… in Europe and Asia a profound change of a religious and moral nature took place, more or less within the span of the sixth century BC at widely separated points. At that time, the earliest universal religions, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, came forth, while those that appeared later, Christianity, Bithraism, Manichaeism, Islam, continued the transformations begun them.
…The individual elements that went into the axial religions had already existed in embryonic forms, sometimes indeed in a well-developed state, in earlier religions. The most fundamental early contribution was the notion that temporal events, touching infinite beings, had an eternal significance; that the brief life of man does not end at death, but is continued in another sphere; and that the quality of that longer existence is the subject of an ultimate judgement, which determines whether he who is judged is to participate fully in that after-life or be deprived of its benefits, perhaps even punished.
That cosmic forces themselves make for righteousness, that there is come close connection between man’s assumed role and process that lie outside his control, shaping his life for good or bad, were well-established principles in Chaldea and Egypt before even the correlated idea, of a single divine providence, came into existence. Religion’s basic premises are the unity and meaningfulness of all life, indeed, of all existence. (p.57)
Despite the pretence of choice, one is born a Buddhist or a Christian, almost as one might be born a Kaffir or an Eskimo. Instead of mingling freely with other men, exchanging the gifts of spirit, a stubborn pride in their own spiritual possessions, yes, and a desire for domination, has often set one axial religion at odds with every other: Mahomet’s tolerance of Moses and Jesus was a happy exception – though it did not create a warm brotherhood with Christians and Jews. In the long history of human cruelty, the treatment of heretics and nonbelievers by the axial religions ranks among its blackest pages: multiplied by desolate chapters devoted to ferocious wars of religion. (p.78)
-Mumford, Lewis. The Transformation Of Man, Torchbook, 1978.