Honors World History Unit 2 Review: World Religions and Belief Systems

Buddhism began in northern India with Siddhartha Gautama, who was born into a leading family of the Shakya clan in Lumbini, in present-day Nepal. Later Buddhist tradition describes him as a prince. Tradition dates his life to 563-483 BCE, though many historians place it somewhat later, so "around the 5th century BCE" is a safe answer.

According to tradition, Siddhartha left palace life after seeing the Four Sights, an old man, a sick man, a corpse and a wandering holy man. He tried extreme self-denial, rejected it, and chose a Middle Way. Meditating under the Bodhi Tree at Bodh Gaya, he reached enlightenment and became the Buddha, or "Awakened One."

His teaching works like a doctor's diagnosis. The Four Noble Truths say life involves suffering (dukkha), suffering comes from craving and attachment, suffering can end, and the way to end it is the Eightfold Path. The goal is nirvana, release from the cycle of rebirth. Buddhism kept the Indian ideas of karma and rebirth but rejected the authority of Brahmin priests and the idea that caste determined your spiritual worth.

The biggest early boost came from Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Empire. Horrified by the bloodshed of his conquest of Kalinga (around 261 BCE), he supported Buddhist monks and missions and set up stone pillars carved with moral edicts. Monks and merchants then carried Buddhism along the Silk Road to Central Asia, China, Korea and Japan, and by sea to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Ironically, Buddhism largely faded in India itself by about 1200 CE.

Judaism is one of the oldest monotheistic religions, with roots more than 3,000 years old in the ancient Near East. It centers on a covenant, a binding agreement between God and the Jewish people.

Jewish tradition says God made this covenant with Abraham, promising that his descendants would become a great nation in the land of Canaan. The Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, contains Jewish law and early history. According to the Torah, Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt in the Exodus and received the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. Passover commemorates the Exodus each year.

Judaism is often called ethical monotheism because its one God demands moral behavior, not just ritual. Jewish law (halakha) covers daily life, including the Sabbath (Shabbat), dietary rules (kashrut) and charity as an obligation (tzedakah).

Two disasters shaped Jewish history. In 586 BCE the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem and exiled many Jews, who kept their faith alive through prayer and study. In 70 CE the Romans destroyed the Second Temple, intensifying an existing diaspora of Jewish communities across the Mediterranean and beyond. As temple sacrifice ended, rabbinic Judaism increasingly centered prayer, synagogue life, Torah study and oral traditions that were later recorded in the Mishnah and Talmud.

Judaism generally does not actively seek converts, although it accepts converts. It spread mainly through migration and diaspora rather than missionary work. Limited proselytizing is one reason Judaism remained relatively small, but persecution and other historical forces also affected its population.

Christianity began in the 1st century CE in Judea, a province of the Roman Empire. It grew out of Judaism and centers on Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish teacher who preached love, forgiveness and the coming Kingdom of God, often through parables like the Good Samaritan.

Roman authorities under the governor Pontius Pilate had Jesus crucified around 30 CE. His followers believed he rose from the dead, and the resurrection became the central Christian belief. Christians came to see Jesus as the Son of God and to believe in the Trinity, one God in three persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). Christians generally teach that salvation comes through God's grace and Jesus's life, death and resurrection, though traditions differ over how faith, works and sacraments relate to salvation. The Bible's New Testament joined the Hebrew scriptures, which Christians call the Old Testament.

Paul, a former persecutor of Christians, was one of the most influential missionaries who spread Christianity among Gentiles, or non-Jews. His letters make up much of the New Testament. Roman roads and the shared Greek language helped missionaries move quickly.

Rome persecuted Christians at times, under Nero in 64 CE and Diocletian around 303 CE. Emperor Galerius issued an edict of toleration in 311. In 313, Constantine and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan, which confirmed religious toleration and restored confiscated Christian property. Constantine later called the Council of Nicaea in 325 to address disputes over doctrine. In 380, Theodosius I, Gratian and Valentinian II issued the Edict of Thessalonica, which made Nicene Christianity the empire's official faith.

Later splits produced the main branches. The Great Schism of 1054 divided Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, and the Protestant Reformation began in 1517.

Islam began in 7th-century Arabia with Muhammad, a merchant born in Mecca around 570 CE. Around 610, Muslims believe, he began receiving revelations from God (Allah) through the angel Gabriel. These revelations were collected in the Quran, which Muslims see as the direct word of God. The Sunnah, Muhammad's example recorded in the Hadith, also guides Muslim life.

Muhammad's message of strict monotheism (tawhid) angered Mecca's polytheistic elite. In 622 he and his followers moved to Medina, a migration called the Hijra that marks year 1 of the Islamic calendar. He returned to take Mecca in 630 and died in 632.

The Five Pillars structure Muslim practice. They are the declaration of faith (shahada), prayer five times a day facing Mecca (salah), giving to the poor (zakat), fasting during Ramadan (sawm), and pilgrimage to Mecca if you are able (hajj).

After 632, disagreement over succession created the roots of the Sunni-Shia division. Sunni Muslims accepted the community's selection of Abu Bakr, while supporters of Ali believed leadership belonged to Muhammad's family; the division developed further over the following decades, especially after Ali's son Husayn was killed at Karbala in 680. The Rashidun caliphs (632-661) conquered the Sasanian Persian Empire and Byzantine lands in Syria and Egypt. The Umayyads ruled from Damascus and reached Spain by 711. The Abbasids founded Baghdad in 762 and made it a center of learning.

