.
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