New religions rise and fall but the ones that seem to have lasted and spawned vast zombie empires are the Abrahamic religions. The original, Judaism, has seen it’s books re written to form the others. It’s adherents have suffered persecution at the hands of the others as well.
Their release from enslavement in Egypt is the beginning of their known history. That was approximately 1300 BCE. The Jewish calendar year is 5781. There are about 2500 years unaccounted for. Some of the events are in the Book of Bereshit (Genesis) but were probably transcribed from verbal accounts saved during their time enslaved. They suffered persecution by the Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Romans. When Rome destroyed the Temple in 66 AD the Jews began a diaspora that would last until 1948.
Their religion in the Roman Empire was illegal as were any others that did not worship the Emperor as a god. This included Christianity, which eventually rose to such prominence the Romans abandoned their Emperor worship and adopted it instead. That was pretty much the official end of polytheism (protestants hold your tongue). They rewrote and edited, scrapped writings and kept writings, and carried on as if it had been their idea in the first place.
Christianity was institutionalized as two distinct units, the Catholic and the Orthodox churches. This goes back to dualism. The whole idea is it’s impossible to rule all people under one umbrella. The reason; some people are conformists and some are non conformists. Having two churches affords the illusion of choice.
It doesn’t matter which church they join if you control them both. The main thing is they have to be at odds over something, preferably something meaningless that they will be able to harmlessly direct any anger energy at. That means they won’t be directing that anger at the ruling class. The Orthodox church does not believe Mary was a virgin for instance.
The other major Abrahamic religion is Islam. It also is divided into to distinct units; Sunni and Shia Islam. The two main branches direct anger at each other all the time. The Koran has many of the same Hebrew books, known as the Old Testament in Christianity, but have been rewritten again. Islam and Christianity have historically held contempt for the Jews, a topic for another blog.
In 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto. In it they describe two forms of economics that have been elaborated into types of government. Both have one party rule. One, Socialism is predicted to occur first, and lead over time to Communism. The difference is in socialism the main forms of production are owned by the government. In communism everything is owned by the government.
The adherents of Communism and Socialism have been at odds ever since. The Soviet Union was set up as a Communist government. Western Europe was Socialist under the Fascist regimes. Both originate from the same authors. We witness another form of dualism. Not only is it really totalitarianism with a different names, they are at odds with each other and they are both antisemitic in nature. Karl Marx who wrote “On the Jewish Question” was an ardent antisemite. Marxist apologists trying to explain how he really didn’t mean what the document obviously means should be ignored and lose their tenure.
People repeat themselves over the course of their lifetimes. Those who created Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity also created Shia and Sunni Islam. They have been, and continue to, create Communism and Socialism.