Judaism

Assembled from 11 blocks · 2 evidence · 9 related

1. Story
2. The monotheistic tradition of the Jewish people, centred historically on Jerusalem and the Temple, and after the Temple's destruction in 70 CE reorganised around text, law and rabbinic interpretation. Judaism is included in this Journey chiefly as a diffusion mechanism rather than a missionary one: diaspora Jewish communities along Mediterranean, Mesopotamian, Arabian and later Indian Ocean and Silk Road networks formed a pre-existing web of literate, mobile, mutually connected settlements. Early Christianity spread first through and alongside those communities. Judaism itself did not generally pursue conversion, which makes it an instructive control case: the same trade network carried very different diffusion outcomes depending on whether a tradition sought converts.
3. Knowledge
4. Judaism
5. Connections
6. Christianity
7. Jerusalem (Old City)
8. Measured global religious composition, 2010-2020
9. Evidence
10. The Old City, holy to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, contains some 220 historic monuments including the Dome of the Rock, the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; it was inscribed in 1981 at the request of Jordan and placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 1982, where it remains, in part because of unclear legal status and absence of an agreed conservation policy.
11. Between 2010 and 2020 Christians fell 1.8 percentage points to 28.8% of world population (about 2.3 billion, an absolute rise of 122 million) while Muslims rose 1.8 points to 25.6% (an absolute rise of 347 million); Christians remained the largest group and Muslims the fastest-growing.