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These are historical figures credited with founding religions or religious philosophies, or who codified older known religious traditions. The list includes those who have founded a specific major denomination within a larger religion.

Legendary/semi-historical

Ancient (before AD 500)

Medieval to Early Modern (500–1800 AD)

New religious movements (post-1800)

See also

• Burial places of founders of world religions
• List of Buddha claimants
• List of messiah claimants
• List of people who have been considered deities
• List of religions and spiritual traditions
• Lists of religious leaders by century
• Timeline of religion

Notes

1. The religion of the Israelites of Iron Age I was based on a cult of ancestors and worship of family gods, the "gods of the fathers". With the emergence of the monarchy at the beginning of Iron Age II the kings promoted their family god, YHWH (Yahweh), as the god of the kingdom, but beyond the royal court, religion continued to be both polytheistic and family-centered. As such, this founding group is referred to as "Yahwists".
2. Israel emerges into the historical record in the last decades of the 13th century BCE, at the very end of the Late Bronze Age, as the Canaanite city-state system was ending. In the words of archaeologist William Dever, "most of those who came to call themselves Israelites … were or had been indigenous Canaanites". The worship of YHWH (Yahweh) alone began at the earliest with Elijah in the 9th century BCE, but more likely with the prophet Hosea in the 8th; even then it remained the concern of a small party before gaining ascendancy in the exilic and early post-exilic period.
3. historicity disputed but widely considered plausible. Gosta W. Ahlstrom argues the inconsistencies of the biblical tradition are insufficient to say that Ezra, with his central position as the 'father of Judaism' in the Jewish tradition, has been a later literary invention. (The History of Ancient Palestine, Fortress Press, p.888)
4. ^ The teaching of the traditional "founding father" of a "heresy" is may well have differed greatly from the contents of the heresy as generally understood. For references see following notes.
5. Acc. to Rowan Williams, 'Arianism' was essentially a polemical creation of Athanasius in an attempt to show that the different alternatives to the Nicene Creed collapsed back into some form of Arius' teaching. (Arius, SCM (2001) p.247)
6. Pelagius' thought was one sided and an inadequate interpretation of Christianity, but his disciples, Celestius and, to a greater extent, Julian of Eclanum pushed his ideas to extremes.(Kelly, J.N.D. Early Christian Doctrines A & C. Black (1965) p.361) Pelagius himself was declared orthodox by the synod of Diospolis in 415, after repudiating some of Celestius' opinions. (Frend, W.H.C. Saints and Sinners in the Early Church DLT (1985) p.133)
7. Nestorius specifically endorsed the repudiation of "Nestorianism" reached at Chalcedon in 451 (Prestige, G.L. Fathers and Heretics SPCK (1963) p.130)
8. Monophysitism represents an advanced type of Alexandrian Theology; it emerged in a distinctive form in 433 as a result of the agreement between John of Antioch and Cyril of Alexandria. The exaggerated form held by Eutyches was condemned in 451 by the Council of Chalcedon. In its moderate forms the divergence from orthodoxy may be simply terminological. Alexandrian Theology stressed both divine transcendence and a marked dualism between the material and the spiritual and so tended to nullify the humanity of Christ.(Cross & Livingstone. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (1974) arts. Monophysitism, Alexandrian Theology)