Conquest is only part of the story. Merchants and Sufi mystics spread Islam peacefully across the Sahara to West Africa (Mali's Mansa Musa made his famous hajj in 1324) and across the Indian Ocean to Indonesia.

Confucianism is a system of ethics and government built on the teachings of Confucius (551-479 BCE). He lived in the state of Lu during the late Zhou dynasty, when Zhou authority had weakened and rival states frequently fought. His question was practical. How do you restore order to a broken society?

His answer was virtue and proper relationships. His followers collected his sayings in the Analects. The central virtue is ren, meaning humaneness or benevolence toward others. Li means proper ritual and behavior, from funerals to everyday manners. Xiao, or filial piety, is respect and duty toward parents and ancestors, and Confucius saw it as the foundation of all social order. The ideal person is the junzi, a "superior person" defined by moral character, not by birth.

The Five Relationships set out mutual obligations between ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, elder and younger brother, and friend and friend. Four are hierarchical, with duties on both sides. Friendship is reciprocal rather than senior-junior. A ruler who governs by virtue, Confucius argued, will not need harsh punishments.

Confucianism became state ideology under the Han dynasty, especially Emperor Wu (ruled 141-87 BCE). Later dynasties tested candidates for government service on Confucian texts in civil service exams, a system that lasted until 1905. Confucian ideas also shaped Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Confucius did not claim to be divine, and the tradition focuses on this life, not the afterlife.

Taoism, also spelled Daoism, is a Chinese philosophy and religion centered on living in harmony with the Tao, meaning "the way," the underlying course or pattern of nature and reality. The Tao cannot be fully described. The Tao Te Ching opens by saying that the Tao that can be put into words is not the eternal Tao.

Tradition credits the Tao Te Ching to Laozi, said to be an older contemporary of Confucius in the 6th century BCE. Historians debate whether Laozi was one real person, and the text was probably compiled around the 4th century BCE. The other major early thinker, Zhuangzi, used humor and stories, like his dream of being a butterfly, to question fixed ideas about reality.

The central practice is wu wei, often translated "non-action." It does not mean doing nothing. It means acting naturally and without force, the way water flows around a rock. Yin and yang describe complementary forces, like dark and light or passive and active, that depend on each other and must stay in balance. Taoists valued simplicity, nature and a ruler who governs lightly.

Taoism developed during the same broad era of disunity as Confucianism but answered disorder differently. Confucius emphasized cultivated virtue, ritual, education and social duties. Early Taoist writers criticized artificial conventions and forceful government, arguing for simplicity and wu wei. Later, religious Taoism developed temples, priests and practices aimed at long life. Many Chinese people followed both traditions, often along with Buddhism.

Animism is the belief that spirits or spiritual agency exist in natural beings, objects or places, such as mountains, rivers, trees and animals. Animistic beliefs appear in many ancient and present-day traditions. Animism is not one religion but a worldview found in many separate indigenous traditions on every inhabited continent.

These traditions usually have no single founder and no written scripture. Beliefs pass down orally through stories, songs and ceremonies. Many of these traditions describe humans as part of a wider community that includes animals, ancestors and spiritually significant places, but beliefs differ across cultures. Many traditions practice ancestor veneration, honoring dead family members who are believed to still influence the living.

Many traditions have ritual specialists who heal, interpret signs or communicate with spirits, but their titles and duties differ by culture. Some scholars use the general term shaman, which comes from a Siberian context, while many communities use their own names for these roles.

Examples help make this concrete. Japanese Shinto honors kami, spirits found in nature and ancestors. The Yoruba of West Africa honor the orisha. Aboriginal Australians connect land, ancestors and law through the Dreaming.

When Christianity and Islam spread, indigenous beliefs often blended with them rather than disappearing. This blending is called syncretism. Vodou in Haiti and Santería in Cuba mix West African traditions with Catholic saints.

Hinduism is one of the world's oldest living religions, and unlike most in this unit, it has no single founder or starting date. It developed in the Indian subcontinent over thousands of years. Some artifacts from the Indus Valley Civilization, especially its mature urban phase around 2600-1900 BCE, may hint at later practices, but because the Indus script is undeciphered, that link is uncertain.

The clearer roots lie in the Vedic period (about 1500-500 BCE), when Indo-Aryan peoples brought the Sanskrit language and composed the Vedas, hymns and rituals to gods like Indra and Agni. Brahmin priests performed these rituals. Later, the Upanishads explored philosophical questions about Brahman, the ultimate reality, and Atman, the self. Some influential passages identify Atman with Brahman, but later Hindu schools interpreted their relationship in different ways.

Core ideas link together. Samsara is the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Karma is the moral effect of your actions, which shapes your next life. Dharma is moral and religious duty. In the classical varna-ashrama framework, duties were connected to a person's stage of life and varna, one of four broad social categories; jati refers to the many hereditary groups commonly called castes. Moksha is liberation from samsara, the final goal. The Bhagavad Gita, in which the god Krishna tells the warrior Arjuna to do his duty, is one of the most widely read texts.

Hindus worship many deities, such as Vishnu, Shiva and Devi, and many see them as forms of one divine reality. Hinduism also spread by trade, shaping kingdoms in Southeast Asia like the Khmer Empire, which built Angkor Wat in the 12th century.