What are some ancient civilizations, if any, that are believed to pre-date Judeo-Christian religion?

by Your_Cake_Is_A_Lie

Any explanations, sources, or details you feel may be relevant would be awesome.

Thanks :)

flowerboy98

Do you mean civilizations that came before judaism that directly influenced it or just any civilizations that came before?

kookingpot

What is the date you are proposing for the beginning of Judaism? Because Judaism as it is known today only really began around 130 AD with the fall of the Bar-Kochba rebellion and Jews having to restructure their religion around not having a temple anymore.

Prior to that, the Israelites really have their origins probably around 1400 AD as a united, identifiable people group worshipping a deity known as "YHWH", later translated in the Hebrew Bible as the name of God. This is when they supposedly were led out of Egypt by Moses (I say "supposedly" because while I believe it happened, we have no direct, incontrovertible evidence for it, merely the presence of Semitic peoples in Egypt, then a weakening of Egypt and shortly thereafter an appearance of new Semitic people groups in the land of Canaan).

We have no archaeological evidence for named humans of the Judeo-Christian tradition prior to Moses (actually prior to David, but we can track Israelites as a group all the way back to the time attributed to Moses). Abraham is referred to as originating among Ur of the Chaldees, which corresponds to an ancient Sumerian city-state called Ur, but we have no way of finding him archaeologically.

Therefore, if we accept a roughly 1400 BC beginning for the Israelites and their religion (many scholars prefer a date of 1200, but we'll go with the earlier one), you have quite a lot of options. Several kingdoms in Mesopotamia, such as the Sumerians, and Akkadians. The Egyptians were also quite early.

Some of the most interesting civilizations arose in ancient Turkey, such as the Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites like Çatalhöyük and Göbekli Tepe, each of which were occupied over 6000 years ago. They did not last, but were certainly present.

The Indus Valley civilization is another that has been mentioned, beginning around 3300 BC, around the same time as the Sumerians and Egyptians.