References

1. Albertz 1994, p. 61.
2. Grabbe 2008, pp. 225–6.
3. Killebrew, Ann E. (2005). Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel, 1300–1100 B.C.E. Society of Biblical Literature. ISBN 978-1-58983-097-4.
4. Hornung, Erik (1999). Akhenaten and the Religion of Light. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-8725-5.
5. Melton 2003, p. 191.
6. Zimmer 1953, p. 183.
7. Fisher, Mary Pat (1997). Living Religions: An Encyclopedia of the World's Faiths. London: I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1-86064-148-0. p. 115
8. "Parshvanatha". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2007. Retrieved 2007-10-22.
9. Bowker, John (2000). "Parsva". The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192800947. Retrieved 2007-10-22.
10. Charpentier, Jarl (1922). "The History of the Jains". The Cambridge History of India. Vol. 1. Cambridge. p. 153.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
11. Radhakrishnan & Moore 1957, pp. 227–249
12. John M. Koller (1977), Skepticism in Early Indian Thought, Philosophy East and West, 27(2): 155-164
13. Dale Riepe (1996), Naturalistic Tradition in Indian Thought, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-8120812932, pages 53-58
14. Upinder Singh 2016, p. 313.
15. Zimmer 1953, p. 222.
16. "Mahavira." Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2006. Answers.com 28 Nov. 2009. http://www.answers.com/topic/mahavira
17. Cousins 1996, pp. 57–63.
18. Schumann 2003, pp. 10–13.
19. Hugan, Yong (2013). Confucius: A Guide for the Perplexed. A&C Black. p. 3. ISBN 9781441196538. Archived from the original on 2017-04-16.
20. Riegel 2002.
21. James Lochtefeld, "Ajivika", The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Vol. 1: A–M, Rosen Publishing. ISBN 978-0823931798, page 22
22. Brueggemann 2002, pp. 75, 144.
23. "Ramayana | Summary, Characters, & Facts". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2020-08-12.
24. Hendrix, Scott; Okeja, Uchenna, eds. (2018). The World's Greatest Religious Leaders: How Religious Figures Helped Shape World History . ABC-CLIO. p. 11. ISBN 978-1440841385.
25. Melton 2003, p. 67.
26. Melton 2003, p. 128.
27. Melton 2003, p. 69.
28. Melton 2003, p. 102.
29. Melton 2003, p. 95.
30. Melton 2003, p. 73.
31. Melton 2003, p. 183.
32. Melton 2003, p. 75.
33. Melton 2003, p. 724.
34. "AḤSĀʾĪ, SHAIKH AḤMAD". Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
35. "Individualism and the Mystical Path in Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa'i". h-net.org. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
36. "Shaykhism". Oxford Bibliographies. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
37. "SHAYKHISM". Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
38. Melton 2003, p. 992.
39. Melton 2003, p. 741.
40. Melton 2003, p. 621.
41. Melton 2003, p. 637.
42. Chryssides 2001, p. 330.
43. Melton 2003, p. 451.
44. Smith and Prokopy 2003, p. 279-280.
45. Beit-Hallahmi 1998, p. 365.
46. Melton 2003, p. 1051.
47. Beit-Hallahmi 1998, p. 97.

Bibliography

• Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin (1998). The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Active New Religions, Sects, and Cults (Revised ed.). Rosen Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8239-2586-5.
• Brueggemann, Walter (2002). Reverberations of Faith: A Theological Handbook of Old Testament Themes. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 978-0-664-22231-4.
• Chryssides, George D. (2001). Historical dictionary of new religious movements. The Scarecrow Press, Inc. ISBN 978-0-8108-4095-9.
• Cousins, LS (1996), "The dating of the historical Buddha: a review article", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3, 6 (1): 57–63, doi:10.1017/s1356186300014760, S2CID 162929573
• Jestice, Phyllis G. (2004). Holy People of the World: A Cross-cultural Encyclopedia (Volume 3). ABC-CLIO, Inc. ISBN 978-1-57607-355-1.
• Melton, J. Gordon (2003). Encyclopedia of American Religions (Seventh ed.). Farmington Hills, Michigan: The Gale Group, Inc. ISBN 978-0-7876-6384-1.
• Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli; Moore, Charles (1957). A Source Book in Indian Philosophy. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-01958-1.
• Riegel, J (3 July 2002). "Confucius". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 27 October 2018.
• Schumann, Hans Wolfgang (2003), The Historical Buddha: The Times, Life, and Teachings of the Founder of Buddhism, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-8120818170
• Smith, Christian; Joshua Prokopy (1999). Latin American Religion in Motion. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-92106-0.
• Singh, Upinder (2016), A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century, Pearson Education, ISBN 978-93-325-6996-6
• Zimmer, Heinrich (1953) , Campbell, Joseph (ed.), Philosophies Of India, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, ISBN 978-81-208-0739-6

• Founders of religions
• History of religion
• Lists of religious leaders
• Religion-related lists